Skaneateles Ski Club

The Skaneateles Ski Club is open to schussers who want to conquer their own hill

Ask any member of the Skaneateles Ski Club what kept their club in business for 50 years, and they respond that the secret is the people. As members of the oldest privately owned ski hill east of the Mississippi, it seems they know something about creating a legacy. Perhaps the reason is that the first thing anyone mentions about the Skaneateles Ski Club is that the club is home to a family.

“It is the camaraderie within the community that keeps it going the way it is now,” explains Brad Wirth, the club’s president for the last three years. “{The hill} is run by the volunteers and the people who come to ski.” 

Wirth’s wife Lisa, the ski club’s first lady and a ski instructor, agrees. “What keeps the hill alive is a core group of people—it’s home to them,” she says, adding that the ski club has a group of kids who feel they grew up at the hill. Those kids, notes Brad Wirth, may eventually travel to larger, more challenging hills, but “never forget where they first learned to ski.”

The Skaneateles Ski Club’s hill, on Route 174 in Marietta and where generations of kids and adults alike have learned to ski, got going in 1959 when four or five guys with the dream of starting their own club purchased 33 acres of land for $1,500. Each gentleman brought something to the project such as a bulldozer or tractor, and the owners built the ski hill they envisioned. 

“The hill was created back when people were making handshake deals for a dollar,” says Dean Mason, a longtime club member. 

As a private entity, it is particularly important to members that the hill stays in business because fewer restrictions exist for private hills. To the members this means creating special memories they couldn’t elsewhere. For example, some of Mason’s fondest memories include skiing after hours and skiing with the sunrise. “We would ski a couple runs then go to work,” he says.

“If we ever lost the hill, we wouldn’t be able to get it back,” says Lisa Wirth. “We don’t want to become another one of the lost ski areas of New England.”

With 50 years of history, everyone has a story to share, like Amy Nye, a longtime member who was “born and raised at the Skaneateles ski hill,” or Chad McNeil, a member for 15 years, who points out another member who baby-sat for his three children when they were toddlers. Jo Gregg, a charter member, recalls learning to ski for the first time at the hill.

“I learned coming down that hill, and I was terrified,” says Gregg with a laugh, adding that she bought her first pair of skis in the club’s shop. She used those wooden skis until one year when the club decided to auction off a new pair, which Gregg won, much to her excitement. “In church the next day, I said, ‘Hail Mary full of skis’ instead of ‘Hail Mary full of grace.’ I just couldn’t get it out of my head that I had this beautiful new pair of skis. We all had fun over there. People that ski are a lot of fun to be around.”

Julie Moore has been making ski club memories since 1993 when her neighbor, the club president at the time, told her she was joining “and it wasn’t a question.” She says she cries every time she talks about the club.

“This is the best thing we ever joined. It was a way to connect with people who had kids. Some of my oldest friends are here,” says Moore, who loved watching her kids learn to ski and her husband, who couldn’t ski at all when they first joined, “grow up” on the hill. “{The kids} are confident, wonderful skiers, and that is one of a million {memories}.” 

Moore also laughs at the time parents shoveled snow onto the T-bar track to keep it running as long as possible for their kids in the spring. With all the mud, Moore jokes, they did it mostly out of desperation. “The longer you could use it, the longer your house stayed clean.”

Kristi Newton, who says the ski hill is “just enough of a hill” for her, enjoys snowshoeing up and down the hill in the winter as well as hiking it in the warmer months. On a recent Friday-night hike with the girls, Newton remembers a full moon and that she “could almost reach out and touch every star. Every time I go there I have a new memory,” says Newton. The club welcomes snowboarders to their ranks as well. 

For the members, keeping the hill running means continuing to make memories, but preserving the hill presents several difficulties. “This is our legacy, and we try to keep it going at a time when there is a lot more for kids to do in the winter and expenses are so high,” says Lisa Wirth. 

In addition to competing with other wintertime activities and affording membership fees, snow production became a greater issue in recent years. “For the last five or six years, there hasn’t been much snow. People are going where the snow is,” says Mason, who mentions that, because of this, membership numbers dwindle below where the club would like. 

Thankfully, the club has Peter Fleckenstein or, the “hill slave” as he calls himself. Fleckenstein is in charge of snow production and ensuring that the hill is smooth for the next day. This year, the club invested in a new water pump to increase snow production. “If we lose the snow overnight, we can get it back within 24 hours,” he explains. 

Mason contends that the new snowmaking abilities will save the club from extinction. The members, however, seem unaffected by potential problems for the Skaneateles Ski Club. They focus instead on family, on friendship and on being the same close-knit group they always have been. 

A rule around the club exemplifies the unspoken mentality that each member is a parent to every child. “When a child is down, you take care of that child as if it were your own,” says Kim Baldwin, a member from DeWitt.

Members feel that this sort of closeness keeps them alive. “{The club} has families that are committed to it. It’s a jewel, and to let it go would be a shame,” says Moore. Orville “Bunt” Osborne, one of the founding club members, agrees. He loves seeing the kids run around the hill because he believes they are the ones who will keep the club going.

For now, however, the members simply want to enjoy half a century of Skaneateles Ski Club memories by approaching different members to collect their memories and photographs for each generation since the club began. “We want to find ways to celebrate what those guys did 50 years ago,” says Brad Wirth. “We want to get the word out that we survived for 50 years and we want to for another 50 years.”

Membership in the Skaneateles Ski Club is open to anyone. Fees range from $99 to $489. For more information on the club, visit www.skiskaneateles.com or call Andrea Quick at 432-8967.

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