New York Ski Resorts Ranked & Mapped

New York has a rich history of skiing. It also has the mountain with the largest vertical drop east of the Rockies in Whiteface Mountain.

New York Ski Season

The ski season in New York state typically runs from late November to early April, depending on the weather and snow conditions.

In general, ski resorts in New York rely heavily on natural snowfall to provide good skiing and snowboarding conditions. Some may open earlier or later, depending on how cold the fall season is during that year.

List of All New York Ski Resorts

New York has 34 ski resorts, evenly spread throughout the state.

IKON and EPIC each have dozens of slopes in their system that will allow you to ski at any one of them if you hold it. However, within New York, EPIC (a Vail-owned property) and IKON are associated with only one each. Smaller ticket system INDY has 6 associated New York resorts.

Resort	Pass	Location
Belleayre Mountain		Highmount, NY, 12441
Brantling Ski & Snowboard Center		Sodus, NY, 14489
Bristol Mountain		Canandaigua, NY, 14424
Catamount Mountain	INDY	Hillsdale, NY, 12529
Cortina		Baldwinsville, NY, 13027
Dry Hill		Waterton, NY, 13456
Four Seasons		Ravena, NY, 12143
Gore Mountain		North Creek, NY, 12853
Greek Peak Mountain	INDY	New York, NY, 10007
Holiday Mountain		Monticello, NY, 12701
Holiday Valley		Ellicottville, NY, 14731
HoliMont		Ellicottville, NY, 14731
Hunter Mountain	EPIC	Hunter, NY, 12442
Kissing Bridge		Glenwood, NY, 14069
Labrador Mountain		Truxton, NY, 13158
McCauley Mountain		Cold Brook, NY, 13324
Mt. Peter		Greenwood Lake, NY, 10925
Mt. Pisgah Recreation Center		Saranac Lake, NY, 12983
Peek’n Peak	INDY	Clymer, NY, 14724
Plattekill Mountain		Roxbury, NY, 12474
Royal Mountain		Saint Johnsville, NY, 13452
Sawkill		Wallkill, NY, 12589
Snow Ridge	INDY	Turin, NY, 12498
Song Mountain		Tully, NY, 13159
Swain	INDY	Swain, NY, 14884
Thunder Ridge		Patterson, NY, 12563
Titus Mountain	INDY	Malone, NY, 12953
Toggenburg		Fabius, NY, 13063
Tuxedo Ridge		Central Valley, NY, 10917
West Mountain	INDY	Queensbury, NY, 12804
Whiteface Mountain		Wilmington, NY, 12997
Willard Mountain		Greenwich, NY, 12834
Windham Mountain	IKON	Windham, NY, 12496
Woods Valley		Bolton Landing, NY, 12814

Explaining Our ‘Difficulty Score’

Parks & Trips created a proprietary Difficulty Score that is generated by looking at the number of easy-intermediate-expert slopes by acreage and the maximum vertical drop of the overall resort.

Our algorithm compares each resort’s metrics with all others in North America, then gives each a Difficulty Score, which we use to rank them accordingly. Resorts with a lower score are easier than those with a higher one. However, a high score does not mean that the resort does not have any easy slopes, or vice versa. This is just an overall score given to the resort based on all its metrics grouped together.

The Most Difficult New York Ski Resorts

Whiteface Mountain tops out as the most difficult ski resort in New York. With the greatest vertical drop east of the Rockies, Whiteface ends up with over a 60% Difficulty Score, and atop our leader board of NY slopes. Whiteface Mountain was the site of the 1980 Winter Olympic skiing events.

Gore Mountain comes in second, mostly due to it having the most acreage along with only around 10% green, or easy, trails.

Rank	Resort	Green Trails	Blue Trails	Black Trails	Difficulty ScoreTM
#1	Whiteface Mountain	22%	41%	37%	71.3%
#2	Gore Mountain	11%	49%	40%	66.3%
#3	Hunter Mountain	25%	30%	45%	54.8%
#4	Windham Mountain	20%	48%	32%	50.9%
#5	Plattekill Mountain	20%	40%	40%	49.0%
#6	Belleayre Mountain	22%	58%	20%	43.4%
#7	HoliMont	29%	29%	42%	43.2%

The Easiest Ski Resorts in New York

Sawkill, Song Mountain and Cortina are all considered “Very Easy” according to our data, coming in with sub-20% difficulty. Looking at their stats, its not hard to see why. Sawkill has no “Expert” trails, and Song and Cortina are not far behind with the majority of their trails being rated as “Easy”.

Rank	Resort	Green Trails	Blue Trails	Black Trails	Difficulty ScoreTM
#1	Sawkill	70%	30%	0%	13%
#2	Song Mountain	58%	29%	13%	23%
#3	Cortina	45%	50%	5%	24%
#4	Four Seasons	40%	40%	20%	25%
#5	Thunder Ridge	40%	40%	20%	29%
#6	Tuxedo Ridge	20%	70%	10%	30%
#7	West Mountain	36%	55%	9%	31%

The Largest Ski Resorts in New York

Choosing the largest ski resorts is a bit of a tricky proposition. Do you look at just the summit elevation? How about the total acreage, most trails, or steepest vertical drop?

Well, we decided to combine all four of those metrics into one ranking to get the best idea, although we fully admit this is completely subjective. We’ve given you all the data in the following table to make your own decision.

No surprise that the 3 hardest slopes in NY are also the three biggest. Whiteface Mountain wins here as well because of its massive vertical drop. Gore Mountain is right behind them, having the most skiable acres of anywhere in NY.

Rank	Resort	Summit Elevation	Base Elevation	Vertical Drop	Acres	Trails
#1	Whiteface Mountain	4,650 ft	1,220 ft	3,430 ft	299	94
#2	Gore Mountain	3,600 ft	1,500 ft	2,537 ft	453	120
#3	Windham Mountain	3,100 ft	1,500 ft	1,600 ft	732	54
#4	Hunter Mountain	3,200 ft	1,600 ft	1,600 ft	320	67
#5	Belleayre Mountain	3,429 ft	2,025 ft	1,404 ft	171	55
#6	Plattekill Mountain	3,500 ft	2,400 ft	1,100 ft	75	38
#7	Bristol Mountain	2,200 ft	1,000 ft	1,200 ft	138	34
#8	Cortina	2,650 ft	1,925 ft	725 ft	87	18
#9	Catamount Mountain	2,000 ft	1,000 ft	1,000 ft	133	38
#10	Greek Peak Mountain	2,100 ft	1,148 ft	952 ft	220	32