Legacy Tour guide Janice Stainkein shows visitors a bobsled at the Mount Van Hoevenberg sliding facility Tuesday, Aug. 20. (News photo — Chris Gaige)

As I stood beneath the 13-foot concrete wall that shoulders Curve 4 at Mount Van Hoevenberg’s sliding track, I was in awe. It was almost impossible to imagine slingshotting around it at a velocity that exceeds the state speed limit while lying flat, face first, on a skeleton sled. To me, this did not go against common sense; it defied reality.

My shock was soon overcome by an appreciation for the exhilaration, bravery and dedication demanded from sliding athletes and their teams. Even as I stood there in the middle of August, months away from a sled gracing the track, I experienced an appreciation I could never get just from watching on television.

Among the many privileges of spending time in Lake Placid, one that rockets to the top is the ability to glean a global perspective on athletics arts and life — all from a village of less than 3,000 nestled deep in the forests of the Adirondacks.

One of the most picturesque and prominent venues to gain this type of experience is Mount Van Hoevenberg. The site hosts sliding events — luge skeleton and bobsled — and Nordic skiing events. While these are all winter sports, this world-class facility serves as a year-round training facility for athletes from the U.S. as well as a host of other countries.

Television cameras will capture the minute or less it takes a sled to fly down the ice at the upcoming bobsled and skeleton World Championships next March. Visiting in the middle of summer offered a glimpse into the herculean efforts undertaken around the clock, while few are paying attention, by athletes, their training teams and venue staff to make the magic happen.

A skeleton athlete practices at the Mount Van Hoevenberg start facility Tuesday, Aug. 20. (News photo — Chris Gaige)

On Tuesday, Aug. 20, I was invited to take the Legacy Tour of the Mount Van Hoevenberg facilities, operated by the state Olympic Regional Development Authority. The tour began at 9 a.m. at the Mountain Pass Lodge, an enormous 55,000-square-foot structure that anchors the visitor’s experience. The state-of-the-art building was completed in 2021 as part of a massive campaign by the state to upgrade its winter sports venues ahead of the 2023 Winter World University Games and last far beyond. Tour guide Janice Stainkein welcomed the group and gave a brief overview of the venue renovations before whisking us up to the lodge’s second floor.

The tour’s first stop was at the Nordic viewing deck. In typical Adirondack fashion, clouds danced up and down along mountain shoulders, lifting just enough that morning to reveal the jumps and village in the distance. The gray skies accentuated a few scattered splotches of yellow and orange just beginning to appear in the foliage. While Aug. 20 was unseasonably cool for the area, Stainkein explained that Mother Nature is increasingly fickle when it comes to winter. To address that, the state upgraded the snowmaking and grooming capabilities at Mount Van Hoevenberg. This included completing a two million gallon reservoir that makes the facility completely self-sufficient for water needs each winter, a far cry from the 1980 Winter Olympics when, faced with a lack of snow, most of it had to be made locally by snow guns and distributed along the biathlon and cross-country ski trails one dump truck load at a time.

Stainkein explained that with the upgrades, even if there are warm spells throughout the winter, the complex will be able to bank snow at night when temperatures still reliably stay below freezing. According to observations from the National Weather Service, there were only six days throughout December 2023, January 2024 and February 2024, one of the warmest winters on record for the Olympic region, where the low temperature for a given 24-hour period remained above freezing at their Adirondack Regional Airport monitoring station in Lake Clear.

When I arrived just before 9 a.m., my car thermometer read 47 degrees. While most, I suspect, still yearn for a few more weeks of lakeside enjoyment, this early taste of fall was well-received at Mount Van Hoevenberg. After spending some time at the viewing deck, the tour’s next stop was the indoor push-start facility. Located within the Mountain Pass Lodge, it’s the only facility of its kind in the U.S. and only one of two in North America, the other being in Calgary, Canada.

The indoor push-start allows skeleton and bobsled athletes to focus on their running starts, which are crucial to an overall competitive time. The facility features an abbreviated ice track where athletes push off, get on or in their sled, then go up at an incline to slow themselves down before a cushioned pad greets athletes at the end of the ice if they are still in motion. Stainkein explained that athletes can begin their push-offs at different points on the track to train for specific venues around the world, which have different starting pitches. The ice is refrigerated and maintained year-round.

The Mount Van Hoevenberg sliding facility at is seen here from the lower portion of the combined track for luge, bobsled and skeleton on Tuesday, Aug. 20. (News photo — Chris Gaige)

Stainkein also explained that athletes’ bodies pull about 5Gs of force during a full track run, only allowing them to complete two or three runs per day. With the abbreviated track and lack of g-force, athletes can practice more repetitions throughout the day.

Mystique Ro, a Team USA skeleton athlete, briefly talked to our tour group in between her push-off training runs. She explained that this was the first time pushing off for many athletes this season. She explained the importance of conditioning now to minimize the risk of injury once the season gets underway in the late fall. Constant travel for the athletes around the world during the season, combined with ensuring enough rest and recovery time between events, means less opportunity for conditioning then, she said.

After seeing the push-off facility, it was time to hit the road. No, the tour was not yet over. We were given a shuttle bus ride that climbed 420 vertical feet from the Mountain Pass Lodge to Start One, at the very top of ths sliding track. Janice boasted about the track’s technical nature, noting that Mount Van Hoevenberg’s track was capped at 20 curves after its designers originally wanted to include more. Most tracks have between 14 and 16 curves, she said. The 420-foot drop is the third largest of the 16 tracks around the world used by the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation.

After going over the track statistics, our group walked down the first few curves before exiting at at one of the four lower starting points the track features. At an average 9% grade, the track was surprisingly easy to navigate as the grooves in the concrete provided ample traction. That will change at the end of October, when builders begin the process of icing the track for the season. Stainkein explained that it typically takes two weeks to build the initial layer of ice on the refrigerated track. The building process and maintenance throughout the season is completely performed by hand, with people from around the world to assist with and/or learn the trade.

It was nothing short of astonishing walking around the track curves, which featured walls of up to 20 feet to accommodate the sled’s velocity throughout the run, which can regularly exceed 75 mph. The track’s most famous, or perhaps, notorious, curve is Shady II, which pays homage to the original 1932 track’s Shady corner. The curve bends 180 degrees and requires extreme technical precision to master.

The old and the new combine here at Mount Van Hoevenberg Tuesday, Aug. 20 with new sidewalks and railings, left, and the Cliffside Coaster track, right, and the older buildings and end of the 1980 bobsled in the middle. (News photo — Chris Gaige)

After exiting the track, we were met again by the shuttle bus and driven back to Mountain Pass Lodge. Our short walking path back to the lodge took us over the Cliffside Coaster, the longest coaster in North America, according to ORDA. While I unfortunately did not ride the Cliffside as part of the Legacy Tour, it is high atop my wish list to return to and conquer.

Mount Van Hoevenberg will host the IBSF World Championships this season for the first time since 2012. The event is scheduled for March 6 to 16, 2025. More information on the event, including ticket sales, can be found at https://tinyurl.com/y5avt5cp.

The Legacy Tour wrapped up by 10:15 a.m. At $15 per adult and under 20 minutes from Lake Placid by car, I cannot recommend this tour enough to anyone visiting Lake Placid. Put simply, it is a must-see. More information about Mount Van Hoevenberg tours, including hours of operation attractions and pricing can be found by visiting their website at https://tinyurl.com/22asvzu5.

A Mount Van Hoevenberg employee drives a Legacy Tour group up to the top of the sliding center on Tuesday, Aug. 20. (News photo — Chris Gaige)

The Mount Van Hoevenberg sliding facility at is seen here from the upper portion of the combined track for luge, bobsled and skeleton on Tuesday, Aug. 20. (News photo — Chris Gaige)

The inside of a bobsled is seen at Mount Van Hoevenberg on Tuesday, Aug. 20. (News photo — Chris Gaige)