Vaughan to Lake Placid: the Olympic village and the Adirondacks by chauffeured car

Lake Placid, in the park

Lake Placid sits in the middle of the Adirondack Park — six million acres of state forest preserve and private land, larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon together — and it is the only village in the world to have held two Winter Olympics (1932 and 1980) at a size that still fits around Mirror Lake's Main Street. The Olympic sites are the reason a Vaughan family goes: Whiteface Mountain, the largest vertical drop in the East, with its Veterans' Memorial Highway to the summit in summer; Mount Van Hoevenberg's bobsled track, where the public rides behind a professional driver; the Olympic Center's Herb Brooks Arena, where the American college team beat the Soviets in 1980, with its museum and public skating; the ski jumps' elevator to the 120-metre tower's top; the Olympic Oval where Eric Heiden won five golds, open for public skating in winter. Around them the High Peaks' forty-six summits, Ausable Chasm's gorge, the lakes and the Great Camps make the summer week. The Lake Placid site has the village; the border guide has the bridges.

The road, through the park

From Woodbridge the 401 east past Kingston to the Thousand Islands Bridge, I-81 north to Watertown and Route 3 east across the park's northern half through Tupper Lake and Saranac Lake — seven hours by the estimate and seven and a half with the booth and a Kingston stop — or the 401 to the Ogdensburg–Prescott Bridge and Route 68 and 3 through Potsdam, about the same, or the 401 to Cornwall's Seaway International Bridge and Route 37 and 3 through Malone. The chauffeur picks by the waits and the season; the last two hours are two-lane roads through the park with the lakes beside them, on winter tires from November, and the Sprinter carries a family and its skis or bicycles.

Whiteface, in winter and summer

Whiteface Mountain is the ski area — the East's largest vertical at 1,050 metres, ninety trails from the Olympic downhill's Cloudspin to the Bear Den beginner area, the gondola to Little Whiteface, the Lake Placid Club's old lodge at Wilmington's base — and a Vaughan ski family's week is the hill by day from a Lake Placid inn twenty minutes away with the Sprinter's morning drive; in summer the Veterans' Memorial Highway climbs to a parking lot four hundred feet below the summit, with an elevator through the rock or a stone stairway to the 1,483-metre top and the view over the park to Vermont and Montreal, the family's afternoon, and the gondola runs for the view from Little Whiteface. The Adirondack Wildlife Refuge's wolves at Wilmington and the High Falls Gorge's boardwalk on the Ausable River are the drive's other stops.

The bobsled, the jumps and the Olympic Center

Mount Van Hoevenberg's Olympic Sports Complex, ten minutes from the village, runs the Bobsled Experience — a passenger seat behind a professional pilot down the last half mile of the Olympic track at eighty kilometres an hour, in winter on ice and in summer on wheels — with the skeleton and the Cliffside Coaster, a mountain coaster down the old track's line, and the biathlon range's public shooting; the ski jumps at Intervale have the elevator to the top of the 120-metre tower and the glass-floored platform where the jumpers start, with the summer freestyle aerialists training into the pool; the Olympic Center in the village has the Herb Brooks Arena's 1980 rink, the Olympic Museum's medals and the Miracle on Ice film, and public skating on the 1932 and 1980 rinks. The Olympic Authority's site sells the passports to the sites and the bobsled's tickets, which book ahead in February.

Mirror Lake and Main Street

The village's Main Street runs along Mirror Lake's shore — the Olympic Center at one end, the shops, the Lake Placid Pub & Brewery, the Mirror Lake Inn on the far shore with its spa and its Adirondack rooms, the Golden Arrow and the High Peaks Resort on the water, the public beach and the boat rentals, the two-mile walk around the lake, and in winter the toboggan chute onto the lake's ice and the dog-sled rides. Ironman Lake Placid in July fills the village, and the Lake Placid site has the calendar; the travel desk holds the Mirror Lake Inn, which for the Family Day week and July books in the autumn.

The High Peaks, Ausable Chasm and the summer

The Adirondack High Peaks — forty-six summits over four thousand feet — start ten minutes from the village at the Adirondak Loj's trailheads: Mount Jo's hour for the family with young children, Cascade's three hours for the first High Peak, Algonquin's and Marcy's full days for the fit; Ausable Chasm, forty-five minutes east, is a two-mile sandstone gorge with walkways, rafting and a via ferrata — the Grand Canyon of the Adirondacks, the brochures say — and the summer's second day out; the Wild Center at Tupper Lake, an hour west, is the natural-history museum with the Wild Walk's treetop trail, the summer's rainy day. The Adirondack Mountain Club's site has the trailheads, and the Sprinter drops at the Loj and collects at the trail's end.

The week, in shape

Saturday at 7 from Woodbridge, Kingston's lunch, the Thousand Islands Bridge at 11:15, Route 3 through the park, the Mirror Lake Inn by 3:30, Main Street's evening; Sunday the Olympic Center and public skating, the ski jumps' elevator; Monday Whiteface's hill or its summit highway; Tuesday the bobsled and the Cliffside Coaster; Wednesday Cascade's climb or Ausable Chasm; Thursday the Wild Center or a second Whiteface day; Friday the road home — Route 3, I-81, the bridge at 12:30 with the 48-hour exemption, Kingston, the 401, Woodbridge by 5. Six nights, the Sprinter on daily hire with the village days released, one number in the booking engine.

What the chauffeur replaces

Seven hours each way with the last two on park roads in the dark or the snow; the bridge as the driver; Whiteface's twenty-minute morning drive with the skis; the Loj's trailhead lot, which fills by eight in summer and which the chauffeur solves by dropping; and the Friday drive home after a week of mountains. For a couple the trip is a car's; for a ski family of five or two families in a Sprinter it is one fare and a driver who has done Route 3 in a January whiteout.

Seasons

December to March for Whiteface, the bobsled on ice, the Oval's skating and the toboggan chute — the Family Day week is the fullest; July and August for the High Peaks, the lake and the summit highway, with Ironman's weekend in late July filling the village; late September and early October for the park's colour, which is the best drive on this site's northern road; May and November are the quiet months between the seasons.

Pairing it

Lake Placid pairs with Alexandria Bay as the road's first night, with Lake George two hours south for the lake resort's version, with Burlington across Lake Champlain by the Port Kent ferry for the Vermont continuation, and with Ottawa two and a half hours north for a family that loops home through the capital.

The winter week, in order, for a ski family of five

Saturday's drive with the skis in the Sprinter's bay and the Route 3 snow, the Mirror Lake Inn by four, the toboggan chute onto the lake's ice at five; Sunday's public skating on the 1980 rink at ten and the Olympic Museum, the ski jumps' elevator at two with the jumpers training; Monday's Whiteface — the Sprinter at 8:15 for the 8:45 first chair, the children in the Bear Den ski school, the parents on Cloudspin, the last run at 3:30 and the Wilmington pub; Tuesday's bobsled at Mount Van Hoevenberg at 11 with the pilot and the eighty kilometres an hour, the Cliffside Coaster after, the Oval's skating at four; Wednesday's second Whiteface day; Thursday's dog-sled ride on Mirror Lake and the Wild Center's snowshoe trails; Friday's road home in the light. The lift tickets and the bobsled are booked in December on the Olympic Authority's site, and the inn is the travel desk's hold from October.

The Great Camps and the Adirondack style

The Adirondacks invented a way of building — the Great Camps of the 1880s, log lodges with stone fireplaces and twig furniture that the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers built on the private lakes — and two are open: Great Camp Sagamore on Raquette Lake, two hours southwest, with its guided tours of the Vanderbilt camp's twenty-seven buildings, and White Pine Camp at Paul Smiths, thirty minutes northwest, Calvin Coolidge's summer White House of 1926, with its cottages rented by the week. The Adirondack Experience museum at Blue Mountain Lake, ninety minutes south on the road to Lake George, tells the region's story with the boats, the camps and the guide-boats in twenty buildings on a hill over the lake; the museum's site has the hours, and a family on the Lake George road stops for it.

Costs, plainly

The Lake Placid week is a daily hire in the booking engine with the village days released, or a return with the mountain days on daily hire; the inn, the lift tickets, the Olympic sites' passport and the bobsled are the family's own, and the 48-hour exemption covers the Main Street shops. Against the fare are seven hours each way with two hours of park roads in the snow as a driver, the bridge, Whiteface's morning drive with the skis and the Loj's trailhead lot; a couple does this in a car, and a ski family of five or two families in a Sprinter book it for one fare and a driver who has done Route 3 in January.

Booking it

Book a daily hire from your Vaughan address for the week with the village days released, or a return with the mountain days on daily hire; tell us the season, the inn, the bobsled's date, the skis or the bicycles, the seats and every passenger's citizenship for the bridge, and the chauffeur confirms the road and the plan the evening before.

Book the Lake Placid week