If you missed Lake Placid Part 1- read this. Otherwise…

Our second full day at Lake Placid was action packed! So much so that I’m writing a separate post for each of the three major things we saw, starting with my favorite spot, Mount Hoevenburg. I’m surprised I didn’t get any good pics of the bobsled track, which is the main attraction there. But hopefully the pictures I did take will be enough to convince you to go visit this place if you ever get a chance.

Mount Hoevenburg

Lake Placid’s Olympic slide track is just a few miles outside the village, at Mount Hoevenburg. This is where bobsled, luge and skeleton events take place. The biathlon course is there too, and the facility houses one of the only training centers in the world with a “push track” (more on that later).

I’ve always dreamed of bobsledding or doing luge, and although my dream did not come true (yet), we still had an excellent experience at Hoevenburg.

It was nice and cool in this lodge and hot outside – the total opposite of what you would expect when the sports are in season.

Cliffside Coaster

We started by riding the Cliffside Coaster, which moves on a raised track above most of the original bobsled course (which has since been replaced by a more modern course).  As you travel up the hill, a recorded announcer fills you in on the history of the course and the sport itself.  The ride down is fun, with enough speed and curves to keep it interesting, without freaking out the faint of heart.

The Cliffside Coaster cars are designed to look like bobsleds.

The only downside of the coaster is the price, which is about $50 per person.  With the whole ride taking about 15 minutes, we watched several families of four burn through $200 in less time than it takes to get a pizza delivered.  If it were priced at about $20, I would have taken at least one more ride, maybe two.  But at $50, we decided to just be satisfied with one run.

This is as close as we got to actually bobsledding. It was fun and probably a lot safer!

Facility Tour

We learned and saw a lot on this tour!  Our guide was super knowledgable about everything related to the slide track, the training center, and other related topics. In fact, he started out as a local kid and grew into an Olympic bobsledder, I believe it was on the 1970’s!

Push Track

This was the Hovenburg Highlight for me! 

When our guide opened the door to the track area, I thought we were just going into some sort of spectator viewing spot where we could get a good look at the slide track.  Instead, we stepped into an elongated room with a U-shaped ice track in it.  At the near end were a bobsled practice cart and a similar device suited for luge and skeleton.  At the far end, the track reached skyward before stopping like a deadened road. The room was, especially by summertime standards, brutally cold (in the 20’s)!

The indoor push track- a meticulously maintained world class facility. The guy on the track is spraying it with water and building ice.

The track is one of only a few in the world, and is the only one in North America besides another in Calgary.

Our guide told us that slide sport medals are won and lost at the start; the faster you can start, the faster you can go throughout the course.  And with competitions decided by fractions of a second, starting fast is critical.  Push tracks, like the one we were looking at, draw at athletes from all over the world, year-round. They even have national and international push track competitions, right at the facility.  

The room is surreal in a way; freezing in a 25 degree room built around a perfectly groomed ice track in the middle of summer, where the world’s most accomplished slide sport athletes show up from who-knows-where to practice their craft.  It was awesome!

After the slide track, the guide took us outside to share some info about the slide course.  I didn’t realize that the same course is used for bobsledding, luge and skeleton.  I also didn’t realize the extreme amount of engineering that goes into building one of these courses and keeping it running! I won’t bore you with the details here but look it up if you’re interested- it’s insane!

Biathalon Area

To wrap things up, we took a short stroll down to the biathlon area, where the course winds it’s way over to the target shooting area.  It was very interesting to see the green, grassy course while hearing our guide tell stories of how high the snow usually gets there in the winter.  There were plenty of shells laying on the ground in certain areas, proof that the biathletes were there.

A look at part of the usually snow covered biathalon course.
The target shooting area for biathletes.

I had heard that visitors like us could rent luge-like roller scooters and practice their skills on the biathlon track.  But, sadly for me, all the scooters were reserved that day for a group of camp kids that would be arriving shortly.  So…that was the end of our Mount Hoevenburg visit- but it was definitely a Lake Placid highlight.

I definitely plan to visit again, because in the winter you can ride down portions of the actual Olympic bobsled track, in a bobsled with a skilled driver.  That sounds awesome!!  

It’s on my bucket list.

Tam takes gold on the slide track with me in second place.
Everyone’s a dreamer….

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