Alpine Sport Shop Celebrates
85 Years in Business
Written By Megin Potter
Photos by Susan Blackburn Photography
In 1969, Saratoga High School ski team sweethearts, Cathy and Jack met while they were on the Alpine Ski Team together. “Jack is the real ‘Mr. Alpine,’” said Cathy, whose parents, Thurlow and Dorothy “Dot” Woodcock, purchased Alpine Sport Shop three years earlier, in 1966, from Edwin Taylor Jr. and his wife Josephine, the founders of the Alpine Meadows Ski Area in Corinth, NY.
Ed and Jo started Alpine Sport Shop on Spring Street in 1941. Ed’s white skis (from the time he served in the United States Army 10th Mountain Division during World War II) are now placed near the hand carved signs that Jack made. They simply display ski destinations of trips hosted by the shop. In the 55 years since Jack and Cathy were married, they have skied most of them with their customers and friends.
In the early days of the sport, skis were made of wood, but other materials were introduced in the 1940s, like the metal ones placed on the shop’s far wall today. “These silver skis once belonged to Pete.” Meaning Newman “Pete” Wait; president of the Adirondack Trust Company, and the father of the Hays’ Saratoga ski team classmate, Charles Wait. He, like so many others, became one of Alpine Sport Shop’s many generational customers, who have brought their children, and now their grandchildren, to the store for their winter sporting needs.
Slices of a Storied Past
Originally located within the downtown Skidmore College campus (when it was only for women and girls), Alpine Sport Shop began primarily selling ladies sportswear and had a small selection of skis available for sale in the basement.
When Skidmore College transitioned to their new campus on North Broadway in 1970, however, Alpine Sport Shop followed, relocating to the distinct “chalet style” structure that Thurlow designed and built at 321 Clinton Street, and that has been their home since.
Evolving with the times, as 25 other shops (catering exclusively, or in part, to skiers) have come and gone, Alpine Sport Shop has carved out their legacy as a landmark in New York skiing history.
At Alpine Sport Shop, boot fitting was elevated to an art form. Staying current in the mid-1970s came in an exciting new form when the gas crisis left drivers without an affordable way to get to the mountains. In response, Alpine Sport Shop installed an indoor ski deck, encouraging skiers to take to the slopes -without ever leaving the store- from 1974 until 1981.
Learning to ski while staying warm was a boon for the shop thanks to Thurlow’s introduction of very short, Graduated Length Method (GLM) skis that allowed skiers to start with short, easy-to-turn skis, and “graduate” to full length skis. Hundreds of new skiers learned on these unique skis, shaped and baked in Thurlow’s home oven. These fun trainers started at just 50cm long, then graduated to 65 cm, and then 100 cm (or just larger than 3 feet in length) and eventually appropriate “regular” length skis.
Wandering Off the Trail
In the 1980s and 1990s, advancements in ski helmets and equipment made skiing safer. The wooden skis of the past were traded in for those being designed and built from state-of-the-art synthetic materials.
This is also when snowboarding really began to take off, said Jack, which is why he built “Al’s Snowboard Shop,” a small building with a pinball machine at the back of the store, that sold snowboarding gear and became quite the gathering spot. For five years in the mid-1990s, they began selling bicycles in the summer months. There was too much overlap in the cycling and skiing seasons, however, remembers Jack, making it impossible to do both effectively, so, in 1997, they stopped carrying bicycles.
The decade brought another enterprising addition to the business, however. In 1994, Alpine Sport Shop invited 85 people to take a trip with them to the stunning alpine destination of Innsbruck, Austria. It was a voyage that would kick off an annual tradition of weeklong adventures, both domestic and abroad. In February 2027, they’ll be embarking on their 50th trip, traveling to Switzerland with 43 people. Tickets sold out in just 10 days.
