Ask any kid who grew up in the 1970s and early 80s near a small local ski hill and they’re likely to share stories that include stinky two-buckle boots, soaking wet gear, duct taped gloves, hockey-puck-hard slices of tray pizza and more than one tale of creatively dodging ski patrol.
Each is a story of pure joy. Life less structured. Selfies not included.
Many of those kids later picked up jobs in the rental shop on weekends or sold lift tickets after school. Laps on breaks and free passes included.
For a mini-Mike Taylor, who grew up in Monticello, Holiday Mountain was the center of the universe in winter. Rain and sleet be damned—he was skiing and so were all his buddies.
“Holiday Mountain changed my life,” says Mike. “A lot of memories are packed into those 400 feet of vertical. I couldn’t imagine growing up without it and am glad I don’t have to.”
SPOILER ALERT: Thanks to Mike, an entire new generation of kids don’t have to either.
When the property was on the verge of being closed as a ski hill forever, an all-grown-up Mike and his family bought it in 2023 and immediately invested in new snowmaking, a quad chairlift and a state-of-the-art tubing hill—complete with surface lift and lighting that syncs to the music. Like glow bowling, only with kids and snow.
How Beet Soup Brought Skiing to the Catskills
But before we get here, let’s back up a chair or two. It’s important to know a place like Holiday. Dig under the floorboards. Catch a whiff of that familiar lodge musty odor, and you’ll start to understand why a guy like Mike went all in.
In the early 1900s, as discriminatory practices at some resorts excluded Jewish guests, expanding railroad access made the southern foothills of the Catskill Mountains an increasingly reachable and welcoming vacation destination for families from New York City and nearby communities.
In addition to a major influx of money, those families brought along their culture, including cuisine, like borscht, a beet-based soup. Before long a series of new resorts were built in places like Liberty, Bethel and Fallsburg. The area became widely known as the Borscht Belt.
Monticello Adds a Platter
Other communities quickly caught on and hopped on the train, too. Monticello was one of them and in 1957, the Town of Thompson opened Holiday Mountain with one rope tow and a Poma lift, commonly known as a “platter”.
Families ate it up and the little hill boomed into the early 1990s expanding with time to add lifts, more terrain, a ski school and a racing program that included a high school team and a dream for Becky Mitchell, who tossed her skis over her shoulder and walked to the lift when she started working at Holiday at the age of 14.
“From the age of three until I went away for college, I was either working or skiing at Holiday in the winter,” says Becky. “We used to play a game called NASCAR where everyone would bomb down the mountain intentionally crashing into each other. Whoever survived and made it down first, won.”
It was a time without TikTok. And a lot less liability.
Ironically, Becky would go on to work for NASCAR for a period in Alabama before returning to her hometown and eventually placing a call to a guy named Mike Taylor who had just bought the mountain.
“I had a feeling something special was going to happen and I wanted to be a part of it,” says Becky.
Massive Flood Nearly Ends the Holiday
To understand why he bought the mountain is to understand Mike. He’s a guy rooted in Catskills dirt who grew up ripping laps at Holiday in winter and pumping gas at his pop’s shop in summer. Mike would eventually take over his family’s companies and grow them from six employees when he was a kid to 150 now, but that’s another story.
It also just so happens that when the Town of Thompson decided to build the ski area, they built it on his great grandmother’s property—with her permission, of course. Kids from Monticello were already skiing and sledding there anyway.
With time, the resorts vanished and as lift ticket sales waned, so did the energy at the town for continuing to burden taxpayers with a ski area that always lost money. It was eventually sold to a private owner in 2000, but according to Mike, it was already too far gone without a massive infrastructure investment.
“The owner did everything he could to keep it alive, but there wasn’t a card in his deck that would have saved it and everyone was rooting for him—including me,” says Mike.
A catastrophic flood in 2006 didn’t help either as six feet of water destroyed the north lodge and associated terrain, leaving Holiday with one functioning chairlift and minimal “sometimes skiable” trails.
Titanic-Level Sinking
Stuart Winchester of The Storm Skiing Journal and podcast describes a 2021 trip he took to Holiday Mountain like this:
“I’m the biggest optimist ever when it comes to ski areas, so when I get down on a place, it’s probably titanic-level sinking. And that’s what it was doing when I skied there in 2021. It was the worst active ski area I’ve ever experienced.”
For context, Stuart’s resort experience was one where 80% of the mountain was permanently shuttered, an entire chair lift sat idle, only one lift spun and it served exactly three trails.
“My only thought upon leaving was ‘welp, I’m glad I skied there, because this is definitely going to be New York’s next lost ski area,” recalls Stuart.
Resources, Manpower, Energy & Passion
To right the ship, two things happened. First, the owner didn’t want to sell the mountain to a developer who would close it for good. Second, Mike didn’t want that to happen either.
“I wanted to get kids off their phones and get them outside recreating again,” said Mike, who then used his energy and passion to parlay the resources and manpower from his Monticello-based businesses to invest in Holiday.
For Becky, she remembered thinking that Mike was the only guy who could pull it off.
“He has local knowledge, support and a vision for things, but maybe more than that is he’s the only one crazy enough to try it,” she said.
SIDE NOTE: Mike volunteered that his wife concurred with Becky.
“We had no idea what the hell we were doing,” Mike recalled. “We closed on the deal in May 2023 and all we knew was that we had to get the mountain open by Christmas. Let’s just say we learned a lot by making many mistakes. I thought grooming would be like mowing the lawn. It’s not.”
A New Generation of Holiday Skiers
The kinks are more-or-less worked out as Mike and his team enter their third winter of operation, which will feature the addition of a terrain park serviced by a high-speed rope tow, a new expert trail from the summit and more improvements to snowmaking.
“I didn’t want to half-ass it,” says Mike. “I also didn’t, and couldn’t, do it myself. We’ve had such incredible support from this community, and I cannot tell you how amazing it makes me feel to see kids on the lift again. There is nothing that makes me happier than seeing families experience what I was able to experience growing up.”
It’s an experience that is a community effort. Mike’s daughter Drew now manages youth programming and his son Ross helps out with snowmaking. Becky’s dad recently “retired” and is now working in the parking lot. Her mom retires in January and is planning to work at the mountain. They just want to be a part of it, she says.
“For a while, my family abandoned skiing here too. Now, we get to ski here together again and that’s pretty special,” said Mike, who added that phase three of the revival is kicking in next year with the re-opening of the northside of the mountain that was abandoned after the 2006 flood.
The Talk of the Town
Thanks to early season snow, Holiday Mountain is targeting opening day for the weekend of December 19-20, but if you ask Becky, the community acts like the lifts are already spinning.
“It’s the talk of the town,” she says. “People have been coming by the mountain for weeks just to check things out. I’m pretty sure most everyone around is going to have a Holiday Mountain t-shirt or hat under their tree this Christmas.”
For Mike, the present is something else.
“It’s seeing 12 kids in a ski lesson, high schoolers training and racing and families loading the lift together. All of it is a gift,” says Mike.
HOLIDAY MOUNTAIN STATS
- Location: Monticello, New York
- Founded: 1957
- Base Elevation: 900 feet
- Summit Elevation: 1,300 feet
- Vertical Drop: 400 feet
- Skiable Acres: 60
- Trails: 9 (5 beginner, 2 intermediate, 2 advanced)
- Lifts: 3 (1 fixed-grip quad, 1 triple, 1 carpet)
- Hours of Operation: Check the website for updated hours.