Lemme ask you a question. Is it New York City or New York? You could say New York CIty or Metropolitan New York, or you could say New York, NY. And all would be correct. I get a lot of questions about hotels in New York from visitors to my blog. Some want cheap hotels, some want specific amenities, some want a pet friendly hotel, others have kids, and so on.

But not a single one has asked for an Upstate New York hotel. Now if I started asking my readers whether they're talking about New York hotels or New York City hotels, well.. Let's just say that I wouldn't have that many readers left for long. When somebody asks for a place to stay in New York, you roll out a selection of NYC hotels. Simple as that.

Confused with all the New York talk? I just wanted to make the point that for most people in the world, the rest of New York does not exist, except maybe for the Niagara Falls, and even with that, very few people know that the American side of the Falls is in New York state.

Point here is to focus a little spotlight on New York's ski areas and resorts, which have nothing to do with New York City, except maybe for the fact that a lot of NYC residents 'getaway' to the Catskills, Lake Placid, Gore Mountain and the other winter hotspots in and around the 6 million acres of Adirondack Park.

Its a misconception that New Yorkers' preferred winter ski areas and resorts are in New England and especially in Vermont. Not so. There are 44 ski areas in New York, and they're all pretty heavily frequented, mostly by New Yorkers, since the Big Apple swallows most of the out-of-state visitors.

Photo by BalaSub via flickr (creative commons). The most famous of these resorts is at Whiteface Mountain (www.whiteface.com/), which has a 3,430 foot vertical drop, and has extensive facilities with lifts and snowmaking equipment, as befits the site of multiple winter Olympics (Lake Placid has hosted the winter Olympics in 1932 and 1980).

Whiteface is located in Wilmington, and Lake Placid is 7 miles away from Whiteface. Lake Placid has a lot more to offer, including an Olympic Museum and tobogganing and dog sledding on Mirror Lake, along which there's also a neat paved pathway for exploring the Village. You'll also find a veriety of restaurants and pubs, and a historical movie theater.

Whether you stay at Wilmington, Lake Placid, Saranac Lake or Keene, there's a range of accomodations available, depending on your budget, from cheap Inns and motels to ski and stay vacation packages at four diamond luxury resorts.

Another option is the imposing Gore Mountain Ski Resort off Lake George(www.goremountain.com/), about an hour and a half north off Lake Placid. For the 2008/2009 season, Gore Mountain has introduced new terrain which increases the vertical drop from 2,100 feet to 2,300 feet, and the longest continuous run has been extended from 2.9 miles to 3.7 miles.

There's Gondola skyrides at Northwoods, and family friendly skiing and riding on Village Slope, and Ski Bowl "Park,"  a new terrain park which adds to the tubing fun. There's also a new Women's Learn-to-Ride Burton Method Center and a couple of new lodges. 

Gore Mountain offers plenty of packages and lodging options, including Ski & Stay, B&Bs, motels, cabins and cottages, resorts, and private vacation home rentals. More details and full lodging listings here.

2 and 1/2 hours northwest of New York City lie the Catskill Mountain ski areas (www.visitthecatskills.com/), and the most well known of the areas within the Catskills is Hunter Mountain (www.huntermtn.com/), in Greene County.

Hunter is very well equipped with 1100 snow guns which can quickly blanket all the trails with snow to make optimum use of even short spans of favorable conditions. And they've added 45 new snowguns for the 2008/09 season, along with a new TuneJet machine and a variety of projects and developments. Also, January 10, 2009 marks the beginning of a year of parties, contests and events to celebrate Hunter Mountain's 50th anniversary.

The winter at Hunter Mountain is big enough, topped off with wedding facilities, festivals, races, luxury spas and quality dining and also summer activities, that people have to taken to renting condos and lodges, instead of just a weekend getaway at a hotel or resort. Lodging options for Hunter Mountain are listed here.

Other ski areas in the Catskills include Belleayre (www.belleayre.com), Plattekill (www.plattekill.com) andWindham (www.windhammountain.com). Photo by chorcel via flickr (creative commons).

Other than this, if you're visiting New York City this winter, you might be interested in taking a day off from the urban fleshpots to visit Warwick, just 50 miles from Manhattan, where you'll find Mount Peter (www.mtpeter.com).