If I understand your question, you only want to see if a particular node is an ancestor of an other node. If so, just (string) check the Path property of the node. The path property is a comma separated string. No need to build the list yourself.
Just myNode.Path.Contains(",1001") will work.
Small remarks.
- If you are using Umbraco 6, use the IPublishedContent instead of Node.
- If you would build a list like you do, I would rather take you can provide the Umbraco helper with multiple Id's and let umbraco build the list (from cache).
For the second remark, you are able to do this:
var myList = Umbraco.Content(1001,1002,1003);
or with a array/list
var myList = Umbraco.Content(someNode.Path.Split(','));
and because you are crawling up to the root, you might need to add a .Reverse()
More information about the UmbracoHelper can be found in the documentation: http://our.umbraco.org/documentation/Reference/Querying/UmbracoHelper/
If you are using Umbraco 4 you can use @Library.NodesById(...)