Weeklong swing sees that northern ski areas are making strides

In five years of ownership, Vail Resorts hasn’t changed the old-school vibe at Wildcat one bit.

That’s a good thing.

It’s also a not-so-good thing.

First, the pluses. The mountain remains, as ever, splendidly isolated in New Hampshire’s spectacular Crawford Notch, across the road from legendary Tuckerman Ravine and Mount Washington.

Wildcat is not a resort (the same is true of nearby neighbor Cannon Mountain, but more about that later). It’s just a ski area, with no housing or other development at the base, and a unique one at that.

Wildcat

A single high-speed quad chairlift services the entire mountain, with a couple of mid-mountain lifts for people who don’t want to go to the top. The funky, utilitarian base lodge dates to 1970 and is the antithesis of what many picture as a luxurious amenity at a major ski area.

Once renowned as largely ungroomed, Wildcat has made strides in snowmaking and trail grooming. Its interconnected web of “cat”-themed trails provides endless combinations of downhill routes on beautiful cruisers like Polecat, Lynx and Wild Kitty. The tree skiing is plentiful and tough. Other than that, despite its scary moniker, Wildcat is a family ski area with mostly accessible, not-too-steep terrain.

I hit Wildcat on Dec. 16, the start of the pre-Christmas week. It was the first of six areas I visited on a seven-day road trip. The others were Attitash, Cranmore, Bretton Woods and Cannon in New Hampshire and Stowe, Vermont.

Only one top-to-bottom run was open at the “Cat” that day, mostly due to the devastating rainstorm that washed out most New England ski areas the week before. It was an exhilarating run, though, from Upper Catapult to Middle Wildcat to Bobcat, and the snow coverage and quality were decent.

But the scarce open terrain at Wildcat and Attitash, its sister mountain about 10 miles away, illustrated the advances Vail still needs to up its snowmaking game at both areas. Indeed, the Colorado-based company, the world’s largest ski area owner, has made progress in rehabilitating and modernizing snowmaking at both Attitash and Wildcat, but not as much as many customers would like.

GM of Attitash and Wildcat

I sat down with Brandon Swartz, the 37-year-old general manager of both areas. I asked him whether water supply for snowmaking has been a problem in the wake of the prolonged fall drought. Internet chatter says yes, but he said not so.

“The teams are continuing to look at our pipe infrastructure on the hill and finding opportunities to replace aging infrastructure,” Swartz said. “We’re looking at items that have an opportunity to be replaced, how we’re positioning our snow guns on the hill, pumping capacities, and looking at how to bring those systems so they perform at the peak of their operation, when we’re in our key windows of snowmaking.”

Wildcat and Attitash diehards tend to complain the ski areas don’t turn on the snow guns enough, early enough and throughout the season.

Swartz countered that notion.

“Snowmaking is the heart of our operation. We are in snow business, and we need to make snow to be in business,” he said. “So our ability to get open as many trails as soon as we can is important to us, and to be able to provide everyone with the experience they expect.

“We’re going to continue to make snow at every opportunity that we can that makes sense, and we’re going to continue to expand terrain,” he said.

Sure enough, when I passed by Attitash a few days later on my way to Bretton Woods and Cannon, the guns were firing up on the mountain, and the new and great Mountaineer high-speed summit quad was spinning, with early-season access to the winding Saco top-to-bottom cruiser.

Also, I wanted to know what plans Vail has for lift upgrades at Wildcat. The corporate owner’s investments in Attitash — spending millions on two new lifts in the last two years, notably installing Attitash’s first high-speed summit quad — starkly contrast with the old lifts at Wildcat.

The Wildcat Express summit quad was built in 1997. The Snowcat triple dates to 1974, the Bobcat triple to 1982 and the Tomcat triple to 1987. By today’s New England standards, those are ancient lifts, and the old triples are super slow.

The situation reminds me of how for many years, Boyne Resorts, corporate owner of Loon, Sunday River, Sugarloaf and Pleasant Mountain, plowed many millions of dollars into state-of-the-art lifts at Loon and Sunday River while seeming to neglect Sugarloaf. That finally changed with the big West Mountain expansion opening at Sugarloaf last season.

Swartz was somewhat guarded about the prospect of lift upgrades at Wildcat.

“As a company, we’re always looking across the entire network of resorts and thinking about how we invest in our ski areas,” he said. “It’s up to us locally on how we are building and telling our story, to be able to look at those opportunities of how we’re leveraging those funds. There are always opportunities where we can look at how we want to upgrade this or purchase this new thing.”

I also spoke with Barb Tetreault, food and beverage general manager at Attitash. She gave me a quick tour of the spruced-up base lodge at Attitash, home to the great Ptarmigan’s Pub, one of the most hopping après-ski joints in New England.

Tetreault, a Foxborough native and veteran of 30 years working at Attitash, noted that the whole main floor of the lodge was repainted for this season, with new tables and chairs throughout. Attitash also has a new food truck slated to open at the foot of the Mountaineer.

Also new this season is the opening of Hunky Dory, a new gladed run where the old mountain coaster stood until being removed as part of the Mountaineer installation. Attitash, once known for its bust summer adventure park, has “paused” summer activities other than festivals, Swartz said.

Cranmore Mountain

On Dec. 18, I visited this classic resort located in the village of North Conway and renowned as one of the best family areas in New England.

It was my first time seeing the handsome, sprawling new Fairbank Lodge, which opened in December 2023. What an upgrade from the old, cramped base lodge.

On the mountain, Cranmore had done a good job amid challenging weather conditions in opening a couple of top-to-bottom runs and a mid-mountain pod, with great snow.

Cranmore also has become a bit of a magnet for Alpine touring because it is one of the only ski areas in the Mount Washington Valley that allow it during the day. An uphill pass is $19 for the day or $149 for the season. The resort is also part of the Uphill New England multi-pass, $215 for this season.

I had a nice uphill to the summit on the gently pitched uphill route to far looker’s right from the bottom. Cranmore also has a dedicated uphill track to the woods this season. It could be open by the time you get there.

Bretton Woods

With my old ski friends Michael O’Sullivan of Worcester, a retired educator, and Michael Hussey, a Worcester lawyer, I dropped in on this jewel of a ski area just past scenic Pinkham Notch.

Bretton Woods usually has more and better snow than any ski area in New Hampshire, and this pre-Christmas Thursday lived up to that, with about half of the mountain open.

The largely low-angle terrain here also tends to keep the snow on the many ample boulevards and a wide selection of gladed skiing. From the top of the mountain or cruising in the five-year-old, eight-person Skyway gondola, you also get an amazing view of the Mount Washington Hotel, owned by Omni Hotels and Resorts, which also owns and runs Bretton Woods.

“Bretton Woods was its usual self: great conditions, great snow and lots of options, even this early in the season,” O’Sullivan said. “The snow cover was terrific — tree line to tree line with no brown spots anywhere.”

I concur with Hussey’s summation: “Most ski areas in New England would be overjoyed to have as much snow in as good condition.”

Onward to Cannon Mountain

The next day, a frigid Friday, I met up with another old ski friend, Andrew Combs of Leominster. He and his wife Anne have a ski home in the area. Over the past 14 years, Combs has become one of this tough, cold, steep mountain’s most knowledgeable regulars.

He’s also an incomparable guide to Cannon, which is owned by the state of New Hampshire. But if you ski with him here, you had better tighten your safety belt because Combs skis fast and hard, sweeping down and across Cannon’s narrow, often rock hard and steep trails cut into the face of the 4,000-foot-plus summit of the imposing monolith of a mountain just past Franconia Notch.

On our first run, Combs led me into the semi-treacherous Upper Tramway run and then Upper Cannon, a winding, steep plunge to the middle of the mountain. The fabled front five lower bevy of steeps was still closed but expected to open soon. As for the aerial tramway itself, the only one in New Hampshire, it is scheduled to be modernized soon, with new cabins. First opened in 1938, the iconic lift is certainly due for an update.

Cannon has a new general manager this season for the first time in 16 years after the departure of former GM John DeVivo. He is Jace Wirth, a former ski racer who has helped run a ski area in China. I plan to interview Wirth later in the season for this column to learn about his vision for the future.

Combs, a recently retired heavy equipment operator, has some ideas about that. One is for an expanded base lodge. Though Cannon has a large bar and deck at the Peabody Lodge, it’s an older space and sometimes feels cramped.

No place like Stowe

When my 14-year-old ski partner and I boarded the FourRunner Quad last Saturday morning, we took in Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s tallest mountain, in all its majesty. On this clear and cold day, in the mid-teens, a few inches of new snow lent some cushion and some choppiness to two of the ski area’s famously steep Front Foor expert runs: Liftline and National.

So, we headed for Hayride, another black diamond run from near the top. It, too, was filled with choppy snow, but smaller moguls. It was still a thigh burner.

With about 70 of Stowe’s 129 trails open for the season, the resort was coming into full focus.

We opted for the warmth of the gondola for much of the day, enjoying multiple descents on Upper Gondolier and Perry Merril, two of the fastest cruisers in New England.

Across the road at upscale Spruce Peak, a patch of woods off the Sunny Spruce lower quad was in good shape.

The best skiing we found was off the Sensation Quad to the top of Spruce, on Upper Smuggler’s and Side Street, with some soft snow on the edges.

Stowe is such a great town, with plenty to do and see, including great cross-country and backcountry skiing and dozens of interesting restaurants, bars and shops. In my view, it’s among the top three Northeast ski towns, along with North Conway and Lake Placid, near New York’s imposing Whiteface Mountain.

Something to note while you’re here. Avoid the weekend parking fees on the mountain and take the free shuttle up the well-traveled Mountain Road, which noticeably has become less traffic-clogged since Stowe beefed up its public transit system a few years ago.

I’ve been skiing since the 1970s. There are a bunch of new lifts, hotels, and shops now (that upscale development is on the Spruce side), but the skiing experience is mostly the same: steep and long with ample snow. I’ll be back again later this season.

—Contact Shaun Sutner by email at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Weeklong swing sees that northern ski areas are making strides