Whimsey
02-07-2009, 10:27 AM
The following was in yesterday's NYTimes:
On No-Nonsense New Hampshire Slopes
Brian Post for The New York Times
Wildcat has steep and expert trails, a good test for skiers or riders.
IT is a subtle realization on the final five minutes of the drive to the venerable Wildcat Mountain in New Hampshire: Something is missing. Actually, lots of things are missing.
There are no houses, hotels, restaurants, gas stations, banks, shops, traffic lights or billboards. Just miles of tree-lined hills. Finally, there is a sign for the ski area, a parking lot and a lodge.
And that’s about it. Carved into a peak in the White Mountain National Forest 76 years ago, Wildcat is a ski area in a preserve. If not for the fast lifts and snowmaking guns, you could say it is a ski area in a time capsule.
“We don’t have a lot of people looking for cell service or a Wi-Fi connection,” said Tom Caughey, Wildcat’s general manager, who first worked at the resort as a teenager. “People come here, put their boots on and go skiing on trails hand-cut by the Civilian Conservation Corps with an understanding for the natural flow of the mountain.
“And our busiest day is a crowd equal to the slowest day at other mountains.”
A ski trip to the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire can be many things, including sophisticated dining and elegant lodging in a quintessential New England village down the road. The region also has outlet shopping, festivals and art shows.
But a journey to the soul of New Hampshire skiing means visiting its oldest and most iconic mountains, places like Wildcat, the first Eastern ski area on federal Forest Service land, or the nearby state-owned Cannon Mountain in Franconia, which in 1967 hosted the first World Cup ski races in North America.
These areas have served up three-quarters of a century of American skiing and don’t bend toward trends. They are idiosyncratic, even anomalous, places, so far from the industry bustle that you can ski 100,000 vertical feet in a single day.
They are big, tough mountains. They have enough soft edges to have trained hundreds of thousands of children to ski and ride, but they reflect New Hampshire customs and a New Hampshire ethos. People outside Northern New England always think of Vermont and New Hampshire as one place, like sibling states. On a map, they look similar — inverted images of one another, like interlocking bookends.
In truth, as anyone from either state will tell you, they could not be more different. And that’s instantly recognizable when you cross the border between the states, the Connecticut River. Consider it the Checkpoint Charlie of Northern New England.
Heading west into Vermont, the landscape turns from industrial to rural. Heading east into New Hampshire, the politics turn from environmentally and fiscally liberal to determinedly conservative and frugal.
These cultural realities are important to enjoying a winter trip to northern New Hampshire. While Vermont skiing can be like a soft-focus Christmas card scene, New Hampshire’s best mountains are rugged and a bit thorny. They are unadorned and practical.
But they pack a thrilling and thorough alpine adventure. Wildcat and Cannon, for example, have long been known for their steep and expert trails, and there’s little question that any intermediate or better skier or rider should venture to both mountains to test their skills. They won’t baby you, and they are full of not-so-secret backcountry stashes when you tire of the sanctioned trails.
Still, challenge is not the entire reason to see these historic ski areas at least once. The no-nonsense New Hampshire approach also means ski areas left in a natural setting. The view from the 4,062-foot summit of Wildcat Mountain, an eye-level vista of Mount Washington and Tuckerman’s Ravine, is consistently voted among the most scenic in all North American ski resorts by readers of Ski magazine. There is also no on-site lodging at either Wildcat or Cannon, which gives both places a parklike landscape.
While these mountains will not baby you, they need not intimidate. As with nearly any mountain, most of the terrain is rated for beginners and intermediates.
“We’re not an extreme skiing area,” Mr. Caughey said.
In fact, Wildcat’s best trail might be Lynx, a blue square intermediate. It rolls, winds and plunges 2,100 feet from top to bottom.
Cannon, meanwhile, takes pride in being a vacation from the resort experience, and has verifiable contrarian roots: It was home mountain of the champion skier Bode Miller, who skied to his own drummer. Cannon is also where the sight of dogs walking through the lodge doesn’t turn a head. It’s where a junior racer waited in a lift line next to his grandfather, who was dressed in a full-length, zipped, tan Carhartt work suit. It’s where the lodge has a brown-bag basement, but in fact, people all over the lodge are unwrapping sandwiches made at home.
Just as there are no fashion police at Cannon, there is no one discouraging the cost-effective brown-bagging tradition, something prohibited at many ski resorts. Cannon’s general manager, John DeVivo, admits that his children brown-bag it, too.
“We preach value and a mountain in its natural state,” Mr. DeVivo said. “You can’t force people to do something in that setting. Half of our product is the snow and trails — what you’re skiing and riding on. The other half of our product is invisible. It’s what you don’t see — you don’t see a McDonald’s or a holistic health spa.”
You also won’t see many New Yorkers at Cannon and Wildcat. The northern New Hampshire skiing populace is a mix of in-staters, those few who have wandered over from Maine or ventured up from Rhode Island, and lots of people from eastern Massachusetts.
If you make your base the beautiful village of Jackson, you are 10 minutes from Wildcat and about an hour from Cannon. Ski areas like Attitash and Bretton Woods are also nearby, down winding roads dotted with private ski clubhouses and roadhouse bars with signs welcoming “skiers, small fries and motorcycles.”
Just two miles out of Jackson is Black Mountain, a small, hidden jewel. At Black, you can park within 50 yards of the lodge, won’t be fighting lift lines and your descent will be unhurried and undisturbed. Like a lot of New Hampshire skiing, it’s an informal small-mountain experience in a big-mountain setting.
These aren’t classic destination resorts, the all-inclusive ski areas with slopeside hotels and amenities. But there is a natural, straightforward and plainspoken appeal. And there’s nothing wrong with doing your skiing on the mountain, then spending the rest of your day in a thriving, old New England village.
In Jackson, there are art galleries, antiques shops, a large ski touring center, stores and restaurants. For lodging right in the heart of everything, the elegant Wentworth Inn, a village fixture since the mid-19th century, has an Old World feel. And its dining room has imaginative and artfully prepared entrees like Gulf of Maine lobster and Vermont goat cheese cannelloni (in New Hampshire they don’t mind borrowing from their neighbors), with baby greens, leeks, tomato confit and a white wine reduction ($28).
The drive to the White Mountains of New Hampshire might be a little farther than some people want to go, and it might be a little less scenic — until the final stage. But once inside the national forest, it’s about the pristine landscape. As you drive through the quiet of the mountains, it is then that you realize nothing is missing.
On No-Nonsense New Hampshire Slopes
Brian Post for The New York Times
Wildcat has steep and expert trails, a good test for skiers or riders.
IT is a subtle realization on the final five minutes of the drive to the venerable Wildcat Mountain in New Hampshire: Something is missing. Actually, lots of things are missing.
There are no houses, hotels, restaurants, gas stations, banks, shops, traffic lights or billboards. Just miles of tree-lined hills. Finally, there is a sign for the ski area, a parking lot and a lodge.
And that’s about it. Carved into a peak in the White Mountain National Forest 76 years ago, Wildcat is a ski area in a preserve. If not for the fast lifts and snowmaking guns, you could say it is a ski area in a time capsule.
“We don’t have a lot of people looking for cell service or a Wi-Fi connection,” said Tom Caughey, Wildcat’s general manager, who first worked at the resort as a teenager. “People come here, put their boots on and go skiing on trails hand-cut by the Civilian Conservation Corps with an understanding for the natural flow of the mountain.
“And our busiest day is a crowd equal to the slowest day at other mountains.”
A ski trip to the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire can be many things, including sophisticated dining and elegant lodging in a quintessential New England village down the road. The region also has outlet shopping, festivals and art shows.
But a journey to the soul of New Hampshire skiing means visiting its oldest and most iconic mountains, places like Wildcat, the first Eastern ski area on federal Forest Service land, or the nearby state-owned Cannon Mountain in Franconia, which in 1967 hosted the first World Cup ski races in North America.
These areas have served up three-quarters of a century of American skiing and don’t bend toward trends. They are idiosyncratic, even anomalous, places, so far from the industry bustle that you can ski 100,000 vertical feet in a single day.
They are big, tough mountains. They have enough soft edges to have trained hundreds of thousands of children to ski and ride, but they reflect New Hampshire customs and a New Hampshire ethos. People outside Northern New England always think of Vermont and New Hampshire as one place, like sibling states. On a map, they look similar — inverted images of one another, like interlocking bookends.
In truth, as anyone from either state will tell you, they could not be more different. And that’s instantly recognizable when you cross the border between the states, the Connecticut River. Consider it the Checkpoint Charlie of Northern New England.
Heading west into Vermont, the landscape turns from industrial to rural. Heading east into New Hampshire, the politics turn from environmentally and fiscally liberal to determinedly conservative and frugal.
These cultural realities are important to enjoying a winter trip to northern New Hampshire. While Vermont skiing can be like a soft-focus Christmas card scene, New Hampshire’s best mountains are rugged and a bit thorny. They are unadorned and practical.
But they pack a thrilling and thorough alpine adventure. Wildcat and Cannon, for example, have long been known for their steep and expert trails, and there’s little question that any intermediate or better skier or rider should venture to both mountains to test their skills. They won’t baby you, and they are full of not-so-secret backcountry stashes when you tire of the sanctioned trails.
Still, challenge is not the entire reason to see these historic ski areas at least once. The no-nonsense New Hampshire approach also means ski areas left in a natural setting. The view from the 4,062-foot summit of Wildcat Mountain, an eye-level vista of Mount Washington and Tuckerman’s Ravine, is consistently voted among the most scenic in all North American ski resorts by readers of Ski magazine. There is also no on-site lodging at either Wildcat or Cannon, which gives both places a parklike landscape.
While these mountains will not baby you, they need not intimidate. As with nearly any mountain, most of the terrain is rated for beginners and intermediates.
“We’re not an extreme skiing area,” Mr. Caughey said.
In fact, Wildcat’s best trail might be Lynx, a blue square intermediate. It rolls, winds and plunges 2,100 feet from top to bottom.
Cannon, meanwhile, takes pride in being a vacation from the resort experience, and has verifiable contrarian roots: It was home mountain of the champion skier Bode Miller, who skied to his own drummer. Cannon is also where the sight of dogs walking through the lodge doesn’t turn a head. It’s where a junior racer waited in a lift line next to his grandfather, who was dressed in a full-length, zipped, tan Carhartt work suit. It’s where the lodge has a brown-bag basement, but in fact, people all over the lodge are unwrapping sandwiches made at home.
Just as there are no fashion police at Cannon, there is no one discouraging the cost-effective brown-bagging tradition, something prohibited at many ski resorts. Cannon’s general manager, John DeVivo, admits that his children brown-bag it, too.
“We preach value and a mountain in its natural state,” Mr. DeVivo said. “You can’t force people to do something in that setting. Half of our product is the snow and trails — what you’re skiing and riding on. The other half of our product is invisible. It’s what you don’t see — you don’t see a McDonald’s or a holistic health spa.”
You also won’t see many New Yorkers at Cannon and Wildcat. The northern New Hampshire skiing populace is a mix of in-staters, those few who have wandered over from Maine or ventured up from Rhode Island, and lots of people from eastern Massachusetts.
If you make your base the beautiful village of Jackson, you are 10 minutes from Wildcat and about an hour from Cannon. Ski areas like Attitash and Bretton Woods are also nearby, down winding roads dotted with private ski clubhouses and roadhouse bars with signs welcoming “skiers, small fries and motorcycles.”
Just two miles out of Jackson is Black Mountain, a small, hidden jewel. At Black, you can park within 50 yards of the lodge, won’t be fighting lift lines and your descent will be unhurried and undisturbed. Like a lot of New Hampshire skiing, it’s an informal small-mountain experience in a big-mountain setting.
These aren’t classic destination resorts, the all-inclusive ski areas with slopeside hotels and amenities. But there is a natural, straightforward and plainspoken appeal. And there’s nothing wrong with doing your skiing on the mountain, then spending the rest of your day in a thriving, old New England village.
In Jackson, there are art galleries, antiques shops, a large ski touring center, stores and restaurants. For lodging right in the heart of everything, the elegant Wentworth Inn, a village fixture since the mid-19th century, has an Old World feel. And its dining room has imaginative and artfully prepared entrees like Gulf of Maine lobster and Vermont goat cheese cannelloni (in New Hampshire they don’t mind borrowing from their neighbors), with baby greens, leeks, tomato confit and a white wine reduction ($28).
The drive to the White Mountains of New Hampshire might be a little farther than some people want to go, and it might be a little less scenic — until the final stage. But once inside the national forest, it’s about the pristine landscape. As you drive through the quiet of the mountains, it is then that you realize nothing is missing.