New England Lost Ski Areas Project
nelsap.org
nelsap.org
http://www.nelsap.org/ma/prospecthill.html
ETA: A quote from a former employee during its last year of operation:
I was part of the ski school management team in Prospect Mountain's last year of operations, 1990. They had been out of business for two or three years before this season. A man named "Bill Krikorian" had been trying to reopen Mt. Watatic in Ashby, MA. The town fathers saw through him and would not allow him the permits. He leased Prospect Hill from the MDC, but three problems arose: 1. They would not give him a liquor license for the premises 2. There was virtually no natural snow that winter 3. His "cannon-style" snow gun literally blew up on the hill in mid-December.
Sad I don't live there anymore such a fun place to ski and then if you wanted Vermont Skiing on big slopes was just a few hours away.
MIT used to have a house in basically the backyard of Suicide Six that Laurence Rockefeller (who also owned the ski area) donated. Living groups and others would rent out the place. We usually skied at Killington but we'd put in short days at Suicide Six as well.
http://ascutneyoutdoors.org/story/ http://ascutneytrails.com/about/
Guess he's manually updating it now ... or running FrontPage on an old PC.
Is it possible to run FrontPage on a newer PC?
Unless they don't want the publicity. I'm not that popular though. :-)
And while I'm not too certain on the prospects of Sugarloaf, I can't see it struggling too badly. They have held high profile events consistently, and they're owned by Boyne who have a consistent track record of running resorts. They're a strong operator in the industry.
I actually once owned the farm that included the hill that the ski slope was on (long before I bought the property though). I was there with Peter Kallander, its owner operator, on what was likely the last occasion the rope tow was operational on that site. I think it was in the fall of 1983. Peter was the guy that built the lift and owned several hundred acres including the mountain.
Peter was a pilot of wide-body jets for Delta Airlines. He had a small private airport on the site (with grass north-south and east-west runways), and the run-out for the ski slope ran across the east-west runway over toward Stoneybrook golf course a few hundred yards away. Peter built that golf course with his dad when he was younger on another part of the property. It was a small 9 hole par 3, which is the golf equivalent of his small ski slope. They sold the golf course at some point I believe. Here's the Airline Owners and Passengers Association link to the private air strip, which is still in operation: http://www.aopa.org/airports/09MA.
... Kallander Hill, which it should be referred-to as, was north facing, and had two purposes. In the summer and the fall, Peter told me if the conditions were right, he would take his plane up the hill and take off. I never saw him take off on that side of the hill because my property was a few hundred yards south and west, and the ski slope faced pretty much due north. I did, however, help Peter clear the west side of the mountain in 1983. At that point he hadn't been operating the lift in the winter for a number of years. The lift was an old farm vehicle with its drive-train intact. I did see it, and I think we may have fired it up that day to see if it was still working properly. He showed me how it operated because he knew I was a life-long skier and had learned at a place like this in Dudley Mass near Nichols College, and at Mount Tom and Maple Valley. The rope was attached to one of the back wheels with its counterpart at the bottom. He'd just start it up and run it for his kids and their friends. I don't recall him ever saying if it was ever a commercial venture for Peter. It was likely just for his kids and for locals. Peter was a popular guy around town and had been the president of his class in high school.
... We cut down a number of cedars that fall weekend, and I took them to use for a fenced-in paddock that I was going to build off my barn (which I never got around-to). Peter then had a west-facing runway on Kallander Hill that could be used when the winds came from the other direction. I don't believe anyone ever skied on that, although I had planned to try it. My estimate is the hill had a vertical of at least 200-250 feet. On that day Peter gave me the history of the mountain that I note here. Over the next year I did see him take off from the part of the hill we cleared. I think he did that as a practice exercise for having to take off or land in extraordinary conditions. He had a house on Moosehead lake in northern Maine, and would fly up there regularly.
Around the time I moved away a few years later he had purchased an amphibious plane (either a Lake or a Seabee), with a large prop high and behind the cockpit. I did see him taking off and even doing the last part of his landings on the side of the mountain with that and its predecessor plane, sort of like touch and goes. It was an amazing site for me and all the other neighbors that could see it. I think he bought the rear prop plane because there wasn't enough prop clearance on the west facing hillside given the steeper grade.
Peter also told me that the mountain was his retirement, so that would explain why he never tried to develop it into a commercial ski area, as he did with the golf course. He was going to build houses on it. Clearing the portion on my side was likely a part of that strategy. It was pretty steep, and I didn't quite understand how he was planning to do that. I also didn't completely realize how big the mountain was. But he had been seeing it from all angles during his years of flying around it.
About 15 years ago he did that and there must be 60 high-end homes/condos on it now, most with magnificent views. It's a high density development with 2-4 units in each structure. They've also made major topographical changes, taking off at least 100 feet of vertical and creating a large plane for the area where the homes are now.