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ItÆs not often that a ski resort rises from the dead, but thatÆs exactly what
happened when New Hampshire's Crotched Mountain reopened at high noon on
Saturday, December 20, 2003.
Of course, in the interest of reportorial accuracy, I was there. And IÆve
been back many times since . . . In fact, Crotched has become one of my ôold
faithfulsö when I just want a place to slide with no lift lines and great snow.
I had skied Crotched number of times in the mid 60Æs and early 70Æs. While
some of my friends skied there regularly, I remember it being really expensive
(My mother complained about paying $8 for a weekend lift ticketùor maybe that
was the lift ticket, lunch and a hot chocolate), and the lines for the double
chairlift seemed to take forever.
A competing ski area, Onset, opened in about 1969 on the same mountain. All I
really remember about Onset was that the double chairlift had a plexiglas bubble
that closed around it to keep the wind and snow off. The part that was Onset,
later became Bobcat, and, eventually, Crotched West. ThatÆs the part that
reopened as Crotched..
All of Crotched had been closed since 1989, a victim of the condo bust. Hard
to imagine anyone today believing a little mountain like Crotched could support
100 condos . . .
In intervening years, a couple of attempts to revive the area had stalled.
The trails had grown in with some of the trees 15 feet high, the lifts had
rusted and the base lodges had fallen into decrepitude. A sad state of affairs
for an area with over a million people living within an hourÆs drive.
Then Peak Resorts leased the area for 50 years and work began refurbishing
it. Everyone held their collective breath as all the various local, state, and
federal permit hurdles were jumped. When work began full speed ahead on the
40,000 square-foot modern, efficient base lodge and the new and refurbished
lifts, everyone breathed sigh of relief.
Now thatÆs itÆs open, it all seems worth the wait.
Crotched always seems to have lots of snow. Some of it is thanks to Mother
Nature, and fortuitous positioning on a hill that gets lots of snow from coastal
storms. More of it, lately, is thanks to their state-of-the-art, $3.5 million
snowmaking system (the pump house looks more like it belongs at a hospital than
a ski area.) The system can cover the whole mountain in just two or three cold
nights.
The first thing youÆll notice is that everything at Crotched is designed to
make it easy for large groups and families to move through the process of buying
a ticket, renting gear and getting out on the slopes as efficiently as possible.
Crotched uses fixed grip chairlifts, which are plenty fast enough for a
little mountain like this. Lift lines are pretty rare -- except after school . .
.
While it will never count as a major destination resort, Crotched delivers
wide-open smoothly groomed slopes covered with plenty of snow ThereÆs nothing on
this mountain (except the two killer terrain parks) that will really challenge
an expert skier or rider, but thereÆs pleasure to be had in carving beautifully
groomed, smooth, soft snow Crotched has perfect terrain for learning and has
wisely billed itself as a ôlearn-to-ski and rideö and ôfamily-friendlyö
mountain, not as a haven for experts.
One more thing. Crotched has night skiing. Boy do they have night skiing. In
fact, most Friday and Saturday nights, they are open until 3 a.m. and the place
rocks . ThatÆs night skiing!
Pretty amazing for a resort that had been pronounced dead when snowboards
were an anomaly and before shaped skis had been invented . . . | 
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