While skiers at Saddleback Mountain in Rangeley are anxiously awaiting word on whether their favorite mountain will open for the season, a ski industry insider said that situation doesn’t reflect on the overall health of the state’s ski areas.
In fact, Greg Sweetser, executive director of the Ski Maine Association, said that investments made at smaller community ski areas have helped build a thriving ski scene in the state.
According to published reports, Saddleback — the state’s third-largest ski mountain — announced in June that it would not open this season unless it could arrange financing to replace an aging chairlift. No news has been forthcoming, and skiers in the region are wondering whether the mountain will open.
Sweetser said the resort will open at some point, though he doesn’t know when.
“The analogy of a speed bump sums it up,” Sweetser said. “I’m confident that they’re going to continue operation at some point. It’s a big facility. It’s got everything. It’s got winter. It’s got summer. It’s got hiking. It’s got a nordic center.”
Sweetser said he’s hoping Saddleback officials will have something to announce later this week. In the meantime, he said the Saddleback situation doesn’t detract from an otherwise robust Maine ski scene.
And while some might think of Maine’s big three — Sugarloaf, Sunday River and Saddleback — when they think of skiing and snowboarding, Sweetser said the state’s smaller community ski areas are copying some of the practices at the large resorts and carving out valuable niches.
“One thing that has really shown through on the smaller ski areas — the Titcomb Mountains, the Hermon Mountains, BigRock, Black Mountain — [is that] Christmas week is important to the industry,” Sweetser said.
“Titcomb [in Farmington] is just a perfect example. They’ve slowly picked away and expanded their snowmaking to the point where they can now assure their membership and pass-holders that they’re going to have skiing at Christmas,” he said. “That has solidified their membership base.”
Sweetser explained that at smaller ski areas, prospective members have often waited to buy season passes until they see snow on the ground. And if no natural snow showed up, they’d play it by ear, skiing at their local hills only on nice days.
With a predictable blanket of snow on the ground thanks to snowmaking efforts, that piece of the equation can be eliminated. The result: More pass-holders sign up early and show up to ski as soon as the ski area opens.
“It just gives you that base business and the base of enthusiasm, and that critical mass of people being there,” Sweetser said.
And that trend has been replicated at small ski areas around the state. Sweetser said that among the 18 Alpine areas that are members of the Ski Maine Association, only three — Baker Mountain in Moscow, Mount Jefferson in Lee and Quoggy Jo in Presque Isle — rely entirely on natural snow.
The rest are making their own.
“Everybody’s doing it because, even though we all know in Maine that the deepest snows are in February and March, Christmas is a vacation period,” Sweetser said. “Kids are off from school, so people have the time [to ski]. So people have really decided that if the little ski area is going to be successful, you’d better have the product when the people have the time to enjoy it.”
Sweetser said that reliance on snowmaking has even crept into the cross-country ski business, with nordic areas around the state seeking to provide a reliable track for their customers.
One of the challenges facing ski areas, according to Sweetser, is the cost of electricity required to make snow. Recent advances have aided ski areas in that regard.
“The real key has been the new technology in snowmaking has made it much more efficient, so there is much less energy required to make X amount of snow,” Sweetser said. “We’re an energy-intensive industry when we’re making snow.”
And Sweetser said a change in branding and focus among community ski areas has changed popular opinion. Instead of viewing a smaller mountain based on its size, owners have begun focusing on what they can provide that’s different from the larger operations.
“In the late ’90s, people kind of looked at their community areas as, quote, ‘Just a little ski area,’ because everybody wanted to get to the biggest hill or the tallest summit,” Sweetser said. “These community areas have taken on a new role in the communities where they’re being viewed as a recreational asset.”
Some areas have added or improved cross-country trails, or added mountain bike trails. Others have tubing hills. And most have embraced youth programs with a goal of introducing children to the sport.
“As the Maine Office of Tourism says, ‘Maine is the outdoor adventure capital of the east,’” Sweetser said. “The brand of Maine is outdoors, be active, and skiing fits perfectly with that.”
