Waterville Valley

New Hampshire's venerable Waterville Valley provides "big mountain" skiing close to Boston (2-hour drive), with its 4,000-foot summit and 52 trails over a 2,000-foot vertical. This weekend, the area will host the 20th running of the Jack Williams Ski Race for Wednesday's Child, which raises money to aid the adoption of kids with special needs. Williams, a Channel 4 news anchor, anticipates raising some $425,000 at an event where "the kids are the celebrities. " Visitors to Waterville Valley who are novice skiers can practice turns on Southstreet and Pasture, while Upper Valley Run, White Caps, and Old Tecumseh...

Carnage. That's one way to describe the current state of New England ski resorts, many of whom were forced to shut off the lifts over the last few days, thanks to last week's record heat. A few survived - Sunday River, Sugarloaf, Saddleback, Wildcat, Loon, Bretton Woods, Jay Peak, Stowe, Sugarbush, Waterville Valley, and Killington - but everybody else has moved on to golfing season. Does that mean the skiing riding season is finished? Nope. It's not typical to see snowmaking in late March, but this isn't your typical March either.

WATERVILLE VALLEY, N.H. - In its infancy in this country, skiing was pioneering. Long before motor-driven lifts were invented, groups of friends headed to the mountains, climbed up carrying their skis, then skied down the untouched terrain on whatever conditions existed. Most of the clubs that formed around this daredevil new sport have long since disappeared. But when members and alumni of the Black & Blue Trail Smashers meet at Waterville Valley next week for a reunion, they won't be celebrating merely a glorious past - but also a dynamic present day role in skiing and snowboarding.

Mount Eustis, a 200-foot vertical, rope-tow hill in Littleton, N.H., might be the latest defunct New England ski area to get back up and running with help from an all-volunteer group of community supporters. The regional news website newhampshirelakesandmountains.com reported last week that a group of a dozen "can-doers" met with the town's parks and recreation department for initial approval to move forward, with the stipulation that the operation on the town-owned land would have to be funded privately through donations and not taxpayer dollars.

WATERVILLE VALLEY, N.H. — There are plenty of sad, old literary admonitions about the passage of time: “You can’t go home again’’; “You’re only young once’’; “There are no second acts in American lives.’’ Then there are people who take these old saws head on and try to prove them wrong. Meet Chris and John Sununu Jr., Bob Fries, and Tom Gross — guys who are determined to go back again to the glory days of a classic New England ski area, Waterville Valley in New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest.

Carnage. That's one way to describe the current state of New England ski resorts, many of whom were forced to shut off the lifts over the last few days, thanks to last week's record heat. A few survived - Sunday River, Sugarloaf, Saddleback, Wildcat, Loon, Bretton Woods, Jay Peak, Stowe, Sugarbush, Waterville Valley, and Killington - but everybody else has moved on to golfing season. Does that mean the skiing riding season is finished? Nope. It's not typical to see snowmaking in late March, but this isn't your typical March either.

WATERVILLE VALLEY, N.H. -- He has been a member of the national ski patrol, a lifelong Rocky Mountain skier who began in the 1940s on the long boards with leather boots and beartrap bindings. But in New England, he is better known as the TV news anchor with the mellifluous baritone and infectious grin. Jack Williams is also known for the hope he and his wife, Marci, have given to hundreds of special needs children in the last quarter-century whose greatest need has been adoption into stable and caring homes.

During a low-snow winter some 25 years ago, Les Otten filled a few dump trucks with snow from his ski area, Maine's Sunday River, alerted the media he was coming, then dumped the snow on Boston Common. With this piece of folklore in mind, Barry Hallett Jr., owner of the Funky Red Barn restaurant in Bethel, Maine, had in mind to possibly do the same thing. It's not that there's no snow at Sunday River - in fact, it is nearly 100 percent open. But, as in the year of Otten's stunt, ski areas are not the problem.

The defunct Powder Ridge ski area in Middlefield, Conn., got a step closer to reopening last week when the Board of Selectmen voted, 2-1, to approve a $1 million bid to purchase the town-owned property. The owners of nearby Brownstone Exploration & Discovery Park want to incorporate the mountain into a year-round outdoor activities venture. "Powder Ridge in my mind did a phenomenal job in creating a place to learn to ski," Brownstone managing director Sean Hayes told the Middletown (Conn.)

Mount Eustis, a 200-foot vertical, rope-tow hill in Littleton, N.H., might be the latest defunct New England ski area to get back up and running with help from an all-volunteer group of community supporters. The regional news website newhampshirelakesandmountains.com reported last week that a group of a dozen "can-doers" met with the town's parks and recreation department for initial approval to move forward, with the stipulation that the operation on the town-owned land would have to be funded privately through donations and not taxpayer dollars.

During a low-snow winter some 25 years ago, Les Otten filled a few dump trucks with snow from his ski area, Maine's Sunday River, alerted the media he was coming, then dumped the snow on Boston Common. With this piece of folklore in mind, Barry Hallett Jr., owner of the Funky Red Barn restaurant in Bethel, Maine, had in mind to possibly do the same thing. It's not that there's no snow at Sunday River - in fact, it is nearly 100 percent open. But, as in the year of Otten's stunt, ski areas are not the problem.

The defunct Powder Ridge ski area in Middlefield, Conn., got a step closer to reopening last week when the Board of Selectmen voted, 2-1, to approve a $1 million bid to purchase the town-owned property. The owners of nearby Brownstone Exploration & Discovery Park want to incorporate the mountain into a year-round outdoor activities venture. "Powder Ridge in my mind did a phenomenal job in creating a place to learn to ski," Brownstone managing director Sean Hayes told the Middletown (Conn.)

The New Year brings new hope, and hopefully new snow around the slopes of New England. The beginning of the year is also a time to reflect on special moments. For skiers, Auld Lang Syne might sound like old Lange ski boots (had a pair, still feel the pinch in my pinky toe) but it means time gone by. If you are like me, you measure your time gone by, particularly the winter portion — which constitutes at least a third of the year, in ski memories. It's fun to wax nostalgic on all the areas you have skied, the skiers and riders you have met, and the slopes you have conquered.

Two upcoming ski races put the focus on Mount Washington and the one man defending titles in both. Justin Freeman will try for bragging rights and a four-peat in Sunday’s Ski to the Clouds. Six days later he’ll try for a second straight win in the Bretton Woods Nordic Marathon. “It’s very different racing uphill,’’ Freeman said. “Not necessarily hard, but certainly not easier than racing on the flats. There is no time to recover, and at the same time you can’t go as hard as you can in other races.’’ Freeman, 34, was an All-American at Bates...

WATERVILLE VALLEY, N.H. — There are plenty of sad, old literary admonitions about the passage of time: “You can’t go home again’’; “You’re only young once’’; “There are no second acts in American lives.’’ Then there are people who take these old saws head on and try to prove them wrong. Meet Chris and John Sununu Jr., Bob Fries, and Tom Gross — guys who are determined to go back again to the glory days of a classic New England ski area, Waterville Valley in New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest.

PRINCETON — Like most people in the ski industry, Tom Meyers has been keeping careful watch on the effects of a recession on a recreation few would call a necessary consumer product. As marketing manager of Wachusett Mountain Ski Area, he likes to chat on chairlift rides with visitors to get a sense of how people are thinking about the sport these days. The most surprising conversation he remembers was with an unemployed electrician from Fitchburg who told him that, because his wife’s health care coverage included skiing as a health benefit, he was enjoying the economic...

WATERVILLE VALLEY, N.H. -- Earlier in their lives, the Chapmans skied. Laurie and Glen began in their younger years before they met, and their two kids, Ben and Millie, were on skis almost from when they first could walk. But now the family, which makes its winter commute from a Beverly, Mass., home and a mountain condo here, steps onto snowboards each morning and rides together. Revolution complete. As it began making its way into the world of winter recreation over the last two decades, snowboarding was the exclusive domain of the young and rebellious.

Cranmore Mountain in North Conway, N.H., will host the annual Hannes Schneider Meister Cup Race this weekend. The event combines modern ski racing with a patchwork of nostalgia for the sport's past. Honoring one of the founders of modern skiing, Schneider, who died April 26, 1955, was an Austrian skier who fled the Nazis and settled in North Conway in 1939. A ski trooper in World War I, Schneider will be honored by the 10th Mountain Division, which will take part in ceremonies around the event.

No snow in the city might lead some people to think there isn’t much of it in ski country, either. Tom Daly, Waterville Valley general manager, has always kidded with his marketing staff that he would like to see a virtual billboard in downtown Boston that would show live video of the conditions 130 miles north. “It’s snowing here,’’ Deb Moore, marketing director, said Daly has told them. “I want people to know that.’’ Daly’s wish is moving closer to reality.

WATERVILLE VALLEY, N.H. - In its infancy in this country, skiing was pioneering. Long before motor-driven lifts were invented, groups of friends headed to the mountains, climbed up carrying their skis, then skied down the untouched terrain on whatever conditions existed. Most of the clubs that formed around this daredevil new sport have long since disappeared. But when members and alumni of the Black & Blue Trail Smashers meet at Waterville Valley next week for a reunion, they won't be celebrating merely a glorious past - but also a dynamic present day role in skiing and...