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Posted 11/16/01
Aiming to continue its record success of last year, the Dartmouth Skiway is beefing up its offerings with more snowmaking, more grooming and a bigger Worden trail.
Newly constructed facilities and heavy snowfall helped generate a 20 percent increase in turnout at the Skiway last year, twice the national average. Turnout at the Skiway for recent seasons had been about 44,000 skiers, but last year hit a record of 56,500.
"The increase was first due to the new McLane Lodge, which attracted many new people, and the weather," said Don Cutter '73, an 18-year Skiway veteran who is now Assistant Director of Outdoor Programs. "We had a lot of snowfall and it had great timing throughout the season."
Maintaining the high turnout of last year will be a challenge not only because last year's weather was unusual, but also because the economy has significantly softened since then. Cutter, however, doesn't see the recession as a serious threat because the Skiway is part of Dartmouth.
"Being in the Upper Valley, we're less affected by the economy," he said. The Skiway is the only college-operated ski area Cutter knows of besides Middlebury's Snowbowl.
Keeping the trails buried in snow is key to drawing crowds, and that's an area of expertise for Doug Holler, the new Director of the Skiway, who spent years in the snowmaking industry. He hopes to attract more than 60,000 skiers this year, and the Worden trail on Holt's Mountain, one of the Skiway's two mountains, has been widened in anticipation of the increased traffic.
"The Skiway," Holler says, "is very typical of Northern New England, with some narrow trails, challenging twists and turns, and terrain changes. This means that we can open a variety of trails early."
According to the National Association of Ski Areas, snowboarding has increased dramatically in recent years. So the Skiway installed snowboarding features like quarter pipes and tabletops on the base slopes a few years ago. This year Holler also plans to expand to having features on both sides of the Skiway instead of just one.
The quarter pipes are large tubular structures made of snow that snowboarders "surf" back and forth inside, gaining speed and attempting gymnastics with their boards on the upper edges. Tabletops are flat surfaces of packed snow used to create jumps and other trick features. Until this year the Skiway staff packed snow into snowboarding structures however they could - by hand and with traditional groomers -limiting the size of the snowboard park. This year the Skiway purchased a Park Bully machine that custom grooms snowboarding features, allowing for further expansion.
The McLane Lodge opened last year, improving the Skiway's ability to handle more skiers. At 16,000 square feet, the lodge is quadruple the size of the old Brundage Lodge, which dated back to the 1950s. The new building has more rental equipment, an expanded menu, and more than 400 seats in the dining area - up from Brundage Lodge's 125.
Thanks to recent improvements in the snowmaking system, including the installment of state-of-the-art snowmaking equipment in 1998 and improvements made last year, the Skiway can make snow for 54 percent of its terrain. Provided the temperatures are right, trails may be open as early as mid-December.
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