Sunday, January 19, 2025 -- I won't bore you with the usual "fresh snow overnight made for wonderful day" blah blah blah. I've been skiing Black NH as a regular for over 20 years, first with my daughters, now with my granddaughters. I went to the meeting back in October when the changes were announced, and I motored in Sunday to see what the status was.
Long story short: They've somehow removed Black Mountain ski area and installed a new Black Mountain ski area in the exact same place. They're still using the same signs, buildings, lifts, trails, and parking lots. Beyond that, completely changed. Although some things are better, some things are not, it has definitely and thoroughly
changed. Whatever it is, I recognized the
place but little else.
There are probably at least 5x more staff on hand. The parking lot was overflowing. The lifts were running without the old groans and grinding sounds. Trails were covered edge to edge. The typical Black Mt. average people with crappy equipment are now hard to find among the new wealth and $150 haircut crowd with state-of-the-art equipment. No longer can you count the good skiers on one hand -- they're all around. At the Lostbo Cabin (which I think they renamed) there were people sitting in lounge chairs with wooly blankets over them and sipping fancy drinks like they were on a Victorian era ocean liner. lt seemed like some sort of alternate reality.
The on mountain layout was a little weird in that East Bowl did not connect to Sugarbush, Sweet Dreams etc. In other words, you couldn't reach far skier's left on the lower mountain from the triple, although I saw skiers going down toward them from Upper black beauty. Not sure what all was open and what wasn't. Just found it odd that East Bowl didn't run out to the other stuff. Maybe I wasn't fully understanding what was going on -- there were people everywhere, and it was all surreal, to be honest.
Big dipper was a shadow of its former self: the frozen snow humps, rocks, and trademark ice pit were replaced by groomed snow, side to side. Like I said, it was just kind of weird. At least Valley view was scraped off as it should be.
People everywhere, although you could find quiet trails if you waited and picked your spots.
The ticketing process was odd, it took a long time even though they had six people doing what used to be two people. There were some odd payment machine/cameras which the customers have to operate while the employees use touch screen tablets. It was not as bad as Keystone but definitely worse than Saddleback. The line for this experience went out the door.
The cafeteria seems markedly improved. The bar is definitely not...there were people paying at the bar, lined up at some kiosks that matched the machines in the ticket area, yet I don't think the machines were dispensing the beer...but the taps were all just standing there alone...I gave up and left. Not sure how you make money at a bar if the beer doesn't actually flow but I'm a boomer so clearly I don't get it.
Well the place was bumping. I think the future of Black is secure if they don't over-think everything, although the young people there seemed to thrive in the DIY electronic whatever and crowdedness and multi-step process to get a beer. The place will go and the co-op will succeed if they keep delivering a product like this.
Chatted with a few different people here and there, all of whom said it was their first time at Black, and they loved it.
I personally liked it better under John Fichera's reign but obviously that was not sustainable. He may not have been the best ski area manager but he stubbornly kept it going when others would've folded, and I appreciated the low-key atmosphere.
It was a fun day, albeit bittersweet to see the old era definitely over.
Above: More snow than the rundown resort across the way
Below: What used to be the Davis* trail:
After you clear the unload area, you can make a snow angel. Wish I'd thought of that when I was a kid.
*edit: apparently renamed a couple years ago. According to old deeds the Davis family retained the right to tap maple trees and graze livestock on certain parts of the property, heirs and assigns always and forever. This sort of thing is common on rural New England deeds. I wonder if they're out of the picture, or maybe there will be a cashless payment kiosk on every sap bucket?
