Skiing at Cranmore Mountain
America’s First Ski Resort in New Hampshire's White Mountains
Hitting the slopes near Mount Washington combines the personal challenge of skiing on trails graded for beginners to experts with beautiful snow-covered mountain scenery
One of the few ski mountains in New Hampshire that faces south and west, Cranmore gets the sun almost all day, so it is a good choice for early-season skiing, when temperatures in the White Mountains are usually their coldest.
Late in the season, those who like spring skiing will be happy to find spring conditions here a bit earlier than at some others New England ski resorts.
Which Trails to Use?
Cranmore has several beginner slopes on the east side. Accessed from the South Side Double lift, these are comfortable slopes that will encourage you to move on to bigger challenges. By using the Skimobile Express (a high speed quad) to the top, beginners can take the green-marked Easy Street all the way to the bottom, a long trail with a few short challenging spots.
Intermediate skiers will love Cranmore Mountain. East Slope and Schneider trails provide nice runs to the East Bowl Double chairlift, with a few tests of skill and some moguls on the north side of East Slope (but easily bypassed).
Most of the west side is webbed by great intermediate trails that feed the Lookout Triple lift and connect over to the Snowmobile Express. Kandahar and Skimeister are wonderful trails, and Arlberg provides a few more challenges.
Be sure to save at least one run for the expert (but not terrifying) Split Decision to Middle and then to North Slope, where recreational skiing in North America was born. You’ll be skiing with the memory of the first great names in American skiing.
White Mountain Skiing History
New Hampshire’s Mount Washington and the mountains around it have been a magnet for New Englanders for more than a century, and North Conway has drawn skiers since the 1930s. It was then that a few intrepid winter sports enthusiasts cleared away the trees on Cranmore Mountain and began sliding down the hill on primitive wooden slats.
Skiing has been almost a winter religion here since the ski pioneer Carroll Reed snatched the famed Austrian ski instructor Hannes Schneider away from the Nazis in the late 1930s and invited him to teach skiing, first at Jackson and then at Cranmore. In fact the ski school at Cranmore carries on his name even today.
The old Skimobile, a line of small cars that were towed uphill on a wooden track, has been replaced with a high speed quad lift, but the slopes and trails offer all the fun and challenges they did way back when.
For More Information:
Cranmore Mountain is off Route 16 in North Conway, New Hampshire; follow Kearsarge Road to the mountain. 800 Sun-N-Ski (786-6754),
