Maine resorts up and ready to rock
The ski resorts of Maine are spruced up and ready for your visit. New improvements include:
At Black Mountain of Maine in Rumford, trail expansion adds five miles of new backcountry skiing, all just a quick 1,000 foot hike from the main lift. They also added more craft brew taps to their lineup, an important thing for skiers and riders.
Lost Valley in Auburn added a new Magic Carpet to enhance the beginner experience and fully utilize its beginner teaching area. The Magic Carpet runs up the middle of the practice slope and allows skiers to have more room to learn and practice their turns.
This winter Mt. Abram in Greenwood will offer additional seasonal training programs for kids and adults. The Kids All Mountain Program is a wellrounded development program that includes a full weekend of action. Each session will provide specific challenges and developmental opportunities designed around the individual needs and interests of each KAMP group. A trail expansion project added six new trail areas for all ability levels. Crews have also installed water pipes, spanning the new trail areas, to increase snowmaking operations by 35 percent.
Shawnee Peak Ski Area in Bridgeton unveiled a fully renovated rental shop, snowmaking improvements and other projects aimed at improving the guest experience.
On the snowmaking side, Shawnee Peak has installed HKD Klik hydrants on the Pine Slope. This will allow for getting the trail online and shut down faster, enabling the snowmaking team to open trails quicker and allowing for more frequent refreshing in-season. At mid-station, a generator and fan gun have been placed, with the intent of opening top-tobottom terrain much sooner. This year’s investment also includes additions to the fan gun fleet as well as additional HKD SV-10 tower guns and an overhaul of the snowmaking pumps on the lake.
Sugarloaf in Carbabassett’s new competition center is up and running. When the nation’s best skiers return to Sugarloaf next March for the U.S. Alpine Championships, they will arrive to a new, stateof-the-art facility thanks to the combined efforts of Carrabassett Valley Academy, Sugarloaf and the Sugarloaf Ski Club.
The country’s top alpine skiers, including Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsay Vonn, will compete for national titles in slalom, giant slalom, super G and combined.
The championships will once again allow Sugarloafers the opportunity to witness the country’s best skiers in action, and get up close and personal with many of them at the opening ceremonies and a special autograph session.
At Sunday River in Newry, the Locke Mountain triple chairlift has a new top terminal and the new Spruce Mountain triple lift is open. Snow conditions will benefit from upgrades to the resort’s snowmaking system, as well as two new PistenBully groomers. The resort’s dining scene welcomes a new 20-person bar at the Peak Lodge as part of phase one of a twophase new restaurant expansion for The Mountain Room. Food trucks such as Maine-ly Meatballs and The SaltBox Café, Maine’s only tiny house food truck, will park themselves there for the season.