Inside what makes the New England Ski Museum a gem to visit

The New England Ski Museum's Franconia Notch branch.

You may hear the word “museum” and think: stodgy and uncomfortable. And you can’t touch anything, like Cameron Frye’s house in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

But that’s not what the New England Ski Museum is about.

“People should just come and hang out,” says Tim Whiton, the museum’s executive director. “We’re open 10 to 5 every day. You don’t need a reservation. We’d love to see more people just hanging out.”

The New England Ski Museum, with locations in Franconia Notch, N.H., and North Conway, N.H., has one of the world’s foremost collections of ski artifacts, books, photos and more. To visit is to transform one’s self back in time to a world without eight-person heated chairlifts. The museum is trying to capture a time when skiing was a little more rustic.

A museum staffer since 2022, Whiton joined our Basecamp Podcast recently to talk about how the institution interacts with the local ski community.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

What will visitors see when they visit the museum?

Tim Whiton: “In Franconia, there’s one of the original (Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway) cars. Which makes you really scared of, like, ‘They’re going up Cannon Mountain in these things?’ Makes you really appreciate the new stuff. Then we have an annual exhibit, which this year is on ski towns, with Franconia being one of the originals. And in our permanent exhibits, we’ve got Bode Miller’s World Cup globes and medals. We’ve got maybe the oldest book with a ski reference, from many centuries ago.

“Then North Conway, it kind of hits you like a big open ski lodge. Big rafters. Big open ceilings. A lot of different exhibits. There’s the Annalee Doll exhibit, which is, for me not being from New Hampshire, way over my head. But it’s pretty cool. There’s this company, Annalee Dolls, that started around World War II. It was the Thorndike family and they started making dolls. They weren’t toys. They were designed as a collector’s item. And their first dolls were skiers, which represented the family’s deep integration with skiing. It really just speaks to New Hampshire’s very close connection with skiing, back to the early 20th century. We worked closely with the New Hampshire Historical Society to get some dolls on loan. Those are scattered throughout the museum as a treasure hunt for the kids.”

Where do the collections of the New England Ski Museum rank among its peers?

Whiton: “In terms of the most comprehensive and broadest breadth of what an archive would be, this is definitely the largest and more comprehensive outside of Europe. And the library is the core piece to that. That’s how the NE Ski Museum got its start — six guys as a book group. And the it took off from there.”

“We’ve got a board member who coined it best: We are the industry and the culture of skiing’s repository. We’ve got it all, and we’re going to use it.”

Does the New England Ski Museum ever bring its collection on the road?

Whiton: “With the imagery and collections that we have, we have a lot of ways to help support other events. We have a lot of ways to create content for people and organizations, particularly in the industry. We’re trying to get ourselves out there and see how best we can support other things that are happening.”

How much of your holdings can be viewed online?

Whiton: “The archive, the collection — we need to not only preserve it, but we need to make it more accessible. We need to make it accessible for ourselves and for the public. … We get a lot of image requests and document requests, particularly from people in the industry and journalists. But then there’s also people who are just going to want to see (what we have).”

What makes the Hannes Schneider Meister Cup Race so significant to the museum?

Whiton: “It’s just an opportunity for 400 to 500 people to come together at Cranmore and a ton of fun. Great food, great beer, great music. It’s what we all might imagine what the 1950s and ’60s were like at Cranmore.

“I think (the annual race) speaks to how important this event is not just to our organization but to the Mount Washington Valley. It has a race component, though it’s relatively mellow. … It really is more of a celebration of skiing in the valley. A celebration of winter and the long history and heritage in the valley. So we get a lot of little kids in the race.”

What else is the museum doing to integrate into the local ski community?

Whiton: “I’ve been talking to the folks at Waterville Valley. Next year we’re going to put on a cross-country ski race that will be the longest cross-country ski race in North America. So that will be pretty cool. It will be a good blend between citizens racing and high-level/elite racing. It’s going to hit a lot of bare trails which are old-school but still sort of modern. In the village and out of the village.

“So many cross-country ski races now happen on super hard, super technical courses (with) shorter loops. This one will be long loops, a little less technical, maybe some old school in there. Should be super fun.

“We’re also working with the New England Nordic Ski Association and we’re going to put on a roller ski race next fall in Franconia Notch on the rec path.”

And you said the door is always open for visitors, right?

Whiton: “It’s a pretty comfy library space (in North Conway). There’s a gas fireplace that gets super hot. And the staff is all fun. They’re all super talkers.”