New Hampshire is closed for the season.
Loon Mountain Resort, the only ski area in the Granite State to remain open through Easter weekend, ran its lifts Sunday for the final time this season. Loon wasn’t alone. Maine’s Saddleback and Okemo, Stowe, and Stratton in Vermont also called Sunday the final day of their 2021-22 seasons.
But fear not; that still leaves a six-pack of resorts still open for business, refusing to give up on the spring skiing and riding season.
In Maine, Sunday River Resort will open for its final weekend April 23-24, with free lift tickets on closing day (You can grab them online here). To the north, sister resort Sugarloaf is aiming to keep the lifts running, daily, through May 1.
Meanwhile, in Vermont, a quartet of spots refuse to call it quits just yet. Mount Snow should be able to claim Vail’s longest spring in the East when Carinthia aims to close its lifts on Sunday. That will leave Sugarbush, Killington, and Jay Peak battling it out for the honor of pushing the season as far as it can go.
Jay Peak general manager Steve Wright penned an open letter to Jay faithful last week, boasting that the resort still had close to 100 percent of its terrain open, but warming that rain would seriously decrease that percentage within days. They plan to run both sides of the mountain through April 24 (much later than usual for Tramside), then run one, final weekend, April 30-May 1.
Even then, it might not be over in the Northeast Kingdom.
“There’s an outside chance we’d be able to reopen again, after closing midweek May 2-6, for the weekend of May 7-8,” Wright wrote.
Sugarbush Mountain Resort is looking at May 1 as well. Operations are scheduled to run daily through April 24, then reopen for a final weekend.
Then, there’s Killington, where no closing date has been announced. The plan currently calls for daily lift service through May 1, then weekends only for as long as Superstar can last.
As always, make sure and plan ahead to determine lift and trail status, as operations could vary in the unpredictability of New England spring weather.
Eric Wilbur can be reached at eric.wilbur@skijournal.com.
