Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome 2010/2011 is now available at your favorite beer merchant; let the games begin!Four NELSAP's in Western Mass>>
I'm ready and waiting for Winter. Lately I've been checking out some "Lost Ski Areas" at http://www.nelsap.org/ to add to my "Must Ski" hit list. Add some snow and I'll check them out real soon! Just in case you are not familiar with NELSAP it stands for New England Lost Ski Areas Project and it's website lists the region's known lost ski areas. Jeremy Davis founded the website in 1998 to preserve the memory of those lost ski areas. My goal is to find and ski as many of those areas as time and snow permits. Here are four I've visited recently that are on my Ski Radar!!
Williston Academy's Area 1946-1972 is found on the Easthampton side of Mt Tom. It had one rope tow and a few trails. A few of the trails look open enough to ski. We found the remains of the rope tow too. I hope to ski this area this winter along with a re-visit of Mt Tom Ski Area, my old stomping grounds.
Mitch's Hockanum Ski Ranch early to mid 1950's is at the base of Mt Holyoke on Rt47 in Hadley. I remember people sledding on this hill back when I was a kid. Hunting around you could see the old engine that powered this rope tow. The hill is really just a big field with an upper narrow trail feeding into it. If I'm already in the area skiing I'll give it a stab.
Tinker Hill 1954-1964 This is the first NELSAP area I ever skied and that was at least 15+ years ago. As a matter of fact the http://www.nelsap.org/ site didn't even exist yet when I made my first crude Telemark turns down it's old tow-line. According to NELSAP the Amherst College ski club privately used this area. I'd love to give this one another shot and try some of the offshoot trails on modern Telemark equipment.
Hemlock Hill Three Rivers/Palmer 1960's-1970's Never skied this one back in the day but many of my friends did. Some of the trails still look clear enough to ski so I'm hoping for an invite to go check it out this winter. Ski-In used to have a ski shop in town back then but later moved to their current location in Wilbraham. I worked for them in the late 80's thru early 90's in my mid-formative Ski-Bum years.
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