Key improvements signal strong seasons ahead for Attitash, Wildcat ski areas

It looks like Vail Resorts has finally realized the value of the unique assets they have in Attitash and Wildcat.

The two iconic North Conway, New Hampshire ski areas (never call Wildcat in wild Pinkham Notch a resort) are somewhat of anomalies in the giant ski area ownership chain's constellation in that they don't easily fit into Vail's strategy of owning areas close to major urban centers.

Suffering through a tough season

They're both also gritty, throwback, glitz-free places whose attractions are vast and exciting terrain and dramatically beautiful natural settings rather than fancy amenities or the most perfect grooming and snowmaking. The ski areas attract a lot of Central Massachusetts ski families who feel at home there.

Unfortunately, a couple of years into Vail's ownership, last season was probably the worst in at least two decades for both areas, located 17 miles from each other both in the shadow of majestic Mount Washington.

MORE: Area skiers concerned for safety after Wachusett Mountain Ski Area ends Ranger program

The sister areas were battered by freakishly low natural snowfall, a severe staffing shortage and lift shutdowns, plus bad publicity driven by critics who alleged Vail was mismanaging the areas. The reality, though, is that both areas had been neglected by their previous owner, Peak Resorts, and Vail was still getting a handle on the identities of the mountains and how to run them.

New guidance signals rebound

But signs point to a big comeback this season and the next few years under the guidance of two new young general managers who grew up skiing in New England and collaboratively oversaw significant infrastructure improvements over the summer including a new fixed-grip quad lift at Attitash.

While you'll see or at least benefit from a lot of improvements, the pandemic-era practice of not allowing customers to leave bags in the lodge remains, apparently for space reasons, not as a COVID-19 measure. Skiers can boot up inside but must return their belongings to their vehicles.

For Wildcat GM J.D. Crichton, who started last November after multi-year stints in top food and beverage jobs at Vail's Crested Butte and Copper Mountain in Colorado, so far it's been a matter of rehabbing the snowmaking and lift system.

Over the summer, the 43-year-old Bangor, Maine native said he was able to put between nine and 12 people on the mountain maintenance trail team full-time, four times the size of crews in previous years. He credited some of that success in staffing to Vail's raising the minimum wage for all employees to $20 an hour this season, along with other perks and a growing pool of affordable employee housing.

"It was numerous years of deferred maintenance that the crews hadn't had the opportunity to attack," he said.

The team welded and patched numerous holes and leaks in snowmaking lines across the mountain from boundary to boundary.

Updates in ski lifts

At the same time, Wildcat did extensive maintenance on its three main lifts: the speedy but aging and wind-buffeted Wildcat Express detachable summit quad – built in 1997 – and the even older Bobcat (1982) and Tomcat (1974) triples. Snowcat, another old triple, had a scary malfunction last January when a chair detached, injuring a snowboarder.

A fully staffed lift maintenance team tightened the new haul rope on the summit quad that was installed during the summer of 2021 and "we've done a ton of mechanical work on it just on maintenance, just the deferred maintenance that maybe in the past we hadn't had the opportunity in the past to get done," Crichton said.

Meanwhile, the Bobcat chair got a new drive system and the top Tomcat lift deck was renovated, with work finishing up in late November.

"That deck is all structurally reinforced steel. It's a beautiful piece of work," Crichton said.

Wildcat also got a couple of new grooming machines, bringing the total fleet to four dependable machines.

Looking toward the future

By the way, while Attitash got a new lift next year and has committed to replacing the ailing summit triple with a high-speed quad next summer, don't be surprised if in the somewhat near future Wildcat replaces its old summit lift with a D-line high-speed six-pack. The new technology D-lines ride smoother and are more reliable (read, in high winds) than old-school lifts.

Crichton was mum about plans for new lifts. He's got plenty to do right now.

I asked him about feeling accepted as a newcomer in a grizzled mountain culture at one of the wildest ski areas in the East, and whether absorbing the wisdom of veteran employees was a key to that.

"I do my best. I probably don't do it as well as the team wants but it's still an opportunity for me to work on," Crichton said with a laugh. "The staff actually was my guiding light. In a year like last year, they saw me through it as much as they saw the mountain through it. That was a humbling experience and one that I will not soon forget."

Attitash on the move

Yes, Attitash pulled off its opening day on Dec. 2 with the new Progression Quad spinning.

This new four-seater replaces two ancient side-by-side doubles that were hard to load and broke down a lot.

Now beginners and low intermediates have their own lift that's easier to get into, and more advanced skiers heading over to adjacent Bear Peek have a more reliable way to start their crossover. At a six-minute ride it's not faster than the old lifts, but it'll be a lot more pleasant experience.

New GM Brandon Swartz, 36, is in his first full year running this great ski area classic, known for its serpentine steeps for experts and challenging intermediate terrain and downhome feel.

Swartz grew up in Hudson County, New York skiing Mount Snow and later worked at Mount Snow as a ski instructor and in mountain operations, and at Hunter Mountain in New York in lift maintenance and as a full-time ski patroller at Burke Mountain in Vermont.

He started at Attitash on Feb. 7, 2022 after the departure of Greg Gavrilets. This is his 10th resort; most recently he was GM of Vail's Hidden Valley ski area in Missouri.

At the start of summer, Swartz made a bold decision to suspend summer operations including an adventure park and mountain bike park.

Attention to Bear Peak

The reason was to give employees time to give some love to the Attitash infrastructure.

"I really gave the team the time that they needed to do a really deep dive into every facet of our operation, and obviously, the biggest thing that was out there that was very apparent when I started last year was the reliability of our lifts," Swartz said. "Now we feel like all of our lifts are in a really good place going into the season."

The top rehab project was on Bear Mountain's popular Flying Bear high-speed quad, which gets a ton of use and is getting even more as more people start to use Bear Mountain as their home base for a day of skiing. Swartz' team overhauled the electrical system, which had experienced reliability problems in recent years.

On the Kachina triple at Bear Peak, which accesses some nice intermediate trails but has been closed for about three years, workers replaced the drive system and the lift is expected to operate this season and relieve some pressure on the Flying Bear and service race training terrain to get some young racers out of the quad lift line.

As for the Attitash summit triple – the lift I and everyone else love to hate because it's so slow, uncomfortable and prone to shutdowns – even that got some attention over the offseason.

"I mean, things will still happen, they always do with lifts. But we're going to be ready for it and I feel like it's going to have its time in the sun here for its last year," Swartz said.

Employees also did a lot of trail work over the summer, pruning and cutting back areas that were intruding on the slopes.

"Our trail crew team really just honestly worked on reclaiming our hill," Swartz continued. "Over the last few years trees, trees took hold, shrubbery took hold and so they were in year two of a three-year stint to really brush our trails back. That'll help our snowmakers keep the snow on the trails and not plaster our trees on the side."

Coming home

Like Crichton, Swartz sought to return to the East for family reasons and the outdoor attractions of the beautiful high alpine country of the Mount Washington Valley, where both he and Crichton are helping to raise families.

For that reason alone, I have hope that both of them will stick around for a while after a bit of churn in the GM positions in recent years. They both expressed optimism about that, but one of Vail's advantages for top-performing employees is the opportunity to move up in a huge organization.

"I'm really passionate about the East. Part of my platform as I've come here is that I understand the East and how to operate a ski area in the East," Swartz said. "It can be a different animal to run a ski area in the East. I know what that looks like."

—Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at s_sutner@yahoo.com 

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Key improvements signal strong seasons ahead for Attitash, Wildcat ski areas