Podcast #184: Pleasant Mountain General Manager Ralph Lewis

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast

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Who

Ralph Lewis, General Manager of Pleasant Mountain (formerly Shawnee Peak), Maine

Recorded on

September 9, 2024

About Pleasant Mountain

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Boyne Resorts, which also owns:

Located in: Bridgton, Maine

Year founded: 1938

Pass affiliations: New England Gold Pass: 3 days, no blackouts

Closest neighboring ski areas: Cranmore (:33), King Pine (:39), Attitash (:46), Black Mountain NH (:48), Sunday River (:53), Wildcat (:58), Mt. Abram (:56), Lost Valley (:59)

Base elevation: 600 feet

Summit elevation: 1,900 feet

Vertical drop: 1,300 feet

Skiable Acres: 239

Average annual snowfall: 110 inches

Trail count: 47 (25% advanced, 50% intermediate, 25% beginner)

Lift count: 6 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triple chairs, 2 surface lifts – total includes Summit Express quad, anticipated to open for the 2024-25 ski season; view Lift Blog’s inventory of Pleasant Mountain’s lift fleet)

Why I interviewed him

Pleasant Mountain is loaded with many of the attributes of great - or at least useful - ski areas: bottom-to-top chairlifts, a second base area to hack the crowds, night skiing, a nuanced trail network that includes wigglers through the woods and interstate-width racing chutes, good stuff for kids, an easy access road that breaks right off a U.S. highway, killer views, a tight community undiluted by destination skiers, and a simpleness that makes you think “yeah this is pretty much what I thought a Maine ski area would be.”

But the place has been around since 1938, which was 15 U.S. presidents ago. Parts of Pleasant feel musty and dated. Core skier services remain smushed between the access road and the bottom of the lifts, squeezed by that kitchen-in-a-camper feeling that everything could use just a bit more space. The baselodge feels improvised, labyrinthian, built for some purpose other than skiing. I would believe that it used to be a dairy barn housing 200 cows or a hideout for bootleggers and bandits or the home of an eccentric grandmother who kept aardvarks for pets before I would believe that anyone built this structure to accommodate hundreds of skiers on a winter weekend.

American skiing, with few exceptions, follows a military/finance-style up-or-out framework. You either advance or face discharge, which in skiing means falling over dead in the snow. Twenty-five years ago, the notion of a high-speed lift at Alta would have been sacrilege. The ski area has four now, including a six-pack, and nobody ever even mentions it. Saddleback rose from the grave partly because they replaced a Napolean-era double chair with a high-speed quad. Taos – Ikon and Mountain Collective partner Taos – held out for eons before installing its first detachable in 2018 (the mountain now has two). One of the new owner’s first acts at tiny Bousquet, Massachusetts was to level the rusty baselodge and build a new one.

Pleasant needed to start moving up. Thirteen hundred vertical feet is too many vertical feet to ascend on a fixed-grip lift in southern New England. There are too many larger options too nearby where skiers don’t have to do that. Sure, Magic, Smuggs, and MRG have fended off ostentatious modernization by tapping nostalgia as a brand, but they are backstopped by the kind of fistfighting terrain and natural snow that Pleasant lacks. To be a successful city-convenient New England ski area in the 2020s, you’re going to have to be a modern ski area.

That’s happening now, at an encouraging clip, under Boyne Resorts’ ownership. Pleasant was fine before, kept in good repair and still relevant even in a crowded market. It could have hung around for decades no matter what. But the big passes aren’t going anywhere and the fast lifts aren’t going anywhere and ski areas need to change along with skier expectations of what a ski area ought to be. That’s happening now at Pleasant Mountain, and it’s damn fun to watch.

What we talked about

At long last, a high-speed lift up Pleasant Mountain; why the new lift won’t have a midstation; why the summit triple had to go; taking out the same lift at two different mountains decades apart; when the mountain will sell old triple chairs, and where the proceeds for those will go; will the new lift overcrowd the mountain?; why Pleasant doesn’t consider this a used lift even though its bones came from Sunday River; being part of Boyne versus being an indie on an island; Pleasant Mountain in the ‘70s; building Bear Peak at Attitash; returning to a childhood place when you’re no longer a child; the Homer family legacy; Boyne buys Shawnee and changes the name back to “Pleasant”; “the big question is, what do we do with the land to the west of us?” as far as potential ski area expansion goes; how Pleasant interacts with Boyne’s other New England ski areas; why Pleasant hasn’t joined the Ikon Pass like all of Boyne’s other ski areas; the evolution and future of Pleasant Mountain on the New England Pass; whether the Sunnyside triple is next in line for a high-speed upgrade; night-skiing; snowmaking; and potential baselodge expansion.

This pod also features some of the coolest background noise ever, as we hear the helicopter flying these towers for the new summit lift:

Lewis sent me some photos after the call:

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Boyne came in and went to work doing Boyne things. That means snowmaking that can bury a brontosaurus. More parking. Food trucks. Tweaks to the trail network. Better grooming. Access to the Maine bigsters with a Pleasant season pass. And a bunch of corporate streamlining that none of us notice but that fortify the bump for long-term stability.

But what we’ve all been waiting for are the new lifts. Or lift. It would always be the Summit Triple that would go first. The other chairs gathered around Big Jim (as he was known around the yard), and delivered their eulogies on that day three years ago when Boyne bought its fourth New England ski area. They all had stories to share. Breakdowns and wind holds. Liftlines and rainy days. Long summers just sitting there, waiting for something to do. Better to hear the tributes before the chairs stopped spinning, before they were auctioned off and sent to sentry backyard firepits from Portsmouth to Farmington, before the towers were scrapped and recycled into steel support beams for a Bangor outlet mall. Then they gathered round to listen.

“What’s it like to have a midstation?” asked Pine Quad.

“Did you have electricity in the ‘90s, or were you powered by a woodstove?” asked Rabbit Run Triple, born in 2014.

“Is it true that from the top of North Peak at Loon, you can see four Canadian states?” asked Sunnyside Triple.

“In Canada, they’re called ‘metric states,’” Summit Express Triple answered sagely. And they all nodded in awe.

And then Boyne sawed the whole thing into pieces and trucked a better lift down from Sunday River to replace it. The whole project probably took a bit longer than Pleasant Mountain locals would have liked, but hey Boyne restored the ski area’s original name in the meantime which was a nifty distraction. And now the new lift is here and it isn’t new but it looks new and was rebuilt like a ‘60s muscle car so that the garaged version you see today is better than anything you would have seen on the street when CCR was new and cool.

I don’t know what Boyne’s going to do when they run out of lifts to upgrade. Right now it’s like 10 every year and each of them sleek as a fighter jet and nearly as expensive. But impactful, meaningfully changing how skiers experience a mountain. The new tram at Big Sky feels like a rocket launch to a moon landing. Camelot 6 at The Highlands – 487 vertical feet with bubbles and heated seats – is so over the top that riders travel from Michigan to Austria on the 42-second ride. Even the International triple chair at Alpental will blow the sidewalls off one of the best pure ski mountains in the Pacific Northwest, humble as a three-person chair sounds in this itemization of megalifts.

Pleasant Mountain’s new Summit Express – which replaces a Summit Express that was actually a Summit Regular-Speed Fixed-Grip Lift – will transform the ski area. It will change how skiers think about the place and how they experience it. It instantly promotes the mountain to the 21st century, where New England skiers expect detachable chairs anytime a lift rises more than a thousand vertical feet. And it assures the locals that yeah Boyne is in this. They’ve got plans. And we’re just getting started here.

What I got wrong

* There were a bunch of times that I called the ski area “Shawnee” or “Shawnee Peak.” Yes I got the memo but I don’t know names are hard.

* I said the six-state New England region was “like half the size of Colorado,” but the difference is not quite that dramatic. New England covers 71,988 square miles (nearly half of which – 30,843 square miles – is Maine), compared to 103,610 square miles for Colorado. I feel like I’ve made this mistake, and this correction, before.

* I made the keen observation that Pleasant Mountains was “Loon’s” fourth ski area in the region and third in the state of Maine. I meant “Boyne’s.”

Why you should ski Pleasant Mountain

Pleasant Mountain fits into this odd category of ski areas that you only visit if you live within an hour of the parking lot, and only if that hour is east-southeast of the ski area. There’s too much Conway competition west. Too much Sunday River north. Too easy to get to Loon if you’re south. Which is another way of saying that Pleasant Mountain is an overlooked member of New England’s ski area roster, a lost-unless-you’re-from-Portland afterthought for skiers distracted by New Hamsphire and Vermont and Sugarloaf.

That’s not the same thing as saying that this is not a very nice ski area. Nothing stays in business for 86 years by accident. Skiers just don’t think about it unless they have to. Pleasant isn’t on any national multimountain pass, isn’t particularly convenient to get to, isn’t a bargain, doesn’t harbor a pocket of secret hardcore terrain.

But you should go anyway. Even if all you do is ride the lift to the summit and stare out at the water below. The views are primo. But the ride down is fun too. Twisty narrow New England fall lines at their playful, unpredictable best. The pitches aren’t overly steep, but they are consistent. This is one of the more approachable thousand-plus-footers in the country. And Maine is one of the more pleasant states in the country (no pun intended). Good people up there. A nice place to break your leg, I’m told. I’ll take any excuse to visit Maine. You can go ahead and see that for yourself.

Podcast Notes

On Pleasant having one of New England’s highest vertical drops with no high-speed lift

Pleasant Mountain is one of the last New England ski areas with more than 1,000 vertical feet to install a detachable lift, but there are still a 11 left. Twelve if you count Dartmouth Skiway, which I will because I suspect their reported vertical drop may be more honest than some of the ski areas claiming 1,000-plus:

On Boyne rebuilding old detach quads

Boyne has rebuilt quite a few high-speed quads over the past half-decade:

Loon GM Brian Norton delivered an excellent breakdown of his mountain’s rebuild of Kanc/Seven Brothers in his 2022 podcast appearance.

On early-70s Pleasant Mountain

Lewis recalls his 1970s childhood days skiing Pleasant Mountain. The place was a fairly simple operation in 1970:

Within a couple of years, however, the trail footprint had evolved into something remarkably similar to modern-day Pleasant Mountain:

On Pleasant’s claim to having the first chairlift in the state of Maine

Pleasant appears to be home to Maine’s first double chair, a Constam make named “Old Blue,” that ran from 1955 to ‘84. According to New England Ski History, a now-defunct operation named Michaud Hill installed a single-person chairlift for the 1945-46 ski season. The lift only lasted for a couple of years, however, before being “possibly removed following 1947-48 season, with parts possibly used at [also now defunct] Thorn Mountain, New Hampshire.”

On Sunday River as a backwater

I’ve covered this extensively, but it’s still a trip to look at 1980s trailmaps of a teeny-tiny Sunday River:

On ASC’s roster

Lewis spent time as part of American Skiing Company, which at its height had collected a now widely distributed bundle of mountains:

On Bear Peak at Attitash

Lewis helped build two of the largest modern ski expansions in New Hampshire. Bear Peak, installed between 1994 and ’95 on the proposed-but-never-developed Big Bear development next door to Attitash, more or less doubled the size of the ski area. Here’s a before-and-after look at the American Skiing Company mega-project:

On Sugarbush’s Lift-tacular summer

Those American Skiing Company days were wild in New England, marking the last major investment surge until the one we’re witnessing over the past five years. One of the most incredible single-summer efforts unfolded at Sugarbush in 1995, when the company installed six chairlifts: Super Bravo Express, Gatehouse Express, and the North Lynx Triple on the Lincoln side; North Ridge Express and the Green Mountain Quad on the Mt. Ellen side; and the two-mile-long Slide Brook Express (still the longest chairlift in the world), linking the two.

Current Sugarbush GM John Hammond, who occupied a much more junior role at the mountain in the mid-90s, recalled that summer when he joined the podcast in 2020.

On vintage Loon

Lewis eventually moved from Attitash to Loon, where he found himself part of his second generational expansion: South Peak. Here’s Loon around 2003:

Expansion unfolded in phases, beginning in 2007. By 2011, the new peak was mostly built out:

Loon actually expanded it again in 2022:

On Loon busyness

While it’s difficult to verify skier visit numbers exactly, since ski areas, for reasons I don’t understand, lock them up as though they were the nuclear launch codes, they occasionally slip out. And all available evidence suggests that Loon is, by far, New Hampshire’s busiest ski area. Here’s a dated snapshot gathered by New England Ski History:

On Loon being the best of New Hampshire

I claim, without really qualifying it, that Loon is New Hampshire’s “premier ski area.” What I meant by that was that the ski area owns the state’s most sophisticated snowmaking and lift system. That assessment is a bit subjective, and Bretton Woods Nation could fight me about it and I wouldn’t really have much of a counterargument.

However, there is another way to look at the “best,” and that is in terms of pure ski terrain. Among the state’s ski areas, Cannon and Wildcat generally split this category. Again, it’s subjective, but on a powder day, those two are going to give you the most interesting terrain when you consider glades, steeps, bumps, etc.

And then you have a bunch of ski areas in Vermont, and a handful in Maine, that are right in this fight. And since New England states are roughly the size of suburban Atlanta Costcos, it makes sense to consider them as a whole. Which means this is a good place to re-insert my standard Ski Areas of New England Inventory:

On Booth Creek’s roster

Loon was, for a time, one of eight ski areas owned by Booth Creek:

Today, the company’s only ski area is Sierra-at-Tahoe.

On the Homer family and “Shawnee Peak”

Pleasant Mountain’s somewhat bizarre history includes its purchase by the owners of Shawnee Mountain, Pennsylvania in 1988. Per New England Ski History:

Following the 1987-88 season, the owners of Pleasant Mountain found themselves in financial trouble. That off season, they sold the ski area to Shawnee Mountain Corp. for $1.4 million. Pleasant Mountain was subsequently renamed to "Shawnee Peak," the name of the owners' Pennsylvania ski area.

Current Shawnee Mountain CEO Nick Fredericks, who has worked at that Pennsylvania ski area for its entire existence, recalled the whole episode in detail when he joined me on the podcast three years ago.

Out-of-state ownership didn’t last long. New England Ski History:

Circa 1992, the parent company decided to divest its skiing holdings, resulting in banks taking control of Shawnee Peak. After a couple of season on the bubble, Shawnee Peak was purchased by Tom's of Maine executive Chet Homer in September of 1994. Though Homer considered restoring the ski area's original name, he opted to keep the Shawnee Peak identity due to the brand that had been established.

In 2021, Homer sold the ski area to Boyne Resorts, who changed the name back to “Pleasant Mountain” in 2022. Chet’s son, Geoff, recently acquired the operating lease for the small Blue Hills, Massachusetts ski area:

On expansion potential to Pleasant Mountain’s west

Pleasant Mountain owns a large parcel skier’s left off the summit that could substantially expand the mountain’s skiable terrain:

Boyne has been aggressive with New England expansions over the past several years, opening a massive new terrain pod at Sugarloaf, expanding South Peak at Loon, and adding the family-friendly Merrill Hill at Sunday River. Boyne has the resources, organizational knowhow, and will to pull off a similar project at Pleasant. I’d expect the new terrain to be included whenever the company puts together the sort of long-term visions it’s articulated for Sugarloaf, Sunday River, Loon, Boyne Mountain, The Highlands, Summit at Snoqualmie, and Big Sky.

That expansion will not include these trails teased skier’s right of the current Sunnyside pod in this 52-year-old trailmap – Pleasant either donated or sold this land to a nature conservancy some years ago.

On Pleasant’s slow expansion onto the New England Pass

Here’s how access has evolved between Pleasant Mountain and the remainder of Boyne’s portfolio since the company’s 2021 acquisition:

* 2021-22: Boyne purchased Pleasant in September, 2021 – too late to include the ski area on any of the company’s pass products for the coming winter.

* 2022-23: New England Pass excludes Pleasant as a full partner, but top-tier passes include three days each at Pleasant and Boyne’s other ski areas across North America; top-tier Pleasant passes included three days to split between Sugarloaf, Sunday River, and Loon, but no access to Boyne’s other resorts.

* 2023-24: New England Pass access remains same as 2022-23; top-tier Pleasant Mountain passes now include three days each at Boyne’s non-New England resorts, including Big Sky.

* 2024-25: New England Pass holders can now add a Pleasant Mountain night-skiing pass at a substantial discount; Pleasant Mountain access to remainder of Boyne’s portfolio remains unchanged.

Since Pleasant Mountain’s season pass remains so heavily discounted against top-tier New England Passes ($849 early-bird versus $1,389), it seems unlikely that adding Pleasant as a full pass partner would do much to overcrowd the smaller mountain. Most skiers who lay out that much for their big-time pass will probably want to spend their weekends at the bigger mountains up north. Pleasant’s expansion, whenever it happens, will also increase the chances that Pleasant could join the New England or Ikon Passes.

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