Ski Maine: Down East From L.L. Bean To The Slopes -
Men with axes sought wealth in the Great North Woods long before the ski industry brought jobs to rural Maine, stretching across northern and western Maine. Henry David Thoreau's essays, compiled as The Maine Woods, describes trips over an 11-year span in the mid-1800s across a stretch of forest populated by loggers, a few settlers, and American Indians.
The logging heritage remains alive and well today, and is honored by trail names like Bubblecuffer, Boomauger, Whiffletree, and Tote Road at Sugarloaf.
Paper making is the state's No. 1 industry, but Maine also is the world's largest blueberry producer, and tourists pour billions into the state's economy in their search for recreation year-round – on the water in summer, on the snow in winter. The lobsters aren't bad, either.
L.L. Bean in Freeport is one of the world's great outdoor retailers, whose founder set standards of quality and customer service that still serve as benchmarks in retail trade. The story goes that Leon Leonwood Bean came home from a hunting trip with wet feet. He developed the famous "Maine hunting shoe," a rubber-bottomed, leather-topped shoe ideal for the boggy woods of Maine, and started selling them in 1912.
Well, the stitches let go on 90 of the first 100 pairs he sold. He took them back, returned the money, and fixed the problem. It made his reputation, which his heirs have worked hard to maintain, with enormous success.
Other individuals have played equally important roles in weaving a strong fabric for the good life in Maine, none more so that Gov. Percival P. Baxter. Like Bean, an outdoorsman, he bought and donated more than 200,000 acres of forest and mountains to the people of Maine in 1931 for the state park that now bears his name. Mount Katahdin is its crown jewel, the state's highest peak, standing at the northern end of the 2,015-mile-long Appalachian Trail. Katahdin's mile-long knife-edge ridge is one of the great stretches of trail in North America, running from Pomola to Baxter Peaks, with precipitous drops on either side.
Amos Winter is a legend in the world of skiing. He and the Bigelow boys cut the early trails on Sugarloaf Mountain, adopting the logging theme for trail names, and setting a high standard for big-mountain skiing in New England.
More recently, Les Otten's endeavors in the ski world generated strong feelings from supporters and detractors. Otten created the American Skiing Co., a conglomeration of resorts that included Sugarloaf and Sunday River in Maine, and Killington, Mount Snow and Sugarbush in Vermont among others. He bet the rent money on the twin foundations of ever-expanding real estate development, and modern snowmaking that would keep skiers and riders coming. We know how that worked out; ASC is no more.
But the state of skiing is strong in the State of Maine. Saddleback Maine is in the early phases of a 10-year expansion that will eventually see nine new lifts, a 60-room inn, and new ski terrain at the family operated resort. New owners are refurbishing lifts and other facilities at Sugarloaf and Sunday River.
Mt. Abram, Baker Mountain, Big Rock, Black Mountain of Maine, Camden Snow Bowl, Eaton Mountain, Hermon Mountain, Lost Valley, Mt. Jefferson, Powderhouse Hill Ski Area, Quoggy Jo, Shawnee Peak, Spruce Peak and Titcomb Mountain round out the state's offerings.
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