Border War! Vermont vs. New Hampshire Skiing Part 6 – Cannon Mountain
by Jay Flemma
May 6, 2020
And of all the far-flung places Dad skied – from the Dolomites and the Alps to the Long Trail and the White Mountains – he always reminisced with wide-eyed wonder about Cannon, “the Living Legend” as they call it.
“They have this 80-person tram that takes you up to the top!” he’d gush excitedly. (There are two actually: one red, one yellow – “Ketchup” and “Mustard” as they’re called.) “It’s steep double fall lines, and reverse camber, and drop-offs everywhere you look!” he’d exclaim excitedly, his sky blue eyes sparkling like gemstones as he recalled.
“And it’s cooooooooold…,” he’d intone, almost like an incantation. “It is mighty cold in the shadow of Mt. Washington.”
Sadly we never got to ski it together, but a year after he passed on to That Great Above-the-Treeline Run in the Sky, where he catches first chair every morning, I finally made to Cannon.
It was everything Dad said and more.
Cannon is spoken of in holy whispers by the skiing intelligentsia and with good reason. Sure the big corporate resorts have plenty of bells, whistles, and buzzers – restaurants, bungalows, and cutesy animal mascots. But it’s the terrain that ultimately defines the quality of a ski area, and Cannon Mountain is the final examination of the expert skier.
Until you’ve actually been to Cannon to experience it yourself, you’ll still not be fully prepared for the ferocity of the mountain. Coming from the south, you approach from behind, so there’s a moment where you turn a corner along Echo Lake and ***WOW!*** There it is looming over you. (Cue the music from The Shining…the scene when they’re driving to the hotel…) Its trails a Gordian Knot of adders reflected eerily in Echo Lake and sinister mare’s tails of spin drifts swirling off the summit cone, you can’t help but feel a twinge of intimidation along with exhilaration. I felt like Rick Ridgeway in 1975 when he first saw K2, the second highest mountain in the world. He said “How the hell are we ever going to climb that thing?” I said, “Dude, I’m in for a bumpy ride…”
And then there’s the weather. Like Whiteface Mountain, near Lake Placid, New Hampshire’s White Mountains are one of the coldest places in the entire Western Hemisphere, sometimes recording temps more frigid as Antarctica. Worse still, hurricane force winds often lash the summits of the Presidentials. (They are deep within what’s known as the “Roaring 40s” latitude after all…) Storms brew like steam from a witch’s cauldron with frightening alacrity. So Cannon is nearly always cold, windy, and – again like Whiteface – is prone to be icy.
Still, those same Presidentials are among the most breathtaking views offered from atop any peak, with Lafayette Mountain on one side, Franconia Notch on the other, and Echo Lake waiting below. It seems Dad’s assessment – made 40 years ago – is still dead solid perfect. Nowhere on the east coast can you find such an electrifying synergy of beauty and challenge. Old school, primal, and eminently natural, Cannon has been an American stronghold of winter sports for over eight decades and home to some of the most accomplished skiers and boarders in our country’s winter sports history, including Bode Miller, arguably the best Olympic skier ever.
In the early 1930s, the Peckett family, owners of the popular Sugar Mill Inn winter resort, saw potential in Cannon as a ski resort began pursuing ski trail development. Old logging roads on the mountain had been used for skiing since 1929, and in 1931-1932 one “Duke Dimitri von Leuchtenberg” is credited with designing perhaps the first Cannon Mountain trail partially cut in the summer of 1932.
