I spent today in New Hampshire at Ragged Mountain. We drove up in the crazy snow storm last night (took us 5 hours to get from Providence to Concord) and got up early today to hit the slopes. Ragged is only about 45 minutes from Concord, but what a ride. It’s way off in the middle of nowhere, way off the beaten path (though the path there is pretty beat up). The ride is frost heave hell. There’s nothing but frost heaves the entire ride, and the snow storm didn’t help as the road up to the mountain was packed with it and had 2 nice ruts for my tires to bounce around in.
Anyway, we made it to the mountain before the lifts opened. I figured we’d go here to avoid crowds at other mountains, including our beloved Cannon Mountain, which is normally not crowded, but with the school vacation week and the fact that it’s right off 93, I figured even they would be crowded. Ragged, if you don’t know anything about it, is smaller, about the size of Gunstock. They had some financial issues in the past, but were bought up and the new management installed a whole bunch of new snowmaking equipment. The biggest issue they had in the past was not being able to compete with the other mountains because of their lack of snowmaking. I figured they’d get a couple inches of fresh snow last night (which is all they got, about 2-3″). The skiing was great. There were no lift lines, no crowds on the mountain, and even the lodge was pretty empty. While I know the reason is that it’s so far off the main road and kind of small and not as well known, it was good for us. More fresh powder, nice groomed trails and no lift lines. I did just about every blue trail that was open and a couple of the blacks. The skiing was great with only a few patches of ice. There are actually 2 peaks at Ragged with nothing but glades in between. I don’t do glades (or harder blacks), but I was told that’s the reason people go there - for the great tree skiing. Spear Mountain, the western peak, was nice and soft (probably because the snow couldn’t get pushed off with the lift being extremely slow and only having 3 non-glade trails (and tougher trails, so fewer families). The other peak was a little crusty, even into the afternoon after getting some sun. I preferred Spear because the snow was much better and I could easily cruise down without worrying about the ice.
Ragged is a nice little mountain and great for beginner skiers and riders, and it’s probably awesome for families (so long as no one gets carsick easily). The blues aren’t too tough, and even the blacks are reasonable. I am not a huge fan of it because everything flattens out at the end and the trails aren’t terribly interesting (I prefer the nice curves of a classic New England trail, such as those at Cannon, and even Sunday River to extent). It was great day though. I’m glad we chose Ragged, I wasn’t in the mood to deal with crowds.
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