Thanks to Brian O'Malley, we first heard about this small area that existed in Spencer. Here's the details on this one from him.
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1-It
operated in the 60s 2-There was a truck that took skiers to the top, then they skied down. It also had a rope tow. 3-Its located near the SPENCER COUNTRY inn, off RT.9, off DONNELLY rd, take a right at the fork. The hill was open slopes...... 4-According to a co-worker who remembers it well, it had an approximate 200' drop.
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And then, a visit to the New England Ski Museum yielded tons more
information, including a trail map!
| Here's the cover of the brochure, year unknown, but likely in the mid 1960's. |
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Here's the trail map for the area. Take a
look at trail structure. A truck would load skiers at the lift loading
ramp, and take 800-1000 skiers/hr up the "lift route". Skiers would keep
their skis on the truck and be carried up hill.
Details on the trail: Moose Run, 1900' long, 300' wide, and easy all the way. A novice's delight. Bull Moose, grades up to 60%, a treat for the expert. Four other trails from novice to expert. Something to suit everybody's taste. |
| Directions to Moose Hill. It was only 10 miles from Worcester City Hall! |
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NELSAP also recently heard from Mr. Albert Southwick, former owner and operator of Moose Hill! Here is what Mr. Southwick had to share with us.
"My brother, Tom, and I ran Moose Hill Ski Area in Spencer from 1960 to 1970. Moose Hill was a mostly wide open field with a 250-foot vertical. It was contoured in such a way as to make a rope tow impossible and very difficult for a T-bar. So we devised our own lifts -- the first and last of their kind. We found that by going around the side of the slope, trucks could climb from bottom to top. So we graveled a road, outfitted the trucks with non-slip differentials, and built large platform bodies which could take up to 40 skiers sitting at an angle with their skis on. They would ski on at the bottom, ride up and then ski off the ramp at the top. We sometimes had more than 300 skiers on a good Saturday or Sunday. (We operated on weekends). Many skiers in the Worcester area learned to ski at Moose Hill and some still remember it."
Anybody else remember this one?
