A groomer spreads snow at the base of Brattleboro’s Harris Hill ski jump in advance of the annual Presidents’ Day weekend competition. Photo by Kevin O’Connor/VTDigger
BRATTLEBORO — This town’s Harris Hill ski jump is the only Olympic-size slope in New England and one of just six in the nation.
This winter, it’s also a climate roller coaster.
When organizers of this weekend’s annual competition started up an arsenal of snowmaking guns just before Groundhog Day, they did so less because the temperature was frigid and more because the subsequent forecast threatened day upon day of unseasonable highs in the 40s and 50s.
“The man-made snow is a lot more dense and doesn’t melt as fast,” said Jason Evans, a Dummerston contractor in charge of hill preparation.
A crew of 10 worked three straight days and nights funneling and freezing hundreds of thousands of gallons of water into 12-foot-high snow banks, all in hopes they’d stand tall enough until a grooming machine was scheduled to arrive this past Tuesday.
That’s when real snow began to fall, delaying plans to spread and smooth everything.
Even so, more than 30 male and female athletes from the United States and Europe are set to fly this Presidents’ Day weekend at the nearly century-old annual competition.
The 90-meter hill with a launchpad 30 stories high is a rarity. When the late Dartmouth Outing Club founder Fred Harris built it in his hometown in 1922, he simply laid down a few boards for a ramp and lashed two more to his feet to fly off what’s now one of the few natural venues on the continent.
But to draw this weekend’s anticipated crowd of several thousand spectators, a nonprofit group, Harris Hill Ski Jump Inc., had to raise nearly $600,000 a decade ago to rebuild the slope to International Ski Federation Cup standards.
Because volunteers maintain everything, Harris Hill is open just two days each February. Gates will open Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m., with trial rounds at 11 a.m. and opening ceremonies and competition at noon. Ticket details and directions are available on the hill’s website or Facebook page.
“Everything is all set,” chief of competition Todd Einig says, “although Mother Nature is going to continue to challenge us a little bit.”
The snowmaking crew, having managed the past two weeks, isn’t wilting.
“We’re in pretty good shape,” Evans says. “I think there’s plenty of snow.”
The maintenance team at Brattleboro’s Harris Hill ski jump man snowmaking guns in advance of the annual Presidents’ Day weekend competition. Photo by Kevin O’Connor/VTDigger
Read the story on VTDigger here: State’s biggest ski jump is a climate roller coaster.