Petersburg Pass Ski Area

Petersburg Pass Ski Area in Petersburg, New York, sat at the top of Route 2 where the Taconic Trail crosses the ridge into Massachusetts, a few miles from the Vermont line. Its base lodge and parking lots were beside the height of land on the New York side, close enough to the border that former skiers still argue over which state they skied in. The area opened in 1962, started by two executives of the Sprague Electric Company in North Adams, with a Poma double chairlift and three main trails on the north face of the ridge.

A Pomalift for beginners followed, and through the 1960s the trail map grew to about ten runs. Panorama, West Ridge and Deer Hollow were novice runs, Berlin and Twist were for intermediates, and Zoomer and The Drop, a run of about a mile, were for experts. A restaurant at the base was called the Schusskabob. The area was sold in 1967, and that December's ads announced the new Petersburg Pass under new ownership: a 3,100-foot double chair, 850 feet of vertical, night skiing Wednesday through Saturday on the Pomalift slopes, and a holiday racing camp, all 25 miles east of Troy.

The area shut down after 1969 and sat idle for about three years. Mark Raimer and his family bought it in 1972 and reopened it that December as Taconic Trails, and it was later renamed Mt. Raimer. They put up a new lodge and cut trails down the west side of the ridge toward New York that would have added hundreds of feet of vertical, but the expansion never opened. Short of money and of water for snowmaking, the area missed seasons in the 1970s and went out of business in 1980.

Butternut in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, bought the lifts in the early 1980s and put the double chair back up on its beginner slopes. The old trails are now part of Taconic Ridge State Forest. Backcountry skiers still climb them from the Route 2 parking lot, where the Taconic Crest Trail crosses the pass.