Ski Mountain

Ski Mountain in Pine Hill, New Jersey, was a small ski area on a hill off West Branch Avenue in Camden County, about ten miles from Philadelphia. Emil Del Conte and John Early, who had been classmates at Temple University, bought the land around 1963 with Ed Klumpp, a business associate. The area opened in January 1965 with snowmaking, a three-story base lodge and a small Summit House at the top that sold light refreshments. A pond at the base held water for the snow guns and caught the occasional skier who could not stop, until hay bales and a snow bank were piled in front of it.

It was close enough to the city to run as a school and night hill. In February 1968 the student paper at Eastern High School described its ski club riding out every Wednesday evening: seven dollars covered the bus, rental gear, an hour and a half of lessons and free skiing on a floodlit slope, and the hardest part was the rope tow. The ski school ran more than fifty classes a day, and the area offered programs for disabled Vietnam veterans and for deaf and hard-of-hearing skiers.

The lifts grew over the years to a 1,500-foot T-bar, two 1,300-foot pony lifts, a shorter pony lift and three rope tows. In 1978 a 1,800-foot double chairlift went in, at a reported cost of about $400,000. The brochure trail map was an aerial photo of one wide open slope with the lift lines drawn in and numbered, from the chair to the first aid station.

In 1983 Ski Mountain merged with Great American Recreation, the company behind Vernon Valley and Great Gorge in Sussex County. Water slides and other summer attractions were added to make it a year-round park, and the hill was renamed Action Mountain. Action Mountain filed for bankruptcy in 1986 and its equipment was sold at auction, which ended skiing in Pine Hill. A golf course was built over the hill in the late 1990s, and the clubhouse now stands at the top.