Woody Glen Ski Area

Woody Glen Ski Area in Salisbury, New Hampshire, ran on Raccoon Hill for nearly three decades as a small family hill for beginners. Its founder, Russell McLaughlin, was a Navy veteran and teacher who had spent years as a school principal on a remote Alaska island before starting a 31-year teaching career in Concord around 1960. He bought a 150-acre farm in Salisbury, spent the early 1960s shaping a novice slope, and opened Woody Glen as a rope tow area on January 14, 1967. The lodge doubled as a display for the Alaska Native masks, paintings and carved ivory he had collected.

Woody Glen was an upside-down ski area. Raccoon Hill Road, the parking lot and the small lodge sat at the top, and skiers rode back up. The rope tow had to be hung on its towers each night so it would not freeze into the snow. By the end of the 1960s the hill offered day and night skiing, and by the late 1970s it had about 10 acres served by a 900-foot rope tow. In 1974 McLaughlin and the Concord special education director started the Yes-I-Can! summer camp on the property, and a learn-to-ski program for students with special needs ran there in winter for years. Dave Hardy took over day-to-day management in the 1970s as a volunteer.

Around 1988 McLaughlin and a helper took down the T-bar at the closed Tyrol ski area in Jackson by hand, hauled it to Salisbury and set it up along the old tow line. The 1,500-foot lift raised the vertical from under 100 feet to 250, and new trails with tree islands and glades were cut below the original open slope. The early 1990s brochure called the place A Mogul With A Lift, charged $14 for a full day, let kids 5 and under ski free, and told skiers to ask about the Raccoon Happening. On a later rate poster that turned out to be a card handed out with each full-day ticket; five cards earned a free day.

There was never any snowmaking. Insurance cost about $6,000 a year, due before the first paying skier arrived, and McLaughlin often covered the bills himself. The 1994-95 season had one operating day by mid-January. McLaughlin died that October at 73, and the hill never reopened. The property passed to the Hardy family, the lodge became a house, the T-bar was sold to Ski Ward for parts in 2014, and the land was sold in 2016.