When Steven Kelly bought Tenney Mountain Resort in 2022 and looked at how to return the long-struggling ski area to past glory, he quickly found that his initial ideas needed updating.
“I’m a developer, a builder. When I first saw it I said, let’s build a big, sexy lodge,” he said. “Then I realized you can have the best lodge in the world and with these slow lifts, nobody will come, so we fixed the lifts. Then I realized you can have a new lodge and great lifts but nobody will come if there’s no snow, so snowmaking became a priority.”
“One thing we realized last year, our first full season, was we really couldn’t get water to the top of the mountain due to the age of the infrastructure,” he said. Increasing the pressure enough to move water up the 1,400-foot elevation blew holes in some existing pipes.
Five miles of new snowmaking pipe and three new pumps were installed this year, along with 125 more snow guns, Kelly said, as Tenney Mountain launches its first back-to-back full seasons in more than a decade. The resort is also applying to build a new retention pond to store at least 10 million gallons of water.
“People think of coverage, how much of your trails are covered (with snowmaking),” he said. “That’s just one component. It’s not just coverage that matters but your capacity to put snow on that coverage. We’re going to be dramatically different than last year.”
Tenney opened in 1960 along Route 3A just south of Plymouth, one of many New Hampshire ski areas started in the decades after World War II as the industry boomed. It thrived through the late 1980s but faltered as insurance costs and the public’s increasing demand for snowmaking took a toll.
Since the 1990s the mountain has gone through a succession of owners who made promises but rarely followed through. It has occasionally failed to open at all. Kelly says he realizes this is an obstacle.
“I know the public is going to be hesitant to trust Tenney … because of the past,” he said. “For the people who question Tenney, just keep watching. We’ll continue to silence the critics every year.”
The state’s most notable ski rebirth was Crotched Mountain in Francestown, which had to be rebuilt from scratch on an adjacent mountain that once held Bobcat/Onset before it could open again in 2003. However, Crotched had been shut for a decade. Tenney Mountain is in better shape, however, having gotten use in most years and receiving some investment from the most recent owner, Michael Bouchard.
But lots more is being done and more needs to be done, Kelly said. “It’s an evolution.”
He pointed to a variety of upgrades made this year to buildings, equipment and services, including a new culinary team at the Backcountry Bar & Grill, as well as cutting bush and trees on ski trails that had become overgrown.
“We’re cutting back the trails to the original Tenney Mountain trails that you saw in the 1960s. … In all that time, different ownership groups, a lot of the trail maintenance was neglected. Some folks on social media mention that they don’t want Tenney to change, they want the same old Tenney – we’re making it the same old Tenney again,” Kelly said.
Kelly, like some past owners, has long-term plans for developing the area around the ski area with homes, condos, hotels and commercial space, partnering with Plymouth State University to shape the local economy. The next step is to expand into a four-season resort with such things as mountain bike trails; as part of that, the chairlifts have been rated by downhill capacity, for the first time.
“Skiing is the anchor amenity. We’ll get that up and running, functional, competitive, before we go to four-season resort,” he said. “My bet is that in 20 years, central New Hampshire is doing extremely well, and what we’re doing at Tenney Mountain with PSU will be a big part of that.”
David Brooks can be reached at dbrooks@cmonitor.com
