Along with the rest of New England, New Hampshire experienced a historic 2025-2026 skiing season. Keene State students enjoyed the pleasant season at a number of mountains around the state and region.
New Hampshire experienced a greater-than-usual snowfall total, especially after a late January winter storm hammered the state with 18 to 20 inches of powder. Early in the season, the East Coast outpaced the West in snowfall in an unusual reversal of the usual pecking order. Jay Peak in Northern Vermont reported 136 inches of snow by Dec. 5, compared to 14 inches of snow in Park City, Utah and 31 inches in Vail, Colorado. The East Coast also saw plunging temperatures that kept many skiers off the mountain. New Hampshire experienced its coldest winter in twenty years.
Junior Grace Bonyman, the ski and snowboard coordinator for the Keene State Outing Club, said she felt like she had a good season. “I skied quite a bit. We got some nice, fresh powder. I went to Granite Gorge, Okemo, […] and we did our Waterville Valley trip.”
The Outing Club annually heads to Waterville Valley Resort to volunteer for the Special Olympic Winter Games. “It’s one of my favorite trips that we do,” Bonyman said. “We don’t get to do a lot of skiing [ourselves], it’s a lot of helping out different athletes. It was really cool to be in that position as somebody who’s ski raced before. At the end when they’d [finished their race] some of [the racers] recognized us from years past, and they’d show us their gold and silver medals and how proud of themselves they were.”
Junior Thomas Czwakiel enjoyed his season of New Hampshire skiing. Czwakiel, a Vermont native skier, skied at Granite Gorge Mountain Park in Roxbury and Pat’s Peak in Henniker, N.H. “The first place I went [was Granite Gorge] to warm up,” Czwakiel said. “It’s a smaller mountain, but the snow was really, really nice. Sometimes when [trails] are really well run over and the snow isn’t great, there’s a lot of ice underneath, but there was almost none of that [at Granite Gorge].”
Czwakiel spent the second leg of his season at Pat’s Peak. “It was amazing. I went night skiing for the first time, which is something I’ve never done before. I got a night ticket, so [I was skiing] from noon to [10 p.m].”
Senior Cole Archambault said the season has been great. “There’s been a lot of snow, more than normal, and because of the cold, most of the snow was powder instead of ice. [Especially] Mount Stowe, it was great in late November.”
Archambault said he spent a week in Colorado earlier this year, comparing it favorably to the East. “I went out to Copper Mountain for six days [in February], and it was the best snowboarding I’ve had in my life. They got two feet of snow [when I landed]. The backcountry was great, the bowls were great.”
Archambault also described typical East Coast conditions compared to this past season and a typical season out west. “Generally, it’s all ice; it’s super hard, we’re really used to leaning forward into my boots. Out West, [I didn’t] really have to do that at all.”
The ski season has begun to wind down in New Hampshire. Granite Gorge stopped spinning its lifts on Sunday, March 22. Crotched Mountain and Pat’s Peak expect to close the weekend after, shutting down on Sunday, March 29. Sunapee, in Newbury, plans to close on Sunday, April 6.
Frank LeBlanc can be contacted at
