Local’s Summer – Labor Day Camping on Richardson Lake
September 22, 2026
Between Mooselookmeguntic and Rangeley Lakes, Bald Mountain is a quintessential natural resource in the Rangeley Region and GBA’s efforts are adding more.
A Brief History
It’s a crisp mid-September morning in Oquossoc, Maine. The maple leaves are starting to turn colors; you can see your breath again for the first time in months, and snow-deprived skiers are donning their beloved puffies for a day of glade cutting. We’re at the base of Bald Mountain, at the Rangeley Region Guides and Sportsmen’s Association clubhouse for check-in and a briefing. Bald Mountain has a history of skiing, once run as a rope tow in the 1960’s according to New England Ski History. The former base area is now a shooting range. Some infrastructure still exists, including concrete footings for the T bar, an old top shack, and a pretty narrow, but reasonably skiable line on the north-facing slope.
I’ve skied Bald Mountain a handful of times in the last three or four years. It’s still a thriving recreational asset, owned by the state of Maine, and hosts snowmobile and hiking trails, as well as hunting and birding opportunities. During a major snowfall, I’d park slightly uphill of the clubhouse, skin along the snowmobile trail for a while before banking uphill on an old ski trail that was occasionally used for powder riding on snowmobiles. I have a fond memory of my dad and his friend trying to take our grand-touring snowmobiles from the early 2000’s up that grade, while us kids watched safely from off the trail.
Occasionally, I’d see other ski tracks, and every once in a while a forum thread would disclose it as a place where people would ski, usually followed by another contributor saying something to the effect of, “shhh.” While it’s never been a true secret, locals cherished it as their own. And that’s what made the morning briefing so special. When GBA’s Glade Team Leader Katelin Nickerson surveyed the volunteers, at least eight or so were from the local community.
In partnership with the state, and with the help of 40 or so volunteers for the day, GBA set out to create a skiable glade after decades of neglect. My team, the Possum Pack (origin unknown), made up of Noah, Mo, Mark, Ray, and our fearless leader, Skip, set out to hike to the top and work our way down. The peak of Bald Mountain sits just above 2,400 feet in elevation and serves up about 900 feet of vertical rise from the valley floor. The skiable terrain orients mostly to the north side and lies below the summit. A forest service road, which doubles as the ski trail I’d been using to climb up and ski down for years, was our access to the glade cutting area.
The Glades
The two glades the GBA has permission to cut are the old T-bar line and a new West Glade. The T-bar line is aptly named and follows the old lift line from the base to the decaying top-shack. The pink flagging they used to denote the trail was spaced anywhere from 60-100 feet across the slope based on my estimates.
The work was efficient. Using loppers and pole saws, our ground crew followed another crew of sawyers, who used chainsaws to knock down trees 3-4 inches or smaller. They limbed and bucked the trees before moving on to the next section. This left a couple of tasks for us:
- Prune remaining limbs from standing trees.
- Break down limbs and tops.
- Lay down the debris as flat as we could, using it to strategically fill in holes in the forest floor, or put it in front of or behind large boulders. Anything that could potentially grab a ski, known as snow sharks, was to be mitigated.
I was floored at how quickly a mess of slash became neatly organized piles that created an even grade for skiing. It was “many hands make light work” personified. Though, as I write this, I’m on my second round of ibuprofen the following day. It was no joke. The mossy forest floor gave way to unexpected holes, no step was 100% trustworthy, and moving hand tools and tree limbs meant my body and my awareness were being utilized all day. Lots of folks, moving quickly, working in a relatively tight group meant team building became paramount.
Light chatter about where folks like to ski, where they’re from, and their motivations for joining the day percolated as we whacked tree limbs that would otherwise rip our Gore-Tex ski jackets come winter. People came from all the White Mountains, the seacoast of NH, southern Maine, and arguably, most importantly, the Rangeley Region to come out and improve this community asset.
While I regret that most of my skiing over the last few years has been aided by lift service, I couldn’t help but pay a bit more attention to the finer details in hopes that I’ll find renewed motivation to ski some of these choice lines in the upcoming ski season.
More information:
