In New Hampshire, Can Bretton Woods Get Gnarly?

Skiers and snowboarders went knowing what to expect. And Bretton Woods, New Hampshire’s largest ski area and a historic vacation destination high in the White Mountains, has always delivered. No surprises.

Be careful what you wish for.

Skiers and snowboarders sometimes want a little unpredictability, and Bretton Woods — part of the only true Alpine range in the Eastern United States — is nestled among some of the thorniest ski mountains in America. Wildcat Mountain, just around the bend, is big, tough and often icy. Nearby Cannon Mountain hosted the first North American World Cup ski races in 1967, a series discontinued years later, some say, because Cannon was so difficult that the European elite preferred to stay away.

So, as extreme skiing and rogue backcountry experiences have become more popular in the last 15 years, many snow sports enthusiasts who wanted to be surprised, even scared, drove past Bretton Woods on the way to New Hampshire’s gnarlier options. Bretton Woods remained unmoved. It catered to its market: families and those who wanted a more pampered ski trip. In time, some younger voices called Bretton Woods “Medicare Mountain.”

As a New England native, I first skied Bretton Woods as a college student. After some desultory runs that failed to stir my youthful quest for danger, I soon left for Cannon and its frightfully steep slopes. Ten years later, on a return visit to Bretton Woods, I appreciated newly open terrain that zigzagged around the occasional rock outcropping, yet still found the place a bit tame. In the last few years, however, I started to hear that Bretton Woods, now linked to the famed and adjacent Mount Washington Hotel, was carefully recasting itself.

A college roommate now living in New Hampshire told me it had become his favorite winter destination.

“I’m telling you,” my friend said. “New terrain on the mountain, renovated hotel, dog sledding, zip lines, a spa, miles of Nordic skiing, even a nightclub.”

At Bretton Woods? Now this I had to see.

IF you don’t ski or snowboard and yet have heard of Bretton Woods, you probably paid attention in your high school history or economics class. In the summer of 1944, with most of the world secure in the belief that the Allies would win World War II, delegates from 44 nations convened at the mountain’s Mount Washington Hotel to try to solve a world economically wrecked by the fighting. About 1,000 people arrived at a hotel built in 1902 in the tradition of the grand late-19th-century hotels of northern New England.

The Mount Washington Hotel was, and may still be, the largest wooden structure in New England, a palace built for the rich of New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Constructed on 10,000 acres by the New York rail and coal magnate Joseph Stickney, the hotel’s Spanish Renaissance Revival exterior and French Renaissance-style interior were created by 250 Italian craftsmen lured from Boston. The Great Hall lobby has 23-foot ceilings and Tiffany stained-glass windows that also adorn the adjoining dining and meeting rooms. There is a wraparound veranda that extends for a quarter mile.

The hotel had all kinds of innovations and idiosyncrasies: Turkish baths, a squash court, boot and gun rooms, a bowling alley and billiard parlor. Thomas Edison installed the electricity and a stock ticker wired directly to Wall Street. The Italian workers, meanwhile, imparted their own old-world superstitions. The number of steps to the floors, for example, were varied — 33 to the second floor from the main registration area but only 31 steps in the south tower staircase. Why? To confuse ghosts.

The economic conference — delegates stayed for three weeks — and the international publicity it generated revived the hotel, which had been battered by the Depression. But while the meetings, which established the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and produced what is still known as the Bretton Woods agreement, revived the world economy, the post-World War II renewal for New Hampshire’s White Mountain resorts was short-lived. Soon the Mount Washington was the last of the grand hotels standing. Never open during the winter season, it endured with the help of hiking trips, summer pro tennis tournaments and waves of golfers arriving for its championship-level golf course designed by the noted golf architect Donald Ross. When the Bretton Woods ski area opened in 1973, the hundreds of thousands of new visitors to the area stayed in cozy condominiums and smaller nearby inns. By 1991, the hotel, worn and threadbare, was put up for auction.

Local businessmen bought the hotel and, six years later, took over the ski area, too. Dozens of trails and lifts were added. The Nordic trail network was enlarged, and in 1999 a winterized hotel opened for the ski season and instantly became one of the largest and most majestic ski lodges in the country.

The mountain continued to develop its reputation for having the best intermediate slopes in the East, earning a loyal following that loved to cruise the miles of genteel, groomed corduroy.