We're in Littleton, New Hampshire, where in the early 1980s a community treasure disappeared.

You'll meet some folks who decided that what was lost could be found.

They got together to reclaim an important part of their town.

The Mount Eustace Ski Hill has a long history with the town of Littleton, New Hampshire, as far back as 1939.

And it was a place where people go to ski or just get together with their friends.

Well that sort of came to a halt in the early 1980s and the hill after that was quiet for many years.

But luckily that wasn't the end of the story.

It's been revived and I'm here tonight with the president of the mountain, Eustace Ski Hill.

Yes.

Caitlyn Kauffman.

That's me.

How did you, you miss the meetings?

I like the president.

I did.

But I think you're doing a good job.

I've got to play you.

Yeah.

It's amazing to have people out here.

It's our first night open with the lights on and we're just there's a lot of people pulling in right now.

And yeah, it's a beautiful night to have the community come out and ski.

Nice and warm and warm.

I know this feels like spring compared to the last couple of weeks.

Guess so.

It's great.

We're going to shoot shootaround here a little bit.

Take a look.

Sounds good.

I'll talk to you a little bit later.

In those memories It sounds good.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

It's Wednesday night under the lights.

We're on a hill overlooking a town that's settling in after a workday just up from the parking lot.

Volunteers take $5 donations.

People are here for an evening of skiing.

This is our first time here.

The kids are here with the ski club with Bethlehem Rec, and they're looking for Dave and Diane to get out here.

So it doesn't mean they have excessive well here.

Oh, it's awesome.

It's such it's such a great hill.

It's an easy spot, and it's nice to be able to bring the kids out on an old school rodeo and have them go down Mount Eustace Ski Hill is in Littleton, New Hampshire, a town of about 6000 people that sits on the northern edge of the White Mountains.

Continue along Interstate 93 for several miles more.

And you'll be in Vermont skiing returns to Littleton.

A small group of volunteers made it happen Is it difficult to keep it going all right at all?

It's been challenging, especially when we have winters like this year where we don't have snow.

We do not have snowmaking here.

So we rely just on Mother Nature, you know?

So that's been one of our biggest challenges, is being able to kind of you know, look at the forecast.

And can we open do we have enough snow kind of flying by the seat of our pants flip through the archives and you'll find pictures like this Mount Eustace has a long history as a place to gather, ski and get to know neighbors.

Now, when you were a little kid.

Yes.

You ski this mountain.

We did.

Was it like this?

Was it open like it was open like this?

Yeah.

Everything was that way, though.

You know, this is now faced on this side.

We had it all over there.

Littleton is Jean McKinney's hometown.

She and her husband serve up breakfast at the coffee pot restaurant, as they have every morning.

For the past 42 years, long before owning the restaurant.

Jean and her eight siblings were regulars on the Hill You've been here a few years.

A few years.

I'm part of Littleton.

Is that right?

Well, it's third generation Littleton.

And Lee's big family.

My family was nine children, and they all scared.

We all scared.

And my mother and father.

Is that right?

Yes.

Oh, and you're close enough.

You could walk up here.

We could walk here.

We lived on Grove Street, which is not even a mile away.

We'd come up through the backyards, and we'd more often than not wear our skis, you know, in walk on the snow banks when we could end in the road, when we could.

And it kept us warm Sure.

So when we get here, we'd be ready to go It was an almost farm, you know, and there was a fellow neighbor.

Lewis was his last name, and he bought it from a farmer.

And I'm not sure he bought a ski area, but I think he just realized, hey, we could put a rope to show up here.

And, you know, certainly back in those days, just sort of did anything to get a few dollars in, you know, go to.

Eaton grew up in town.

He says the first person who operated the ski hill stuck with it until competition put him out of business.

And then it went to somebody by name with George Pepperell back in like 39 or 40.

And he he ran at that as a ski area for a while.

And then after that, the town got involved and realized it was sort of a, you know, a community project.

That was this a pretty big deal for the whole town?

The little.

Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

We had lights.

So we did night skiing and we had lessons during the week.

There were like five or six different teachers with 15 kids.

It was it was really a going concern It was called the Littleton Outing Club.

We participated in the Littleton Outing Club lessons at night, and we had a ball and then we would come and practice the pie shape and then into the soil and races Really?

Yes, it was exciting.

We had slowly a giant slalom.

We had kids everywhere a hot chocolate racing on a hill this size might not seem like a big deal, but it was Gordy learned to ski here a rope too, and all.

He eventually went on to ski for the United States in the 1960 Olympic Games.

What he remembers about Mt.

Eustace doesn't necessarily have to do with his accomplishments being absorbed outside of just skiing, but the camaraderie we'd get from from just you know they got little trails up there cold that hardscrabble and you know, that kind of thing where it's it's eggbeater as you get they call it.

Yes.

You know, it's really steep and they get lonely and crazy and so forth.

It but kids at their own level will find their own level, you know what I mean?

And it's, it's I'm a big fan of that kind of independence and learn to love it or go play basketball.

It's something else I'd like to do, but being outside winter to me is always special.

They go, they go back, win every weekend.

Every school kid in the in the school is here now.

This is our social is social.

Event.

You know, there wasn't any Internet or any Facebook or anything.

So this is where we came and played and hung out, got looking When did you come here?

Oh, let's see.

So probably late sixties, early seventies.

Well, it was the only way I was going to ski.

I mean, we didn't, we couldn't, we couldn't get to the big mountains.

You can't a mountain was in Minnesota where the two that ran.

But if we didn't have this here, I probably would have never learned to ski you know.

And then, you know, later on, Agassi in Bethlehem starts on numerous different towns, started doing it.

So but really, it was it was really fun, tough time changes things.

It did it mount useless.

People began to travel away from Littleton to larger ski hills.

Where snowmaking provided earlier and longer ski seasons.

Some loyalists remained at Mt.

Eustis, but the hills struggled and it lasted for a while that way.

But then you had a two or three bad snow winters, and it's it just didn't make sense economically.

The areas were getting bigger, the competition and insurance and all these other issues.

And our small ski areas went away because of the competition.

We could not the town, I guess it was in the towns here and could not get people to come up and run it that was the end of a long tradition in Littleton in 1980.

Skiing ended on Mt.

Eustis 3 hours emotionally at the end of tissue.

When I close it, it was kind of a bummer because it was it was, it was obvious because no one was using anymore, you know, it was just, it just became, you know, and I'm thinking in this kind of faded away, you know, you know how that goes but what fades away can reappear how you got involved at Mt.

Eustis on the board back in October of 2021.

So recently.

Originally, yeah.

Yeah.

And I spent the last ten years teaching snowboarding on the weekends.

I grew up skiing and it was a way to give back to a sport that I love that has affected my life and also give back to the community John Kelly is a board member of the nonprofit that runs the Ski Hill.

It continues what Dave Harkless, a local business owner, began years earlier with other local volunteers.

Reopen Mount Eustis and make it work Dave Harkless from the Little Tim Bike Shop decided that they should be an ongoing venture.

It's revival around, you know, like 20, 16, 20, 17, I think the sort of the base for all of that was accessibility to the sport here.

When you are you know, we're in the heart of the White Mountains 20 minutes from five different resorts and it's but it's expensive, right?

So you don't you live here but you might not have access to to what what is here I think it was 78 years ago when a group of community members here in Littleton decided that they wanted to bring the Hill back.

And so a group of community members came together and formed a board, formed a nonprofit and got the rope donated and got it used to back up and running the people who keep skiers skiing are volunteers.

This is the engine room is in here.

This is the upper left.

It's the guts of the whole operation.

And here there's an old diesel engine like a 18 wheeler motor in here that powers the pulleys that pulls the rope there's a bunch of electrical equipment hooked up to that battery, but it's basically a big motor and a couple of big police $5 donations, along with gifts from the community, help keep skiers moving up and down the hill.

We're still in May break even.

We might, yeah.

You know, this opening weekend on Saturday and Sunday we had almost 40 people here and it was great to see, you know one of our biggest thing is accessible to young families.

There was a lot of little kids here.

There's a lot of families bringing these little ones learning how to ski and and so that's like one of our biggest things is like start your kids here.

You guys go for it.

You know, give them the foundations of skiing.

And riding.

And then, you know, we're surrounded by other bigger resorts.

But this is where families can start and learn to ski again.

Oh.

Oh, it's a pretty great local resource.

You get a lot of a lot of people out here skiing for a real cheap is a good place to get a bunch of kids out.

And just how about we don't know she's a little small, so I got to kind of carry her between my legs.

But my son, he holds on as tight as he can, gets as high up the hill as he can, and he has a great time right I'm from Lincoln, New Hampshire.

I'm director actor here in Bethlehem, and I started out this program this year for local skiers to join the local hill.

I've been skiing since I was two and you guys are with her?

We are, yes.

Our son is part of the program here.

That's why that's him, right?

That that's him for me.

I was such a skier.

So like basketball doesn't mean a ton to me.

But to be able to ski during the week with the kids is great.

It's great.

You know, especially with our six year old.

Sometimes you don't want to, you know, spend all day skiing and packing.

And here you can come in, spend an hour, you know, go up, go up there upto a few times, make a few good runs, then carry on with your day.

It's only 5 minutes away.

But yeah, it's great that they brought it back to those for the new generation.

That takes me back game.

One thing that grabs my attention is the rope told me there was a time they were the norm.

Now skiers need an introduction and a quick lesson on how to use them.

I grew up in Connecticut.

We had a small amount in there, but I grew up skiing at Oak Mountain in southern Vermont.

So no, I didn't.

I didn't grow up with a rope tow or anything like this.

So it's so unique to see these little kids and our rope.

Douglas, that's where you go grab one right now.

And see these little kids just grab on and like, hang on for dear life and go up the rope absolutely fearless.

Yeah.

And some of the like, the adults can't even hang on all the way up to the top, but these little kids just do lap after lap after lap with this big smile on their face and they hang on right until 4:00.

It's amazing to see.

I love it.

That's a lot of our upper body strength.

It takes a lot of energy out of you.

Your arms will definitely be sore on the next day, after the first time each year.

The folks who got the lights back on it used.

This would love it.

If it returns as a community beacon they know what it once was and seemed determined to write a new chapter for Littleton Ski Hill.

And it's right here.

And you know it's great when you can see the lights from driving through on 93, look off to the left and see the hill lit up and it's just great we're we wanted to provide that that sense of community where families and parents feel comfortable dropping off their kids to come skiing for the night and hang out by the fire and listen to music and we want to we're building slowly building up to having that community base again.

And it's been amazing to see.

It's going to take a lot of planning and a lot of support from our community members.

But we think that with time and all come together, maybe if Sarah Mogul sounds optimistic, it's her job she writes grant applications, looks for corporate support, and works to attract enough community partnerships to keep the place running.

It's the love of skiing, right?

It's the love of kind of the identity of Littleton.

And I think that the more that we promote this hill in, the more that we focus on that identity and Littleton, it could be a really great, great thing in addition to the amazing things that are already happening in this town.

So it's just a great place to be and hang out and a great group of people I think one thing is super important that people don't realize is that a personal connection to me is sort of the history of skiing in the area.

We have the ski museums down the street at the base of Cannon Mountain, but early on, you know, World War two area of the 10th Mountain Division, and a lot of people that went out to Colorado, Camp Hail and join the 10th Mountain Division came from this area and there's a town identify it all with the ski area.

And they think of it as our ski area or the ski area.

It's slowly getting to that point.

The community in the past year has really stepped up to support us.

Last winter during the pandemic, we had one of our biggest seasons around.

You know, we had a lot of skiers here on one particular Wednesday night and for closing day.

And the community started to pull together for us.

And we want to keep that momentum going.

Those are old timers.

That momentum reignites old memories for Jean.

It's been a while since she skate here or anywhere else.

Seeing the hill alive again is enough to make her happy.

And happy to see this open again in her part of coming up this cave.

But they have done it you know, it's probably time notes that I think well, for me, before I bring my boots, you know, there's no better.

You know, you never outgrow them.

So when I think came back to life when you were here, when it came back to me, I was here.

But I came up during the summer and I walked up during the winter, but I didn't come up with skates.

I just wanted to see what they had done.

I wanted to see where the rope was.

I wanted to see how everything was running and people were skiing.

It was exciting to see the history of Mount Used.

Eustace Ski Hill lives on through stories and all photographs its future depends on a strong connection with its community.

I remember as a board member of the A couple of years ago, we would struggle to get people to come here.

You know, there was one night that we were like, Well, should we even open on a Friday if we only had one or two skiers here and it was hard because like our art board is volunteer run.

And so, you know, if no one comes, it was kind of like, all right, well, should we even open sometimes we would be open on a Saturday or Sunday and have two, two to five skiers here.

And that was really hard.

Labor was like, how do we gain the momentum like, you know, what do we do?

So we we start doing some more marketing.

We started doing some more fundraising.

And honestly, I think it took a fresh group of people that were a little bit younger to come in and kind of look at the Hill differently.

And as I was talking about before, with the pandemic last winter, it was February vacation.

I'll never forget it.

It was a night like tonight.

40 degrees.

It was a February vacation.

So there was a lot of people off we had we were open for 19 and we had, I believe, over 120 people here you know, it was nothing like that.

Yeah.

And we're, we're really excited about this year and going forward and seeing what we can do right now.

You know, it's important to just get, get the hill open and running and you know, and get back out there I think we're finally gaining the momentum that we need and we're still constantly striving to have that community feel and and it's really nice to see the impact that social media has and just having a simple website out there and then word of mouth because look at these kids, man, is this they grow for maybe doing tonight if they weren't out here in fresh air having fun skiing and snowboarding.

It's it's a great alternative for there's not there's not a great deal of other activities to do at night around here for kids oh you haven't done it before.

Okay.

So I'm going to hold it up for you Great.

Describing the golf for a lot of jackets and gloves here Well, we've had a beautiful evening here at Mt.

Justice, but unfortunately, it's drawing to a close for me.

So I've come to that part of the program.

I like Last Time to say goodbye.

And so I shall I hope to see you again on windows to the well.

And thank you for a lovely evening.

Thank you.

And in the meantime, come out and ski.

You're talking to people.

Yes.

Oh, I may not have everybody else come out of the ski office.

I never got to get any better.

Now I support for the production of Windows to the Wild is provided by the Alice J.

Ring Charitable Trust, the Fuller Foundation the Gilbert Verney Foundation, Bailey Charitable Foundation, the Macintosh Foundation, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

Oh, it's okay.

So we heard you got your ears back.

What's the matter?

Oh, that's that's great.

If you like to.

We think book for me to hear that's a way