PORTLAND, Maine—Sugarloaf ski resort's plan to more than double the amount of its skiable terrain will make it the biggest ski area east of the Rocky Mountains and knock Vermont's Killington Resort out of the No. 1 spot, Sugarloaf officials said Wednesday.
Crews will begin clearing trees next week on Burnt Mountain, adjacent to Sugarloaf Mountain, to add 270 acres of terrain for the coming season and 655 acres in the next three years. When the work is done, the Carrabassett Valley resort will have a total of 1,310 acres of skiable terrain; Killington says it has 752 skiable acres.
Being the biggest ski mountain in the East will be a feather in the cap, said Sugarloaf General Manager John Diller.
"The bragging rights are there not just for Sugarloaf, but really for Maine for having the biggest resort in the East," he said.
Not so quick, said Killington spokesman Tom Horrocks. There's good reason Killington is known as the "Beast of the East," he said -- it has the most skier visits, most lifts, most trails, most miles of trails of any resort in the region and, for now, most skiable acreage.
"Making the claim they are going to be the biggest is just a claim right now," Horrocks said. "Killington Resort is still the biggest resort in the Northeast."
Ski resorts often claim friendly bragging rights when they're the first resort in a region to open for the season or the last to close, or for having the steepest vertical drop, the most trails or the most skiing terrain.
By selectively cutting down trees and creating hundreds of acres of glade skiing -- or downhill skiing through open spaces in wooded areas -- Sugarloaf says it will be the region's biggest. The project does not include adding new trails, lifts or snowmaking capacity.
But Sugarloaf will fall far short of being anywhere near the biggest ski area in the U.S. Vail ski resort in Colorado calls itself the biggest ski resort in North America, with 5,289 acres of terrain, though Big Sky Resort in Montana says it is the biggest ski resort with 5,512 acres.
Big Sky and Sugarloaf are both owned by Michigan-based Boyne Resorts, which owns and operates nine ski resorts in Maine, New Hampshire, Michigan, Montana, Utah, Washington and British Columbia.
Boyne Resorts' Stephen Kircher said it's important for a ski area to be at the top of a list to distinguish itself.
"It's like who has the fastest car in the neighborhood," he said.
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