cobble mountain

[dcr]

For some months now I have been sharing information about the Belknaps with a Gilford lady who has been researching the history of skiing in the Gilford area as she hopes to write a book about the topic - she has uncovered a lot of very interesting data about this subject that demonstrates the extraordinary interest in skiing by Lakes Region residents during the first part of the 20th century.

I asked her if she could shed some light on the question about a ski slope on Cobble Mt, and she provided the following information:

Yes, there was indeed a ski area on Cobble Mountain, called the Cobble Mt Rope Tow. It was the first built in the Guntock, Mt Rowe, Cobble Mt area. They clear-cut the mountain and ran a rope tow up it with the hopes of having a toboggan run. It faced north, had the wrong exposure and got iced up very quickly when the sun hit it, so they abandoned it after about a year. That was the late 1930's.

When the Gunstock Nordic Association recently began building their new clubhouse (across the road from the Cross Country ski shack on Gunstock's entrance road), Gunstock had them move it since the foundation to the bottom building of the Cobble Mt rope tow turned out to be where the new building was supposed to go.

Perhaps this will provide a fairly complete answer to kleine t's query.

[Boardwalk Bluesboy]

On the NELSAP (New England Lost Ski Areas Project) website there is a very interesting webpage about the old Gunstock Ski Hoist here:http://www.nelsap.org/nh/hoist.html. If you scroll down the page to the map, you can see the Cobble Mountain rope tow in the upper left corner of the map.