If your here to ski this is the best mountain in the east. If your here to ski part time and party the night away this is not your place. This is no singles club if you go mid week so don't expect to find any ski bunnies to hang out with. You will find very friendly locals that love to share stories about skiing Sugarloaf over the years.

The steeps at this mountain are awsome and they hold the snow long into the spring. The chairs are slow other then the Superquad and Whiffletree when open. They don't run it during the week. This is the best mountain in the east for spring skiing. Often when it rains at other resorts it snows here. Often I hear intermediate skiers complain about the difficulty of some of the blue square trails. The verticle drop of this mountain is unmatched in the east and if your into crusing you can go top to bottom wihtout any long crossover trails that burn you out.

Sugarloaf is definitely the best area I've ever skied at, with its insanely steep snowfields and difficult glades, especially Cant Dog. Along with the frontside, the backside snowfields have headwalls so steep, you can extend your uphill arm, and touch where you've already been! But if you don't like steeps, head over to whiffletree for some nice cruisers. The only downfall to Sugarloaf is its hefty lift ticket prices and some rather pokey lifts, but overall it is, in my opinion, one of the World's best resorts.

SkiTown Review

Ski resort reviews can be helpful only if you know the skill level and skiing perspective of the person authoring the review. My perspective is focused on the actual skiing experience (terrain, crowd, and snow factors), and not so much on the ancillary aspects surrounding skiing. I am a middle-age advanced skier with no interest in jumping off cornices or cliffs. I will often at high speeds hit a small lip in the terrain and get a little air, but thats about the extent of it. I venture in and out of moderate mogul fields in an attempt to become a better all-around skier, but I tend not to spend a majority of my ski day dealing with the bumps. If I had to describe the type of skier with which I most closely identify, it would be a high speed cruiser who enjoys medium to giant slalom turns. Three other ski buddies and I just finished a one week skiing trip in the wilds of northwest Maine. The locals were saying that the 2007-2008 ski season brought the most snow seen in 10 to 15 years. We skied Sugarloaf USA (The Loaf) and Saddleback mountains and were the timely benefactors of this humongous snowfall. All trails on both mountains were completely covered and open. With that said, here are my impressions of The Loaf:

Terrain: Rated 5.0:
There is no argument from me that the western ski resorts usually run the gamut with respect to the variety of offered terrain. And rightfully so they deserve the highest terrain rating. But the Snowfields available at The Loaf (the only above tree-line skiing in the east) puts this mountain into western company. The Loaf has several areas of glades, but most of them are for experts and have extremely tight trees. Believe it or not, I enjoyed many of the tight twisting classic New England trails that The Loaf had to offer. With the conditions as good as they were, whenever you set your edges you could make true tight and precise turns. There are also many great cruising trails such as Hayburner, which begins as a steep black diamond trail, and then mellows out to become a fantastic cruiser. Terrain-wise, The Loaf has all the goods.

Service: Rated 4.0:
The Loaf made me realize that there are two types of good service: human customer service and structural customer service. Everyone is familiar with good human customer service, and The Loaf has it. The first day we skied The Loaf, we arrived at approximately 11:00 am. We went to purchase our lift tickets, when the ticket agent recommended that although half day skiing starts at 12 noon (some areas start there half days as late as 1:00 pm), ticket sales begin at 11:45 am. She suggested that by the time we get our boots on and get ready to ski, we could purchase a half day ticket and save some money. We took her advice and saved $18 per man. The retail sales staff were all quite courteous and competent. During the interim between arriving and purchasing our tickets, one of my buddies had his skis tuned, and received an excellent waxing and edge sharpening job by the ski shop staff. This was done in about a half hour. An example of good structural customer service was the provision of a huge room in the base lodge called the King Pine Room. The room is separated from the main dining facilities, and there you have many circular tables with chairs and cubbies where you can store your bags and excess gear without being trampled or having food spilled all over you. In addition, there is a large parking area maybe 50 to 30 yards from the base lodge where you are allowed to park for one hour. This certainly facilitates the loading and unloading of all that bulky but necessary gear. At lunchtime I had a microscopic cup of chili. The taste was somewhat bland and for some reason they used sprinklings of navy beans. Dont they know that successful chili means using black beans or red kidney beans?

Crowds: Rating 4.0:
We were skiing during a mid-week in March, but The Loaf is in the middle of nowhere and is also quite a hardship travel-wise. But the advantage is that there are no crowds, no lift lines, and there is a lot of space in the eating areas as well as the King Pine Room.

Activities: Rating 1.0:
The Loaf resides in boondocks, as well as the land of lakes and of nice, but one-horse towns (Rangeley, Stratton, and Kingsfield). The largest town in the vicinity is Farmington, Maine which is 43 miles away with a population of approximately 7,400. Listen, we are not talking megalopolis here. To survive this region during the winter, you have to be a skier, boarder, snowmobiler, or ice fisherman; and that is it!!!

Value: Rating 2.0:
The Loaf is a heavy wallet hitter concerning lift tickets, resort dining, and on mountain lodging. You may find reasonable lodging in the surrounding areas, but they will not be of the 5 star nature. And what makes it even worse, The Loaf refuses to allow area lodging facilities to participate in issuing ski-and-stay packages or discounted lift tickets to their patrons (Bunch of tightwad Scrooges!!).

In summary: I enjoyed my skiing experience immensely at the Loaf. When the conditions are good, you couldnt ask for a better ski experience east of the Rockies. Since my focus is on the actual skiing experience, between The Loaf and Saddleback, I could not decide which one I enjoyed the most.

Sugarloaf is where I took my first ski lessons, and they have lots of nice bunny slopes and beginner terrain. I believe they have much more challenging terrain, too, but as I beginner I couldn't say. The staff here are really nice... the chair lift operators even do a little coaching, i.e. "Hey, that was better than last time!" My ski instructors here were really good, too. The distance (and therefore required expense of lodging) is the only reason I haven't returned, but I really hope to go back and explore more of the mountain soon.

One drawback, though, is that there is no night-skiing and everything except the bars and restaurants pretty much shuts down after 4pm. Assuming it doesn't take 6 hours to eat dinner, there's not much to do before bedtime. When I booked, I was told tubing would be available, but then when I arrived it was not.