When considering resort expansion at Mount Sunapee, remember that Mount Sunapee State Park is a state park with a ski area. It is not a private ski resort or amusement park, and the park is not just for skiing.
From its creation as a nature reserve in 1911 to today, Mount Sunapee’s public lands have been protected as a park for the preservation of its special natural features and public use including quiet recreation, snowshoeing, hiking, picnicking, and exploration.
While skiing is one of many uses of the park, expansion of the ski area and development outside the resort’s current footprint on the mountain is unwise.
The expansion will negatively affect other park uses and resources. Okemo’s proposed expansion at Mount Sunapee will destroy the current hiking experience now enjoyed along the Summit Hiking Trial and diminish the state park’s natural heritage, including exemplary forest and natural communities.
The proposed expansion will open the way to cross-border private development in Goshen, which will not only violate the mission of our park but will diminish and fragment an ecologically important landscape—the Pillsbury-Sunapee Highlands. Additionally, the resort-driven real estate development that will inevitably follow expansion will forever change the rural character of the communities in the mountain’s shadow.
For more information and to receive FOMS pamphlet about the proposed expansion, contact Friends of Mount Sunapee.
Friends of Mount Sunapee is a grassroots organization that seeks to preserve and protect Mount Sunapee State Park for its essential public values and preserve the region’s quality of life, clean waters and open spaces.
Watercolor by Deb Flanders, Fells Cove Design