Proctor Ski Area Hosts Record Number of Events

The Proctor Ski Area’s lighting and ability to host events at night has allowed local high schools to utilize the venue for ski jumping meets (like this one hosted by Merrimack Valley High School on January 16) and Nordic meets. Caption and photo: Scott Allenby

Each winter, the Proctor Ski Area serves as a hub of activity in the ski world, hosting Nordic, ski jumping, and alpine races for both Proctor and the local ski community. With increased restrictions on ski resorts, Proctor’s independently-run ski hill is in high demand as both a training venue and a race venue. Colleges across the northeast have been utilizing the Proctor Ski Area as a training venue, and there are more than a dozen high level USSA/FIS races hosted at the hill this winter.

The Proctor Ski Area will host a record number of USSA/FIS alpine races this year due to COVID-19 and limitations on other venues around the state. Caption: Scott Allenby, photo: Lindsey Allenby

Special precautions have been taken at the Proctor Ski Area to isolate different groups of users, to prevent spectators at all races, and to ensure this special little ski area serves as many in the local community as possible during a winter that has seen so many recreational opportunities limited by the pandemic.

Whether it is the Andover Outing Club hosting biweekly sessions for local youth, Proctor hosting ski jumping meets for public high schools in the state, or elite college racers making the trek from Harvard University, Boston College, the University of New Hampshire, and other institutions of higher education around New England, the Proctor Ski Area is shining brightly this winter.

Head of School Mike Henriques recently wrote, “Sometimes we need the places that offer a little magic, and the ski area, with its jumps, its race trails, its Nordic trails offers a bit of that. Winter magic. Awesome nature.

“And sometimes a school like Proctor, with all of its opportunity and privileges wrapped and held so tightly in the bundle of the immediate campus, needs to find ways to give back. Just across the Blackwater River is that place that gives back. Of particular note: there are more families, more high school skiers in all disciplines, more collegiate skiers that come from outside of Proctor than come from inside. Hands down.

“There are the smallest of the smalls who learn to ski. There are Olympians who never attended Proctor but have been on our hill, off our jumps, around our Nordic trails. High school buses roll up every afternoon from Concord, Bow, and Kearsarge. College vans pull in from all over the northeast. We don’t run that area to keep it to ourselves; we run the Proctor Ski Area to give back. To share a little of the magic.

Nothing else that we do has such a broad reach outside of the immediate Proctor community.”