FROM THE CAMDEN TOWN OFFICE

(Nov. 26) At the Camden Select Board meeting on Nov. 19, Town Manager Audra Caler reported that the town had notified Penobscot Bay YMCA the previous day that it would like them to find a new home base for their nine-week summer camp/childcare program.

“We came to this decision after a lot of thought, and with consideration of the long-range plan for the Snow Bowl as a four-season recreation area,” said Caler in her report.

The Snow Bowl can still be a place for the YMCA to plan to bring this summer’s children to swim at Hosmer Pond, hike the Kuller Trail and play games on the ballfield. And as Camden begins talking about the Snow Bowl four season recreation area master plan, and what a new lodge will provide to the community, it makes sense that opportunities for summer camp would be part of the long-range discussion. Right now, this change is temporary and born of necessity to make good on a promise to do long-overdue work on the lodge and the adjacent modular that should have been gone 15 years ago.

A major factor for this decision is the significant amount of maintenance that will need to be done on the lodge and facilities at the base of the mountain in spring and summer of 2025, which includes:

• The window wall in the lodge needs to completely be redone. It was discovered this summer, while replacing the deck, that the frame has severe water damage, and more recently one of the windows was broken. The window cannot be replaced without jeopardizing the entire wall. There is currently an architect working on plans and estimates for this work. Temporary repairs were performed, but this section of the lodge needs major repairs and will impact both the deck and inside the lodge, as well as the grounds around the deck.

• The Snow Bowl is anticipating that after the end of this winter season, the second modular trailer that has long been home to the ski area’s rental gear area, ticketing counter, and ski school desk will be unusable, and need to finally be demolished and removed.

• This past summer the Snow Bowl acquired a tubing hill rope tow from Lost Valley that will be installed next summer to further expand winter activities on the mountain.

• Water bars need to be repaired to improve rain and snow-melt runoff and drainage that collects around the base of the lodge, often delaying use of the grounds around the deck until early summer. This runoff also impacts winter operations and contributed to the early end of the 2023-2024 ski season on March 3.

While some of this work can be scheduled and performed around summer camp, it will not be possible for all this construction to be scheduled in a manner that avoids conflict with the program that runs weekdays, from mid-June through mid-August, 7:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

Overwhelmingly, we have heard that the community wants the Snow Bowl and the Ragged Mountain Recreation Area to provide accessible outdoor recreation. And to support the development and maintenance of this space and those activities, we need a new lodge, which is the major unfinished component of the 2014 redevelopment. But until we get that new lodge, we need to maintain the old lodge and replace the remaining “temporary” 30+-year-old modular trailer, while also making improvements to the grounds for summer and winter activities.

Today, this is an opportunity for a school district, a charitable organization or a private individual to lean in and offer a solution for the summer of 2025. Camden children accounted for around 30%, or less, of the 2024 nine-week camp program, so the solution is not limited to Camden. YMCA membership (and camp families) hail mostly from the five towns that serve the local school district – Appleton, Hope, Lincolnville, Rockport - and so too can the solution to the YMCA’s need.