CAMDEN — The first of a two-day soft opening at the Camden Snow Bowl, today, Dec. 14, proved a smooth entry to the winter ski season. Even drivers arriving with all their gear quickly got the hang of a new parking/traffic route, engineered to pack vehicles more efficiently into the lot over the course of a busy winter.

"The 2025-2026 Season has begun!" said Snow Bowl Assistant General Manager Grace McMullan, halfway through Saturday afternoon, as the sun filtered through snow clouds that hovered over Ragged Mountain. "We had a great turn-out for our soft opening. The double chair and magic carpet were spinning and there was great snow on Foxy, Coaster, and Slipway. The Ski School instructors were on snow, training for the season. The Terrain Park staff was hard at work shaping features for the Wave Pool Park. Snow-makers were up the mountain making snow so we can get the rest of the mountain open for holiday vacation."

Outside, skiers were filling the double chairlift and making their first turns of the season on Foxy, one of the mountain's most favored trails.

With extreme cold temperatures thudding into the region just a few days after Thanksgiving, followed by clipper systems heading east from New York State, the Snow Bowl has already recorded more than several inches of natural snow. Meanwhile, the skilled and enthusiastic operations staff have been on the mountain already for a few weeks, setting snow guns into place, and then firing them up as overnight temperatures dipped to 0 degrees Farenheit. 

Since last spring, the Snow Bowl has undergone a variety improvements and upgrades, including the placement of a new ticket/rental equipment building and the implementation of a new traffic pattern, introduced to the public Saturday morning, without commotion.

"New for this season, the Camden Snow Bowl parking lot will be one way, and we will ask everyone to park nose-in on a diagonal," said the Snow Bowl just prior to opening day. "This will increase parking lot safety while maximizing our parking spaces."

Camden Snow Bowl Manager and Parks and Recreation Dept. Director Jeff Nathan introduced the revamped parking plan earlier in the month at the Dec. 7 annual meeting of amountain staff — administration, ski school, operations and maintenance, volunteer ambassadors, and ski patrol — who gathered in the lodge to get winter recreation at the Snow Bowl under way.

That meeting had followed the mid-November annual Ragged Mountain Ski Club Ski Swap at the lodge, where enthusiasm for the winter season was mounting, evidenced by record-breaking sales as community members turned over their gently-used gear with each other, be they skiers, skaters, snow boarders, mountain bikers, hikers and walkers, all ready to enjoy winter in Maine.

The list of Summer/Fall facility accomplishments at the Snow Bowl is extensive:

• The last moldy modular trailer (which was once a temporary classroom building at the old Rockport Elementary School before being hauled to the Snow Bowl and used as a ticket and rental sales office) was demolished and removed from the grounds, not only ridding the Snow of a useless property, but re-opening a view to Hosmer Pond from the deck of the lodge.

• A surface lift on the tubing hill was installed, and crews built a new footbridge over wetlands to enable better access for the public to walk from the parking lot to the bottom of the tubing hill.

• The Snow Bowl purchased an Amish-constructed stick-built building to house ticket sales and rental equipment. The new building appeared one warm autumn day and was settled into place on a concrete slab next to another fairly new building that houses Side Country Sports and the Ski Club's race headquarters.

"The new ticketing/rental building would not have been possible without the generosity of the Ragged Mountain Recreation Area Foundation, which donated $100,000 toward the construction of the new building," wrote Nathan, in a Nov. 7 progress report on Snow Bowl developments.

In that update, Nathan thanked area contractors: "Cold Ridge Concrete and Ferraiolo Construction for donating the concrete materials and construction. Ford Enterprises provided the site work at a deeply discounted rate. Thank you, Dan Ford, for your continued support of the Camden Snow Bowl. Thank you to Seacoast Plumbing and Heating, Hedstrom’s Electric and Pendleton Heating. Finally, thank you to Jeff and Chad from Carpentree Solutions and North Point Ventures for the finish work and helping us get the building ready for the season."

With the demolition of the modular trailer, dirt underneath it was repurposed to improve the entrance to the double-chair, enabling an easier ascent to the lift, especially for skiers.

Higher up on the mountain, more than two dozen water bars were reestablished on the hill, and the ski patrol shack at the top of the double-chair lift was shifted in location so that it was no longer sitting behind a power pole. That provided patrol with an uminpeded view of lift operations from inside the shack.

Over in Tobogganville, the former Hotel Rockport building (a deteriorating shack) was also demolished, and a new building is planned for the future. For this season, however, a platform measuring  20 x 30 feet is to be built in its place with a tent raised on top of it, all in time for the Toboggan Championships in February. 

Toboggan Weekend update

Preparations are underway for the 35th annual U.S. National Toboggan Championships at the Snow Bowl, Feb. 6-8. Team registration is strong this year, with more than 200 teams signed up already, said Holly S. Anderson, Toboggan Championship Committee co-chair.

Registration closes Jan. 30 and there are a total of 400 team slots available: 100 2-Person teams, 100 3-Person teams and 200 4-Person teams. As of Dec. 10 there were 44 2-Person teams available and 30 3-Person teams.

There is a new website for the event – www.toboggannationals.com – with links to register teams, pre-order souvenir merchandise for pick up race weekend, archives with photos and results, and more. 

“Once again excitement is in the air now, especially since we have had early snow, freezing cold weather and ice on Hosmer Pond already,” said Anderson. “Our committee is now meeting weekly and we’re finishing up on the big to-dos like poster design, official program production and printing and toboggan chute prep.”

Fundraising is ongoing to bring StreamState.tv back to Camden to live stream the races and the event’s website has 2026 sponsorship deck that can be downloaded. There are many ways to join the team and become a sponsor. 

The U.S. National Toboggan Championships has become the Camden Snow Bowl’s largest fundraising event, said Anderson. The event raises money through team registration fees, souvenir sales, sponsorships and parking fees. West Bay Rotary Club volunteers manage public paid parking for the event, earning 50% of the proceeds to benefit the good work the organization does in the community. 

“Toboggan Nationals has grown into a true celebratory event for all things Maine and the Midcoast and I know I speak for the rest of the committee when I say we’re excited for everyone to come back to Camden to race toboggans,” said Anderson.

The Toboggan Nationals are free to attend for spectators, but parking on site costs $20 per vehicle and space limited and fills early with racing teams and their entourages. There is free shuttle bus service from downtown Camden throughout the day both Saturday and Sunday, with a new pick-up spot on Mechanic Street this year. There will be food trucks and beverage vendors in Tobogganville all weekend, and the Snow Bowl is open for skiing and tubing, with Snow Dogs concessions inside the lodge.

As one Snow Bowl operations staff said Dec. 11, "I think this is going to be a good season."

All indicators all pointing in that direction. See you on the mountain!

Reach Editorial Director Lynda Clancy at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657