Find Maximum Adventure in North Conway

A vintage ski poster from the early days of the ski train and the Carroll Reed Ski shop.

On Feb. 11, 1939, a tall, leather-tanned Austrian named Hannes Schneider walked off the train from Boston and onto the fields of what is now Schouler Park in downtown North Conway. Thousands of miles away from the sleepy North Country village, a war was brewing; Hitler had annexed Austria the year before.  

Schneider was one of the most accomplished skiers and instructors in the Alps, and American celebrities and athletes flocked to his school at St. Anton. He was also an outspoken critic of the Nazi party, and he’d been arrested shortly after the invasion.

Now, Schneider took a glance up toward the stunted, undulating terrain that rose above North Conway’s placid streets. 

“He thought he was going to be teaching on Mount Washington,” Stefi Hastings, whose father, Carroll Reed, founded the Eastern Slope Ski School in 1936, tells me. 

Instead, Schneider found himself staring at Cranmore, its gentle, wooded slopes rising a mere 1,200 feet above town, the venue where he was slated to help bring European mountain culture to the United States. To one accustomed to the sweeping vistas of the alps, that first glimpse of Cranmore must have been a letdown. 

“He had a chance to go back to Austria after the war,” Hastings says. “But he said no — staying in America.” 

That afternoon, Schneider and his son Herbert toured Cranmore for the first time, and Schneider stopped halfway down his first run at the mountain that would soon cement his legacy. “Well, Herbert,” he said, “It’s not St. Anton, but we’re going to love it here.”

Stefi Reed Hastings, daughter of Carroll Reed, talks about her father’s legacy at her home in front of a wall of family photographs. Reed founded the Eastern Slope Ski School in 1936 and then founded the Carroll Reed Ski Shop in downtown North Conway to sell gear.

In the course of a few hours, it’s likely Schneider had already figured out what locals and visitors still love about North Conway: Its small size isn’t a detriment — it’s a way to cram maximum adventure into each day. 

Sneaking in a few laps

I’ve lived in North Conway for 18 years, but I’m still appreciative of the town’s slalom between work and play; the ebb and flow of visitors coming to enjoy the mountains and the quiet moments in between. 

Today I’m skinning, my skis pointed uphill, to Cranmore’s summit to sneak a few ski laps in before work. It’s chucking snow. The occasional local schusses past me, and the snow blankets the sound of plow trucks below while the lift churns its low hum in the background. I’ve only got two hours to spare, and the time crunch quickens my pace. On top, I rip the skins off my skis, put my goggles on and prepare to descend. 

Rick Wilcox, owner of International Mountain Equipment, is a longtime fixture in the climbing and mountain rescue community.

Before I can, though, I bump into a buddy who’s showed up with his two kids, who have been making the most of canceled school by spending all day at the terrain park. It’s not a shocking development: Live here long enough, and it’s hard to ski, climb, hike, bike or run without running into someone you know doing the same thing. 

Ski school and a shop for gear

North Conway was already undergoing its revolution as a skiing hub when Schneider arrived. And Carroll Reed, Stefi Hastings’ father, was one of the locals who kicked things into high gear. In 1934, the passionate young skier slipped on a patch of ice heading down the Wildcat Valley Ski Trail; the resulting fall broke his back. Doctors told him he would never walk again. But recovering in Memorial Hospital, Reed had plenty of time to think. 

“Dad’s thinking, ‘Gosh, if I had gone to ski school, maybe I wouldn’t have had this horrible accident.’ That kind of gave him an idea,” Hastings says. Miraculously, Reed bucked doctors’ predictions and taught himself to walk again using crutches. He also decided to form the school he wished he’d had. 

Soon, Reed imported ace Austrian Benno Rybizka — and a few New Hampshire locals — to serve as teachers. 

“Dad basically raided the local hockey team … to get together ski instructors,” Hastings recalls. At the same time, Reed purchased ski inventory from Saks Fifth Avenue and set up his own shop — Carroll Reed Ski Shop — in downtown North Conway. 

By 1937, Reed had sold the school to Harvey Dow Gibson, who had also bought Lookout Mountain in North Conway, which he renamed Mount Cranmore. Gibson, a North Conway native, had worked his way through the financial world to become president of the Manufacturers Trust Company in New York, but he still held skiing close to his heart.

Brady Callahan, manager at International Mountain Equipment, is a boulderer, ice climber, rock climber and board member of Mountain Rescue Service.

It was Gibson, spurred on by Reed and others, who negotiated for Schneider’s release from Nazi imprisonment. The move would forever change skiing in America and cement North Conway as New England’s adventure hub.  

The hills, rivers and cliffs of North Conway offer more than skiing, too. Cathedral and Whitehorse ledges offer unparalleled access to rock climbing “a three-minute drive down the street,” according to Brady Callahan, manager of International Mountain Equipment (IME), across the road from where Carroll Reed’s shop outfitted skiers during the town’s ski renaissance. 

IME’s owner, Rick Wilcox, bought the downtown store in 1979. “I took a second mortgage on my house to get money for inventory,” Wilcox says with a laugh. But, like many independent businesses downtown, IME has become a fixture, part of the fun of visiting downtown. 

A skier makes tracks down South Slope at Cranmore Mountain.

“This town lives with the mountains,” Callahan says. “No matter what you’re doing, everything is focused off the resources the mountains provide.” And no business is just a business: Wilcox founded the Mountain Rescue Service in 1972, and its volunteers still meet upstairs at IME over a half-century later. “I always felt my payback to the community was Mountain Rescue,” Wilcox says. “I take a huge pride in it.” 

A few blocks away from IME, Mark Ross-Parent and Margaret Graciano are rolling croissant dough and taking the day’s baguettes out of the oven at Old Village Bakery (OVB). Ross-Parent, who moved to the valley in 1995, started the bakery in 2002. Tucked off the main drag, OVB is a local’s secret haunt. 

The bell on the door constantly chimes as another customer’s senses are pleasantly overwhelmed by the indescribable smell of North Conway’s finest baked goods. Lee Grady, who has worked here for a decade, knows pretty much all of them by name. 

“It’s a pretty supportive valley,” Ross-Parent says. “We’ve seen a couple of generations come through here.” Most of the bakery’s employees and customers are on their way toward — or returning from — doing something outside. 

Baker Nate Iannuccillo, one of North Conway’s best rock climbers, walks in, fresh off having climbed one of New Hampshire’s most difficult routes, even though it’s March. “The mountains and the landscape are a big part of it,” he says of moving to the valley full time, “but it’s also the people here.”

Graciano, who is now co-owner along with Ross-Parent, echoes what makes this adventure town and its inhabitants so special. “I’ve met so many people by working here.” Graciano’s co-ownership is the result of this close-knit community and the loyalty it engenders. “I would have never opened my own bakery in this town to compete with Mark,” she adds — although she is plenty competitive in the mountains, having been on multiple winning teams for Mount Washington’s Tuckerman Inferno race, which first took place in 1939, when Austrian ski instructor Toni Matt, a protege of Schneider’s, rocketed from summit to parking lot in 6 minutes and 39 seconds. 

A skimeister’s legacy

Margaret Graciano, co-owner of Village Bakery in North Conway, rolls out croissants.

The snow keeps pelting down, and for another hour, I take the lift up and down Cranmore’s slopes. Its ski runs — many named to honor the little mountain’s fascinating past — are chock-full of kids from the Eastern Slope Ski Club, founded the year of Schneider’s arrival to help local youth learn to ski. “The valley was so small and supportive,” Stefi Hastings tells me. “My mom would drop me off at Cranmore, and I would spend the whole morning … right there. The ski instructors all knew me .. that was our daycare.”

 A speedy quad might have replaced the original “skimobile” lift long ago, but the mountain’s sense of community remains. On the way back to the parking lot, happy to have snuck in outside time before heading to work, I pass the statue of Schneider, mid-turn, at the base of the mountain. 

To someone who’s never visited here, maybe the skimeister’s decision to remain
in the smaller, sheltered hills of New Hampshire seems like an odd one. Spend a day
or two in North Conway, though, and it will all make sense.