Time For Tenney Mountain

PHOTO: Tenney Mountain in Plymouth, NH has 48 Trails and 1,400 vertical feet of fun! Look at the snow on Tenney’s Shooting Star Trail. Tenney has made major improvements and the skiing and snowboarding is very good right now. Tenney offers fun groomed trails, glades, a terrain park, snow tubing and uphill skiing. The big White Mountain views from Tenney’s slopes will fill your eyes with happiness–Sandwich Mountain, the Tripyramids, Mount Tecumseh and so many more. It’s time to visit Tenney Mountain.

by Amy Patenaude
Outdoor/Ski Writer

“Anyone been to Tenney this season?”
We were on our skis at the top of the slope waiting for our turn to race in our Monday night race league at Pats Peak when this question was asked. None of my teammates had visited Tenney yet this season but it seemed like everyone had a good story to tell about skiing there in the past.
My hiking and snowboarder pal Becca went there last Saturday and raved about the snow conditions and that she had a wonderful time.
Matt said he could go tomorrow but he couldn’t leave until after his morning dentist appointment. I said I was game to go and I’d pick him up on the way.

Tuesday morning sometime before 11 am the parking lot attendant waved us into a line of cars parked at an angle in the middle of the lot. We made it. We dressed in the car and carried our skis and ski boots up to the lodge. The lodge sits above the parking lot and above the base terminal of the summit
chairlift.
Tenney has a long history beginning in the 1930s but lift service and dreams of building a ski area came true when 10th Mountain Division Veteran Sam Hall and his partner John French purchased the land in the 1950s. It opened in 1960 with surface lifts and by the mid-1960s a chairlift carried skiers up the mountain.
On the way to the ticket window we saw the nice mural honoring Sam Hall and his accomplishments.
Lift tickets are a refreshingly excellent value–weekdays $45 and holidays & weekends $65. We paid and we were handed RFID cards. Yes we could have and should have bought our tickets online on their website. It would have saved some time. But I wasn’t thinking about tickets when we made our last minute plans. I certainly will reload my RFID card online next time we go.
We put on our ski boots and stashed our boot bags on the storage shelves near the ticket desk. Out the door we went and clicked into our ski boots and skied the short drop down to the lift.
I waved my arm where my RFID card was zipped and the gate opened. Matt had a little trouble, it wasn’t reading and then it finally did? This happened for the first two runs. He laughed when he realized he had a RFID card from Jay Peak still in his card pocket. The unit was trying to read both cards and that didn’t work. RFID cards need to be kept separate. Once the only card in his pocket was the Tenney card it worked like a charm.

What a wonderful job they did upgrading the chairlift. New blue paint, wonderful seat cushions and the wood slats on the backrests of the chair are lovely. The ride is steady and maybe it is just under 15 minutes to the top. No lift line! We picked a cold perfect day to ride this lift. It was sunny with little wind and we were both glad we dressed warmly.
For our first run we went left off the lift and zoomed down Morning Glory! Groomed edge to edge the packed powder and loose granular snow underfoot made for nice turning. We enjoyed the natural waves and rolls of the slope.
On the rides up we enjoyed the view. It looked like snow flurries north of Mount Stinson and we could see and hear the Groton wind turbines above on the ridge. The wind turbines were spinning in the light wind.
There was snow in the glades but conditions were just a tad too firm for me to dare venture on this day. I have some fond memories of skiing the glades here on a big powder day in the late 1990’s. When the temperature gets above freezing soon I bet there’ll be lots of people back in the trees.
My favorite trail of the day was Shooting Star! Great snow, fun terrain and a fun headwall drop. The trail around the headwall drop is named Chicken Out. We liked it too.
There were more skiers and snowboarders riding the triple chair. It’s shorter and has plenty of nice blue square rated trails. Tiger Lily and Trillium have nice pitches and ski nicely.
The views East while skiing at Tenney are grand. With snow flurries blocking out the view to the north the sky to the East was clear and blue. Sandwich Mountain is prominent with the Tripyramids right behind it and Mount Tecumseh further north. So many mountains to see.

We stopped for a late lunch and to warm up. Even though the menu and the sit down dining at the Backcountry Bar and Grill was inviting, we chose to grab cheeseburgers with fries and hot chocolate. The meal was satisfying and good. We sat a table near the big stone fireplace complete with a Mr. Moose mounted above. Matt noted there might be more people in the restaurant than on the ski slopes.
You don’t have to be a skier or snowboarder to enjoy the restaurant. On Monday nights they have been offering line dancing. Wednesday through Saturday they are open late.
Matt and I made an effort to try to ski a different trail every run. We didn’t have enough time todo it. They have 48 trails and almost all of them were open.
On our last run we did find the Terrain Park. It had some rails and jibs and jumps. Not my style but some snowboarders were thinking hard about doing tricks.
I am so glad that Matt and I decided to go ski Tenney. It was Matt’s first time skiing here. I sure hope we get some more snow because we want to come back for some spring skiing in the trees.
Have Fun.
Hopefully the new owners, The North Country Development Group, will have lots of snow and good fortune to operate the ski area for decades to come.
Tenney Mountain is located in Plymouth’s from I-93 take exit 26 and drive 3.7 miles on Route
25 and then head south 1.8 miles south on Route 3A. Look for the entrance sign to Tenney Mountain.