Mt Bethel Ski Hill

That is where I learned how to ski !! No fancy hat, no gloves, no goggles, and usually wet clothes!!!! I think they had a J bar and/or maybe a T bar ? What fun - years later on to Vail !!!!!

ML ✉
Dec '11

old man - is that the little A-frame type structure right on the side of the road? It actually looks like a tiny a-frame garage?

Rebecka ✉
Dec '11

My wife skied there a lot in her youth. Not many people live this close to a ski slope! We live on Mt. Bethel Rd., which was Barkers Mill Rd back then before they switched the street names all around.

Reggie Voter ✉
Dec '11

Rebecka - yes, it is a small a-frame looking structure.

maja ✉
Dec '11

The building is still standing on Mt Bethel Road.

bemo12
Dec '11

Wow, great link Blocal.

I always wondered what the a-frame was built for. I assumed it was a house for a little troll or something. Learn something new every day.

Rebecka ✉
Dec '11

Actually, that write up on NELSAP.org was done by me, and the photos as well. I am just seeing if anyone can tell me anything more about the place (how many trails, etc...) than I can guess at. Pictures of people skiing there would be amazing. If you have any, post them here for sure or use the NELSAP link and send them to the organization. I grew up on Valley Road, which was where the driveway entrance to the hill was. Currently a residence, their drive used to be my bus stop as a kid.

eperot ✉
Dec '11

there were 2 dedicated hills and 2 trials, 1 on either side of the hiils.the main slope and 1/2 of the "bunny" hill had snow making eqipment the trails and the the upper section of hill 2 were up to mother nature.both hills were lighted.The trails were srictly BONZI AT night. The tow engine on hill 2 was a corvair transaxle bolted to large concrete blocks. the main hills tow ropes were powered by a packard straight 8 flathead and a dodge straight 6..both were attatched to 3 speed manual trannys. the operaters sat upstairs and could use the clutch as needed to stop and start the rope.They could also cotrol throttle and ignition as needed. the pump moter (for snow making) was also an industrial dodge straight 6 the exhaust glowed orange for 2-4 days at a time pumpin water. the compressors were HUGE ingersol rands (we used 2) they were powered by V-12 supercharged DETROIT DIESELS (2 strokes) they could be heard for miles around when they were cranked up to wide open throttle. what an AWESOME sound that was. I could go on and on but ill let u absorb this first. ask away if u have any questions. Thanks Dave

Dave Jacobus ✉
Dec '11

pictures???

Jonelle
Dec '11

hey Eric...

Dave Jacobus ✉
Dec '11

Dave, I'm looking forward to them! It was cool talking with you...interesting to speak to someone who grew up in the same neighborhood but a couple decades apart. I was really blown away with the info you gave. Thanks again!

eperot ✉
Dec '11

ANY ONE ON/

Dave Jacobus ✉
Dec '11

I will get the pics to u as soon as I can. Wish I had more but... Spoke to my mom this morning but she doesn't really remember much. Have to say one of my favorite memories was being allowed to sled the hill after they closed for the night. They would run the tow ropes for us so that we could get back up the hill easier :)

Nadine ✉
Dec '11

My father and his partner George owned Mt Bethel...I had no idea people were still interested. we had great fun up there for 8 years..too bad it had to end. I have som pics, most of them family stuff at the hill. My dad is still going strong...as strong as you can for 87! He skied until he was 80. Some of us "kids" are still skiing. Fun times!!

Kathe Conaghan ✉
Mar '12

I wrote a book "Skiing In New Jersey?" that has some info about the Mount Bethel Ski Area. My book is available on amazon.com

Liz Holste ✉
Feb '14

Yes, please! The more pictures the better!

eperot ✉
Mar '14

Here's an old Mt. Bethel advertisement. If anyone else has pictures - I would love to see them.

Liz Holste ✉
Aug '14

Would have been great last year!

As kids, we belonged to our own ski club with a hill similar to this. Each family put like $1,000 in and paid yearly upkeep dues. If you left, the next person put their $1,000 in and you got yours back. Started with ropes but got a t-bar finally.

Everyone pitched in to maintain and run the place.

Clubhouse was really more for bringing your food basket in, might have been a coke machine, but that was about it.

It was great.

mistergoogle ✉
Aug '14

I was very good friends with Pat Conaghan, John's son and knew both families very well! The times I spent at Mt Bethel will always remain fondly in my memories!! Ever since I moved back to NJ, I've been trying to find this place again!! I too, learned to ski there. I also worked there to earn my keep!! I will always love those families and that ski hill!! I'm sorry it's on private property or I would take a drive up! I would love to see Pat, Kathy, and Linda again!

Robert Wisniewski ✉
Jan '15

Chuck Harvey Where are you!!!

Lance ✉
Mar '15

If people have more pics of the Mount Bethel ski area I would love to see them. I am also looking for a Mount Bethel ski area patch to add to my New Jersey ski history files.

I can be contacted at: holsteliz@hotmail.com

The www.gondyline.com/skibabe blog is mine. :) :) :) I am glad to see that people are reading it.

I have information on all of the old ski areas that were in New Jersey and I published a book "Skiing In New Jersey?"

Liz Holste ✉
May '15

Hi,
My name is Diane Meigs, my father, George R. Meigs and John Conaghan were the owners/operators of the Mt. Bethel ski area. There was a small lodge with a concession stand, a lodge for rentals and an A-Frame used to monitor the rope tow, just in case anyone fell, the operator would turn it off until they got up or moved out of the way.
Our families, mothers & fathers, gave us the best childhood any child could ask for. So many fond memories spending every weekend up at the "ski hill". Most of the pics that I have are of family members skiing. We had a lot of parties up there with our friends and they still, all these years later, talk about going to the ski hill as a huge part of their childhood as well. We were blessed.

Diane Meigs ✉
Jun '16

The old Mt Bethel Ski Hill was across the street and down a bit from where I grew up. I remember hearing the loud motors blowing snow/running the lifts. By the time I started skiing, it was with a 6th grade Mansfield trip to Shawnee Mt. in 84 since Mt Bethel was long closed then. I remember Mike Kizun living across the street from the A frame. Some of the big kids used to hang out in the A frame. Eric - was so cool to read your detailed write up from 07. I actually walked around up top around 9 years ago. Everything is overgrown. Hard to envision too much of what it was. According to my mom, she thinks it closed when I was 2 or 3 - which would have been '74 or '75. Back then, cars were rear wheel drive. The long gradual road from down around Lichtenstein's Gen Store up to the Ski hill on the Mt Bethel side was extremely tricky to navigate when we had real snow storms up there through the 70s and 80s. Def would like to pic of the A frame from Dot Lichtenstein. I searched for info just recently since I was talking to my own kids about why our local ski resort (Bear Creek which is old Doe Mountain) was closed for several days while they try to build the base back up. I really liked that ad which advertised blowing own snow at Mount Bethel. Liz, if you have anything higher res in that file, please email.
Thank you!

Justin ✉
Jan '17

Hi....I am the daughter of John Conaghan .....the hill was open from 65 to 72....my dad could no longer keep it going even with making snow....every time he made snow it would rain....the winters were just getting warmer...he finally gave up...it was too difficult to do alone as he had lost his partner George Meigs due to a heart attack. A tragic event that just took the wind out of our sails.....it was a wonderful place for our families and hopefully other families in the area. I cannot tell you the memories are so great! The place was sold to someone who never made good or even completed the process....so there it sits...overgrown and a mess....where once there was a lot of happiness and activity and fun. I can say that I hope any of ou that are out there and remember Mt Bethel, remember it with fond and happy moemories as do all of us in the two families!

Kathe Conaghan Bacsk ✉
Jul '17

What's interesting is that road is down right dead now, but when the ski area was operating for a few months every Winter it was bustling in relation. Going down that road today you would have no insight into it once being there.

The demise was a common one among small ski areas -- warmer winters, higher insurance, and lower attendance due to bigger ski areas up North.

iJay ✉
Nov '19

I miss those days too, they still exist in my memories but oh so long ago.

Cleo ✉
Nov '19

Some scam like farmland preservation

https://www.njspotlight.com/2017/04/17-04-19-dep-s-proposed-stewardship-program-would-help-protect-nj-s-forested-land/

Bug3
Nov '19

Bug3 I had Googled it already. What I am wondering is what exactly they are doing there? Hopefully they leave the A-frame building. We live on Mt. Bethel Rd (used to be Barkers Mill Rd before they confused everyone and flipped the road names, which was sometime after it stopped being called RD #2) and my wife used to ski there with her family. They have been living here since the 1950s.

Reggie Voter ✉
Nov '19

You get money and keep the land...the taxpayers get scammed

Bug3
Nov '19

Huh
If you are in the farmland program you pay taxes on farmland,much much cheaper than residential The state buys development rights at millions of dollars in some cases..yet they don't own the land.....so yes farmers make out like bandits...tax payers get screwed...It woul much easier to just zone and protect the land as farmland without giving a huge payday at tax payers expense

Bug3
Nov '19

Back to skiing.....

When we were young, in a galaxy far away, our State Park had a free rope tow and a bit of a lodge, like hot chocolate, hot dogs, burgers, etc. We got our ski's at ski sales (like flea markets), yard sales, never new. The rope was like a gym rope, big, tough, and mean....You packed special gloves because good chance they would never be used again. The rope as so heavy that if you attempted as a long rider, a little ways in, you would be bent over with the rope dragging on the ground.

With a bunch of kids on the rope, the deal was, first zip the entire rope to the left, then zag it back to the track on the right seeing how many kids you could knock off. Then you got good, went under the rope, so you could really zag to the right with gusto. Of course, when caught, it was a timeout in the "lodge,"

The best though was to carefully creep arm over arm up the rope to the stocking capped person in front of you and ever so carefully to wrap the hat around the rope. Now that was a fun departure to watch. Until some kid tied one on that had a chin strap. Game over after that one.

Same antics on the slope. Bunch of kids would form a train, each hugging the person in front, boots almost touching boots. Then marauders would attempt to buck the train with direct shots from the side. Still better than going alone because they really could get picked on by folks crossing then, letting them run over the back of their moving sideways ski's for instant destruction.

After step-in bindings were invented, whole new path of fun by creeping up on the toe and releasing the binding. Worked well in the lift line too...…

Ah.....memories.....can't imagine with insurance pulling these stunts off today, but it was just kid stuff back then, in a galaxy far, far, away. Really miss the small slopes This one is not only gone, it is forgotten. Golf courses and cross country now. .

strangerdanger ✉
Nov '19

Every see the "rope grabber," a thing that actually clamped on the rope so you didn't need to hold on? Never could make that one work :>)

strangerdanger ✉
Nov '19

How bout this one. I’m a little kid, skiing at the club, it’s a t bar. No one there, so I grab a t. It’s very cold. As we hit a steeper part, the cold won’t let the spring stretch, so I get lifted off the ground. No biggie, I just sit on the bar. Then ever so slowly I start turning around. Then back to Earth, backwards, and fall right off. Had to ski the bottom until a big guy could literally give me a lift.

Strangerdanger ✉
Nov '19

At the club, there was no one to stop the thing..... no lift attendants in those days, you rolled your own :>) They just turned it on and went skiing themselves.

OK, got another one. At a major mountain, going up the lift, and looking back at the view from VT to CAN, I turned sideways to see better and took my skis off the chair. Of course we were near the top, that's where the best view is. One ski caught the emergency netting below the departure deck. Suddenly my ski stuck, I was dragged forward, and ended up waist on the deck, legs hanging over the deck, ski caught in the webbing. They dragged me in.

But in all that, the chair jerked backwards as I was dragged off, my buddy was looking back at my disaster now behind him as the chair bar crashed down. Now he's basically trying to lift the chair bar but he has instinctively put his feet on it and panic sets in. He moves forward off the deck into open space ten feet above the ground as they stop the chair.

I figured he would have to complete the circle and get off at the bottom. Didn't know they could back those things up :>) Now the real issue. After that, on any lift we went on, the lift attendants would point n snicker, darned communication devices.....Had to change clothes to avoid the shame. Thank goodness we were staying at the base.

But wait, there's more.... yeah, I have fallen/erred/messed up in almost every way you can imagine, and some like this, unimaginable possibilities with skis. Did I mention coming out of the mountaintop bar, a few under, and skiing down a flight of stairs? Didn't fall on that one, it was pretty cool. Yard sales skis do have advantages. Or how about being strapped to a car roof, on skis, to gain experience of higher speeds...…it works.

OK, one more, a cute one. Imagine pristine powder, much less on the East Coast. I am first up the hill on what's to be a busy day, the line is already building. Towards the bottom, lift line in view, I am really looking good, I mean really good, picture taking stuff, carving well, and making quite a picture on the virgin snow. I mean I know I look good, I know the lift line is watching. Suddenly I catch a inner edge, ski flies out, my legs spread and I go down, face first, spread legs behind me and sliding full speed into the lift line which, like the Red Sea, parts magically and I slide right though. And yeah, I can hear the collective line thought: "a-hole...." Pride cometh before the fall. heh, heh.

I leave the one about my buddy hitting the snow gun hose for another time......

strangerdanger ✉
Nov '19

Narcissism.... :-)

Close.... I was looking at Jay Peak.....

Strangerdanger ✉
Nov '19

I was on Madonna Mountain, now Smugglers. Jay is 40 miles to the North, and I think facing South.....at least some of it. Canada about 10-15 miles after that.

Some more silly ski stories...…

We used to ski the woods going off-trail and roughing it; something I would not recommend for safety reasons but.....we were young. Main reason you shouldn't do this is most paralysis accidents come from hitting the immovable object like a tree or rock under the snow. And you have to keep a pretty good head of steam going unless you like walking in powder. Fire roads, walking paths, or just full woods, we loved it. One thing about the woods, no matter how deep the snow, you will always make the turn or stop before you hit that tree. At least that's what happened for us. Learned how to jump out of the deep sluff, turn in the air, plant em and stop --- was not pretty at all, but sure beat the alternative tree hugging of the painful kind. Doing Killington, there's something called Juggernaut running the ridge on the left side. There's always a ridge runner as a long distance beginner's trail and perfect for off-trailing it. But if you are ridge running to the left, if you go right you go over the ridge away from the slopes. Cool unless you go to far over and can't ski back. The idea is to parallel the trail looking for a spot to turn left and get back on. Buddy took a hard right and ended up on the road at the base, skis and ski boots, about 10-15 miles away from the slopes...… Imagine answering that door bell :>) "uh, can you call me a cab.....?"

OK, one more....ah, the memories. So, shooting through some smaller pines, I found myself on a tree-lined straightaway flanked on both sides by a row of bushy pines. No way out, had to keep going straight until something else turned up Suddenly, dead center in my path was a crotch-level pine. It was either that full stop I mentioned which, given how tight the path was, would hurt a lot or...…..go for it......the tree might be short enough, looks short enough, I think I can clear it...…..spread legs to straddle and.......whack......nope....perfect shot,.thank goodness for all the padding and a soft white pine top..... Must have been pretty funny looking.

strangerdanger ✉
Nov '19

Jay has a NE exposure, perfect for keeping the snow, bur cold.

Best experiences in the NE of simple yet awesome skiing of days gone past would be skiing at Mad River Glen -- Ski It If You Can!

iJay ✉
Nov '19

Well SD, the main exposure is NE but certain trails can view other directions, just not over the main peak. I have skied there in early May with every trail open due to heavy snow and its NE exposure to keep the snow. Bolton Valley is the only ski area in VT that I know of that has a Southern exposure. Tremblant in Canada has a Southern backside for those frigid January/February days BTW although my one trip there was in March one year that was brown (no snow) until half way up from Montreal. But even with Bolton's 2500 foot base it never skies beyond early April.

Never made it to Tuckerman unfortunately too. But have bitterly skied every area from NJ North over with 40+ years of Skiing. Killington was my family's main ski area since we had a little ski house off of the access road.

I never had a chairlift experience, worst accident was a sprained ankle goofing around at the side of a trail on the snow berm, but many close calls.

Stowe, the legend too. The Front Four. Been on the National after a 3 foot dump and all the snow from the top section was pushed below due to the steepness and ice.

In wouldn't be surprised if we were at the same ski area over the years...

iJay ✉
Nov '19

Occasionally we could overhear skiers from the "West." No matter the day, they always complained about the poor conditions. Ice builds skill. Sure the trails are steeper and longer being steam out West but add ice and a shorter less steep trail out East is a tougher challenge.

iJay ✉
Nov '19

I started on a rope tow at a State Park hill and it was glorious! On days off from school, designated Moms (letting the other Mom's stay home), would drive car loads of kids up, spend the day in the park lodge by the fire reading, and we would have the time of our lives! Sadly it was done in by the budget and the price of insurance.

strangerdanger ✉
Sep '20

I passed by the other day, and there is work being done. The brush is being cleared, and even the little A frame building seemed to be getting a siding repair. I hope that is what I saw and not the beginning of demo. Anyone know anything?

4of4
Nov '20

I grew up in Scotch Plains NJ, and somehow my mother heard of Mt. Bethel. We spent our summers at the Jersey Shore and my mother wanted us to have a winter sport, so I remember one Saturday the 5 of us, my parents, my brother and sister and I all took a ride to Hackettstown for our intro to skiing. It must have been around 1970. We all had such a great time we went back up the next day, and returned several more times with friends along. Eventually we leaned it had closed but I’ve always wondered about it.
The little snack place had great cheeseburgers, I remember that. I do have 4 photos, mostly of the slope but one of the snack bar. Really nice memories.

Barbara Rabasca DiBo ✉
Jan '22

Yes, please post any pictures you might have!

Eperot ✉
Jan '22