Ski area continues to make progress,
more fund-raising work remains
MARS HILL — Bigrock Mountain is looking to raise $300,000 to stay open and fund a three-year plan to restore the mountain to profitability. The fund-raising effort began Aug. 6 with an original goal of $150,000, and as of Aug. 27, organizers have raised over $100,000. The goal has since been increased to $300,000 to ensure funding to support a turnaround plan that the mountain leadership believes will take three years.
“We feel like we’ve made really great progress,” said Bill Getman, general manager of Bigrock. “But there is still a lot of work to do before we can say we’ll be open this winter. We hope people will go to the www.gofundme.com/save-bigrockmountain website and give generously. If we are going to save the mountain, and all that it means to the people of the region, we’ve got probably three weeks to make it happen.”
Getman said it was tough news to hear that Bigrock was losing its funding.
“But we really owe Libra Foundation and the Maine Winter Sports Center a debt of gratitude,” he said. “Bigrock Mountain had closed in 1999 and was not going to reopen. Libra and the MWSC have kept the mountain open for the last 14 years and made significant improvements in the process. It’s up to the communities on both sides of the border now to pick the ball up and keep it going.”
The plan would be to continue to grow the reach of the mountain to the Bangor and Western New Brunswick regions, to reduce mountain operations expenses by engaging volunteers, and to reach a break-even status within three years.
Bigrock Mountain, at 980 feet of vertical, is the tallest ski area in northern Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. Over $6 million in improvements have been made at Bigrock including a dramatically expanded snowmaking system, a new beginner/intermediate area with a triple chair, a glade park, a magic carpet lift in the ski school park and a tubing park.
