The ski hill that is ‘the biggest baby sitter on the North Shore’
For generations, Ski Bradford has been a warm and wild rite of passage for children.
HAVERHILL — Each afternoon on a winter weekday, round about 4:30, the level of chaos inside the lodge at Ski Bradford is award-worthy.
As far as lodges go, it is barely large enough to qualify for the title, just like the ski hill it looks out on. It’s essentially a large living room that sells chicken fingers. About 900 kids run through it each afternoon, from the school programs and ski teams of nearly every town in the area. Throw in a hundred or so tots who come with parents for some of the 350 lessons taught each day. Turn the volume up to 11. And good luck navigating the gear strewn here, there, and everywhere.
“I say I’m the biggest baby sitter on the North Shore,” said Neil Sawyer, who is 81 and still owns and runs the family ski area that his father’s cousin started 74 years ago. “It still makes me happy to see so many kids having a good day, but sometimes you say ‘This is a lot.’ ”
The “organized chaos,” as Sawyer describes it, is one of the many charms of Ski Bradford, a beginner’s ski hill that has been a rite of passage for generations of children on the North Shore and Merrimack Valley. And like most New England ski areas, it is buzzing this week during February school vacation, typically the biggest week of the ski season in New England.
“There’s no place better than this,” said Kasie Cran, who has been coming to Ski Bradford since elementary school and on a recent day was serving as a chaperone for the Hamilton-Wenham after-school program, which her son attends.
“For kids, this place is about freedom,” she said. “There’s not many places where they feel like they can go off on their own, with their friends, and learn to be independent.”
The ski area is so small that parents can stand in front of the lodge and essentially keep an eye on their children no matter where they go. The highest point has an elevation of just 272 feet, and a trip up one of the three chair lifts takes less than four minutes.
When fully open, Ski Bradford is only 60 acres of skiable terrain. But it’s been even less lately because the terrain park — which requires huge helpings of natural snow — hasn’t been able to open in a couple years as Mother Nature has not cooperated. With a milder, drier winter, Ski Bradford has had to constantly make artificial snow to keep the slopes white.
All that smallness is part of the appeal, and that smallness includes the prices. There is, of course, no part of skiing that is cheap. But beginner hills close to metro Boston, such as Blue Hills Ski Area in Canton and Nashoba Valley Ski Area in Westford, have long provided accessible and relatively affordable places to learn the basics of skiing or snowboarding. They also build confidence in seemingly simple things such as getting on and off a lift, before heading to the big mountains up north, with the big price tag on lift tickets. On weekday afternoons at Ski Bradford, a very popular time, a ticket to the beginner area can run as low as $22.
But if Ski Bradford is known for anything, it is for the after-school programs, and that’s what was in full madness mode on a recent afternoon as Emma Quateman sat at a table amid the mayhem. She’s the activities coordinator for the city of Newburyport, which had about 50 fourth-to-eighth-graders somewhere on the property.
“It gives the parents four hours of freedom, and it gives the kids so much independence and confidence,” said Quateman, who learned to ski at Bradford when she was growing up in Wenham. “Especially the younger kids who are experiencing these things for the first time.”
Quateman said there is much about the jumble that makes her smile, but perhaps her favorite is the huge lost-and-found chest, stuffed with lonely gloves and helmets and water bottles in every color of the rainbow. “It’s like Mary Poppins’ bag,” she said. “It’s endless the amount of stuff that comes out of it.”
While the younger kids relish the first tastes of autonomy, the older kids relish something else, Sawyer said.
“We have a lot of kissing,” he said with a smile. “They go up the hill and away from the adults and they feel free and flirty. And I love that. We’re the baby sitter for a few hours or a whole day. They know the ski patrol is here if anything goes wrong. They can’t go too far. So they just feel free.”
While weekends and holidays draw more adults and families, Ski Bradford’s sweet spot is and always has been as a haven for kids to be kids.
“I just love watching them progress from the magic carpet to the T-bar to the chair lifts,” said Dennis Gauvin, who has been working at Bradford since 1972 and runs the ski patrol and oversees the ski racing program (on this day, several high schools were competing for a regional championship). “They’re not home on their videogames. They’re out here, laughing and joking and developing a lifelong love of skiing.”
Just then, a crackle comes over the radio from someone on his ski patrol, alerting another member to “check out those kids in the trees.”
Gauvin smiles. Another day at Ski Bradford, the biggest baby sitter on the North Shore.
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