White Mountain Hotel, Bretton Woods Skiing & a Frozen Waterfall Hike
This past weekend we headed back to North Conway for a skiing and hiking adventure. We stayed with the White Mountain Hotel & Resort, which is located just a few minutes off the main road of North Conway. This gives the property a very private resort type of feel, featuring fantastic views of the surrounding White Mountains and Cranmore Ski Area. The resort also provides guests with a full stack of amenities, including a heated pool, jacuzzi, fitness center and game room. It is also situated on Hales Location Golf Course.
Our favorite amenity during our visit was the dining area and tavern. The hotel offers guests a complimentary breakfast—and not the typical continental style serve-yourself-buffet, instead a full service hot breakfast off a menu. In addition to having a great property, views, and service, the White Mountain Hotel did all the little things that go a long way with guests while maintaining an affordable price.
Our next stop on Saturday was to Bretton Woods for a day of skiing. While there are a number of ski areas close to North Conway, we had never visited Bretton Woods. The ride there took about 40 minutes but with the bluebird skies and mountain views down rt. 302, we were loving every minute of it.
Although this winter hasn’t been known for its snow conditions, Bretton Woods didn’t reflect that. With over 90% of the mountain being equipped with snowmaking, nearly the whole mountain was open. The mountain features a great variety of terrain that caters to any type of skier. Many of the core trails are intermediate level, but they also have easier routes down and gladed trails for expert skiers. Our favorite trails were Crawford’s Blaze and Granny’s Grit.
The aspect of Bretton woods we enjoyed the most was that you could ski the whole mountain and move around at ease while not needing be an expert skier. The peaks at many mountains in New England feature only expert level terrain, or minimal intermediate runs. This leaves non-expert skies often having to stick to one area of the mountain or chair lift for the whole day. The perfect views of Mount Washington weren’t so bad either!
On Sunday we decided to tie off the weekend with a hike to Arethusa Falls, New Hampshire’s highest single drop waterfall. We had done this hike in the summer before but were excited to see what the waterfall would look like frozen. Not only was it a spectacle to see the falls frozen, but we were greeted to numerous ice climbers shimmying up the falls—and we thought hiking through the snow was difficult!
