Loon Follows Post-Expansion Expansion Plan with Another Expansion Plan

Bro we all see your watch chill

Loon is the worst guy at the barbeque. Loon is getting a new boat. Well, another new boat. It’s hard to keep track of boats when you have as many boats as Loon has. But who has time to count boats when you have so many cars? Loon is the one who drove the Cybertruck that you may have noticed angle-parked backwards into the driveway. The one with the “my other car is also a Cybertruck” bumpersticker? But that’s just a joke because no one makes bumper stickers listing all 12 of Loon’s cars. List them? Loon would be happy to, as soon as he steps away to take this call about “a very expensive watch.” Loon is back. “You gotta love sales,” Loon says. No one loves sales, including salesman. Did Loon mention that he’s in sales? The host is Waterville Valley. “Nice T-bars, Bro. Are those the same ones they used to make the dinosaurs feel at home in Jurassic Park?” Loon notices the six-pack. “Oh, what’s that, a ’22? Not a D-Line, I see. It’s an ‘MND?’ Guess that stands for ‘Must Not be a D-Line!’” Loon looks around. “Nice starter lift for this kind of acreage, though. I guess 265 acres seems like a lot when that’s what you’re used to. I just put ‘look for the teardown’ into Google Maps and it brought me right here.” Waterville Valley looks up from the grill, rolls his eyes, looks back. “Ah, gas-cooker, I see,” Loon says. “I’m a charcoal guy myself.” WV nods. “Hey, I’m just hassling you about that acreage, Buddy. Two-sixty-five is almost as big as each of the next two additions I’m putting on my house.”

Loon is absurd. Loon is obnoxious. Loon is arrogant. Loon is ridiculous. Loon can’t be serious. But Loon is serious. Five weeks after announcing a 272-acre gladed expansion that would make the ski area the largest in New Hampshire, Loon today announced intentions to develop a separate, 280-acre expansion that would make it the fifth-largest ski area in New England.

I thought Loon’s PR team was trolling me when the press release hit my inbox last week. Hardly any ski areas expand in New England, ever. Loon just expanded three years ago. It was just 30 acres, but it was an important, beginner-oriented 30 acres for a mountain without much novice terrain. That expansion – Timbertown – seemed like a nice capstone to a rapid-fire overhaul that included the spectacular Kanc 8 chairlift and a high-speed quad paralleling Loon’s beefcake terrain park. Surely the mountain could not be announcing another nearly-300-acre expansion just weeks after announcing a nearly-300-acre expansion off North Peak, which had followed news of the mountain’s intent to replace their outmoded four-passenger, 1,738-vertical-foot gondola with a 10-passenger machine (D-Line, of course).

But yeah, that’s exactly what Loon intends to do, with up to four new lifts on Lincoln Peak, 280 acres of mostly White Mountain National Forest land directly adjacent to South Peak (the recently announced expansion is the green-dot-shaded area on the far-right; the new expansion is far left):

Here’s the current trailmap, including next year’s planned glade expansion, for context:

More context with a real picture:

Loon has submitted plans to the White Mountain National Forest to expand onto Lincoln Peak, which sits looker’s right of the current resort border, along South Peak and the recent Timbertown expansion. Image courtesy of Loon.

I say Loon “intends to” expand only because to expand on U.S. Forest Service land, ski areas must follow an application-review-repeat-until-dead process. Let’s take a deeper look at what that process might look like, as well as what this proposal could mean for Loon and for parent company Boyne Resorts.