Lost Valley owner Fern Pontbriand left a lasting legacy.
AUBURN – Fernand Pontbriand will be remembered as the owner of Lost Valley, a 240-foot-tall mountain described as “Maine’s biggest little ski area.”
The ski instructor turned ski entrepreneur lost a year-long battle with cancer on Sunday morning. His family was with him.
Meanwhile, friends say his legacy will be far taller than his modest mountain.
In the years before his death Sunday, Pontbriand, 75, preserved the lodge and ski slopes for public use.
He fought off lucrative offers from developers, always aiming to keep the ski area open for the generations of local children who learned to ski here. Meanwhile, he nurtured a growing summertime wedding and banquet business.
“Lost Valley became his family, his life,” said Diane Moreau, part of a Pontbriand-picked trio who has managed Lost Valley for the past four years.
He never married. He had no children.
Pontbriand grew up in Auburn, graduating from Edward Little High School and the University of Maine before entering the Army.
He became involved in Lost Valley first as a ski instructor in the 1960s. The ski area’s founders, Otto Wallingford and Dr. Camille Gardner, were making big changes. Wallingford put up lights on the trails and invented an early snow-making machine, which he later patented.
In 1975, Pontbriand became Wallingford and Gardner’s partner. When they decided to retire in 1988, he bought them out, lest developers move in.
“He just dug in and said, ‘No. I’m going to keep going,'” said Linc Hayes, currently Lost Valley’s vice president of winter operations.
“He had a mission,” Hayes said. “He always wanted Lost Valley to be a community resource.”
The ski operation boomed in the 1980s. Lost Valley became a learning mountain, a place for young people from around the area to learn how to ski. Then, they’d move on to the bigger mountains with growing amenities.
“We teach them and lose them,” Hayes said. “It’s our niche.”
Olympian Julie Parisien learned to ski there. So did generations of others.
Pontbriand was always there, often with one of his dogs: first Patches, a German short-haired pointer, and then Simon, a Dalmatian.
“They were like his children,” said Moreau, who remembers Patches from her teenage skiing days. Statues of them still reside in the ski area’s offices.
During the 1980s, Pontbriand developed the lodge as a place to hold banquets and wedding receptions. Even more than the skiing, the functions were probably the best expression of the man, Moreau said.
“He was a very social person,” she said. “He loved it when everything looked just right. It was really what made him tick.”
By the late 1990s, he grew tired. In 1997, he passed the operation and management of Lost Valley to Moreau, Hayes and Connie King. He called them “The Team.” Moreau became the snow sports director and King became the general manager.
“At the beginning, it was hard for him to stand back,” Moreau said. “Eventually, he learned to enjoy the free time. He traveled, but he always made it back.
“Nothing pleased him more than when people recognized him,” Moreau said. “They’d say, ‘I learned to ski here,’ and he would beam.”
The three plan to continue operating Lost Valley as he intended. A plaque they gave him last fall thanks him for his generosity and vows to keep it a learning mountain for “future generations.”
“That was his intent, his wish,” Hayes said.
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