CARRABASSETT VALLEY – An 82-year-old pilot from Massachusetts experienced a hard landing at the airport here Saturday night but walked away unharmed.

Holland Filgo, 82, of Boston, was flying his Piper Underwing aircraft from Bedford, Mass., on Saturday to his condominium in Carrabassett Valley after making a stop in Nashua, N.H.

Alone and approaching the airstrip from the north after 7 p.m., Filgo landed hard, crushing the front landing gear and dropping the propellers into the tarmac, police Chief Scott Nichols said.

The reason is unknown, he added.

“I’m not quite sure what happened,” Filgo said Monday. “Maybe I misjudged the height. I hit the ground hard and bounced.”

A retired professor from Northeastern University, Filgo has been flying since 1987 and said he’s flown frequently to Sugarloaf over the past six years. Filgo wasn’t hurt. He said he hopes his plane can be fixed so he can continue flying.

“It all happened so quickly,” he said. “But I’m impressed how nice people are here. I hardly stepped out of the plane before a man came running up to help.”

Carrabassett police and firefighters responded to the scene, where the fire crew was able to move the plane off the unattended, unlit runway, Nichols said.