GREENWOOD — After expanding its skiing and riding terrain by an unprecedented 400 acres this summer and fall, Mount Abram Family Ski Resort is banking on attracting visitors who want to rediscover the mountain.

With plenty of woods-clearing help this fall from New England Telemark Association volunteers, the Greenwood ski hill’s usable terrain jumped from 250 acres to 650 acres, Marketing Director Kevin Rosenberg said.

“It’s about bringing people back that have gone to the big mountains that now want to come and re-explore Mount Abram and remember the trails they always used to love,” Rosenberg said Wednesday. “But now they can ski some other terrain that they’ve never been able to.”

Mount Abram instituted its Boundary to Boundary program at the end of the 2008-09 ski season.

During the Columbus Day holiday, New England Telemark volunteers cleared brush and downed trees in the expanded terrain in an unprecedented skier-initiated volunteer trimming effort.

“This allows you to find glades, tree lines and powder stashes that could humble some of the most experienced skiers and riders, and all from the lifts of Mount Abram,” Rosenberg said.

The resort’s new collaboration with the telemark association also landed Mount Abram a new event for March 6, 2010: the Knees to the Breeze Telebration.

New England Telemark, which is the nation’s largest telemark ski school, will bring its Professional Ski Instructors of America-certified instructors to Mount Abram that day and offer free clinics for all abilities, Rosenberg said.

“Mount Abram is a perfect ski area for telemark,” Biff Higgison, NET co-director, said recently. “They have a fantastic beginner area for learning and boundary to boundary skiing for the experienced tele-wacker. It should be a great event.”

Other new Mount Abram features this season include offering Mountain Explorer Shuttle bus service from downtown Bethel to Mount Abram every Saturday; the return of night skiing on Jan. 9, Feb. 6 and March 6; and holding a two-hour buffet every Saturday night in the Loose Boots Lounge.

Unless Mother Nature dumps 2 to 3 feet of snow on the resort this month or next, Mount Abram doesn’t expect to open until Dec. 19. Snow-making begins in two weeks, Rosenberg said.

Other area resorts offering improvements, are:

• Shawnee Peak in Bridgton: the new Sunset Boulevard trail; a 2,000-foot-long easy path from the summit; a new groomer; Wifi in the base lodge; a wine bar in the East Lodge; and six new slope-side duplexes.

• Sunday River Ski Resort in Newry: Grand Resort Hotels received $1.4 million in renovations, including 42-inch flat screen TVs; new drives for White Cap and Spruce Peak chairlifts; new lift houses; a new loading ramp for White Cap chairlift; pump house upgrades and a new drying tower at the Snowflake Factory.

• Saddleback Mountain in Rangeley: a new trail under the Kennebago chairlift; a new 44-acre gladed area; three new Pisten Bully groomers, one with a winch; more snow-making to Wardens Worry and Tight Line trails.

* Sugarloaf/USA in Carrabassett Valley: $600,000 in renovations to the Sugarloaf Mountain Hotel; new wind resistance structures for four lifts; and 8,000 feet of new snow-making lines.

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