AUBURN — Less than an hour after opening Tuesday during the winter school holiday, the steady stream of parents and kids flowed into Lost Valley, the lifts humming and the music playing on outdoor speakers.
It’s been a banner season for winter sports so far, with ample snowfall and weeks of low temperatures to keep it in place. Lost Valley says it’s on track for another record-breaking season.
Ten years ago, it was a very different situation. Lost Valley Ski Area was $1.6 million in debt and did not have enough cash on hand to open for the 2014-2015 season. Former owners Lincoln Hayes and Connie King said the ski area — which opened in 1961 — would have to be sold or shut down after 10 consecutive seasons of losses.
A grass roots campaign gathered steam and Friends of Lost Valley raised enough money to keep it open, barely. Soon after, new owners Scott and April Shanaman came on board, signaling a new era of growth and success for the beloved ski area.
NEW ERA FOR LOST VALLEY
The Shanamans took over the 200-acre ski area for the 2015-16 season.
Scott, who was owner of Aerial NDT Inspection, a ski lift maintenance and inspection company, had worked with Lost Valley for a decade before that. With 10 years of additional experience in lift operations at Sugarloaf, Shanaman had seen similar small ski areas succeeding and thought Lost Valley could too.
It was a struggle from the start. They had just weeks to prepare Lost Valley for the upcoming season: painting, erecting new signage, servicing the lifts.
A few years later, April Shanaman would admit she had concerns about whether it would work.
“It was hard for me to see what he saw at first,” she said in a 2024 video interview about her husband’s vision for the ski area. “I do now.”
“We were second-guessing ourselves before the season even started,” Scott said last week.
That first winter, they didn’t even open the slopes until Jan. 3.
“Not only was there no snow, there were no temperatures to make snow,” he said. “It was 70 degrees on Christmas Eve.”
That means they missed out on the all-important Christmas week, a make-or-break situation for ski areas in Maine.
“That’s how you pay all your bills that you’ve accumulated through the fall,” Scott said, “when you’re spending money hand over fist and not taking any revenue in.”
It was a tough first year.
“A ski area should not be a charity,” Shanaman told the Sun Journal in November 2015. “A ski area should support charity.”
But the Shanamans got to work and have not stopped, upgrading everything from the bathrooms to opening up a third lift last year.
“There’s a lot more that we would do if we had an unlimited amount of funds,” Shanaman said. “We’re doing what we can with what we have.”
Shanaman leads by example, whether it’s adjusting a snow gun or repainting a lift — he can be seen at the ski area almost daily.
LEGACY OF IMPROVEMENT
John Herrick, a former competitive skier, was hired as general manager in 2017. He remembers taking the bus to Lost Valley every day after school as a kid.
His first year was hectic: The brew pub was taking shape, the kitchen in the lodge was getting upgraded, three new trails were cut, $30,000 was pumped into new rental equipment, and a new carpet lift was installed at the base of the hill, the first new lift in 20 years.
At the time, Herrick, who is also president of the Lost Valley Competition Program, stated that one of their goals was to institute something new every year. It’s something management still strives to do today.
Last year’s installation of a third, double chairlift was a major improvement for the ski area. It takes the pressure off the other two main lifts, thins the lift lines and opens up terrain that had limited access before.
When the Shanamans took over Lost Valley, the financial numbers were dismal. So were skier visits, a key industry metric that combines daily lift ticket sales, season passholder visits, group visits, and lesson program visits during the ski season.
That first year under the Shanamans’ ownership, the number of skier visits was around 28,000. Last year the number was 67,000, a record for Lost Valley.
FUTURE PLANS
The biggest challenge the Shanamans face is balancing revenue. Lost Valley needs to have enough money to make it through the offseason, while still reinvesting back into the ski area, something they have done heavily all along.
What they can’t control is the weather, which is why snowmaking has become such a critical part of growing a successful ski area in Maine.
“You can’t get by without snowmaking in this business anymore,” Shanaman said without hesitation. It’s no surprise that upgrades to snowmaking are high on his priority list for next year: The plan is to more than double the current capacity.
“We’re gonna keep improving the hill,” he said last week. “We would like to make some more major changes to this lodge.”
As part of what he described as a grander plan, Shanaman wants to expand the ski area by adding trails on a hill on the other side of the ski area’s access road, across the brook that sits in the valley. That means putting a couple lifts in, as well as a bridge and more parking.
The only ski area like it he could think of is Dartmouth Skiway in Lyme, New Hampshire.
“It would make this place very unique in New England and in the country,” Shanaman said. “To have a double-sided valley ski area,” just like in Europe.
The Shanamans as a family took a big leap of faith purchasing Lost Valley. The family relocated from New Hampshire to Auburn amid a lot of uncertainty.
Two of their sons now work for the family businesses. Middle son Mason runs the snowmaking at Lost Valley and oldest son Reece works for Aerial NDT Inspection, based in New Hampshire. Their youngest son, Sawyer, is a ski racer at Edward Little High School in Auburn.
Lost Valley is now a self-sustaining business, Shanaman said proudly during an interview last week. And his mission is clear. “To be a good steward of the business and to make the improvements that need to be made to make it viable into the foreseeable future, and that’s what we’re doing.”
When the family took that leap of faith, they joined a community that had banded together more than a decade ago to save Lost Valley, a special place of memories for a lot of people who learned how to ski in Auburn.
Shanaman said he’s inspired by that regularly. “People come up and thank us all the time.”
We invite you to add your comments. We encourage a thoughtful exchange of ideas and information on this website. By joining the conversation, you are agreeing to our commenting policy and terms of use. More information is found on our FAQs. You can modify your screen name here.
Comments are managed by our staff during regular business hours Monday through Friday as well as limited hours on Saturday and Sunday. Comments held for moderation outside of those hours may take longer to approve.
Join the Conversation
Please sign into your Sun Journal account to participate in conversations below. If you do not have an account, you can register or subscribe. Questions? Please see our FAQs.