Sunday, March 18, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
By Marty Basch
For as long as there has been a King Pine ski area, there's been a Hoyt around to teach skiing, sell lift tickets and, when snowmaking was introduced, make snow.
"This is a way of life," says general manager Bob Hoyt, 64. "I wouldn't have chosen a different career. You become personally involved with the guests which is so rewarding."
The family connection extends well beyond the 1962 start of the small ski area in East Madison the Hoyts have owned for fifty years.
In the late 1800s, the first family members came and operated a mineral spring water bottling operation. The clan's holdings eventually grew when Purity Spring Resort opened in 1911.
Today, skiers and riders largely come to learn first turns at the ski area opened by E. Milton Hoyt, a former teacher.
Bob is Milt's son and when his daughter Alison graduates from Cornell, she plans to follow the groomed tracks set before her and join the fifth generation that also owns the adjacent Camp Tohkomeupog for Boys dating back to 1932 and the nearby Danforth Bay Camping and RV Resort and adult-only Bluffs RV Resort.
But first she must spend at least two years outside the family business before returning. That's a new rule her father's generation installed.
"By going outside the family, she can get a lot of experience and see how other people do things," said her father. "Maybe she'll come back with a few bright ideas."
Her cousins came back. Andrew Mahoney, 43, spent a couple of years being a Vail, Colo. ski bum and working at an on-mountain restaurant. He's now assistant general manager. Steven Hoyt, 44, followed the hospitality route to Marco Island, Florida and a New England hotel chain before coming home to manage year-round Purity Spring.
"Vail's fast paced environment gave me an insight into how a larger company worked," said Mahoney.
With a century of mountain hospitality, rounding out the fourth generation working clan are the semi-retired president Ted Hoyt, 71, and Susie Hoyt, 55, a bookkeeper.
The Hoyts are a family for every season.
The 17-trail ski area is only big to young children and novice skiers and riders. There's a scant 350 vertical feet and nary a high speed detachable quad.
Each trail has the word "Pine" in it, an historical nod to England's King George who sent his men in the 1700s to acquire eastern white pines.
Though most trails are mellow and short, and some serve views to frozen Purity Lake below, the expert Pine Broule offers a stomach-churning steep pitch while the Twisted Pine Terrain Park has requisite air opportunities.
"We definitely want to have terrain for all abilities," said Mahoney. "As kids get older they want to challenge themselves a little bit more."
Skiing started on the Hoyt acreage about a generation before the first chairlift went in. Milt, son of property founder Edward E. Hoyt, was enamored by the new sport of skiing gracing northern New England and put in a rope tow comprised of Model A truck parts in 1938 on an area called Bald Ledge behind the Purity Spring country inn. Over the years rope tows came and went. He even set up a week-long winter ski camp (now with snowboarding) during February school vacations. The snow camp predated King Pine and will turn 75 next winter.
But he also realized the need to compete. Nearby ski areas like Cranmore and Black were installing newfangled chairlifts. Rope tows didn't cut it.
In 1962, King Pine opened with three trails and a double chairlift.
"In the ski industry you are either on the leading edge or keeping up," said Bob Hoyt. "My dad realized to hold on to winter business he needed a chairlift to maintain the business. We may be small, but we have to keep abreast of the industry."
The Hoyts are also trying to weather other changes in the snow-dependent industry like declining length of stays and ski days.
"We are definitely a feeder area with our place in the ski world," Bob Hoyt said. "No doubt about it. Unfortunately so many learning hills near population centers have closed. If smaller areas were more alive I think skier visits would be nationwide."
As Mahoney, who oversees the boys' camp in summer, says, "We're a multi-generation of owner operators with multi-generations of guests. This business is like the New England weather. The weather changes every season and so does your job."