PITTSFIELD, Mass. - A lot of work has gone into renovations at Bousquet Mountain to get it ready for this year’s ski season. The biggest addition is a brand new 15,000 square foot base lodge, which will offer several new amenities once it opens next month.
“So we have a patio here, which is heated, that will have fireplaces circling the front face of the patio,” said Bousquet general manager, Kevin McMillan, outside the mountain-facing side of the lodge. “We’ll have Adirondack chairs out here. And then up here will be second story deck off of the bar and the restaurant, and I would imagine that’s going to be a pretty popular place.”
Further up the mountain, there’s evidence of the work done on several of the trails as well.
“You can see right up through the tree islands here to your right that we’ve cleared out all the tree islands,” said McMillan, on an ATV ride up the mountain. “And then this is ‘Russell’ that we’re working on right now. We’ve widened ‘Russell’ probably by around 15-20 feet as well.”
There will be a couple new trails for skiers to try out this year, as well as a new terrain park, revamped tubing area, and expanded snowmaking capabilities.
“Last year, we added 32 snow guns, this year we’ve added 42 snow guns, so we’ve increased our capacity to cover the mountain considerably,” said McMillan. “It means we can get more of the mountain open earlier, and we can recover inclement weather that much quicker as well.”
The improvements are part of an effort to help Bousquet compete with some of the bigger mountains nearby, but the goal is to still have the familiar small-mountain feel locals know and love.
“We wouldn’t survive without the city of Pittsfield, and I think that really, I think Bousquet is important to the city of Pittsfield too,” said McMillan. “I met somebody yesterday, a local who said that Bousquet is as important to Pittsfield as Tanglewood is to Lenox, you know, and I think that’s true.”