Join author and longtime Cannon skier Meghan McCarthy McPhaul to learn about the history of this historic mountain that is steeped in legends and lore. Rising at the western edge of New Hampshire's magnificently beautiful Franconia Notch State Park, the granite-domed mountain has been the playground of skiers since the 1930s. Here, the country's first down-mountain ski trail was cleared in 1933, the first aerial tramway was built on the mountain and the first professional ski patrol was established. More than a dozen members of the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame--whose contributions to the sport include historic racing feats, the development of ski techniques and designing countless ski areas across the country and around the world--have called Cannon their home hill.
Meghan McCarthy McPhaul has been skiing at Cannon Mountain since she was a small child in the 1970s. After spending five years in the mountains of Colorado, she returned to the East and began a career as a small-town newspaper reporter, earning accolades and professional journalism awards while working on the side as a ski coach. She continues to write for local and regional publications, and her work has recently been included in two collections of essays: Wildbranch: An Anthology of Nature, Environmental, and Place-based Writing and Beyond the Notches: Stories of Place in New Hampshire's North Country. For more information, visit meghanmcphaul.com.