There is a ski area in New York State that has a sign in the base lodge pointing the way to "Massachusetts pay phones." That's because half of Catamount is in New York and half is in Massachusetts.
If you ski or snowboard down the trail that is situated on the border of the two states and you make tight turns down the middle, you can be in New York! Massachusetts! New York! Massachusetts! And so on. (I borrowed that line from an old Warren Miller movie.)
Catamount has a funky old base lodge with old skis nailed up on the walls along with international flags and vintage posters. Ed Horowitz, the area's group sales director, told me he rounded up all that stuff himself. Catamount skiers donated much of it.
Horowitz is a retired transplant from the Bronx. He has a nametag that reads "Fast Eddie." It was my first time at Catamount and from the start he made me feel welcome with his sarcastic humor. A young girl was given a taste of it when she told him she left her season pass at home.
Fast Eddie said many times skiers will show up with six or more tickets still on their jackets. This makes it difficult for the lift attendants to check. He offers to cut the old ones off. A few years ago he decided to save them. There are tickets from all over ski country in a big frame in the lodge.
Catamount opened in 1939. The mountain had three rope tows, two 1,000 feet long, the third 800 feet long. In 1974 the current owners, Bill Gilbert and Don Edwards, purchased the area.
Gilbert created and marketed the first airless snowguns. These snow cannons are energy-efficient in that they use electrically powered fans, rather than compressed air, to make snow. Gilbert founded Snow Machines, Inc., which became a leader in fan-type snowmaking and remains so today. Gilbert sold his interest in SMI and, together with Edwards, purchased the Catamount ski area.
When Gilbert and Edwards took over, less than 25 percent of the terrain was covered by snowmaking. Today Catamount has 350 updated versions of the snow cannons Gilbert invented nearly 40 years ago. They can cover more than 98 percent of the terrain. Snowmaking capacity also increased by 30 percent after Catamount tapped into a nearby pond and added a bigger pump. Lifts have been updated with a triple chair, a quad and a Wonder Carpet.
Catamount claims to have the steepest trail in the Berkshires, but it was closed the day I was there. They also say the area has the Berkshires' longest run: over two miles. Prices are reasonable; weekday tickets (Monday-Thursday) cost $20. The area offers night skiing Wednesday through Saturday.
The ski area has two addresses, two zip codes and two phone numbers. It's on Route 23 in Hillsdale, N.Y. and South Egremont, Mass. That's just a little west of Great Barrington.
By now, however, the sign in the base lodge about the pay phones seems a little outdated; most of the skiers and snowboarders I saw using the phone that day were on their own cell phones.
