Sugarloaf Moving Forward With West Mountain Expansion, Making for Largest East Coast Terrain Increase in Over a Decade

A view up Sugarloaf Mountain in January 2022.

Background

Maine’s Sugarloaf ski resort is seeing a major expansion for the 2023-24 season, according to a release from the mountain this morning. As previously hinted at in its Sugarloaf 2030 master plan, the resort is adding a brand new high-speed quad—named the Bucksaw Express—and adding 12 new trails of beginner and intermediate difficulty in the currently undeveloped West Mountain zone. The new Bucksaw chair will top out where the West Mountain Double currently ends, and will provide access to the mid-mountain Bullwinkle’s Restaurant. The existing West Mountain lift, which really only serves one parking-access trail, will be shortened to “eliminate redundancy and congestion at the unload area”.

The expansion is expected to add nearly 300 acres of terrain, making it the largest addition to an East Coast ski resort since Sugarloaf’s own Brackett Basin and Burnt Mountain upgrades a decade ago. If excluding Sugarloaf’s own developments, the West Mountain project is the largest East Coast ski resort enhancement since at least the 20th century. Depending on the final footprint measurement, the new expansion may turn Sugarloaf into the largest ski resort on the East Coast (Killington’s skiable footprint is currently just 269 acres larger than Sugarloaf’s).

While the base of the Bucksaw lift won’t have any new parking, the new West Mountain trails will provide ski-in/ski-out access to several new condo developments. Approximately 200 new homes are expected to be built upon completion, and all will be developed and listed by Sugarloaf’s real estate arm.

Trail clearing is already underway; the Bucksaw Express is expected to start operating in early 2024.

This Sugarloaf conceptual drawing illustrates the proposed Bucksaw Express, new trails, and condo developments, as well as the shortened West Mountain Double.

Our Take

Besides the notably variable openings for its Brackett Basin and Snowfields expert terrain, Sugarloaf has two key downsides: a rather ordinary feeling front side (despite its large raw size for the East Coast), and slow lifts in many areas. Next season’s West Mountain upgrades look to address both of these shortcomings.

With the exception of the runs off the Timberline quad—which is slow and cold—and a handful of lower-mountain trails that wind through real estate, the beginner and intermediate runs at Sugarloaf all feel pretty similar to one another. As a result, Sugarloaf’s current beginner and intermediate climate is pretty blasé. By living on a new face of the mountain, we’re hopeful this new pod will make the resort more interesting for these abilities.

The new expansion is also notable because it will be served by a high-speed lift. As of today, Sugarloaf only has two high-speed quads, the Whiffletree and Sugarloaf SuperQuads. Both of these lifts get incredibly overwhelmed in their current state, with the Sugarloaf SuperQuad providing the only high-speed access to a sizable chunk of the lower half of the main mountain, and Whiffletree providing the only high-speed access to beginner terrain. While next year’s upgrades will not address the lack of high-speed chairlifts in upper mountain areas, the presence of a third high-speed quad—and one that serves new beginner and intermediate terrain—will hopefully reduce the burden at Sugarloaf’s workhorse lifts.

But perhaps most importantly—and as discussed in detail by the Storm Skiing Journal earlier today—the West Mountain condominium developments are likely to provide a welcome source of revenue to Sugarloaf as it engages in additional on-mountain improvement projects. The resort is planning multiple lift, snowmaking, and facilities upgrades over the latter half of the decade, and they won’t be cheap. The fates of many of these projects will probably be tied to how successfully Sugarloaf can market its new ski-in/ski-out homes.

Sugarloaf isn’t likely to become the best mountain on the East Coast from next season’s upgrades, but it may very well see a transformed beginner and intermediate experience. We’re looking forward to returning to Sugarloaf in early 2024 to see how the West Mountain terrain expansion shapes up.

Considering a ski trip to Sugarloaf this year? Check out our full East Coast rankings, as well as our comprehensive Sugarloaf review.