Winter 2009
Air Force
Brattleboro rallies to revive its ski jump
By Robert Audette
Rickety and at its end, the Harris Hill Ski Jump was closed in 2005, and it seemed as if ski jumping would never return to Brattleboro, a town with an 80-year legacy of hosting, watching and tempting fate at the site.
But as so often happens in Vermont, the community came out in force. "This is a beloved tradition in Brattleboro, says Liz Richards, who, along with Patricia Howell, chaired a fundraising campaign that eventually drummed up about $600,000. "All the professional fundraisers said ‘I wouldn't try this if I were you,' says Howell. "But we said: ‘No, we are not going to let this hill die on our watch.' Reopened last February, the site attracted a record 8,000 spectators and a field of about two dozen world-class jumpers to the 85th annual Fred Harris Memorial weekend. The only 90-meter ski jump in New England, Harris Hill is now set up to launch a second century of thrills in what is still the granddaddy of extreme winter sports.
