Veteran ski coach and New Hampshire native Mike Kenney has won his bid to designate Cannon Mountain Ski Resort as an official USSA training site. Mike Kenney had been coaching for 20 years for American skiing greats like Bode Miller when he decided his hometown of Franconia, NH, had the perfect terrain for elite racers to speed and slalom train.
The East coast has precious few areas sanctioned by the USSA for this type of training so the addition of Cannon Mountain will hopefully facilitate new crop of talent from the area. The USSA contract with Cannon calls for 20 days a year for camps according to a Boston Globe article. There are only three other sites in the US with similar training facilities, Copper Mt. Colorado, Sun Valley Idaho and Park City Utah.
There is some work to be done to bring Cannon up to the standards needed for this type of training including additional snowmaking, a new T-bar and safety netting. Once complete the area will also be attractive to international teams looking to train for events held on the East coast like the Woman’s World Cup at Killington in 2016, the 2017 US National Alpine Championships at Sugarloaf. Congratulations to Cannon Mountain!
