When I started working at Gunstock, I was amazed by the number of friends who, when they reached out to congratulate me, had a Gunstock story or memory to share. And it continues whenever I meet someone new and tell them where I work. It seems like everyone has a fondness for this Lakes Region resort … and a beloved story to tell about their experience here. The fact is, I have one of my own.

I don’t remember exactly what year it was - sometime in the late 1960s when I was a little kid - that I went on a camping weekend to Gunstock. I come from a camping family. We started our adventures with a big canvas wall tent when I was a toddler and graduated to a tent trailer. We upgraded to a 16-foot trailer, then a 22-foot trailer, and my parents finally upgraded to a 27-foot Airstream that they eventually towed to Melbourne, Florida, where they spent the early years of their retirement living among a large community of shiny, silver trailers. I still love to camp, but I’ve returned to my roots – car camping with a tent.

When I was a kid, we were members of a local chapter of the North American Family Campers Association and spent many weekends, from mid-May to late October, meeting up with other families for safaris throughout New England. We would gather in a designated department store parking lot in my hometown on a Friday night and convoy to some designated group area in an established campground or sometimes in some private hayfield belonging to a friend of a club member. I never knew what to expect; it was always an adventure, and I developed a group of camping friends.

One weekend, our destination was a big open area at the base of a New Hampshire ski area called Gunstock. The campers circled up like a Conestoga wagon train. Dad would chock the tires and level the trailer with jacks while mom organized our outdoor sitting area with folding lawn chairs – the tubular aluminum kind with woven webbing on the seats and backs. The weekends of my youth were punctuated with the sound of those chairs opening and closing. I would always connect with my camping club friends and explore our new surroundings. The club’s organizers filled the days with activities, social events, potluck dinners and relay races for the kids. At Gunstock, the lure of a wide, grassy ski trail leading toward the sky was all it took to grab my attention, and I spent hours hiking toward the top of the mountain. I had never been skiing, but I pictured the trail in its winter glory, covered with snow and dotted with daredevil skiers schussing down the incredibly steep vertical. A decade would pass before I stepped into ski bindings for the first time at a different New England Mountain. But once I tried skiing, I was hooked.

The memories have faded, but these many years later I find myself skiing Gunstock and trying to identify exactly where it was that we set camp for that weekend jamboree. And what trail was it I hiked up that day? I’m pretty sure our group camped in what is now the Pistol parking lot. I recall it being more of a grassy field back then, so I can’t be certain. We weren’t in the Gunstock Campground. And I suspect Pistol was the trail I hiked that day. 

I came to accept that those details would remain a mystery until one day when I was out skiing around the mountain. It was the first time I pointed my skis down the Pistol trail – familiarizing myself with my new home mountain’s layout. I stopped part way down the trail and looking out at the view I felt an intense déjà vu experience. I was immediately transported through time to that summer many years ago. That stunning view was my reward back then for slogging through the deep grass on the hill that day, and my mind’s eye snapped a photo that had been buried deep in the recesses of my memory. I’m 10 years old again every time I am on that trail; only I’m now one of the skiers I imagined ripping down that snowy slope, and Pistol has become one of my all-time favorite trails because of it.