Notes on Wildcat from the ski area

vftt.org

Help Support vftt.org:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

jniehof

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 31, 2008
Messages
1,130
Reaction score
49
Location
Dover,NH
I haven't seen anybody mentioning doing Wildcat from the ski area yet this winter, so some beta...the short is no real change from years past.

The uphill route is either Polecat all the way (per this page) or Stray Cat-Middle Polecat-Catnap-Upper Polecat (this page). It isn't posted at the area and of course the trail signs are all oriented for downhill. We "kept left" on the way up (Stray Cat etc.) and that worked fine; Polecat definitely had more traffic than Stray Cat or Catnap. No real problems avoiding skiers but we did swap sides of the trail a few times to stay visible. We came down behind ski patrol doing their final sweep so we took Lower Polecat instead of Stray Cat, a little gentler. We found a couple of places that could have been the cutover from the ski trails to Wildcat Ridge trail north of D, but the only one that we found from the other side was on the summit of D itself, not really saving anything. We didn't follow any of them.

Uphill is still $10, buy at the lift ticket desk, just ask for a hiking pass and they knew what we were talking about (it's not on the pricing board.) No ID or anything; I bought all the passes for my group while they booted up.

We interacted with several Wildcat employees on the mountain, including one who chatted for five minutes who was clearly evaluating that we knew what we were about, but very nicely. Nobody did obvious checks for the pass. Everybody was really friendly and treated us as equal participants on the mountain with every right to be there. Very positive experience.

Wildcat Ridge is now broken out, thanks to Sunshine and Bobcat who did more than their share from the other side. Overall this is a great route and I highly recommend; great views and worth the $10 IMO.
 
Top