Cannon Mountain

The Old Man of the Mountain was a natural formation, five granite ledges jutting from a high cliff on Cannon that lined up, from below, into the profile of a craggy face gazing north out of the notch. Settlers took note of it in the early 1800s, and over the following two centuries it grew into the defining symbol of New Hampshire, celebrated by writers, painted and photographed endlessly, and chosen as the official state emblem. The great orator Daniel Webster famously said the mountain hung out a sign showing that here God makes men.

The ledges were always slowly loosening, held by cables and epoxy in the twentieth century in a long fight against gravity and frost. In the early hours of May 3, 2003, the effort finally lost, and the face collapsed and slid down the mountain. Today a memorial plaza at the base beside Profile Lake honors it, with steel profiler rods you can line up by eye to see, floating against the empty cliff, exactly where the great stone face once looked out.

Cannon holds another first that changed American mountains forever. In the 1930s a champion downhill skier came back from Europe convinced that the cable tramways he had ridden in the Alps belonged in the White Mountains, and in June 1938 the Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway opened as the first passenger aerial tramway in North America. More than a hundred thousand people rode it that first summer, and over the decades since, the tram has carried millions to the top.

The original cars were replaced in 1980 by a bright new pair nicknamed by their colors, and the tram still climbs the mountain today, lifting riders from the notch floor to the 4,080-foot summit in a few soaring minutes. At the top a short loop trail and an observation tower open a full circle of White Mountain wilderness, ridge behind ridge, with Mount Washington and the Presidentials off to the east.

Cannon has long been one of New England's most respected ski mountains, a state-run area known less for luxury than for steep, exposed, weather-hardened terrain that earns its skiers their turns. Racers trained here for generations, and the mountain's reputation for honest, challenging skiing draws people who want the real thing. At the tramway base, the New England Ski Museum, founded in the 1970s, tells the whole story of skiing in the region, from wooden skis and rope tows to the birth of the tram.

All of it sits inside Franconia Notch, one of the most spectacular mountain passes in the East, where the granite walls close in so tightly that the interstate narrows to squeeze through. Just down the notch lie the Flume Gorge, Echo Lake, and Profile Lake, so Cannon is not a stop so much as the anchor of a whole day of White Mountain wonders strung along a single dramatic pass.

Cannon sits right off the parkway that runs through Franconia Notch, an easy stop between the little towns of Franconia and Lincoln. In the warm months you can ride the aerial tramway to the summit, or, for the more ambitious, hike up on steep trails and ride down, or the reverse. In winter the mountain turns to skiing, and the tram and slopes run with the snow, so the season decides what is open.

However you reach the top, dress for the summit, not the base, because a true 4,000-footer is far colder and windier up high and can vanish into cloud within minutes. Give the notch a full day if you can: the summit view, the Old Man memorial at Profile Lake, the ski museum, and the other wonders strung down the pass make Cannon Mountain one of the richest single stops in the White Mountains.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.