Casee Hart learned to ski at Hermon Mountain about 25 years ago, and the detail she remembers most is falling off the T-bar and getting pulled out of a tree by Bill Whitcomb himself. That's the kind of story that only happens at a hill small enough for the owner to know your name. This past April, Casee and her husband Dave, along with Tim and Amy McClary, became the ones who own that hill.
For anyone who has driven past Hermon Mountain all summer and wondered why the parking lot suddenly had cars in it, here's what actually happened, and why the answer isn't just "new owners."
The Three-Year Sale Nobody Rushed
The Whitcomb family had run Hermon Mountain for more than 40 years, expanding it with a new lift and lodge back in 2003. They put it up for sale in May of 2022, but they weren't in a hurry to hand it to just anyone. It took until mid-December of 2025 for a group of buyers with real ties to the town to get a deal under contract, and the sale didn't close until April 30, 2026, at a price of $2.1 million.
The buyers weren't outside investors looking at a distressed asset. The McClarys have skied Hermon Mountain for a decade, and their daughters, now 14 and 15, started on those slopes at ages 3 and 4. The Hart kids, 6 and 9, learned there too. Bill and Marlene Whitcomb stayed on as what the new owners call cheerleaders, a phone call away during the transition.
None of that history changes the math a ski hill in Maine has to solve. A place that makes its money from November to March and sits empty the other seven months is a hard business to keep afloat as costs rise, and it's the same bet a shrinking number of small, family-run mountains across the state have had to make as ownership turns over. Hermon Mountain's new owners didn't wait for the first snowfall to start testing that bet. They opened for business two months after closing.
What Actually Opened This Summer
By mid-July, the mountain had a working restaurant and a finished disc golf course, both open the same week.
- Scenic Eats, the lodge restaurant, opened serving pizza, burgers, subs, and salads.
- An 18-hole disc golf course opened to the public, with co-owner Tim McClary describing the closing hole as "a 900-foot bomber from up on Cloud 9."
- Summer hours ran Thursday through Sunday, giving the mountain a reason to have cars in the lot on a July afternoon for the first time in its history.
Amy McClary has been straightforward about the pace of it, calling this summer a condensed preview of what's coming rather than the finished version. The disc golf course already has plans for a weekly league, and a cornhole league is next on the list.
What The Town Asked For, And What Showed Up
Back in February, before the sale had even closed, the Whitcombs asked the community on Facebook what they'd want to see if the mountain kept going. The responses give a good read on what Hermon residents actually wanted out of their local hill, and comparing that list to what opened by midsummer says something about which ideas were realistic on a short timeline and which ones are still just talk.
| Residents asked for (Feb. 2026) | What opened by midsummer |
|---|---|
| Mountain biking trails | Not yet built |
| Kayak and paddleboat rentals on the pond | Not yet offered |
| Small concerts and wine tastings | Not yet scheduled |
| Disc golf | Open, 18 holes, since July |
| Food on site | Open, Scenic Eats |
| Fall foliage lift rides | Under consideration, not confirmed |
The pattern here is worth sitting with. The additions that required construction on someone else's schedule, mountain biking trails, boat rentals, a concert series, haven't materialized yet. The ones that a small ownership group could build themselves over a couple of months, a kitchen and a disc golf course, did. That's not a criticism of the pace. It's a reasonable order of operations for two families running a mountain while also raising four kids between them.
The Monday That Didn't Used To Exist
Winter is where the real structural change shows up. Dave Hart has said the core ski and snowboard operation will stay largely the same this coming season, but with longer hours, and for the first time in the mountain's history, it will be open on Mondays. That extra day is meant to make room for more ski school sessions, though the McClarys and Harts are still working out exact hours. Dave and Tim reportedly spent last winter learning the snowmaking process themselves, which suggests they're not treating the seven-day schedule as a stretch goal announced before the equipment can back it up.
The fall piece is still a maybe. The owners have talked about running the ski lift up to the summit during foliage season for cider and doughnuts, the kind of low-cost, high-charm addition that fits everything else they've built this year. Nothing has been confirmed on a date, so it's worth checking the mountain's own site before you plan a foliage trip around it.
Why It Matters If You Live Here
Hermon Mountain spent decades as a place you thought about for maybe four months a year. What the Harts and McClarys have built since April turns it into something closer to a standing appointment, whether that's a Thursday dinner at Scenic Eats, a disc golf round on a Sunday afternoon, or ski lessons on a Monday that didn't used to exist. Dave Hart put it simply when the restaurant and course opened: the mountain has always been a gathering place for the town in winter, and the goal now is for it to be one all year.
That kind of change, a business finding a reason for the town to show up nine months instead of four, doesn't happen without people who already had a stake in the place deciding it was worth the risk. It's part of what makes Hermon feel like a town that's still adding to itself rather than just holding steady, and that's the sort of detail that matters whether you're grabbing a burger at the new lodge or just keeping an eye on the neighborhood you've already chosen to call home.
If you're weighing what that kind of momentum means for your own property here, or just curious what your home might be worth in today's market, Aimi Baldwin Real Estate is happy to talk it through. Request a free home valuation whenever you're ready, no pressure, no obligation, just a straight answer from a team that pays attention to what's actually changing in this town.
