Joe Cushing Receives Lifetime Achievement Award
If you’ve ever ridden down a ski trail that gracefully flows down the mountain, you may have Joe Cushing to thank.
Joe joined Sno.engineering (now SE Group) in 1961 and spent his 35-year career working with ski areas to improve their trail network or start their operations from scratch. Joe had the opportunity to explore more than 400 ski areas with over 150 of them implementing some or all his design influences. As a pioneer in ski area design, he was inducted into the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2014 to recognize the profound impact he had on the ski industry. His work can be found all over the world at resorts from Colorado to Nova Scotia. He described one of the first times he saw his design come to life at Bretton Woods saying, “it was like…heaven.”
This month, Joe received the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by Ski NH. The Lifetime Achievement Award is given to an individual that has devoted a large part of their career to improving the New Hampshire ski area experience. As a New Hampshire native, Joe’s robust portfolio includes over 10% of his projects in New Hampshire including Cranmore, Loon, Attitash, and Bretton Woods.
His son, Chris Cushing, joined SE Group in 1985, where he is now Principal of Mountain Planning and uses the wisdom and knowledge his father taught him to teach the next generation of Mountain Planners. During the presentation of Joe's Lifetime Achievement Award, Chris wrote, "And as we bring new mountain planners into SE Group, I think of how you taught me as I help them understand what makes a truly great ski run. I want you to know how thankful I am for taking me under your wing, setting me up for my own career and giving me the inspiration to pass your insights on to the folks that will be doing it for the next 30+ years."
Joe was recently interviewed by Bretton Woods General Manager, Chris Ellms to celebrate the resort’s 50th anniversary. You can watch the interview here to learn more about Joe and the work that he did at Bretton Woods, one of his first signature projects and where his career as a Mountain Planner began.
