theberkshireedge.com
Yea, Ski Butternut has been my "home mountain" for about 30 years - we live about 15 minutes from the ski area. I never knew Channing personally (my wife learned to ski there when it first opened in the mid-60's and she knew Channing fairly well) but he was the owner and operator when I first started skiing there in the early 90's. He was a constant presence at the area during ski season. In the lodge greeting skiers, out at the lifts to make sure they were running properly, and keeping a close watch on the overall operations. He had the reputation for being a shrewd businessman who kept a close watch on the expenses and ran a tight ship fiscally. He was also very frugal, so he never borrowed huge amounts of money to expand, never got into real estate development (there are no condos or houses at the mountain) and apparently always made a profit every year. As I said, a throw back to the early days of ski area development. It doesn't really exist any more.
Yea, the accident was tragic but also somewhat irresponsible. He was an avid biker but never wore a bike helmet and he liked going fast on his bike so he would "draft" behind trucks going down hill. Apparently, he was riding his bike up in Maine one day and was drafting behind a truck going down hill and he hit either a pot hole or depressed man hole cover in the road that he didn't see and went flying off his bike and landed on his head, suffering significant brain damage from which he never recovered. It cut his active and productive life short. Terrible.
