Saddleback names a longtime leader as general manager, succeeding Andy Shepard
Courtesy / Saddleback Mountain
Jim Quimby, formerly a senior vice president at Saddleback, has been named general manager of the Rangeley resort.
Saddleback Ski Resort has named a new general manager, less than a month after CEO and general manager Andy Shepard left his role because of health problems.
After starting with the resort in 1997 as a volunteer ski patroller, Jim Quimby, the Rangeley resort’s senior vice president of mountain operations, is now GM.
Quimby began managing ski patrol and safety operations in 2003. The 20-plus-year Air Force veteran rose through the ranks at Saddleback, holding various operation leadership roles until the mountain's closure during the 2014-2015 season. He later played a key role in the revival and reopening.
The lifelong Rangeley native led the installation of the resort’s first high-speed chairlift. Among his new orders of business as general manager will be to upgrade snowmaking capacity and increase employee housing availability.
Quimby succeeds Andy Shepard, who was a driving force of the resort’s rebirth years after its closure. In early June, Shepard said concerns about the health of his back forced him to step down and focus entirely on Saddleback’s philanthropic and community development efforts. Those include improving child-care access, developing local workforce housing, and helping seasonal workers find year-round employment.
Prior to its closure, Saddleback was an economic backbone of the region, supporting dozens of local businesses while serving as the area’s largest single employer. Boston-based Arctaris Impact Fund purchased the mountain in January 2020, aiming to bring new life to the resort and restore the hundreds of local jobs lost with its closure.
Significant hurdles were ahead of the team at that point. According to Shepard, a series of deferred maintenance projects were left over from the prior owners, leading the team to build “everything from scratch.”
“All the things that made the mountain unprofitable before had to be addressed,” Shepard said in an interview with Mainebiz.
Then, of course, the pandemic struck, causing even more issues for the revitalization.
“We bought the mountain and were meeting with architects when the pandemic hit. We talked about what it would take to get the mountain open at a time like that and we decided to create the safest air quality possible. We put in massive air duct and HVAC systems. We put ‘outdoor quality air’ indoors,” Shepard said. “Even if COVID went away, there would still be cold season and flu season, and we needed to keep it safe for people.”
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