Sel Hannah was a potato farmer and ski area designer from Franconia, N.H.  He was a former Dartmouth and Olympic ski team member who became a pioneering ski area designer His early work in the late 1930's and for most of the 1940's was at Cannon Mountain in Franconia Notch. Sel laid out the trail system at Big Squaw in Greenville, Maine,  including recently developed glades that were part of his original plans. “The Penobscot Trail was mentioned in Sel Hannah’s obituary as his best work,” said McFarland. 

Sel and wife Paulie founded Sno Engineering which was responsible for the design and layout of dozens of ski areas all across the country.

Verland Swede Ohlson, died in 2003 at age 86.  He was of Center Conway, died at home on Dec. 7.  He was born in 1917 in Duhring, Pa., the fifth of six children of Fred Ohlson, a Swedish immigrant, and Anna Beckwith Ohlson. He grew up in logging camps and farms in western New York state. He was a WWII veteran serving in the elite First Special Service Forces. They were trained in snow warfare, mountaineering, amphibious assault and parachuting. He had a long and distinguished career with the U.S. Forest Service, working in Montana, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maine and New Hampshire. He was Saco District Ranger for 23 years, starting in 1957, when the Kancamagus Highway was an incomplete dirt road. His love of forest and trees was evident in the thousands of trees he planted over his lifetime, in his yard, his childrens yards and just about any place he could put one.