General Information & Bathroom Lowdown :
With over 15 groomed trails ranging from beginner to advanced, you will be sure to find a trail that meets your cross-country ski and/or snowshoe ability at Five Fields Farm. Five Fields Farm also maintains groomed trails on the Bald Pate Mountain Preserve with snowshoe accessibility to the summit of Bald Pate Mountain.
Trail passes can be purchased at Five Fields Farm’s heated lodge (720 S Bridgton Rd, Bridgton, Maine). They also have cross country ski and snowshoe rentals for adults and children available.
Speaking of the lodge, you will be able to leave your gear in the wood stove heated lodge. You will also find flush toilet bathrooms available in a small building just outside the lodge.
Five Fields Farm is also a WinterKids Passport location! Children 17 and younger can ski or snowshoe for FREE! This also includes FREE rentals! And…you are able to use the WinterKids Passport up to TWO times here!
With ever-changing winter conditions, always check the trail conditions before heading out to see what trails are open!
WinterKids Ambassador Tip: Cell service can be spotty here and really drained my phone’s battery. Be sure to bring a car charger with you or power down your phone when you can.
Our Adventure:
We headed out to Five Fields Farm on a early Thursday morning and were rewarded with PERFECT skiing conditions! Blue skies, warm temps, and perfect snow conditions!
We checked in at the lodge with Five Fields Farm employee, Nathan, who gave us a rundown of recommended trails and helped us with my daughter’s cross-country ski rentals. He was so lovely to work with!
And after bringing in our gear to get suited up for our day, I made the lovely (not really) realization that I had forgotten my daughter’s ski pants at home (!!!). Not having a waterproof bottom layer was going to be problematic.
After trying to rig something together with a pair of gaiters that Nathan found, I decided that a 15 minute drive to the Reny’s in Bridgton was probably our best option. So off we went.
Reny’s proved somewhat successful. They had just turned over their seasonal gear and our only option was a pair of size small women’s rainpants. So…we cinched them as much as a could around the waist, rolled them up three times, and headed back to Five Fields Farm.
WinterKids Ambassador Tip: Forgetting things happens to the best of us. To minimize forgetting things, before an adventure, create a list of items you will need to take with you. Double check this list before you head out.
When we returned to Five Fields Farm, another WinterKids person had checked in at the lodge and left my daughter a WinterKids hat. It was a fun gift that we wouldn’t have received, if we hadn’t had our ski pants debacle.
And while we were never able to find this person on the trail, I’ll say it here: THANK YOU. My daughter really appreciated being able to match me with her hat!
I initially picked an easy 2 mile loop on a trail called the Graveyard Loop (trail #4 on the map) but my daughter isn’t a fan of downhill sections on her cross-country skis so we ended up staying on the top part of the trail and going back-and-forth where there was a gentle grade and she could practice getting a little more speed.
While I would have loved to complete the loop, it wasn’t worth the tears that came when I tried to push her outside of her comfort zone. And, if I’m being completely honest, it was way more fun having little races in the classic tracks at top of the orchard than dealing with tears just trying to do the loop I planned for us.
After our lunch and cocoa break in the sun on the chairs outside of the lodge, we switched over to our snowshoes for a short hike through a different section of their orchard.
WinterKids Ambassador Tip: If looking for easier trails at Five Fields Farm, the top of the orchard and the groomed trails on the shared land with Loon Echo Land Trust are a bit gentler.
Trail Recommendations:
- For cross country skiing: I recommend Graveyard Loop (trail #4). There is a little downhill section on the southeastern side of the trail but otherwise, it is pretty flat.
- For snowshoeing: I recommend Back to the Barn (trail #7) and a small loop that includes some of Graveyard Loop (#4) to Bitter End (#9) to Ashfield Field (#10)
Cost:
Important things to note about the cost breakdown below:
The WinterKids Passport program costs $40/family. We are planning on doing ten outings this winter, so I divided the cost of the passport by our intended number of outings (*$4/outing). This is how I incorporated the cost of the passport below.
I will be using the government mileage rate to determine the cost of each trip.
Also, in full transparency, as a WinterKids Ambassador, I was gifted the Passport so while this “fee” isn’t a true cost to my family, I wanted to represent the truest depiction of an outing cost as possible.
- Cross Country Ski & Snowshoe Tickets: 1 Adult: $20, 1 Child: $0
- Rentals: $0
- Mileage: $52.20
- Snacks & Lunch brought from Home: $10
- Passport Program “Fee”: $4*
Total Cost: $86.50
For more on our Winter Adventures, as well as all of other adventures, check out my posts on Instagram and Facebook.
Thank you for reading this blog on The Wandering Chickadee!
~Natalie