The lack of snow and high temperatures made for a dismal 2011-12 ski season for many New England mountains.

WSJ: Skier visits up 20 percent at Northeast ski areas

Collier, who was single, was an avid participant in trips to the mountains of New England that he hiked as a boy.

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And with a cold April, ski mountains in northern New England stayed open longer than last year, when record-high temperatures in March forced many to shut down.

WSJ: Skier visits up 20 percent at Northeast ski areas

In 2011, severe springtime flooding followed by Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee in late summer washed out roads throughout mountains of New York and New England as culverts not designed for such enormous volumes of water were overwhelmed.

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He finally visited Indian Ovens in March after getting permission from the 84-year-old woman who owns the site at the northern end of the Taconic Mountains, a range running along the New York-New England border from northwest Connecticut to southern Vermont.

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Reared in the honest precincts of New England, she could not get used to Texas place-names that advertised mountains that were barely more than hummocks or supposedly mighty lakes that would not have qualified as a pond back home.

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