Meet the first family of skiing in the Philadelphia region
Spring Mountain, a ski hill in Montgomery County owned by Rick and Gayle Buckman, was almost sold off for housing.
The late Leon Buckman knew a lot about plumbing, heating, and swimming pools. He knew powdered chlorine, but not fresh powder.
As far as any living Buckman can recall, neither Leon nor his late wife, Betty, ever put on skis and hit the slopes in Switzerland or even Spring Mountain — elevation 528 feet — right in the family’s backyard in Montgomery County.
“I’m 99% sure they never skied,” said Brad Buckman, senior vice president and owner of Buckman’s Inc.
If you’ve skied or snowboarded, or simply sought out quality cold weather experiences, though, you’ve likely heard of the Buckmans. They’ve been the undisputed first family of winter fun in the Philadelphia region for 50-plus years. In 1971, Leon Buckman branched off from plumbing and pools and, mostly because his kids had a newfound hobby and he had retail space in the winter, he opened Buckman’s Ski & Snowboard Shop in Perkiomenville. Today, Buckman’s has seven locations in Montgomery, Bucks, Chester, Berks, and Lehigh Counties.
A Buckman even owns Spring Mountain, the hill that first indoctrinated the family. Spring Mountain is the closest ski hill to Philadelphia.
“My brother, sister, and I all learned to ski here,” said Rick Buckman, a former Montgomery County commissioner and the mountain’s owner and operator.
Pennsylvania is home to approximately 26 ski hills spread out over various corners of the state, many of them in the Poconos. According to the PA Outdoor Recreation Association, approximately 2.2 million skiers visited the state in the 2022-2023 season, generating an estimated $986 million in economic output.
In recent years, the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources announced that it was seeking to reopen a long-shuttered ski hill at a state park in rural Potter County. For many years, the closest ski destination to Philadelphia was Ski Mountain, in Pine Hill, N.J. It’s now Trump National Golf Club.
On a frigid Friday afternoon in late January, Spring Mountain was bustling with children, adults, and an abundance of instructors in blue, a feature Buckman takes pride in. The mountain employs 180 instructors.
“We are a training mountain and our No. 1 business is lessons. We are close to where people live, to Philadelphia and South Jersey and Delaware. That’s our sell,” Buckman said on the snow. “I encourage everyone to start with lessons.”
While most of the students were children, Stan Hess, 75, said it was never too late to brush up on skills.
“I’ve skied in the past, but I hadn’t skied for five years, so here I am,” Hess said. “I’ve been skiing since I was a teenager but I’m just trying to get my body back.”
Buckman said this winter has been consistently cold and that’s been a boon for Spring Mountain. The mini resort, which features a bar, restaurant, and regulation-size outdoor ice hockey rink, has approximately eight ski and snowboard runs and is about 75 miles south of the Poconos, the typical skiing destination for many Philadelphians. Being farther south, at lower elevations, typically gives Spring Mountain a shorter window for the season.
“When it first opened, in 1962, it only went part way up and they had a rope tow. Over the years it got bigger and bigger and I started skiing here in 1970 when I was 16,” Buckman said. “The past couple of weeks might be the best weather we’ve ever had. It’s stayed cold and it hasn’t thawed the entire time.”
In King of Prussia, about 20 miles south of the mountain, Brad Buckman discussed the latest in ski boot technology at the family’s store. Brad Buckman’s father, Jeff, is in “semiretirement” from the family business, giving him more time to ski. He and his family still go over to visit Uncle Rick at Spring Mountain, too.
“I learned to ski there and my kids learn to ski there,” he said.
Brad Buckman, 42, said skiing and snowboarding remain popular hobbies and the COVID-19 push to get people outside gave the industry a boon.
“On average, the skiing industry sells 600,000 pairs of skis a year, and during COVID it was close to like 820,000,” Brad Buckman said. “It’s the only sport you can do for decades. You can ski from the age of 4 to 84.”
Customer service, Brad Buckman said, is crucial to the ski industry, where savvy shoppers come in seeking specific gear they may keep for years, possibly decades. Most customers will seek out a physical store to purchase ski equipment.
“I personally want to go and see the equipment. I need to try it on,” Brad Buckman said. ”We don’t typically get people who are just browsing. I tell our employees that good customer service could keep or lose a customer for 30 years in this industry.”
Still, he said, many older retail stores have closed over the years. He said his biggest competitors today are the brand names themselves, selling items directly on their own websites.
“A lot of people can’t compete with the vendors themselves,” he said.
One of the biggest components of the storefront business, Brad Buckman said, is seasonal ski and snowboard rentals, which can save customers time and money at the hill.
“We have 16,000 pairs of skis and snowboards for long- and short-term rentals,” he said.
While the Buckmans went on to ski much bigger mountains, in the United States and beyond, Spring Mountain always was a special place for them. The family’s ski, snowboard, and pool chemical business thrived for decades, but Spring Mountain began to falter under previous ownership. In 1998, the mountain closed, and its 183 acres seemed destined to go the way of many large tracts in the Philly suburbs: a housing development.
“It had really deteriorated. The township really didn’t want to see it become a housing development,” Rick Buckman said.
The Buckman family entered into a unique, public-private partnership with Upper Salford Township and Montgomery County to run the mountain. The Buckmans, per the agreement, purchased 20 acres at the base of the mountain for $400,000, including the buildings, parking lots, and all of the equipment. The township purchased the 80 acres that form the slopes for $600,000 and leased it to the Buckmans for 45 years while the county purchased the remaining 80 acres for $600,000, for open space.
Unlike many ski resorts that do downhill mountain bike courses and zip lines in the summer, Spring Mountain mostly closes up until late fall. Rick Buckman, 71, said March is typically the last month for skiing, even if there’s a rare April blizzard.
“We’ll be making snow well into March,” he said.
Brad Buckman says Buckman’s doesn’t keep its ski shops open year-round. They’re still involved in the pool business Leon started decades earlier.
“Pool chemicals pay the bills,” Brad Buckman said. “This is the fun stuff.”