IF YOU GO . . . For general information on Mount Sunapee, go to the Web site www.mtsunapee.com. It is also linked with www.sunapeevacations.com, the Lake Sunapee Business Association site, featuring local lodging. For general info about the mountain, phone 603-763-2356; the snow report is 603-763-4020. The lodging reservation line, open 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m., is 800-258-3530. Lift tickets at Mount Sunapee are $41 on weekends, $36 midweek, $36/$31 for young adults (13-18) and $30/$26 for seniors and juniors. Inquire about twofers like Tuesday Ladies Days, and be aware that Sunday afternoons are discounted for New Hampshire residents. Out-of-staters may want to ski Saturday instead. Norsk (800-426-6775) has its own Website with frequently updated conditions, www.skinorsk.com. Facilities at Norsk include a full service and rental shop and the country club's attractive dining room. Upcoming events include moonlight ski tours and kids' ski games on Saturdays as well as the Women's Ski Day ($50 for the 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m. program), which includes skating instruction for all abilities as well as exercises and lunch. For snowshoeing weekend details, telephone Ginger Lang in Concord, Mass. at 978-371-0337 or on the Internet at gjourney(at sign)ma.ultranet.com. For information on the Follansbee Inn (www.Follansbeeinn.com), telephone 800-626-4221; and Maple Hill Farm (www.maplehillfarm.com) telephone 800-231-8637. Lodging places near the base of the mountain include the Best Western Sunapee Lake Lodge (with an indoor pool), the reasonably priced Snow Goose Inn and Burkehaven Motel as well as The Backside. In New London we should mention the handsome old New London Inn, also Pleasant Lake Inn (the area's fanciest dining spot) and Colonial Farm Inn. In Bradford the Thistle and Shamrock Inn and Restaurant is worth checking out. The quickest way to Mount Sunapee from Boston is I-93 to I-89. Take Exit 9 (Warner) and drive 16 miles along Route 103. If the weather is not too good, it's just as fast to take I-89 to Exit 12 at New London and Route 11 to Sunapee. Be forewarned that the turn in Sunapee for Mount Sunapee isn't even marked, and while you can see Mount Sunapee from the interstate, it's not marked there, either.

Mount Sunapee was just a ski area in a state park last season. Now it's ``New Hampshire's Resort.''

What's behind the verbiage?

Plenty!

On July 1, Tim and Diane Mueller, owners of Okemo Mountain Resort in Ludlow, Vt., 41 miles west of Mount Sunapee, acquired a 40-year lease on this, southern New Hampshire's only big league ski mountain.

Mount Sunapee opened for this season with two fast new quad chairlifts, the power to make significantly more and better snow and high-powered machines to groom it, also a new terrain park and half pipe for snowboarders. The changes total $5 million and add up to a big difference in a day's skiing or boarding.

What hasn't changed yet is the '60 vintage base lodge, a no-frills box of a building with a cafeteria that maxes out on weekends. While the lounge has doubled in size and there are food options at the North Peak Lodge and Summit Lodge, it's still a good idea to arrive when lifts open and lunch around 11 a.m.

At least that's the advice we received from a Mountain Ambassador, one of those red-and-black jacketed Mount Sunapee aficionados who fan out over the terrain, stopping to aid anyone they see in trouble or even looking puzzled.

The real trick to this mountain, we learned, is to tackle the Sun Bowl first. Hop the Spruce Triple to the top and do a quick warmup on Goosebumps or Flying Goose trails, take it again and ski over to the new Sunbowl Quad (an Okemo import), and ride to the summit, where you simply can't help but stop for a showstopper of a view.

While it's just 2,743 feet high, Mount Sunapee is by far the highest mountain in this part of the state. It commands a sweep of the Green Mountains to the west across the Connecticut River Valley. You can pick out the ski trails on Stratton off to the south (Mount Snow, too, on a clear day) as well as Okemo, Ascutney, and Killington.

Directly below, Lake Sunapee stretches away to the north between purplish white countryside that fades to tiers of blue hills, punctuated by the distinctive white crowns of Mount Cardigan and Mount Kearsarge and, on a good day, Mount Washington.

Many more people know this as a summer (far less interesting) view because the chairlift (now a fast new detachable quad that hoists you to the summit in six minutes) runs every day in summer, an adjunct to the popular beach on Mount Sunapee that's also part of this 2,800-acre state park.

According to Bill Ulinsky, director of operations, a lift on Sunapee was actually first conceived in the 1930s as a summer adjunct to the train service to Newbury Harbor. Fall foliage weekends, Ulinsky says, are currently the park's busiest time.

The Sunapee region is one of America's few ski destinations that began as a major summer resort. A half-dozen big old hotels ringed Lake Sunapee in the era when trains from Boston connected with steamboats, not only on this but several surrounding lakes. Unfortunately, almost all the hotels have gone the way of the trains and steamboats, and the lake is now ringed with private cottages.

Despite its beauty and choice of both summer and winter pleasures, the Lake Sunapee region offers just 300 rooms, scattered in some 40 small properties within a 30-mile radius.

Local innkeepers blame Interstate 89, which you would think would be their godsend. Opened in 1968, the interstate cut the driving time from Boston to Lake Sunapee in half, down to 1 1/2 hours. Bostonians now look to Vermont, farther up I-89, when they want to spend an entire weekend away.

Many take Exit 12 off the interstate and drive Route 11 right through Sunapee en route to Okemo, which, incidentally, was also much loved locally but little known generally when the Muellers purchased it 16 years ago. In '83, their first season at Okemo, 60,000 skier days were recorded; last year it was 360,000.

Okemo's enviable success is based on the depth and quality of its snow and grooming, the formula that's presently being applied to Mount Sunapee, which has the key ingredient for snowmaking: water. Given Sunapee's current base, skiing and snowboarding this year should last well into April.

The Muellers have installed a cooling system at the lake to enhance the process, also added more powerful snow guns to augment those already in place. Snowmaking now covers 95 percent of the 41 trails and slopes, a total of 210 miles of skiable terrain. As someone who has skied this mountain in the past, I can attest to new snow quality.

Did I mention that Mount Sunapee has a respectable 1,510-foot vertical drop? That's good for a two-mile cruise down The Ridge Trail off the summit, or more than a mile down several other intermediate and expert runs. While a few trails have been widened, many still remain fairly narrow and tree-lined cut, as the Sunapee Vacations Web site notes, before ``an era of ski areas that resemble logging clear-cuts.''

While the new lifts have significantly increased uphill capacity, ski days are just 10 to 15 percent ahead of this time last season, according to marketing director Dyke Shaw.

Slowly but surely, however, word is getting around about the mountain's makeover. The problem, according to Kathy Trudeau, director of the Lake Sunapee Business Association (the local lodging service), is still ``weak weekdays.''

The Mount Sunapee region actually offers plenty to keep a family busy for far more than a day -- excellent cross-country skiing, for starters, at Norsk in New London.

Nine miles down the road from Mount Sunapee, New London is a handsome town, home to Colby-Sawyer College, also to several inns and a number of interesting shops and restaurants. At 1,300 feet, it sits higher than many towns in the White Mountains and is the logical site for Norsk, the most extensive cross-country ski network south of the Whites. The 95-kilometer network begins on the Lake Sunapee Country Club golf course but quickly spreads into surrounding woodland, offering both skate and double-tracked trails. A favorite six-mile loop accesses Rob's Hut (open weekends 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.). Snowshoeing rentals are also offered at Norsk and at New London's Village Sports, source of a map to local ``Footpaths.'' Better yet, Ginger Lang, an experienced snowshoer (she's done all New Hampshire's 4,000-footers in winter), is offering a March 5-7 snowhoeing weekend that takes advantage of some of the best of these paths, also of the hilltop trails at Muster Field Farm Museum in North Sutton and those at the John Hay National Wildlife Refuge along Lake Sunapee.

Lang bases her weekends at the Folansbee Inn, a rambling, vintage 1840 farmhouse that served for many years as the annex to a big, long-gone 19th-century summer hotel. Just across the road from Kezar Lake, it offers 21 nicely furnished guest rooms, plenty of reading and relaxing space, great food, and genuine hospitality.

Sitting around the breakfast table at another local gem -- Maple Hill Farm -- our group discussed why, after circling Northern New England for roughly 20 years, we had come to rest in the Sunapee area. The consensus was convenience, a combination of great downhill and cross-county skiing, of Currier and Ives scenery, good shopping and dining, and, perhaps most important, given the range of resources in a church group, amazing lodging values.

A ``summer boardinghouse'' since the 1880s, Maple Hill Farm, for instance, offers far more comfortable common space than most inns, guestrooms that are simply but tastefully furnished with comfortable beds and antiques and bathrooms that are basic but equipped with big shower heads gushing endless hot water. In short, while far from Laura Ashley land, all the creature comforts are here, excellent food and an outdoor hot tub included.

According to Kathy Trudeau, lodging in the Mount Sunapee area ranges from $55 per couple ($63 per family) at The Hospitality Motel at the foot of the mountain to $420 for two nights in a condo that sleeps four at Eastman, an upscale leisure community on 3,500 acres around Eastman Lake in nearby Grantham. Facilities include an indoor pool, a small ski hill, and a cross-country ski center accessing 30 kilometers of trails, which we can vouch for.

Much more could be said about local lodging and dining options, but I've space for just one last point and it should be the sense of genuine discovery that's still possible around Mount Sunapee. Precisely, this is still such a sleeper of a winter destination you can still find places like Nelson's Used Books -- some 80,000 quality antiquarian books plus crafted work and fine photography -- hidden away up Brook Road across from The Backside Inn (another dining and lodging find) just 3 miles from the ski mountain.

Published 02/14/99 in the Boston Suday Globe's Travel Section