Beloved Mt. Otsego Ski Shop To Close After This Season

By WRILEY NELSONMIDDLEFIELD

Harry Peplinski announced that his family business, the Mt. Otsego Ski Shop in Bowerstown, will close at the end of the winter season after 46 years of operation. The Peplinskis’ inventory of cross-country skiing and snowshoeing equipment will be sold to Milford’s Woodland Cycles, which will continue to offer local rentals. Peplinski, a long-serving Cooperstown teacher, skiing coach, and slope operator, reflected on his decades in business.

“There was another ski shop on Main Street starting in the late 1930s,” he recalled. “I bought my first proper pair of skis with a metal binding there in 1945. I bought this business from [former Cooperstown principal] Nick Sterling in 1978. He was involved with the skiing hill and with the school, of course. We’ve run it since then, and this will be our last year. I’m very pleased that Woodland Cycles will take over the cross-country ski and snowshoe rentals, because it’s very important to the area. We’re going to help them as much as we can.”