PINKHAM NOTCH, N.H. – Better luck next year, Maine and Vermont.

Something good came out of the beating New Hampshire took this month from rain, floods, Hurricane Wilma and a nor’easter – ski season opened much earlier this year.

Thanks to major snowfall this week, Wildcat Mountain’s Tom Cat chair lift started on Friday morning, beating out Vermont and Maine ski areas in the unofficial race to open the region’s ski season.

“The conditions are fabulous,” said Irene Donnell, spokeswoman for Wildcat Mountain, which has gotten up to 48 inches of snow since Sunday.

Because of its location near Mount Washington, Wildcat gets an average of over 200 inches of snow a year. It usually opens around Thanksgiving.

Many people turned out on the trails Friday, Donnell said. “I think folks were just kind of blown away by it,” she said of the early snowfall.

Wildcat planned to open up to 15 of its 47 trails by Saturday and stay open through the weekend.

New Hampshire ski areas usually open in mid-November, often relying on manmade snow, said Karl Stone, spokesman for Ski New Hampshire.

“In the past four years I don’t remember a scenario like this where a mountain opened on natural snow spontaneously,” he said.

No other ski areas in Northern New England are open yet. Vermont’s Killington Resort, typically the first ski area in the East to open each fall, planned to open Saturday, said resort spokesman Tom Horrocks.

“It’s all about the quality,” he said. “We could have opened the top of the mountain on Wednesday, but we wanted to have a quality top-to-bottom skiing product for everybody.”

The last time Killington lost its title as first in the East to open was three years ago, when Woodbury Resort in Connecticut opened briefly, but weather forced it to close again, Horrocks said.

“That’s the key, opening and staying open,” he said. “Hopefully Wildcat can stay open, because we don’t want anybody to put up a closed sign.”

In Maine, the earliest opening is thought to have been Oct. 11, 1992, when Sunday River ski resort and Vermont’s Killington ski area were engaged in a friendly competition to see which mountain would open first each season, according to Sunday River spokeswoman Susan DuPlessis. This year’s projected opening date is Nov. 11.

Sugarloaf USA in Carrabassett Valley used to routinely open in late October when it would compete with Sunday River to see which could open first, said spokesman Bill Swain. This year’s projected opening is Nov. 18.

But Ski Maine Association Executive Director Greg Sweetser said he expects people to go skiing this weekend – the old-fashioned way, without ski lifts.

“We anticipate there’ll be hundreds of people hiking up Maine trails to be able to ski down,” he said.

On the Net:

Ski Maine Association: www.skimaine.com.

Ski New Hampshire: www.skinh.com.

Ski Vermont: www.skivermont.com.