MI-BOX Is Sponsoring the 10th Annual Mt. Sunapee Duck Drop

On Sunday, October 11, a whole lot of numbered rubber ducks are going to ride the Sunapee Express chairlift up the mountain and then drop out of the sky. MI-BOX of New Hampshire is a sponsor of this year’s Mt. Sunapee Duck Drop, now in its tenth year, and every dollar it raises goes to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central and Northern New Hampshire.

What a Duck Drop Actually Is

If you have never been to one, the premise is exactly as strange as it sounds, and that is the appeal. You buy a numbered rubber duck, carry it onto the chairlift, and ride up over a field of targets set out by the event’s sponsors. As your chair passes over, you drop your duck and hope it lands on something.

• Each target on the ground belongs to a sponsor and represents a prize.
• Land a duck on a target and you are entered into the raffle for that prize.
• Prizes average around 500 dollars in value and range from goods to experiences to cash.
• You can buy more than one duck, which is what most people end up doing.

When and Where

The tenth annual drop runs at Mount Sunapee Resort in Newbury on Sunday, October 11. Ducks are dropped between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM, and winners are announced at 3:00 PM once everything on the ground has been sorted out.

1. Buy your ducks ahead of time. Advance purchase is handled through the official event site at nhduckdrop.com.
2. Sign the waiver. There is an electronic waiver every participant needs to complete before riding.
3. Get there early. Foliage weekend traffic plus a popular fundraiser is a slow combination at the access road.
4. Stick around for 3:00. Awards are called out at the end, and you do not need to be holding a winning duck to enjoy that part.

How the Season Kicked Off

The season kicked off on October 1 with a pre-launch party at Hoptimystic Brewing in Sunapee, where Brett Cusick of Northcape Design and Tanya Frost of the Boys and Girls Clubs guest bartended and every tip taken in that night went to the Duck Drop fund. The drop itself is this Sunday, October 11.

Where the Money Goes

Proceeds benefit the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central and Northern New Hampshire, including the clubs serving the Kearsarge Sunapee region. The organization runs after-school and summer programming for local kids, and events like this one are a meaningful share of how that gets funded each year.

Why a Storage Company Sponsors a Duck Drop

Fair question. The honest answer is that the Sunapee area is somewhere we work. We drop containers in driveways in Sunapee and Newbury for lake house projects, in New London for renovations and moves, and up through Newport and Claremont year round. A company that makes its living in a place should put something back into it, and a fundraiser that gets a few hundred people onto a chairlift on a fall Sunday is a good way to do that.

It is also, frankly, a genuinely fun event. There are not many causes you can support by throwing a rubber duck off a ski lift.

A Few Things Worth Knowing Before You Go

• You do not need to ski or ride anything technical. It is a scenic chairlift ride in October, not a downhill run.
• Dress for the summit, not the parking lot. The top of Mount Sunapee is reliably colder and windier than the base, and October makes that gap wider.
• Ducks sell out. Buying in advance online is the safe move rather than hoping to grab some at the mountain.
• Bring a camera. Foliage from a chairlift at peak week is worth the trip on its own, ducks or no ducks.

See You at the Mountain

Ten years is a real run for a community fundraiser, and the fact that this one has grown into a foliage-weekend fixture says something about the Kearsarge Sunapee region. If you are local, or if you were already thinking about a drive up Route 103 that weekend, the timing works out well. Come find the ducks.

Local NH Towns We Deliver To

We deliver portable storage containers across Central, Southern, and Western New Hampshire. Around the Sunapee area that includes Sunapee, Newbury, New London, Newport, Bradford, Warner, and Claremont. You can also see the whole Dartmouth and Lake Sunapee region. Don’t see your town? We probably deliver there too, get a quote.