Vermont Ski and Ride Holidays, 2018

VT

FREE! HOLIDAYS 2018

SKI + RIDE

Vermont’s Mountain Sports and Life

Legendary

Vermont CLASSIC SKI LODGES REVIVED SUGARBUSH, FROM 0 TO 60 THE FRIDAY PROGRAM VERMONT’S SKI WARRIORS

33 NEW APRES SPOTS | VT’S BACKCOUNTRY BADASS | 5 FUNDAMENTALS www.vtskiandride.com

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PA R T N E R S H I P I S P O W E R F U L M E D I C I N E

TM

(Left to right) Paul Donovan, DO; Katherine Kelleher, FNP-BC; Amy Wheaton, PA-C; James Whittum, MD; Suk Namkoong, MD; Jessica Moses, FNP; Kendra Isbell, PA-C; Matthew Nofziger, MD; Samuel Smith, Jr., PA-C

332 Dewey St, Bennington, VT 802-442-6314 | svhealthcare.org

CONTENTS / 04.02 FEATURES RETURN OF THE BACKCOUNTRY BADASS p. 30

After skinning a record 2.5 million feet in a year and skiing pow from Utah to Argentina, Aaron Rice moved from Alta back to Vermont.

Here’s why. By Lisa Lynn

60 SWEET YEARS p. 34

A look back at Mascara Mountain’s heyday and the people who made Sugarbush what it is today. By Lisa Lynn

LEGENDARY LODGES p. 45

Many of the Vermont lodges that shaped skiing history are being restored. By Lisa Lynn and Abagael Giles

Alan Schoenberger—mime, star of ski ballet, performer and inventor of the ski simulator—kicks up his heels at Sugarbush in the mid-1970s.

FIRST TRACKS APRÈS| 33 NEW APRÈS SKI SPOTS,

COLUMNS EDITOR’S LETTER | PARTY LIKE IT’S 1959,

p. 13

Photo courtesy Sugarbush archives

Don’t miss these hot new restaurants and bars in ski country.

LOCAL HEROES | THE GROOMER DUATHLETE,

p. 21

Meet Craftsbury Outdoor Center’s super-athlete groomer. Plus, the family behind the video series, Alba Adventures.

SKI TOWNS | SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SKIING,

p. 25

How Vermont towns come together to make sure their kids learn to ski..

p. 5

COACH | THE 5 FUNDAMENTALS OF GREAT SKIING p. 52

Good skiers master a few of these techniques; great skiers master them all.

RETRO VT | THE SKI WARRIORS,

p. 55

How a few Vermont skiers changed the course of history.

THE GREEN MOUNTAIN CALENDAR |

p. 59

LIFT LINES | THE PEOPLE’S GUIDE TO SKI TOWN FOOD,

p. 64

We asked and you shared: your favorite spots to eat and drink on the hill.

ON THE COVER: Kristie Adonizio finds Paradise (the trail) at Sugarbush. Photo by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur.

vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 3

With $25 million reasons to visit and savings of up to 40% on lift tickets when you buy in advance, this is the season to visit The Beast.

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THE NATURE OF

THE BEAST

PARTY LIKE IT’S 1959?

As we put together this issue—which looks back at more than seven decades of skiing in Vermont—I got that sinking sensation of FOMO, or “Fear Of Missing Out.” That usually happens when I think about an epic powder day or a party I missed. In this case, it’s an entire era of skiing. | Just talking with Alan Parrish about Johnny Seesaws, the legendary ski lodge near Bromley that his parents once managed, made me want to check in there—in the 1950s. (Though now renovated, it’s more gorgeous today.) | Hearing stories about Sugarbush’s early years made me wish I’d skied “Mascara Mountain” in its heyday. My mother did, and I suspect she had a lot more fun than she ever let on.This picture of her (bottom right) at Fayston’s Ulla Lodge in the 1950s—now the Hyde Away—seems to confirm that. | When I talked with Blaise Carrig, (now a senior adviser at Vail Resorts), about his time at Sugarbush, in the 1970s through 1990s, he said “It seems like there used to be a lot more fun in skiing.” | Win Smith, who owns and runs Sugarbush, has done his best to preserve that sense of fun and bring back the epic parties— and this year, there will be plenty of them. | There’s a lot to celebrate as Sugarbush turns 60, Mad River Glen turns 70 (watch for a story next issue) and Johnny Seesaws is back in business. “Life begins at 60,” Win Smith says. He may be right. —Lisa Lynn, Editor

Stop by, grab some swag and gift certificates.

CONTRIBUTORS Alex Klein, a part-time resident of Hartland, Vt., has shot the Killington World Cup the past three years, coming up with photos such as the one on page 52. Klein is a freshman at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., when he’s not skiing or hiking in the Green Mountains.

Doug Stewart has been teaching skiing for over 25 years, and has been fitting ski boots for over 15. He divides his time in the winter between boot work at Skirack in Burlington, teaching skiing at Stowe and training ski instructors all over the East to try to ski as well as the woman on page 52 does.

Greg Morrill, who wrote “The Ski Warriors,” p.55, is a former computer programmer at IBM who skis 100 days a season now that he is retired.

The author of Retro-Ski: A Nostalgic Look Back at Skiing, he blogs at retro-skiing.com and his column appears in The Stowe Reporter.

vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 5

EDITORIAL Publisher, Angelo Lynn angelo@vtskiandride.com Editor/Co-Publisher, Lisa Lynn editor@vtskiandride.com Creative Director, David Pollard Assistant Editor, Abagael Giles, abagael@vtskiandride.com; Contributors: Brooks Curran, David Goodman, Bud Keene, Brian Mohr, Doug Stewart, Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

ADVERTISING SALES & DISTRIBUTION Liz Wallace, Asst. Advertising Manager ads@vtskiandride.com | 802-388-4944 Greg Meulemans greg@vtskiandride.com Dave Honeywell dave_golfhouse@madriver.com Wilkie Bushby Wilkie@vtskiandride.com Circulation & Distribution Manager: Lisa Razo subscribe@vtskiandride.com HEADQUARTERS VT SKI+RIDE is published four times a year by Addison Press Inc., 58 Maple Street, Middlebury, VT 05753 VT SKI+RIDE print subscriptions are available for $25 (U.S.) or $35 (Canada) per year. Digital subcriptions are free.

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6 Holidays 2018 vtskiandride.com

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FIRSTTRACKS THE

BACKCOUNTRY PAYOFF

With new chapters, huts and guided tours, backcountry skiing and riding just get bigger this season. —Lisa Lynn

Photo by Brian Mohr/EmberPhoto

O Skiing the glades at Brandon Gap, the first sanctioned backcountry ski terrain on National Forest land in the United States.

n a January day last winter, the parking lots were full—both of them—and cars were lined up and down the road. The guy parked next to me, with Massachusetts plates, said “I drive here pretty much every weekend, ski all day and then head home.” He put his skins on and disappeared up the Long Trail toward Goshen Mountain and the backcountry powder runs of Brandon Gap. According to a new study by the SE Group, he was one of the 3,268 people who skied or rode the unmaintained, unpatrolled glades there between January 5 and April 4, 2018.

Three years ago, you’d be hard pressed to find maybe two or three skin tracks leading off of Route 53, which runs east to west from Rochester to Brandon. That was before a small group of backcountry skiers from the Rochester Randolph Area Sports Trail Alliance (a.k.a. RASTA) persuaded the Green Mountain National Forest to allow sanctioned glading, making this the first (official) backcountry ski zone on National Forest land.

Since then, RASTA has created maps and put up signage in four separate ski zones, serving 15,000 feet of vertical. The group will be offering guided tours of Brandon Gap

vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 9

u on February 9 and of its less-developed Braintree trail system, near Randolph, on February 16. This year, both areas will have huts.

“Because of insurance reasons, the cabin at Braintree remains an unheated shelter for day use only,” says RASTA’s co-founder Zac Freeman. In the Brandon Gap area though, the cabin is quite the opposite. On September 28, 2018, the Vermont Huts Association installed its first backcountry hut just east of the Gap, at Chittenden Brook Campground. The hut, designed by the Yestermorrow School in Warren, sleeps 10 in bunks. It has solar power and is heated with a propane stove. The kitchen is fully stocked with pots and pans and a propane stovetop. And it can be booked for $110 to $175 a night.

“It’s already almost fully booked for the season,” says Vermont Huts founder, R.J. Thompson. In the past year, Thompson has named five new and prospective Vermont Huts backcountry hut locations, ranging from the huts of Merck Forest, near Dorset in southwestern Vermont, to a new hut on the Nulhegan River in the far northeast corner of the state. This spring, he hopes to rebuild the South Pond cabin in the Green Mountain National Forest in Chittenden, Vt., which burned last January in what Vermont State Police believe was an act of arson.

“We’re also looking for a location between Stowe and Waterbury for a hut,” he says. “And we’d love to put one near the Catamount Trail.”

The Catamount Trail Association not only serves as the umbrella group for backcountry skiing in the state but also hosts guided tours of sections of the 200-mile-long backcountry ski trail that runs the length of Vermont. Around the state, other backcountry groups, many

10 Holidays 2018 vtskiandride.com

affiliates of the CTA, are mushrooming.

At the annual Vermont Backcountry forum in Rochester on Nov. 2, the Northeast Backcountry Alliance showed a film featuring locals getting steep and deep in gladed terrain that’s being developed in the Willoughby State Forest. On Dec. 7, the Mad River Valley Backcountry Coalition, a newly-formed chapter of the Catamount Trail Association, had a kick-off party at Mad River Glen. The group hopes to develop new trails as part of the Camel’s Hump State Forest management plan.

In southern Vermont, the Dutch Hill Alliance of Backcountry Skiers and Hikers (DASH) has turned the old Dutch Hill Ski Area, which closed in 1985, into an 87-acre backcountry ski zone.

The SE Group’s impact study showed that between Feb. 19 and March 30, 2018 more than 670 people used the Dutch Hill trails, generating $391,000 in area sales and supporting the equivalent of six jobs. A similar study at Brandon Gap showed that the 3,268 skiers or riders who were there between January and April generated an estimated $2.1 million in sales for the region.

“There’s a good economic reason for us to grow backcountry,” says RASTA president Angus McCusker, who worked with the SE Group on an impact study.

For resorts, the question of how to make backcountry skiing pay is more of a head scratcher. “I’ve had this debate with my dad over and over,” says Adam DesLauriers, whose family founded Bolton Valley Resort on 8,000 acres of timber land his grandfather bought in 1963. Bolton now houses two historic and refurbished backcountry lodges: Bolton Lodge and Bryant Camp.

Adam seems to have made his point.

In December 2017 Bolton Valley Resort opened what it has called the “first in-house backcountry-specific guiding and instructional program in North America,” with Dynafit touring gear and Weston Splitboards. This winter, it will host tours there every Sunday for $75 per person, with complete AT or splitboard rental gear for an additional $10.

The only other added cost is $10 if you want one lift ride up. Or you can skin up. n

Photo by R.J. Thompson/Vermont Huts Association

The new Chittenden Brook Cabin (right) sleeps 10 and is within striking distance of Brandon Gap. Results (below) from a study show a growth in backcountry skiing.

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Après

33 NEW APRÈS SKI SPOTS

From Middle Eastern fare to bike bars, there’s a whole new food scene to explore this season thanks to these noteworthy ski country newcomers. By Abagael Giles Lawson’s Finest Liquids opened their Waitsfield taproom in September with

Photo courtesy Lawson’s Finest Liquids

14 original brews on tap.

T

his season, there are plenty of new reasons to eat out in ski country. From long-awaited expansions from beloved establishments like Lawson’s Finest Liquids (their new taproom opened this fall) and Worthy Burger Too into Waitsfield to the arrival of spunky newcomers like Moonwink in Manchester, it’s shaping up to be a great season.

If there’s one thing that stands out about these new spots, it’s the marriage of eating and unique experiences. At Stowe’s Ranch Camp, you can grab a beer or a burrito while you chat with your bike mechanic. At the Wunderbar in Bellows Falls, you can step into a tropical beer garden from the cold January air. Here are some of the best new places to eat, drink and have fun.

NORTHERN VERMONT In Lyndonville, Burke Mountain skiers and Kingdom Trails riders will have a new place to get post-ski or post-ride drinks this winter at the Wildflower Inn’s new Spokeasy Lounge. The big windows and the bar seating that faces them make this a great place to grab a local beer and

watch the sun set over the Northeast Kingdom.

On Route 15 in Hardwick, and worth a detour, The Scale House started serving up unexpected incredibly fresh seafood dishes like their pan-seared sea scallops over homemade fettuccine with sautéed local vegetables and beurre blanc when it opened in July in the village’s iconic downtown block. Owner Sven Olson also runs svenfish, a seafood distributing company based in Boston. The Scale House is 36 minutes from Stowe, an hour from Burke Mountain and 45 minutes from Jeffersonville.

At Stowe’s Ranch Camp, which opened in June and is owned by MTBVT’s Ryan Thibault, you can have your fatbike worked on while you grab one of their rotating selection of local drafts and pre- or post-ride grub like the Percyrrito, a burrito that features dry-rubbed and braised pork, beans, special maple roja sauce and Vermont cheddar. In fact, you can ride your fatbike right to the cozy taproom from the Cady Hill trail network.

There are also new owners at one of downtown Stowe’s most beloved restaurants, Plate. Aaron and Jennifer Martin, the chef and bartender who helped launch the village restaurant when it opened in 2013, just bought it from owners Jamie Persky and Mark Rosman. The Martins plan to keep the restaurant’s chic but cozy interior largely the same and maintain its farm-totable roots while expanding its small, tapas-style plate offerings. “We are keeping the same name, same vibe, feel and ideology of California meets Vermont,” said Chef Aaron, who grew up in Hyde Park and ski raced at the Mount Mansfield Academy in high school.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the notch, Smugglers’ Notch Distillery plans to open a bigger production facility and tasting room early in 2019 at the former North Woods Joinery building in Jeffersonville. The new tasting room will abut the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail.

NORTH CENTRAL VERMONT In early December, Ana Dan and Paul Weber, owners of the Hyde Away Inn in Waitsfield, open a new Mediterranean joint in Warren called Sage on the corner of Route 100 and Route 17. The restaurant features Mad River Valley ingredients wherever possible in its Middle Eastern, Spanish, Italian and French fusion dishes. Look out for paella, pastas and the family baklava recipe.

Last summer, Worthy Burger Too started

vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 13

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14 Holidays 2018 vtskiandride.com

Aaron Martin (above), the chef at Stowe’s Plate, has worked in Alice Waters’ renowned farm-to-table restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Below, at Rochester’s Maple Soul, try the maple roasted beets with Vermont goat cheese.

Just south on Route 100 is Rochester’s Maple Soul, a new farm-to-table restaurant that serves comfort food with Vermont ingredients (the burger meat is sourced from nearby Riverbend Farm) and infused with a bit of southern flair. Try the pistachio and local honey-crusted Vermont lamb ribs with whipped parsnip and demi-glace.

Across the gap in Middlebury, The Arcadian and Haymaker Bun Company opened a shared space abutting Otter Creek, downtown at the former site of The Lobby, in November. Before a day at the Middlebury Snow Bowl, stop by for a coffee and sweet and savory buns, baked by co-owner Caroline Corrente. Or, after a day at Rikert Nordic Center, enjoy a traditional Italian dinner, prepared by her husband, chef Matt Corrente.

SOUTH CENTRAL VERMONT As Vail Resorts takes over Okemo, Ludlow has seen a verifiable boom in restaurant openings this year. La Tavola Ristorante, which opened in September, serves authentic Italian dishes like Rigatoni Fantasia, a rich pasta ensemble featuring hearty mushrooms, peas, caramelized onions and prosciutto in a decadent cognac cream sauce. Owners Fernando and Soa Uva have run La Tavola Ristorantes in Provincetown, Mass. and in Marco Island, Fla., and chose Ludlow after hearing about Vail Resorts’ purchase of Okemo.

Du Jour Café opened in July and offers adventurous specials and American staples like its burger, which features local ground beef on a freshly-baked bun with baby greens,

Photos courtesy Maple Soul, Plate

serving affordable, dependably delicious grass-fed burgers grilled over Vermont hardwoods and served with Shelburne Farms cheddar cheese at its new location on Route 100 in Waitsfield.The restaurant will largely have the same menu as the flagship in South Royalton with a full bar and ten tap lines. Grab a beer and some of their decadent hand-cut fries for après ski at the end of a day at Mad River Glen or Sugarbush.

Just down the Mad River Path, Lawson’s Finest Liquids opened its much-anticipated timber-frame taproom, brewery and retail space in Waitsfield in October. It’s the perfect place for an after-ski beer and snack, with five assorted plates of local cheeses, charcuteries and pairings to choose from and 14 beers on tap. Sip a Chinooker’d IPA and try its piney, citrusy aromas with a wedge of Pawlet-based Consider Bardwell’s Rupert cheese topped with a dollop of apricot chutney.

Longtime local favorite Gracie’s Café has been replaced by Toast & Eggs, a new diner on Waitsfield’s Main Street. For a pre-skiing bite, try the Hungry Carpenter, a breakfast sandwich with one egg, bacon, ham, Cabot cheddar, arugula and garlic aioli on a house-made English muffin.

If you love the Mad Taco, you’d better check out chef Colby Miller’s new project at Warren’s Hostel Tevere, Mad Burger, which opened in July. Look out for a rotating cast of delicious burgers and crazy sandwiches like the Peanut Butter American, which pairs pork belly with garlic aioli, spicy arugula and peanut butter.

After seven successful years of owning and operating The Common Man in Warren, husband and wife team Adam Longworth and Lorien Wroten closed the restaurant for the last time in the spring of 2018.

This season, Longworth will be the new executive chef and Wroten will start as the general manager at the nearby Pitcher Inn. Sugarbush staple Paradise Deli and Market changed hands this summer, and is now owned by Arik and Elizabeth Keller. The market and deli, which offer local produce, baked goods, wine, cheese and sandwiches was renamed Paradise Provisions and has a fresh new look in the same spot on the Sugarbush Access Road. Avalanche Pub, a wood-fired pizza joint is also expected to open late this fall in the former Terra Rossa building on the Sugarbush Access Road.

Vt Ski+Ride 2018 Final.qxp_Layout 1 10/25/18 4:26 PM Page 1

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u At the Spokeasy Lounge in Lyndonville (left), you can grab one of eight rotating local drafts after a day of fatbiking at Kingdom Trails.

Yalla Vermont, (right) serves fresh, homemade pita bread, with house hummus, falafel and sides of middleeastern-style pickled vegetables. Don’t miss the skhug, a deliciously spicy Yemeni spread made from

Photos courtesy The Wildflower Inn, Josh Harris courtesy Ranch Camp

cilantro and hot peppers.

homemade tomato relish and sweet potato chips. Chef and co-owner Peter Dickinson once cooked Julia Child an omelet while he was a dishwasher at the Woodstock Inn and Resort. Today, his cooking turns classic dishes on their ear with new twists. His partner in business, and in life, Desiree Gucia grew up in her mother’s kitchen at Ludlow’s Café Delight.

Sam’s Steakhouse also reopened in downtown Ludlow this year after a oneyear hiatus under the new ownership of Mark Williams, who previously owned the Chophouse on Pond Street.

For an Okemo tradition, head to Mt. Holly for dinner at the new location of Harry’s Café. After five years in Ludlow, owners Trip Pierce and Debbie Alosi decided to relocate their popular restaurant to its original location in Mt. Holly for its intimate, cozy vibe last spring. Alosi and Pierce have run Harry’s since 1989 and grow many of the ingredients in their home garden. “The idea is to serve farm to mouth and skip the table,” says Pierce, who served 4,500 pad Thais last year, but said the current menu features a lot of in-season local butternut squash, potatoes, and leeks. There, try deep-fried black bean ravioli topped with freshly shaved grilled sweet corn, melted Vermont cheddar and homemade salsa.

Bethel is not exactly a ski town. But if you’re headed north on I-89, there’s now a

new reason to get off at Exit 3: Babes Bar. The new bar serves spunky cocktails like “Babes Bitter Morning,” which features SILO Lavender Vodka from Windsor, Aperol, a squeeze of lemon and a dash of simple syrup. Don’t be fooled by the fancy cocktails; Babes Bar co-owners Owen Daniel-McCarter and Jesse Plotsky also offer laid-back vibes and $2.50 Miller High Life drafts.

If you’re driving north from Boston or NewYork, check out Trail Break Taps + Tacos, which opened in White River Junction in November 2017.

Try the chorizo-spiced, chilled ahi-avocado salad with crispy potatoes, spicy crema and cilantro with one of their 23 draft ciders and beers. For a great cortado, made with Vermont-roasted abracadabra espresso, check out JUEL Juice + Smoothies on White River Junction’s Main Street. The former food truck opened its store this summer with menu items like the RedVelvet smoothie, which features strawberries, raw cauliflower, cashews, dates, raw cocoa powder, beet powder and vanilla.

If sandwiches are more your thing, Phnom Penh Sandwich Station opened on White River Junction’s Main Street in November.

Expect authentic Cambodian and South Asian fare, from curries to banh mi, spring rolls and Cambodian iced coffee.

At Stowe’s Ranch Camp (right), you can grab a local beer while you have your bike serviced, have a preride breakfast sandwich or enjoy nachos at the end of a long day of riding the Cady Hill trail network.

vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 17

u right next door to the Bellows Falls Opera House this summer. At Brattleboro’s Twin Flames Taqueria, try the freshly-cut carne asada fries (below), topped with chorizo gravy, cheddar jack cheese and skirt steak.

SOUTHERN VERMONT In Bellows Falls, business partners Remy Walker, Alain Martinez and Gabriele Soyka converted a previously empty building next door to the Bellows Falls Opera House into an all-season, indoor-outdoor, community and kid-friendly Munich-style biergarten called the Wunderbar this summer.

The new space features large windows, 30 varieties of indoor plants and a menu chock full of local and global beers, wines and awesome cocktails like the Green Fairy, a classic which features absinthe, Peychaud’s bitters and St. Germaine. The tapas-style menu is eclectic, with fun twists on regional treats like yucca poutine.

In Manchester, Rachel’s Gourmet Foods has had a total makeover and is now Moonwink, a Burmese restaurant with a uniquely Vermont twist. It’s a project of ninth-generation Vermonter Wesley Stannard and his wife, chef May Stannard of Yangon, Burma. Specials include mohinga, a stew of catfish flavored with ginger, lemongrass and garlic.

If you’re looking for a gastropub, try Union Underground, in the basement of the Factory Point National Bank building on Manchester’s Main Street. The restaurant opened in May and its owners are father and son team Bill and Steve Drunsic. Try the Fiddlehead IPA-steamed PEI mussels or the Perfect Union, a dish of braised duck, spicy local greens, apricot and maple vinaigrette at this plastic-free establishment.

And at Stratton’s BaseCamp, skiers can drink local beers on the roof of this shipping container-turned bar at Stratton’s main base lodge area while watching skiers on the slopes. BaseCamp opened this summer, and this winter, the menu will feature pizza and piping hot waffles.

After a day of skiing at Magic Mountain, swing over to Springfield for dinner at The Copper Fox, a chef-owned farm-to-table Vermont-chic restaurant on Main Street that opened in May. Try a Rainbow Red from Springfield-based Trout River Brewing Co. with Chef Nick Matush’s pulled pork taco topped with avocado, juicy pea shoots, house-pickled fennel and spicy-sweet shishito peppers.

Over in Peru, Johnny Seesaw’s saw a complete overhaul in 2018 (see page 44).The dining room in the reconstructed roadhouse lodge has all the atmosphere you’d expect from one of Vermont’s oldest ski lodges.

18 Holidays 2018 vtskiandride.com

The menu features ceviche, braised duck leg poutine with Maplebrook Farm cheese curds and creative deserts like honeydew carpaccio, served with house-made coconut sorbet.

If you’re driving through Brattleboro, be sure to stop at Twin Flames Taqueria, the brainchild of James Casterline and partner Amber Bergeron. Twin Flames opened in June and the menu features SoCal-Mexican fusion dishes along with authentic Mexican cuisine like pozole, a deep red broth soup seasoned with warming chile ancho and filled with grilled vegetables, purple cabbage and hominy that is traditionally eaten on NewYear’s Day. Also new in Brattleboro is Yalla Vermont, which serves fare from Israel, Morocco, Turkey and Yemen made with locally sourced ingredients. Chef Zohar Arama of Israel has been selling his homemade pitas and hummus at co-ops and farmers markets since 2015 and opened the restaurant in May. For a sweet treat, try the Malabi, a chilled, creamy pudding infused with rosewater and topped with pistachios, coconut flakes and a sweet syrup.

At Mount Snow, Carinthia Lodge will have two new bars this winter. One will be a sit-down restaurant and another will start the morning as a coffee bar and end the day as a slopeside après ski destination with glass doors that open onto a new 9,000 square-foot deck that faces Carinthia Parks. Mount Snow has not yet released a menu, but there will likely be

Photos courtesy Twin Flames Taqueria, Wunderbar

Wunderbar (left) opened

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GROOMING TO WIN

Local Heros

For nearly four decades, KeithWoodward has been grooming trails at Craftsbury Outdoor Center—and competing as a world-class duathlete.

NAME: KEITH WOODWARD AGE: 67 OCCUPATION: Groomer at Craftsbury Outdoor Center CLAIM TO FAME: World Champion Duathlete LIVES IN: Moscow FAMILY: Significant other, Patricia Driscoll; rescue dog, Simon

Photo courtesy Craftsbury Outdoor Center

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f there’s one person who’s going to be busy this December it’s Keith Woodward. January 3-8, the Craftsbury Outdoor Center hosts the U.S. Cross Country Ski Championships and Woodward is responsible for creating the best racing surface possible.

That’s no easy task, but Woodward has been grooming and maintaining trails for longer than most of the skiers on the U.S. Ski Team have been alive.

Woodward grew up on a farm in East Corinth and went to Vermont Technical College. When he started grooming at Craftsbury in 1979, the cross-country ski area just had one “beat up” snow machine. He was hired to work three hours a day for room and board at a time when most of the people using the trails were staff.

“We didn’t even have a tractor,” he recalls. “We just weed-whacked the trails and had one beat up alpine groomer. Today we have three Pisten Bully grooming machines, four snow machines, four tractors and riding lawn mowers and we have access to three full-sized excavators and one mini excavator.”

Today, he sometimes works as much as 80 hours a week during the peak of ski season, which can make it hard to get out and train, but that’s OK, he says, because, “It’s rewarding to see people reap the benefits of my work.” He’s especially excited about the rise of mountain biking there in the summer.

Grooming—that’s only half of what makes Woodward a legend among local athletes. When he’s not working, Woodward is either training or competing as a world-class athlete in duathlon (running and biking).This past summer, at age 67, Woodward finished first in his age group at the ITU World Duathlon Championship in Germany for the

Vermonter Keith Woodward, trail groomer by day and world class duathlete by night.

second straight year. He has also been inducted into the Mount Washington Road Race Hall of Fame and in 2012 USA Triathlon named him its Grand Master Duathlete of the Year.

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THE FAMILY THAT FILMS TOGETHER For the Alba family, making ski movies is about more than finding an epic line.

NAMES: RAY (50), ALICIA (47), SANDRO (14), NEVADA (9)

OCCUPATIONS: Ray works for a tech firm that specializes in online learning, Alicia is a stay-athome mom and Sandro and Nevada are students. CLAIM TO FAME: Founding Alba Adventures LIVE IN: New York, N.Y.

22 Holidays 2018 vtskiandride.com

To get ready for the big events, Woodward and the rest of the crew make a lot of snow. Then they haul it to the 5K loop course. “In general, it takes about 150 truckloads of snow to cover one kilometer of skiable course,” he says.

On a typical snow-hauling day, his crew of four starts work at 6 a.m. and calls it a day at 10 or 11 p.m. that night.

On the eve of a big race, Woodward likes to groom the course the night before so that cold overnight temperatures allow it to set and be extra firm on race day. If it snows overnight, sometimes he’ll groom the course early that morning too.

For his part, Woodward’s favorite times to ski are in the early winter and the spring, when the snow is fastest. “You want to get a nice wet base early in the season and hope that it stays cold in the weeks after. When that happens before Christmas, it sets you up for spring skiing conditions during the inevitable January thaw.”

—Phyl Newbeck n For some parents, Go-Pros and social media can make family time hard to come by. For Ray and Alicia Alba, it’s become the glue that keeps their family of four skiing together all winter.

For the last five years, the Albas have been documenting their ski adventures in a web series called Alba Adventures. “Our videos aren’t about skiers doing extreme lines in the backcountry, but about spending time together as a family,” says Alicia. Since 2011, the Albas have made more than 58 videos over seven ski seasons.

They’ve learned to improve their films by crowdsourcing feedback, and some of their videos have earned upwards of 5,000 views on YouTube.

Their reasons for filming aren’t to showcase big air or to hashtag for free gear. As young parents, the Albas were avid skiers when their first son, Rocky, showed signs of disabilities. Ray and Alicia did everything in their power to help him lead an adventurous life. They took him on their ski trips and even crafted an adaptive ski-sled for him. “We had to recalibrate our lives,” said Ray. In 2007, at the age of nine, Rocky passed away. “It was really hard, especially being first-time parents,” said Ray. After Rocky died, Ray found solace in the few videos he had shot of his oldest son and young family.

Photo courtesy Ray and Alicia Alba

Through his job, Woodward has had the opportunity to meet some of the world’s top athletes. He gets to watch many of them train and compete on the same trails he grooms and he’s seen huge advancements in the way top athletes train.

“I wish I’d known 20 years ago what I know now. I never had a coach and I ran too much and didn’t rest enough when I was starting out,” he says. Technology has changed too: Woodward ran his first marathon in a pair of blue flats, shoes that were like Keds. He finished in 3 hours and 32 minutes. The next year he wore basketball shoes.

Woodward is looking forward to the coming season at Craftsbury. “This is going to be a great year,” he says. “We’ve got our season opener in early December and the Eastern Cup later in the month and then we’ve got the Championships in January, the biggest event we’ve ever had here.”

He was struck by the power of those videos and was grateful they existed. “It just kind of felt like after that point, I wanted to record as much of our lives together as I could as a memory for our children so that after we passed away they could share it with their families and friends.”

In the winter of 2010, the Albas decided to get back into skiing.

With a new baby and a six-year-old, they drove hours every weekend to ski in Vermont, the Catskills or the Adirondacks. That first year, they picked a different ski area every weekend. “We were searching for a home mountain,” says Ray. Skiing proved cathartic and connected them with other families.

They started recording small clips of each other and editing them with the free software on their home computer.

The films feature the Alba kids smiling and making their way down steep slopes at Killington, moguls at Pico and Jay Peak, interviewing people on chairlift rides and in later episodes, ducking into the woods. There are a lot of lifestyle shots, and plenty of unglamorous days of scrappy skiing in poor conditions with a lot of smiles, like one day at Pico in 2016 when it appears to be sleeting. The Albas appear unfazed.

According to Ray, “Nothing is staged. That would be against the spirit of what we are trying to do,” he says. One episode even documents their getting stuck in New York traffic and being forced to turn around en route to Pico on a powder day. As their kids have gotten older, they’ve started to storyboard as a family. Nevada, now nine, has her own miniseries, “Nevada’s Chairlift Snacks.”

In the end, it was the Vermont resorts, that captured their imaginations. “You cross that Vermont border and there’s a decompression that seems to happen,” says Ray, who has averaged between 40 and 60 days of skiing here annually since 2011, despite traveling for work 85 to 200 days out of the year.

The first season the Albas rented in Woodstock, then, in Plymouth. Next, they stayed in a little house near Ludlow’s Lake Rescue. Last season, they rented a place in Killington.

“All the Vermont towns we’ve stayed in have something different to provide. We’re considering Rutland, Middletown Springs or Wallingford for this year, but if budgets provide, we would love to get back to Woodstock,” says Ray. The family picked Pico as their home mountain in 2015 because they liked the atmosphere and community. “It’s like Mad River but closer,” says Ray. “At Pico, everybody gets to know your name and you can let your kids do a run on their own.”

Alicia hopes their videos will inspire other families to rally for a drive up to the mountains to spend time together, regardless of their skiing ability. Neither Alicia nor Ray have formal training in photography or videography and Alba Adventures is purely a hobby.

“When we get emails from other families saying they were inspired to get outside together because of our video, that feels really good,” Ray says. They’re aiming for 60 days or more this season and Ray says Rocky will be with them for every turn. —A.G.n

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Ski Towns SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SKIING In manyVermont ski towns, skiing and riding is all part of the curriculum. But for one farming community, it took a village to make sure its kids learned to ski.

By Emma Cotton and Abagael Giles

O Skiing at Mad River Glen (above), has been part of the local schools’ curriculum since the 1950s.

n a snowy Friday in early March, Orwell Village School sixth-grader Jacob Clifford sits on a chairlift at Pico Mountain in Mendon. Normally, he’d be in math class at around this time, but on this day he’s mastering a jump in the terrain park.

Math is Clifford’s favorite subject, but when asked if he’d rather be skiing, he flashes a toothy smile and nods.

For the students at Orwell Village School, which is located in the rolling farmlands of far western Vermont, Fridays for the last three winters have been good days.

At 10 a.m., while most other kids their age around the country are writing papers and balancing equations, all 120 of the Orwell youngsters file out of their classrooms and grab seats on three big yellow school buses. The buses take off, charging through the snow-covered hills, and arrive at Pico an hour later. The rest of the day is devoted to skiing.

The hours off count as physical education time and the cost to students is minimal.

Photos courtesy M<ad River Glen

VERMONT’S TRADITION OF SKI P.E.

To Vermonters, a school-run ski program might not seem special. Ski Vermont’s Fifth Grade Passport program gives 88 days of free skiing to fifth graders at any Vermont school and many schools all over the state dedicate a weekday to on-mountain learning, or provide free season passes to students who make the honor roll. These opportunities are especially common in mountain towns and at ski areas such as Bolton Valley, Mad River Glen and Stowe, school

ski programs have been going on for more than 50 years.

Bolton Valley’s founder, Ralph DesLauriers first launched a kids’ after-school program in 1966, the same year the ski area opened, because he noticed that Vermont’s ski slopes were mostly populated by out-ofstate skiers. “I’d say we’ve taught easily over 10,000 Vermont kids to ski over the years, if not more. It fits right in after school. Kids get on a bus to go to the mountain, take a lesson, ski with their friends, then their parents can pick them up after work,” says Josh Arneson, who has been Bolton’s communication director. Bolton Valley currently has 21 schools participating in its after-school ski program, with 1,700 kids enrolled over two semesters for the 2018-2019 season “The rising cost of skiing makes it difficult for some kids to have access to the sport,” says Mad River Glen general manager Matt Lillard. That’s why Mad River Glen hosts local schools from Calais, Fayston, Moretown and Waitsfield for in-school ski programs and has since the 1950s. For the last 20 years, the ski area has offered free season passes to kids under the age of 12.

This year, Mad River Glen received a $15,000 grant from the Reed Family Foundation to fund its Skiing For Scholars Program, which offers free skiing and lessons to local public school students. Lillard says the grant will expand the existing free skiing programs Mad River offers elementary school students to include middle and high school students in the Mount Abraham and Washington

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Thanks to a town-wide fundraising effort, the farming village of Orwell was able to start a ski program for its kids just three years ago. They now head to Pico on a bus each Friday.

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cases, we can let those kids keep it,” says Gerndt.

According to Violette, Stowe’s Pinnacle Ski and Sports has also helped provide equipment at little (or occasionally no) cost. “They never single out the kids who need it but they know and the bill just never comes,” says Violette.

Burton allows Gerndt to volunteer his time and he’s “coached” the same group of eight- to ten-year-olds for the last couple of years. He’s seen them grow, on and off the slopes.

One of his kids had a turbulent home life and was acting out in school. “His parents were separated, and he was young. He really got a lot out of snowboarding but didn’t have a pass or anyone to take him on the weekends,” recalled Gerndt, who said the Friday Program was one place the student could really excel. “With snowboarding, he was really great at listening to pointers and tips. Now, if I see him around school, he’ll come over and say hello to me. I got to see him grow up a bit and his behavior is improved. It seemed like he really learned to be respectful of me and of the mountain and his classmates.”

Although many of the chaperones are parents, Gerndt sees a lot of twenty-somethings who volunteer. “There are a lot of really good riders who came through the program and stayed in the valley.”

THE LITTLE TOWN THAT COULD

Orwell is a dairy farming community of 1,234 people that lies about 20 miles west of the Green Mountains.

Getting the ski program started there required a massive fundraising effort, says Stefanie Wilbur, who spearheaded the program. “Orwell is beautiful, it’s vast, it’s far from everything. It’s 30 minutes to the grocery store, and we love that.”

Wilbur, a mother of three, runs a dairy farm, one of about 10 remaining in Orwell. “We are not a skiing community and to open these kids up to that is just awesome,” she says. For Orwell parents and teachers, watching the kids carve turns every Friday feels like a small miracle.

Wilbur first pitched the idea of a Friday ski program to the school board in 2015. She had already called around to ski resorts to see which program was most feasible. She found Pico, whose Junior Explorers program included a 90-minute lesson, a lift ticket and rentals for $10 per child per day—$60 per child for the program’s six weeks.

In total, with busing, Wilbur figured the program would cost $11,000 per year. The school board said she could do it, as long as she could raise the money.

That was in November of 2015. By Christmas, the money was raised. By February, at no cost to families, the kids were on the mountain.

“I called everybody I knew,” Wilbur said with a laugh.

Photo by Emma Cotton

West School Districts. In addition to free skiing, students get free instruction from race coaches and rentals.

For eight Fridays during the winter, all students in Stowe’s public school system break from their regular schedule and participate in alpine skiing and snowboarding (or other activities). A $60 pass gets them skiing those Fridays, as well as on school holidays, snow days and during February break.

Stowe’s program is powered entirely by volunteer chaperones who guide kids around the mountain, get them on the right buses and keep an eye on them in the lodge.

“It’s the one time kids can be with adults who aren’t their parents or teachers or in ski school. They don’t have to learn; they just get to ski with their friends,” says Vanessa Violette, herself a volunteer and organizer. Volunteers get a nontransferable ticket voucher to Stowe for every two days of on-snow instruction.

John “J.G.” Gerndt has volunteered for Stowe’s Friday Ski program for the last three seasons. Gerndt was one of the first sponsored Burton athletes in the mid-1980s and is one of their most celebrated board designers. He’s also the dad of a fourth grader.

“Not every kid in the Stowe school system has access to the right equipment,” says Gerndt, and the kids are required to provide their own if they want to participate in the program. “Sometimes I’ve seen kids with gear that’s holding them back. I’ve been lucky to be able to contact their parents to say, ‘Hey, I’ve got access to this equipment and I can lend it to your child.Would you be comfortable with that?’ In many

‘

THE LEGEND LIVES ON

Photo by John Gerndt

As a volunteer, Burton’s J.G. Gerndt has chaperoned this group of elementary school snowboarders in Stowe’s Friday program. The only curriculum: have fun.

Every cousin, every uncle, every co-worker, any business, I just coldcalled. The First National Bank of Orwell made a very large, generous donation. Stonewood Farms made a large donation. But other than those two, they were anywhere from $5 to $60,” she said.

“All you have to say is, ‘I want to get kids skiing,’ and they’re like ‘absolutely, how can I help?’” Wilbur continued. “It’s pretty awesome.”

The program’s first year was a success. Almost every student in the school, kindergarteners through eighth-graders, skied, and those who didn’t traveled to the mountain anyway and did homework with chaperones in the lodge. The teachers came on alternating Fridays.

For the 2017 spending year, the Orwell School Board decided to help fund the program. They covered $4,000—the cost of transportation.

For the remaining $7,000, the newfound Booster Club got creative.

They started a now-annual golf tournament, and they auctioned off Adirondack chairs that the kids painted. Those fundraisers now bring in plenty of money, which the club uses to supply neck warmers and snacks to kids at the mountain.

For the 2017-2018 school year, the town voted to include the entirety of the program’s cost in the school budget. And on Town Meeting Day in 2018, residents voted yet again to fund the program for 2018-2019.

It’s that support from communities that keeps public school kids skiing across the state. “For some kids, this is their only access,” says Violette.

Since Vail Resorts bought Stowe in 2017, chaperones have had to work two days to earn a non-transferable lift ticket (previously they earned a lift ticket for the day they volunteered and one to share for another date after just one day of work).Violette says the number of chaperones has declined, in part because there is no reward for season passholders.

Several local companies like Keurig and Burton allow their employees to volunteer on the clock. Gerndt says the chaperones get a lot out of the program too. “I’ll probably keep volunteering even after my son is done with the program,” he says. “It’s just a lot of fun. I look forward to it every week and I know the kids do.” n

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RETURN OF THE BACKCOUNTRY BADASS 30 Holidays 2018 vtskiandride.com

“Going for 2.5 million vert wasn’t about the uphill, it was about the cool places I could get to, human-powered,” says Rice, shown here etching a

Photos courtesy Aaron Rice

AARON RICE SPENT A YEAR SKINNING AND SKIING A RECORD 2.5 MILLION FEET IN THE MOUNTAINS OF

Photo Credit

UTAH, CALIFORNIA , ARGENTINA AND CHILE. THEN HE MOVED BACK TO VERMONT. HERE'S WHY.

BY LISA LYNN

Photo by Tyler Wilkinson-Ray

turn in Argentina.

vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 31

A

aron Rice wasn’t expecting the avalanche. On Sunday, March 11, 2018. Rice and three friends set off into the sidecountry, cutting across a ridgeline toward a favorite gully. It had been snowing all week, promising deep powder.

At the top of the gully, they paused. “We followed protocol and skied one by one, making a cut across the top of the gully,” Rice said, when we talked a few days later.

“The first skier launched in and set off the slide. He managed to hold his speed and ski out to the side. If he hadn’t, there are 100-foot cliffs below, and the snow would have swept him right over those.”

Three days later, just to the west on that ridge, another gully slid. Six Army personnel who had been undergoing winter warfare training in Smuggler’s Notch, Vt., were caught in it. Five of the six were injured and sent to the hospital.

“If we were out West, we would have definitely been carrying avy gear that day,” noted Rice. “Everything I know about this terrain should have told us we were in avalanche conditions but since it’s Vermont, we just didn’t think about it,” he says. After skiing down, he checked that no one else had been caught in the slide and then sat down for a debrief with his group. After, he did something not many skiers do: he admitted to his 8,000-plus followers on Instagram, that he’d made a mistake.

If anyone should know about avalanches, it’s Aaron Rice. At 28, he has skinned and skied more backcountry vertical in a year than anyone has ever recorded, and he’s already been crushed by falling snow. In March 2017, Rice was rappelling down a section of Utah’s Y-Not Couloir when a small slide triggered above. It funneled down the rock face, then brushed him over a 35-foot cliff and 250 feet down the couloir. “I should be dead,” he wrote in his avalanche report.

When Rice arrived in Vermont from his home in Acton, Mass., ten years ago to attend University of Vermont, he immersed himself in skiing and learning about backcountry terrain. “I’d get up at dawn and go skin up, do some laps and be back for class by 9:30 a.m.,” he remembers. He took all the avalanche safety training courses, he joined the UVM Outing Club, he skied “80 or 90 days a season —while taking classes,” he adds with a smile. Rice had raced for his high school team.

“He was a good skier, but not a ski racer like you see coming out of the ski academies,” says filmmaker Tyler Wilkinson-Ray, who grew up ski racing at Cochran’s and graduated from UVM in 2012, the same year Rice did. “What I realized when we reconnected out West, is Aaron really, really knew a lot about the mountains.”

After he graduated, Rice did what so many other skiers do: he headed West, ski bumming and bussing tables at Utah’s Alta Lodge.

“In Utah, I really learned to love backcountry,” Rice said one day last October, after I’d run across him near a trailhead in Stowe. “But it’s not like the East where after a snowfall you can still find great untracked in the trees. Little Cottonwood Canyon gets tracked out like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “I’d look over across the canyon away from the resort crowds and kept thinking ‘Now that’s where I want to be.’”

So, he started skinning more and more. And more.

On his website, Rice tallies his vertical. “Five winters ago, I skied about 75,000 vertical feet. The next year I skied 117,000 feet. The next year 248,000. The next year 447,000, and last year 703,000 feet

32 Holidays 2018 vtskiandride.com

of vert. This year, my goal is to earn 2.5 million self-propelled vertical feet, starting in January 1, 2016,” he wrote in late 2015. “I’d heard about Greg Hill’s record of skiing 2 million vertical feet, human powered, in a year and I figured I could break that,” says Rice. (When Rice says “skied” he counts just the uphill vertical.)

To put that in perspective, the vertical rise of Superstar, the trail at Killington where the women’s World Cup slalom races have been held is 1,171 feet. To reach two million vert, you’d have to skin up that more than four times a day, every day for 365 days. And Rice wasn’t planning on skinning up groomed trails.

“The whole point of this was to travel and to ski some really cool places,” he says. That meant breaking trail, plotting routes, carrying water and food, avy gear and ropes. It meant figuring out how to survive without a steady job, where to chase snow in the off-season, lining up ski buddies and friends with couches he could crash on.

Previous spread, photo by Tyler Wilkinson-Ray; This page: photos courtesy Aaron Rice.

WHAT 2.5 MILLION FEET REALLY TAKES

Aaron Rice started out the 2018/2019 ski season riding his bike up Mt. Mansfield (far left, top) on Oct. 12 and then hiking Mt. Washington before dawn on Oct. 29 (far left, bottom). It’s a long way from his days in the Wasatch Range, hiking and skiing some of the steepest couloirs (above and right) with pros such as Caroline Gleich.

“At first, I’m not sure if many people actually believed he could or would do it,” says pro skier and mountaineer Caroline Gleich who has, by her own estimate, skied more than 20 times with Rice. I reached her in November, after she had just returned from summiting 26,906-foot Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world, and was already planning an expedition to Everest for the spring.

“When he started out to break the record, Aaron was a good skier, but he wasn’t known. He hadn’t really done anything to build up cred and companies were not about to sponsor an unknown,” she recalls. As Rice started in on his assault, logging 10,000 feet a day in January, that began to change. He reached out to Wilkinson-Ray who jumped at the idea of making a film about the effort. He plotted trips to Argentina and Chile for the summer. He documented his skiing on his blog, Instagram and on Backcountry Magazine’s website.

Photos by Louis Arevalo

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE RECORD

The story of Rice’s year is told beautifully in the 20-minute film Wilkinson-Ray made, 2.5 Million (watch it at Vtskiandride.com). It shows Rice skiing epic lines and skinning endless terrain. It show days skiing waist-deep pow out of Refugio Frey, a hut high above treeline near Bariloche, Argentina. And it also shows, honestly, the pain that Rice went through as his body broke down from overtraining.

“Why do it, why did you want to set a record,” Wilkinson Ray asks Rice at the end of the film. “It was never really about the record,” Rice says. “It was about pushing myself as far as I could.”

Rice claims he’s not much of an athlete, but he’s skied with the

likes of Gleich and her fiancee, Rob Lea, a triathlete and mountaineer.

“Aaron is just this great guy to ski with,” Gleich says. “He’s humble, he’s really safe and knowledgeable about the mountains. He never gets phased, he’s just steady.” Gleich is the only woman to have skied all 90 of the Wasatch’s most difficult lines, as documented in Andrew McLean’s The Chuting Gallery.

Rice was with Gleich when she skied one of the Wasatch’s toughest lines, Medusa on Mt. Olympus. “We both climbed this super steep couloir. I chickened out and went to ski Zeus, a line that was still pretty scary and she just pointed them straight down Medusa,” Rice recalls.

Though he could have gone the pro skier route, Rice didn’t. “He actually turned sponsors away and told them to support the next kid who wants to do something,” Gleich says. Instead, in 2017 Rice returned to Vermont and got a job as a staff scientist at Stone Environmental in Montpelier. “If I stayed too long in a place like Alta the sad reality was I only saw two paths for myself, becoming an alcoholic or a washed up ski bum,” he says wryly. “I had other things I wanted to do. And I really love the people here in Vermont and the sense of community.”

As our conversation ends, Rice’s eyes scan the Green Mountains. It is October 12 and snow is in the forecast. “I’ll be up there tomorrow on Mt. Mansfield, even if it’s skiing frost on grass,” he says. The next day, he rides his bike up the Toll Road, skis on his pack.Two weeks later, he joins a group that gets an alpine start, climbing Mt. Washington in the pre-dawn hours by headlamp. They are rewarded with turns down the headwall at first light.

Aaron Rice is back. n

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When it opened in 1958, Sugarbushâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s original three-person Carlevaro-Savio gondola at Lincoln Peak gave skiers the longest vertical rise in the East.

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60 Sweet

Years

THERE’S A LOT TO CELEBRATE AS SUGARBUSH REMEMBERS (AND REVIVES) ITS YOUNGER, WILDER DAYS AS “MASCARA MOUNTAIN.”

Photo courtesy Sugarbush archives

By Lisa Lynn

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The Lost Valley “I can still remember the first time I came into the Valley,” says Win Smith, Jr., chairman of Summit Ventures, (the LLC that owns Sugarbush), as he leans back in his office chair in Warren. It is late fall,

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Photo by Angelo Lynn (top); Slim Aarons/Sugarbush archives, bottom

T

he first time I skied I was five years old. I knew the words “Mad River Glen” and “Sugarbush” because my mother spoke them with reverence, fingering the words like talismans, her face lighting up as stories came back to her.

She was the ski bum in the family. At cocktail parties in our apartment in NewYork, she would talk about her single days in Boston, after college, and the “old gang.” They made the pilgrimage north each weekend. The final stretch, Route 17 up to Mad River Glen, was a bumpy dirt road. They bunked at Ulla Lodge, where there were dorm rooms for men and for women, and later, shared a ski house.

Growing up in Indiana, my mother was not a skier. But those Vermont weekends in the 1950s made her one. In pictures, now longfaded Polaroids, she wears lace-up leather boots, stretch pants and a heavy windbreaker. Riding the single chair, she’d burrow into the thick wool blankets handed out at the bottom. “You were never cold skiing down,” she remembers. “You had to work too hard.”

Her friends bragged about skiing the challenging trails at Mad River Glen. They talked, too, about the “new” place in the Valley, Sugarbush, and the celebrities they’d spotted there. There was talk of parties, fondue nights and about things that I couldn’t or, as I knew from the sudden hush when they saw I was listening, shouldn’t, understand.

In my five-year-old mind, the Mad River Valley was this mystical paradise—a wonderland of snow, my mother called it—populated by good friends with whom she would ski for years to come. Those friends eventually lured her to ski Chamonix. In 1960 she moved there to ski bum. Four years later, she returned to New York, married, with a toddler.

“We’re going skiing,” my mother finally announced. It was Christmas, 1967. Beneath the tree were a pair of tiny red skis with rat trap bindings, a heavy Norwegian sweater and a second-hand ski suit that was way too big.

In the early 1960s, Town & Country magazine had done a spread on this new resort, Sugarbush, opened by Damon and Sara Gadd in 1958.

I recently came across the photos Slim Aarons, the Annie Leibowitz of his era, shot for it. There was New York socialite Nan Kempner in a leopard-print jacket; founders Damon and Sara Gadd smiling from a gondola car; a full bar set up in the snow (Sugarbush was one of the first ski areas to serve alcohol at its base); fashion designer Victor Camerana and blue-blood beauty Robin Butler, scantily dressed as Adam and Eve at a party at the tony Ski Club Ten. Those were the “Mascara Mountain” years, as Vogue dubbed them.

Our arrival was far less glamorous. My father borrowed an RV whose tap water tasted of rum. The previous occupants, skiers too, found that filling the water tank with rum solved two problems: the tap water didn’t freeze and the rum didn’t run out.

We drove from New York on a Friday after his work let out, arriving in the Sugarbush dirt lot long after midnight. At first light, I stepped outside. Lincoln Peak loomed higher than any skyscraper I had seen. Snow was falling. In those early hours, the gondolas—wondrous, bulbous, bright toys—hung still and shiny in the icy air.

Sugarbush president Win Smith (far left), a former VP of Merrill Lynch, skis upwards of 100 days and rarely misses the pond skim. He brings the same spirit of fun that its founders, Damon and Sara Gadd (bottom left) brought to the resort. Extreme skier John Egan (this page) arrived in 1976 and still calls Sugarbush home.

Photo by John Atkinson/Sugarbush

“Skiing here, with its natural terrain, rocks and roots, makes you a better skier.” —John Egan, extreme skier

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Bragg Farm, one of the Valley’s many working farms, produces top quality Ploughgate Creamery butter, (this pae) Sugarbush’s early morning powder cat rides give skiers first dibs on something equally creamy (top right). Sunning outside Chez Henri, the slopeside French bistro that

2018. Lincoln Peak is a dark hulk, shrouded in clouds. The first snow has etched white lines across the mountain’s bony shoulders and down its creased ravines—trails like Rumble and Paradise that have challenged some of the best skiers in the world.

“We came over Rochester Gap and I remember seeing the Warren General Store and The Pitcher Inn—and they look pretty much the same now as they did then,” Smith says.

Much of the Valley, 20 miles of fertile farmland carved by the Mad River, looks as it did 20, 60 or even 100 years ago. In the open meadows to its north, cattle pick over stalks in the snow at Doug Kenyon’s farm.

Inside the farm store, next to baling wire, feed and assorted hardware, is a freezer with some of the best beef money can buy. Kenyon, like many shopkeepers in town, knows his customers by name.

Many of the old farmhouse inns—Tucker Hill, Hyde Away, the Mad River Barn—that have housed skiers for the last 50 years still welcome guests (see “Valley of the Lodges,” p. 48). To the south, Lareau Farm remains a working farm and inn. The converted barn serves the wood-fired American Flatbread that founder and ski bum George Schenk has made famous.

Smith bought The Pitcher Inn, which had burned in 1993, and renovated it into a Relais & Chateau property with another valley legend, architect David Sellers (who also built Smith’s house).

Much as it was in the 1950s and 60s, the Valley today is a melting pot of old-time Vermonters, back-to-the-land hippies, European exski racers and quietly wealthy vacationers. They mix easily with the wildly creative artists, Ivy-League iconoclasts, Boston suburbanites and die-hard adrenaline junkies. On the mountain, no one can tell the difference and, it appears, no one really cares.

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Smith did not grow up skiing, but he melded into the Valley quickly.

“I [first] came up to share a ski house and have a good time with a bunch of fraternity friends from Amherst [College],” he recalls. He ended up building a house and raised his four children on ski weekends there.

During the week, he commuted back to New York to a job at the firm his father had helped found and which became Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith. Smith, Jr. worked at Merrill Lynch for 28 years, rising to executive vice president, running the international client group and working on projects such as the valuation of Howard Hughes’ estate, Barron’s reported in a 2001 story “The Son Also Rises.”

Smith followed what was going on with the ski business the way an NFL coach watches college football. “I kept an eye on Sugarbush, waiting until I thought the price would be right,” he recalls.

Les Otten had bought Sugarbush in 1994, adding it to the American Skiing Company’s portfolio of resorts, which started with Sunday River and grew to include Killington and nine others.

Otten put in the Slide Brook Express, finally connecting Sugarbush to Glen Ellen (now Mt. Ellen), the resort that had been annexed in 1979. He also added six other lifts and a 25-milllion-gallon snowmaking pond. Act 250,Vermont’s 1970 land use and development act, protected the land between the two ski areas, the vast Slide Brook Basin, as bear habitat. In the winter, it became a powder stash for savvy locals.

Blaise Carrig started working ski patrol under Dennis Curran in 1975, when the Gadds still owned Sugarbush. Under Otten, he worked his way up to resort president. Carrig remembers those years well. “We spent close to $30 million on those upgrades which, at the time was more in one year than I think any ski area had spent.”

“There was this amazing energy there then,” Carrig remembers.

Photo by Sandy Macy/Sugarbush

Henri Borel started in 1964 (bottom right).

Photo by John Atkinson (top); Sugarbush archives

“When I first dropped out of college and came up to Sugarbush, there was a real ski bum culture there. Half the dishwashers had gone to Harvard or had Ph.Ds., and man could they ski. Guys like Sparky Potter and John Reynolds were as good as the other big names you hear about.”

Carrig, now a senior adviser at Vail Resorts, remembers living in the basement of the Mad Bush Chalet, making $55 a week and getting a free season’s pass. “We’d all go to the Wünderbar on the slopes after skiing, then maybe to Gallagher’s for a $2 beer, then over to Charlie Brown’s Blue Tooth for 99-cent all-you-can-eat pasta, and then back out to hear bands. Orsini’s (which became the site of The Common Man) would set up an after-hours party for all the dishwashers with free beers and dishwashing contests. It was a lot of fun. The Mad River Valley had this quirky, creative, zany vibe about it.”

In 1997, Carrig left to run Utah’s Wolf Creek (as it became The Canyons), then Heavenly, in California and became president of Vail Resorts’ mountain division. “Sugarbush did well back then but Les got overleveraged and expanded too quickly,” he recalls. By the late 1990s, Otten’s company, financially stressed and saddled with debt, began looking to sell off resorts.

Making a Mountain On September 10, 2001, as Otten’s company was struggling after its toorapid expansion, the price was right and Smith and his partner Joe Riemer, operating as Summit Ventures, closed on Sugarbush. A month later, a new CEO took over at Merrill Lynch and Smith resigned. “Right after, a former chairman called me up and said ‘What the hell are you doing? I hope you’re not going to move to Vermont and become a hermit,’” says Smith.

Smith came to Sugarbush with a background and a vision not unlike the early founders had. Damon and Sara Gadd were Ivy-Leagueeducated Mad River Glen skiers. They moved from New York City, where Gadd’s father was a developer, to Hawaii and then, improbably, to Fayston, Vt., after reading an article about skiing in the East. They bought the Ulla Lodge (now the Hyde Away Inn) in 1954.

Damon, who had worked in tourism, bartended. Sara, a former reporter for the Honolulu Star Bulletin, waited tables. As Damon told writer Denise McCluggage in a 1973 Skiing magazine article, “I remember quite a few times Vince Sardi was dishwasher.” Sardi, an actor, was founder of the eponymous Broadway restaurant Sardi’s, in NewYork.

The Gadds, along with Jack Murphy, a veteran of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division and a former ski instructor in Sun Valley, began scouting around New England to build a new ski area. “Skiing was changing,” Gadd told McCluggage. “We thought that a new area was needed—one that was more elaborate, more comfortable, more modern. It started out as cocktail chatter at first, then it became serious.”

The Gadds and Murphy watched as storms marched across the Champlain Valley, their clouds gathering moisture from the broad lake, stacking up at the ridgelines of the Greens and dumping prodigious snow on their eastern slopes. Lincoln Peak, less than 10 miles south from Mad River Glen’s General Stark Mountain, seemed as good a place as any to execute their vision. The terrain was varied. It faced north. Over Christmas week in 1969 an historic Nor’easter piled 30 inches in Burlington and a whopping 44 inches in Waitsfield.

Murphy was put in charge of cutting trails. An old logging road, extended to the summit, became the gnarly, windy Jester. Rumble and Paradise were classic, tight, gladed trails. Stein Eriksen, Sugarbush’s

vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 39

Sugarbush has always been a haven for foodies.

In the 1960s famed New York restauranteur Armando Orsini would set up a buffet for friends at the Castlerock warming hut. Henri Borel, right, now 93 and still skiing, raises a glass at his bistro, Chez Henri.

“My dad was a ski bum and I grabbed what I could out of the ski culture here.” —Grace Potter, singer/songwriter

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Photo Credit Photos Sugarbush archives

legendary ski school director from 1963 to 1966, persuaded Murphy to cut Stein’s, a broad, straight shot, while Glade was Murphy’s own tribute to western resorts. Decades later, two of America’s best skiers would face off on Stein’s when extreme skiing pioneer John Egan raced World Cup mogul champion Jonny Mosely down the trail. Egan later called that his “craziest day on skis.”

The Extreme Team John Egan was barely out of high school when he arrived in the Valley in 1976 as a ski bum and dishwasher at Trodd and Lexi Fortna’s Golden Horse Lodge—and he never really left. Two years later, a filmmaker named Warren Miller came to town looking for skiers. Egan made the cut for “A La Carte” and recruited his younger brother Dan. Together they appeared in more than 17 films. They also traveled the world to ski the Andes, Greenland and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. With brothers Rob and Eric DesLauriers (whose father founded Bolton Valley ski area), they became the North Face Extreme Team, filming their own ski adventures in exotic destinations and hosting advanced extreme skiing clinics.

No matter where they went, John Egan always returned to the Valley. “Skiing the terrain here—with its the natural lines, rocks and roots—just makes you a better skier,” he has said, over and over.

In 1998, Egan launched the Castlerock Extreme—a challenge to see who could best freeski the gnarly lines of the trail that runs beneath the Castlerock chair. “I realized I could ski it top to bottom in 90 seconds, so we decided to double that and set up a challenge to see who could ski Lift Line well in under three minutes.” The competition has been going strong for 20 years, though the time limit is no more.

Since the years when first Peter Estin, a prep-school bred Dartmouth grad, then dashing Stein Eriksen (known for sending a graceful backflip, mid-run, to impress his students), then Austrian Sigi Grottendorfer ran the ski school, Sugarbush has been known for its charismatic ski

instructors. And they helped train some of the best skiers on the planet.

Denise McCluggage, a ski writer and race car driver with Monte Carlo Rally victories and a history of dating actors such as Steve McQueen, also landed in Warren. A founding editor of what is now Autoweek magazine, McCluggage was a passionate skier and developed a new approach to skiing that mixed in sports psychology and visualization. Her 1977 book The Centered Skier gave rise to a different type of ski school workshop at Sugarbush and revolutionized how people learned to ski. “She was way ahead of her time,” Carrig remembers.

Ann Battelle, two-time World Cup champion in moguls, credits her love for bumps to skiing Sugarbush during her days at Middlebury College in the late Eighties. “We had a group of about 15 that would ski every chance we got—parents, big kids, little kids—everyone was welcome. We thought we owned that mountain, befriending the ski patrol and skiing Exterminator to what is now called Tumbler,” she remembers. David Babic, whose father Tom was a liftie at Sugarbush and whose brother Kevin is now V.P. of Finance, also became a champion mogul skier and medaled in the World Cup finals in 2008.

The Green Mountain Valley School (which trains at Sugarbush’s Kelly Brush Race Arena), has turned out some of the nation’s top skiers. Grads include Olympians Doug Lewis, A.J. Kitt, Jeremy Nobis and his sister Shannon, Daron Rahlves and A.J. Ginnis, as well as U.S. Alpine team members Drew Duffy and Abi Jewett, Ben Ritchie and World Cup racer Brian McLaughlin.

Singer/songwriter Grace Potter, whose father Sparky made the original Sugarbush sign for the Gadds (and still makes signs for resorts around the country) did a stint at G.M.V.S. “My dad was a ski bum and I was really absorbed in the ski culture and competitive, so I grabbed as much as I could out of skiing here,” she said in a 2015 interview with Vermont Ski + Ride. “When I was in grade school, I’d get out on half days on Fridays to ski. Later I went to the Green Mountain Valley School and got into ski racing with some pretty amazing athletes like Doug Lewis.”

March Madness The competitions that Sugarbush may be best known for are not downhills or bump contests but less serious events such as the Gelandesprung Championship (a citizen’s ski jumping competition), the Chez Henri Cup (which Henri Borel, 93, still races in), Sloshwicking (a bizarre race involving a ski on one foot, a snowshoe on the other and a broom as a weapon), and the Cowbell Champagne Party (hit the cowbell with a champagne cork and you win).

This year, many of those are being revived and March Madness, a month of sunshine and craziness, promises to bring it up a notch, ending with a tradition that’s been going on since 1969: pond skimming.

When it comes to pond skimming, Win Smith is not a bystander.

Often clad in an Hawaiian shirt, mirror glasses and a Hawaiian lei, the former V.P. of Merrill Lynch usually manages to skim the surface on fat skis without getting his sandy hair wet.

In the years he’s spent at Sugarbush, Smith (who has run a sub-threehour marathon) has only become more of a diehard skier. He’s on the mountain each day by nine in the morning and in recent years has logged more than 100 days, even as he looks toward his 70th year in 2019.

“Life begins at 60,” says Smith as he leans back in his chair wearing fleece, jeans and tennis shoes. He looks relaxed.

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“That’s what a Chinese woman told me once and I believe it.”

In 2009, Smith reached a pivotal point in his life. “I was rafting in class IV rapids in British Columbia and the raft flipped,” he says. “After that, I reevaluated things.” That year he moved to Vermont to manage Sugarbush full time, and reconnected with Shelburne resident Lilli Ruane, a childhood friend who later became his second wife. “I may have thought about Sugarbush as an investment at one time,” he says, “but for the most part it’s been a passion.”

If Damon Gadd said he wanted to make skiing “more comfortable,” Smith took that to the next level. He took a more hands-on approach after 2009, making the master plan a reality his primary job. After raising money with partners and gaining $20 million from 40 foreign investors through the EB-5 program (most of which is paid off), Sugarbush had the funds to move forward.

With an eye toward Vermont traditions, Smith began building the Lincoln Peak Village. The ski school, called “The Schoolhouse” building, was fashioned after a traditional white clapboard meeting

house. The red Rumbles restaurant (formerly Timbers) is reminiscent of a giant silo.The Clay Brook Hotel with its 61 rooms and “residences” stands slopeside in a pleasing red clapboard building. Institutions like the Valley House Lodge remained but its Wünderbar, where the Gadds and their bold-face-named friends would gather for lunch and martinis was moved upstairs, with a retro theme.

Chez Henri, the iconic French bistro Henri Borel started in 1964, remains across a small footbridge from the slopes, tucked into a basement. Borel, 93, still skis nearly every day and presides (and competes in) the Chez Henri Cup which he launched in 1986.

So, what is next? What would Smith do if he had unlimited funds?

He chuckles at this question. “There’s lots more to do,’” he says. “I’d add another snowmaking pond, another mid-mountain place to eat; perhaps a conference center at Lincoln Peak. I’d also look to make this more attractive in mid-week and off-season—not with ferris wheels and waterparks but maybe more intermediate mountain bike trails.”

As Vail Resorts and Alterra have gobbled up resorts to the north

The base village at Lincoln Peak was built with an eye toward preserving Vermont’s architectural traditions.

Far right, founder Jack Murphy, a 10th Mountain

Photo Credit

Division veteran, designed many of the trails.

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(Stowe and Okemo) and south (Stratton), Sugarbush has dropped its season pass prices and joined both the Mountain Collective and Ikon passes. Smith remains optimistic. “If I had to think about one word that defines Sugarbush, I’d say it’s ‘community.’ There’s a loyalty to this place that I am not sure you see at every mountain.” Carrig agrees: “Sugarbush knows who it is. It has a character you won’t find anywhere else. For many skiers, it’s not about the price of the pass but identifying with a place. Mad River Valley skiers identify with this place.”

Photo this page by John Atkinson/Sugarbush; Sugarbush archive

Photo Credit

A Mountain of Change In my late twenties, nearly 25 years after that first ski trip, I found myself back in the Mad River Valley. Saturday was a brilliant day of sun. I skied hard and joined the crowd cracking open beers after. Two fellow journalists whom I had met once on a beach in Antigua years before—writer Jill Bobrow and photographer Dana Jinkins—passed by. We recognized each other and they stopped to talk.

“You can’t go back to New York tomorrow,” Bobrow said after

catching up, “come stay. We’re doing dinner and a full-moon ski after.”

It’s the type of hospitality that happens in the Valley—where if you ski you are instantly part of a family. That night, as we skimmed across a high meadow, the slopes of Sugarbush shining across the valley in the moonlight, I swore one day I’d move here. It took a decade.

Since then, there have been days pounding the bumps down Jester, darting into the powdery woods off Paradise, and spring afternoons listening to a band outside at Castlerock Pub. And last March, there was a skin up for a candlelight beer tasting dinner at Allyn’s Lodge. We sat at long tables. Chef Jim Dinan paired Frost Beer Works brews with a steak so tender it dissolved on the tongue. After, in the dark, guided by headlamps ,we flew down the trails, giddy from the beer. The mild night air was tinged with the scent of wet moss and spring.

I paused at the top of the last knoll, looking down at the Lincoln Peak village, the sparkling lights of the hotel and beyond, the dark parking lot where I’d stepped out of an R.V. 50 years ago.

I thought of my mother, now 90, and how skiing here steered her life in ways a girl from Indiana could not have possibly imagined. I thought about the past 60 years of this resort, the Gadds, Carrig’s era, and now Win Smith’s reign. And it occurred to me that people have changed Sugarbush far less than the mountain has changed them.

In the dark, I quietly said two words, long overdue: “Thank you.” n

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Over 600 years of Belgian Brewing Experience

LEGENDARY LODGES

ACROSS VERMONT, CLASSIC SKI LODGES ARE BEING RESTORED, BRINGING BACK AN ERA OF GOOD TIMES .

Photos courtesy Seesaw’s

BY LISA LYNN AND ABAGAEL GILES

In the 1920s, Ivan Sesow built the Wonder View Pavilion as a roadside dance hall with “sin cabins” out back.

Now, a local family has rebuilt the cabins as guest suites (above), and relaunched Seesaw’s Lodge.

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FROM WONDER VIEW TO JOHNNY SEESAW’S In early 1938, Fred Pabst (of the Pabst beer family) set up a small rope tow just up the hill on Little Bromley. Ski instructor Lew de Schweinitz and his brother-in-law Bill Parrish made a deal with Pabst that “if de Schweinitz bought the Pavilion and turned it into a ski lodge, Pabst would put up a rope tow in the West Meadow,” on Bromley Mountain, wrote Parrish’s godson, Jackson Hogen, in a 2004 article in Skiing Heritage. The deal was done and the Bromley Mountain Ski Club, as Johnny Seesaw’s (nicknamed for Ivan Sesow) was officially named, opened the day after Christmas, 1938.

“At first, my father and mother invited their friends to come stay,” remembers Alan Parrish, Bill’s son, who grew up at the lodge and still owns an adjacent house. “Then skiers started coming back year after year. It got so popular my parents made a policy that you had to know someone and have a good reference to get a reservation.” The lodge hosted a who’s who of skiers and celebrities. “Charles Lindbergh and his wife [Anne Morrow] stayed here to get away from all the publicity after their son was kidnapped,” Parrish recalls.

National Ski Patrol founder Charles “Minnie” Dole and some friends dreamed up the idea of the National Ski Patrol there over drinks in 1940. Other guests included Gerald Ford and Yale president Kingman Brewster, along with various Kennedys and the Harrimans.

Dinner was served in the old dance hall on heavy pine furniture of a Bavarian design and chairs with hearts cut out of the back. After, guests would gather around the circular fire pit with its six-foot copperclad chimney, which the Parrishes had custom-built and fashioned after one they had seen at Colorado’s Grand Lake Lodge. “John Jay would often come too and screen his films,” Parrish recalls, remembering the man Warren Miller credits with inventing the ski movie.

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“One thing my parents were concerned about was that their guests didn’t get hurt skiing, so my father invested in skis and the early safety bindings,” Alan Parrish remembers. Bill Parish had served on the board of Ski Industries of America and helped bring about an early study on ski safety that “showed that at the time [1958] a ski injury cost the industry $5,000 in lost lodging, meals and equipment sales,” Hogen wrote. Bill Parrish began importing Aluflex metal skis from France with more modern safety bindings and wooden Amori skis from Japan. “He’d heard about Clif Taylor’s approach of using shorter skis and his book Ski in a Day so he took those old seven-foot Amori skis and cut them down to 39 inches and they worked great.”

Parrish went on to become an engineer and invented the device and systems that have helped measure the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica. The Parrishes sold the inn in 1974.

In 1980, Gary Okun, a lawyer from New Jersey and his wife Nancy spent five days as guests at Johnny Seesaws and offered to buy it that same week. In 2008, the place was named to the National Historic Register.

RECOVERING HISTORY “We would have loved to keep it as an historic building but so much of it was gone that it needed a total rebuild,” says Ryan Prins, as he stands at the doorway of the lodge he and his wife Kim have spent two years of their life lovingly recreating.

All photos courtesy Seesaw’s Lodge

E

ven before there were lifts in Vermont there were ski lodges, places early skiers bunked at while they explored the mountains—places like Stowe’s Green Mountain Inn or Waitsfield’s Tucker Hill Inn. Some actually gave rise to new ski areas and changed skiing. Johnny Seesaw’s was one of those. And now, thanks to local skiers Ryan and Kim Prins and their business partners, Seesaw’s Lodge is back.

The legend of Johnny Seesaw’s starts like this: In 1924 Ivan Sesow, a Russian immigrant and logger, bought a parcel of land near the base of Bromley Mountain in Peru, Vt., with views to Stratton Mountain, for $300. Sesow, a logger by trade, hewed trees on the property and built a large log cabin (which he dubbed the Wonder View Pavilion), as a dance hall, with “sin cabins” out back. With a bandstand in one corner, it gained notoriety, especially during Prohibition as his second wife,Vinnie (a local girl Sesow married when he was 33 and she was just 14) served homemade wine and moonshine she distilled. The place was largely disreputable and wildly popular. After Prohibition it fell on hard times.

Sesow lost the Wonder View and it fell into disrepair.

The lodge was restored using the original timbers hewn by Sesow and the Bavarian chairs and pine tables. The main dining room still features the well-loved firepit and the “Seducerie” mural (left). Chef Tim Cocheo has a creative menu with soups such as Butternut Squash and Chilled Borscht. A bedroom in one of the cabins—formerly the site of the chicken coop—is updated and fresh. A postcard from the era when to even get a reservation at Johnny Seesaws, you needed a referral.

Prins, originally from Curacao, had grown up skiing at Stowe. He and Kim and their two kids had been living in Arlington and were looking at buying an inn. “We were looking everywhere from Stowe to Alaska,” he says. He heard Seesaw’s was going up for auction in 2015 and went, fully expecting an out-of-state bidder who had shown some interest to bid high. “He wasn’t even there at the auction—hardly anyone was there,” Ryan recalls. The Prins bought the seven acres, the lodge and its various outbuildings for $155,000.

Then the work started. While others might have either patched things up or razed the place and built something new, the Prins (who

ended up partnering with the gentleman expected to buy it, a person who was very familiar with the lodge’s full history) went about meticulously dismantling the old log lodge and reassembling it, piece by piece. The logs were cleaned and set back in place, the “Seducerie”—the site of the old bandstand— taken apart board by board, its mural meticulously restored. It now serves, along with the old library, as a quieter place to take meals.

Old bureaus were fashioned into cabinets in the pantryways. The Parrish’s old pine chairs and tables were lovingly refinished. And the centerpiece—the circular fire pit—was put back in place along with another fireplace. Equidistant from that fireplace another fire pit was installed outside near a skating pond and warming hut.

A large lodge out back (what was once the old ski barn) has a great room with a fireplace, kitchen and guest rooms, each named for a local hardwood (Cherry, Oak, Beech, etc.). And old “sin cabins” and a chicken coop have been beautifully restored as guest suites with original wood paneling (“some of it still has the old graffiti etched in it,” Ryan points out) and bureaus.With kitchens, stoves and two or three bedrooms each, they are furnished in an clean, simple style.Work from local artists hangs on the walls. In the lodge, Ryan points to two heavy pine sled chairs, “We found these out back and refinished them.”

It took a phenomenal labor of love, not unlike the love that the Parrish family lavished on the place back in the 1930s. In a nod to Vinnie Sesow, the Prins plan to put a distillery in and brew their own “moonshine.” And like the Parrishes, last year they lived on the property and invited their friends to come stay, “our ‘soft opening’” says Kim. This season, Seesaw’s is open to the public. However, unlike in the Parrish era, you no longer need to know someone or have a reference to stay. Rooms start at $299 a night. seesawslodge.com

vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 47

THE VALLEY OF LODGES In today’s world, where hotel chains are widespread and independent ski areas are rare, the Mad River Valley offers something unique: a wide array of historic ski lodges, many restored as boutique inns. Each is different, but all of them have tapped into the Valley’s eclectic history and traditions of warmth and community. At each of these iconic ski lodges, good food, good people and good design meet to offer something that feels true to the heart of what skiing once was. By Abagael Giles

The Hyde Away Inn is a true mainstay of ski history in the Mad River Valley, dating back to 1949 when it first opened as the Ulla Lodge, named for Ullr, the Norse god of snow.

The original farmstead once housed a clapboard mill that, in 1889, churned out 700,000 clapboards per year. Brothers Sewall and Arthur Williams converted the farmstead to an inn and began operating it as the Ulla Lodge in 1949. Sugarbush founders Sara and Damon Gadd bought the lodge in 1954 and had dorms for men and women.

In the early 1970s, Ulla Lodge was sold and became the Snuggery Inn and raucous Zach’s Tavern. The California hot tub, an object of après ski infamy, sat in the farm’s silo during this period.

The complex was purchased and renovated by Bruce and Margaret Hyde in 1987 and renamed the Hyde Away Inn and Restaurant. After 28

years, the Hydes sold the Inn and Restaurant to current owners Ana Dan and Paul Weber in 2015.

These days, guests can choose from a variety of modern rooms, from spacious suites for families, to retro ski dorms over the bar, to the Hyde Away House. With Heady Topper and other Vermont microbrews on tap, the Tavern is the perfect place for an après-ski game of pool or to have a drink by the fireplace. The food ranges from entrees featuring local meat like the bacon-wrapped Vermont-raised meatloaf, to excellent pub fare like the Neill Farm beef burger with house aioli, all prepared by executive chef Chris Harmon.

Though the hearty breakfast and historic silo may make you feel like you’re staying in a farmhouse, the Hyde Away is hip. This is a great place to find the newest microbrews or to slip away for a classic Vermont ski vacation with all of the local flavor you’d expect from the Mad River Valley.

Rooms start at $99 per night. hydeawayinn.com

THE MAD RIVER BARN, WAITSFIELD

At just 1.7 miles from the base of Mad River Glen, Mad River Barn is an icon. The Barn was the brainchild of Mad River Glen founder Roland Palmedo, who convinced a few friends to buy the property. The crew put in a pub and a huge stone fireplace, a bunch of stuffed caribou, moose and bear heads, and called it “The 19th Hole.” They used to ski to the barn on an unmarked trail for après-ski parties.

However, the barn’s humble origin lies with the Civilian Conservation Corps, for which it served as a bunk house in the 1930s. It was first converted into an inn by Les and Alice Billings in the 1940s or 1950s.

In 1975, Mad River Glen’s legendary former owner Betsy Pratt took over operation of the Barn, after the death of her husband, Truxton Pratt. Pratt, who ceded Mad River Glen to a cooperative of skiers in 1995, sold the Barn to cur-

THE MAD RIVER BARN

THE HYDE AWAY

48 Holidays 2018 vtskiandride.com

Photo left, Mad River Barn; right Hyde Away archives

THE HYDE AWAY, FAYSTON

Photo left, Tucker Hill Inn; right, Lareau Farm Inn

rent owners Andrew and Heather Lynd in 2012.

Pratt had meticulously preserved the Barn’s original character, which Ski Magazine called “the coziest barn you’ll ever sleep in” in 2010, in keeping with her friend Palmedo’s original aesthetic. In 2013, the Lynds set out to update the plumbing, commercial kitchen, beds and other infrastructure, while preserving that character.

Today, the Barn’s rooms feature white walls, big windows, sliding wooden barn doors and elegant, clean lines. Additional rooms are located in The Annex and Longhouse, with wrought iron lamps, bed boards made of reclaimed and finished wood.

The beds are made to look as though they are still propped up on wooden crates—as they once were.

The restaurant and pub feature wood floors, the same classic stone fireplace, exposed wood walls and a sleek, grey bar with warm lighting. The dining room has long, rustic wooden tables and local fare like Vermont-raised elk and venison stew.

Pratt famously told The New York Times in a 1989 interview, “I’m not a member of the ski industry. I’m a steward of a mountain.” That legacy lives in the walls of the Mad River Barn. Rooms start at $160 per night. madriverbarn.com

TUCKER HILL INN, WAITSFIELD

In its 70 years of operation, the Tucker Hill Inn has launched its share of ski bum-turned renowned chefs. American Flatbread chef-owner George Schenk got his start as a line cook at the inn’s restaurant in the 1980s, alongside three-time James

Beard Cook Award-winner Gary Danko.

When it first opened in 1948, Tucker Hill had a 600-foot tow rope in the backyard and a handful of ski trails behind the lodge. That was the same year Mad River Glen’s lifts started running, and Tucker Hill claims to be the first lodge built to accomodate skiers in the Mad River Valley.

Today, Tucker Hill Inn still feels like a ski lodge.

The yellow, Colonial-style house features 17 rooms, some with floor-to-ceiling fireplaces and marble-tiled floors and others furnished in a rustic style, with bunk beds and wrought iron bed frames.

Current owners Kevin and Patti Begin purchased the property in 2015 and reopened the restaurant and pub, which had previously been closed, in 2016. The restaurant offers fine dining in a cozy, firelit environment while the pub has a beautiful exposed-beam bar, cozy armchairs and a deck with a great view. “The stairs are narrow and steep, so you feel like you’re descending into a speakeasy,” says Kevin.

“It feels like a local place that happens to be available to tourists when they’re here,” adds Begin of the pub’s atmosphere. Rooms start at $139 per night. tuckerhill.com

LAREAU FARM INN, WAITSFIELD

In the late 1980s, George Schenk was skiing up a storm and cooking at nearby Tucker Hill Inn when he started experimenting with baking flatbread appetizers under the stars in a homemade woodfired oven of stacked fieldstones. His flatbreads

were so popular that in 1992 American Flatbread opened in the Lareau Farm’s iconic barn and in 2001 Schenk bought the farm and inn.

Lareau Farm was first built in 1794 by Simeon Stoddard, a friend of Waitsfield founder Benjamin Wait. When it was converted to an inn in 1982, the idea was to create a simple but classic Vermont ski lodge with a unique farm-to-table breakfast and all the comforts of a traditional farmhouse. Today, the white-clapboard bed and breakfast sits on a 24acre farm and features just 13 quiet rooms.

Last year, the inn began redecorating and modernizing its rooms, which feature hardwood floors, wrought iron bed frames and white linens.

“There are no TVs and we aim to create a simple, quiet experience,” says Clay Westbrook, general manager. “We now see people who came here as children to ski bringing their kids,” he says.

The complimentary breakfast includs eggs from the farm’s chickens, bread baked in-house and sausage and bacon raised and cured on-site Owner Schenk has stayed true to his ski bum roots. Look for him hosting The Big Kicker, Sugarbush’s annual rail jam and opening party at American Flatbread each November, or skiing at Sugarbush.

The best perk? Lareau Farm Inn guests get priority for reservations at American Flatbread, which still serves the same wood-fired pizza it did in 1992, featuring ingredients grown right on the farm. Rooms start at $101 per night. lareaufarminn.com n

LAREAU FARM INN TUCKER HILL INN

vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 49

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BY DOUG STEWART

MASTER THE 5 FUNDAMENTALS Good skiers master some of these. Great skiers master all five.

Here are the drills you need to up your game this season.

T

here is one thing that the world’s greatest skiers have in common—be that Mikaela Shiffrin as she charges through the gates at the Killington World Cup, freeskiing phenom Mac Forehand as he launches airs at Mount Snow’s Carinthia Park, or mogul skiers such as Norwich’s Hannah Kearney: They all adhere to five fundamental rules of good skiing. Here, Doug Stewart, a PSIA examiner, bootfitter at Skirack and instructor at Stowe, breaks them down, with drills that will help you up your game.

1. DIRECT PRESSURE TO THE OUTSIDE SKI The fundamental key to skiing well is to get balanced over the downhill or outside ski. This is as simple as saying that turning left is a right-footed turn and turning right is a left-footed turn.

While good skiing does involve help from the inside ski, which should stay engaged with the snow while it also tips and turns, the real money is on the outside ski. Drill: Learn to balance on that outside leg and ski by making some turns with the inside ski just barely off the ground, or touching just slightly, while all of your weight is on the outside ski. Make sure the inside ski stays level to the snow; don’t let the tip get higher than the tail. When you can properly balance on only the outside ski through a series of turns, then you will be better balanced to ski on both skis.

52 Holidays 2018 vtskiandride.com

2. CONTROL EDGE ANGLES WITH INCLINATION AND ANGULATION Skiing in Vermont is definitely about getting on edge, but how we put the skis on edge can make a huge difference. Tipping the skis on edge involves inclining the body towards the inside of the turn in the direction you are turning, and also involves angulating the upper body back towards the skis, towards the outside of the turn. Most skiers get the tipping into the turn part of edging their skis; they usually do this too much. It’s the angulation of the upper body back towards the outside ski that gets overlooked. Drill: The best way to reinforce good angles is to take a run with your poles dragging in the snow. Keep them just a bit wider than your feet and in line with the front of your boots, and almost totally vertical. In order to keep both poles in the snow while turning, you will need to move the inside hip and shoulder up, and keep the outside hip and shoulder down. This will level out your upper body, to prevent tipping into the turn, and will help your edges work the best they can.

3. KEEP THE CENTER OF MASS OVER THE BASE OF SUPPORT One of the toughest fundamentals to master is also the simplest. Good skiers must control their center of mass, so that it can stay over the base of support. In general, stay balanced so you can use the front of the skis and the back of the skis when needed. Many skiers are perpetually stuck in the “backseat.” Only when you have access to the entire length of the skis can you properly shape your turns. Drill: Dial in this type of balance by hopping or bouncing on your skis. If you can find balance over your feet, it will show by the ability to either bounce, or slightly hop and leave the snow at any point in your turn. When you do leave the snow, make sure the skis stay nice and level with the snow surface, to ensure solid balance over the middle of the skis. Challenge yourself by having a friend follow you and call out when they want you to hop or bounce. You should be able to execute the move at any point in the turn.

Photo by Alex Klein

4. CONTROL THE SKIS’ ROTATION WITH LEG ROTATION Everyone loves to watch good bump skiers; it’s amazing to see how well their legs can move and turn independently of their upper body.

It’s also fundamental to good skiing that the skis are turned with the rotation of the legs independently of the upper body. Many skiers who aren’t well balanced over their skis don’t have the ability to rotate the legs and turn the skis without turning the entire body. When you find a stance that is centered over your feet, it becomes possible to rotate the thighs, and turn the skis while keeping the upper body and even the hips down the hill in a short turn. Drill: Practice staying balanced over your feet, and turning the legs off to each side while continuing to move straight down the hill—your shoulders and upper body facing the fall line. This proper stance will make for quick feet, and great skiing in all conditions.

5. REGULATE THE PRESSURE CREATED

BY THE SKI/SNOW INTERACTION The true “je ne sais quoi” of great skiing is a skier’s ability to have “touch.” Good touch is what makes a skier look like they are floating down the hill with no effort. Once a skier is balanced front to back, and side to side on the skis, has proper angles, and is turning the legs, there is a chance to have good touch. Being able to leave the snow when you want, and being able to stay on the snow when you want are good examples of this. When a skier is balanced over the boots and skis, the legs can be supple, and relaxed, and can adjust for changes in the terrain. This is the opposite of a skier who is leaning back and bracing against their outside leg and holding on for dear life. That skier is going to be thrown into the air unintentionally by the next bump. The best drill for dialing in this fundamental is to ski lots of types of terrain. Go find powder, breakable crust, ice and anything else off the groomers. That will help build your touch!

vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 53

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RETRO VT

BY GREG MORRILL AND MEREDITH SCOTT

THE SKI WARRIORS

How a few Vermont skiers changed the course of history.

I

All photos courtesy Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum

n 1944, during one of the last decisive battles of World War II, the 10th Mountain Division was stationed at the base of a steep, 2,000-foot ice-covered cliff north of Florence in Italy’s Appenine Mountains.

A battalion of 700 was charged with taking Riva Ridge that winter, a step toward opening the Po Valley, where Italian companies were supplying the Germans with arms. At the top were the Germans and their artillery.

The American troops below were not ordinary soldiers. The U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division was unique in that it was made up of skiers and mountaineers, including many well-known Vermonters. In the cover of night, protected by fog, they climbed the cliff. From there they successfully took Monte Belvedere, the highest point in the Appenines and were able to descend on the Germans and secure the Po Valley.

During the ensuing battles in the Po Valley, two skiers from Stowe, Austrian-born Werner Von Trapp and his brother Rupert, were on the front lines fighting with the 10th. One night, Werner heard Germans nearby calling orders in the dark. According to his half-brother, Johannes (George and Maria Von Trapp’s son) “Werner used his best Prussian accent to shout out orders in the dark and divert the German patrol from his own.”

“When he came home Werner was quieter, I think he had what we now call PTSD,” Johannes remembers.

Together, to give thanks for Werner and Rupert’s safe return, Johannes and his brothers built a stone chapel in the hills behind the family farm. Today, the chapel still stands, just off the trails of the Trapp Family Lodge.

IT STARTED OVER DRINKS

The Von Trapp brothers were just two of 260 Vermonters who made up the original 10th Mountain Division, the first Army unit to be trained in mountain warfare. The idea of training skiers came about in 1940 after a day of skiing, when Charles “Minnie” Dole, Alex Bright, Roger Langley, and Bob Livermore were enjoying drinks and conversation at Johnny Seesaws pub in Peru, Vt. One of the topics of conversation that evening was the effectiveness of Finnish ski troops in holding off the much larger forces of the Russian invaders. The Finns

eventually succumbed, but not until Russia had to bring in reinforcements from other fronts to secure the invasion.

The United States wasn’t yet a part of the war, but the assembled skiers worried that if England fell, Hitler would have access to Canada and might try to invade the U.S. Their conclusion was that America should develop mountain ski troops.

Minnie Dole had already established the National Ski Patrol, after starting a patrol at Stowe. He wrote the United States War Department volunteering the help of the National Ski Patrol in creating and training such a force.

Dole’s suggestion fell on receptive ears since the U.S. Army had already begun training forces for winter and mountain combat. They would discover early on that it was going to be easier to train skiers to fight than to train soldiers to ski.

Dole became the number one recruiter for skiers to join what would become the 10th Mountain Division and started overhauling gear and helping to train men for winter warfare.

In 1941, 15,000 men applied but only 8,000 were accepted to the 10th. To even join the 10th Mountain Division, early recruits needed three letters of acceptance.

Leo Bartlett, had been a volunteer with the Mount Mansfield Ski Patrol before the war and, according to his nephew, historian Brian Lindner, one of Bartlett’s letters of recommendation came from Minnie Dole. Bartlett served with distinction through the end of the war and received a Bronze Star for his action at the Po River crossing.

Paul Linder of Underhill was one of the Vermont skiers who joined the 10th Mountain Division.

His nephew, historian Brian Linder helped put together a new exhibit about Vermont’s involvement with the 10th at the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum in Stowe.

vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 55

RETRO VT

Stowe’s Werner Von Trapp., seated, with his brother Rupert, standing. The 10th was stocked with men who were mountaineers or skiers (below.)

VERMONTERS WHO SERVED

Many Vermont members of the 10th Mountain Division were honored for their service with at least four earning the Silver Star, the third highest military decoration for valor. Captain Everett Bailey, a UVM ROTC graduate from Burlington, had been a certified ski instructor at Stowe and was transferred to the 10th when it was formed. As an officer, he looked out for his fellow Vermonters. During training, he discovered that Clem Curtis of Stowe, who had been a ski instructor with Bailey, had been assigned to the snowshoe outfit. Bailey asked Curtis why he was snowshoeing and Curtis’s response was “this is where they put me!” Bailey quickly got Curtis reassigned to his skiing company.

Bailey’s company was part of the battalion that successfully took Torbole from the Germans in the last battle in the European theater of WWII. The commander received a minor injury in that action so Bailey became the acting commander just in time for the German

56 Holidays 2018 vtskiandride.com

counterattack, according to Bailey’s grandson, Skyler Bailey. As Bailey’s company and battalion were in danger of being cut off by the Germans, Bailey called for more support, then worked his way through the battle to be back with his men as they fended off the counterattack. Bailey received the Silver Star.

Not all who served returned from the war. Overall the number killedin-action for the 10th Mountain Division was under 1,000, including six Vermonters. Two of those would win the Silver Star for valor. Ev Griffin from Barton was 20 years old and a radio operator. When his squad was pinned down by enemy fire, Griffin moved to an exposed position for better radio transmission to call in artillery. Herbert “Allen” Spaulding of Cavendish was a 30-year-old father of four. For 20 minutes he held off the enemy alone to cover the flanking movement of the rest of his company, which resulted in the capture of the enemy’s position.

Many of those who did return went on to play key roles in skiing.

Clif Taylor fought in the battles at Riva Ridge and Mt. Belvedere. He is best known for his short skis and introducing of the Graduated Length Method (GLM) for teaching skiing. John “Jack” Murphy was one of the founders of the Sugarbush ski area and of the National Ski Areas Association. Bob Ely returned from the war to help launch Mount Ascutney as a lift-served ski area, and under his leadership it became the first area to install snowmaking in Vermont.

Historian Brian Lindner, whose father and uncles served in the 10th, helped pull together much of the information available on the Vermont veterans. Brian’s father Erwin went through rigorous training at Camp Hale in Colorado but was medically discharged before the division went overseas. Erwin returned to Vermont where he became the first full-time, paid patroller on the Mount Mansfield Ski Patrol.

Joe Jones of Mendon had been the Vermont State Alpine Champion in 1942 before joining the 10th. After the war he became the Middlebury College ski coach and went on to found the Vermont Alpine Racing Association (VARA). Another 10th Mountain veteran Leslie Hurley came to Norwich University in 1947 and founded the Mountain and Cold Weather Company, the first ROTC program in mountain and winter warfare in the country. That program still serves in the development of mountain troops today.

MOUNTAIN WARFARE TODAY Today, the 10th Mountain Division is one of the most deployed units in the Army. Since 2001, the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry’s) combat brigade have seen over 20 deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan. And though the Division is headquartered in Fort Drum New York, about 20,000 troops train at the Mountain Warfare School at the Camp Ethan Allen Training Site in Jericho, Vt., each year. They often use Smuggler’s Notch as a training ground for climbing, skiing and avalanche safety and the Jericho facility has one of only three internationally licensed biathlon courses in the country. n Greg Morrill is the chairman of the board of the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum. Meredith Scott is the museum’s curator. This winter, the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum introduces a new exhibit,“Peak to Peak: 10th Mountain Division Then and Now,” see vtssm.org for information.

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610 Route 7, Middlebury, VT 802-989-7414 www.dropinbrewing.com

Drop-In Brewing is Middlebury’s small, independent, locally owned brewery, and is home to The American Brewers Guild Brewing School. Our Tap Room is open 7 days a week serving sample flights, pints, and selling cans and growlers to go. You can find our beer on draft in restaurants and bars across Vermont, and our cans in retailers that carry craft beers. For more information, check out www.dropinbrewing.com, or call us at (802) 989-7414.

von Trapp Brewing 1333 Luce Hill Rd. Stowe, VT 802-253-0900 www.vontrappbrewing.com

von Trapp Brewing is dedicated to brewing the highest quality Austrianinspired lagers with a Vermont twist.

Experience “a little of Austria, a lot of Vermont,” in every glass. Plus come visit our new bierhall at the brewery! sponsored content

6308 Shelburne Rd, (Route 7) Shelburne, VT 802-985-8222 www.shelburnevineyard.com

Taste, tour, and enjoy our award-winning wines as we welcome you and share our adventure growing grapes and making wine in VT’s northern climate. Located in charming Shelburne, just south of Burlington. Open daily, all year, 11-5 NovApr; 11-6 May-Oct.

46 Log Yard Drive, Hardwick, VT 802-472-8000 www.caledoniaspirits.com

Caledonia Spirits is a craft distillery in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Raw honey distinguishes our Barr Hill vodka, Barr Hill gin, and Tom Cat barrel aged gin by imparting a pure and soft botanical essence into each bottle. All of our spirits reflect our deep connection to the land and Vermont’s agricultural heritage.

Open daily 12-5 for free tours and tastings at the distillery.

52 Seymour Street Middlebury, VT

11 Cabin Lane Waterbury, VT

802-897-7700 www.whistlepigwhiskey.com

WhistlePig showcases the tremendous flavor potential of rye while maintaining a smooth and balanced profile, identifying it with the most acclaimed whiskeys in the world.

3597 VT-74, Shoreham, VT 802-897-2777 www.champlainorchards.com Open daily 9-5. July-Nov.

Visit us in Shoreham or find us at your favorite craft retailer to try our award winning, orchard-made ciders. All our ciders are made onsite with our ecologically grown apples and our orchard is solar powered.

Warren, VT 802-496-HOPS www.lawsonsfinest.com

Lawson’s Finest is an award winning small artisanal brewery located in Warren, VT, producing an array of hop-forward ales, specialty maple beers, and unique creations of the highest quality and freshness.

Find our beer at lawsonsfinest.com.

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THE GREEN MOUNTAIN CALENDAR DECEMBER 5 | Ski Bum Registration Party, Killington Register for the weekly 2018-2019 Michelob Ultra Ski Bum Race Series at Mogul’s Sports Pub. killington.com 6 | VTSSM Red Bench Forum: History of the Mount Mansfield Ski Patrol, Stowe Join the popular Red Bench forum at the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum for a talk on the Mt. Mansfield Ski Patrol and beer by Collective Arts Brewing. vtssm.org 8 | Okemo Night Hike, Ludlow Join naturalist Joel Karl for a guided nighttime snowshoe up Okemo’s Jackson Gore with roasted marshmallows at the firepit afterward. okemo.com 8 | 24th Annual BrewFest at Smugglers’ Notch, Jeffersonville For those 21 & older, a DJ spins the tunes and the Mountain Grille puts on a tasty appetizer buffet from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the Meeting House. The $22 entry includes 8 samples, munchies and a souvenir sampling glass. smuggs.com 8-9 | Early Season Telemark Primer, Bromley Whether you are an advanced telemarker or a beginner, this clinic is open to anyone looking to hone their skills with PSIA/NATO-trained telemark coaches. bromley.com 9-10 | Test Fest, Killington Free on-snow demos of the best alpine ski and snowboard gear from 2018 from HEAD, K2, Parlor, Amalgam, Gilson Snowboards and more. killington.com 14 | Shred Vermont Opening Party, Vermont Ski + Snowboard Museum, Stowe Opening party for the exhibit of world-famous snowboard photos. vtssm.org 14 | Founders Day, Mount Snow Celebrate Mount Snow’s unique and colorful history with presentations and a pop-up museum dedicated to the mountain’s past. mountsnow.com 14-16 | WinterWondergrass Festival, Stratton Mountain Stratton Mountain hosts the inaugural WinterWondergrass Vermont, featuring more than 25 bands and beer from more than 20 breweries. This year’s lineup includes Railroad Earth, The Infamous Stringdusters, Keller and the Keels and Ghost of Paul Revere. stratton.com

15 | Santa Sunday at Bolton Valley, Bolton Skiers and riders who arrive at Bolton Valley dressed head to toe in Kris Kringle attire ski and ride free that day. boltonvalley.com 15 | Demo Day at Okemo, Okemo Test drive the latest ski and snowboard equipment for free at the Jackson Gore Courtyard from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. okemo.com 15 | Vertical Challenge Kickoff, Okemo Okemo Mountain Resort kicks off this annual popular alpine (downhill) race series, open to all ages and abilities. skiverticalchallenge.com 15 | SugarBash with The Grift, Sugarbush Get down and funky at Sugarbush’s 60th annual birthday celebration with The Grift, serving up 60 years of music starting with the 1960s. sugarbush.com 15 | Green Mountain Skimo and AT Training Camp, Bolton Valley A day of clinics and presentations on ski mountaineering and alpine touring with the Catamount Trail Association, for athletes of all ability levels. catamounttrail.org 17 | Winter Wild Race Series At Magic Mountain, Londonderry An uphill (and downhill) on-snow event with hiking, running, snowshoeing or skimo races. Compete on skis, boots with traction devices, snowboards or snowshoes before Magic opens to the public for the day. winterwild.com 21 | Winter Solstice Celebration, Smugglers’ Notch Celebrate the solstice with a special performance by Vermont fire performers Cirque de Fuego, Burlington Taiko, fireworks and a parade. smuggs.com 22 | Rikert Nordic Fatbike Roundup, Ripton A day of group rides on the Rikert trail system. Bring your own fatbike or rent one and join in the fun then celebrate afterwards with food, beverages and a warm fire. rikertnordic.com 22 | Carinthia Classic, Mount Snow Carinthia’s park builders will construct a “plaza-style” park loaded with rails, boxes and an arsenal of unique features that will force athletes to choose their line carefully in this spectator-friendly park competition for a purse of $20,000. Open to skiers and riders. mountsnow.com

Join us each month in the heart of Stowe for an informal forum (and a beer) with top experts on topics such as:

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THE BEST NEW SKIS | BACKCOUNTRY HUTS SNOWBOARD PHOTOGRAPHY | LEGENDS FROM THE TENTH MOUNTAIN DIVISION | VERMONT’S ICONIC SKI PATROL LOST VERMONT SKI AREAS AND MORE. For a full schedule visit VTSSM.COM, or follow the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum on Facebook.

vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 59

THE GREEN MOUNTAIN CALENDAR

22 | Grand Opening of Carinthia Lodge, Mount Snow A DJ, beer garden, giveaways and more will follow a 5 p.m. ribbon cutting ceremony. mountsnow.com 22-23 | Eastern Cup Opener, Craftsbury Outdoor Center Catch the 1.3K classic cross-country ski sprint on Saturday and the mass start on Sunday for a U16 and women’s 5K and a 10K for men and masters. craftsbury.com 27 | First Grommet Jam, Mount Snow The first of three park competitions for skiers and riders 12 and under at Carinthia Parks. Also Jan. 21 and Feb. 18. mountsnow.com 28 | Alpine Dinner, Suicide Six Enjoy a guided nighttime snowshoe to the summit, where staff will greet you with a fire and hot beverage, followed by an alpine-inspired dinner at the base. woodstockinn.com 29 | Vermont Institute of Natural Science Family Presentation, Okemo Have a first-hand encounter with falcons, hawks and owls and learn about these natural predators have at the Roundhouse Cafe. Also Feb. 19. okemo.com 31 | The TUCK IT! Extreme Skiing Challenge, Magic Mountain Magic Mountain hosts this second annual ski and snowboard race from the top of the mountain to the bottom, at which point skiers and riders’ speeds are measured by a radar gun. The fastest skier/rider wins. magicmtn.com

JANUARY 3-8 | U.S. Cross-Country Ski Championships, Craftsbury Outdoor Center Six days of races featuring the best Nordic skiers in the country, with national championship titles and start spots on the line for everything from the Junior World Championships in Finland to World Cups in Quebec City. craftsburynationals.com 5 | Uberwintern with MTBVT, Stowe A day of group fatbike rides, good food and beer hosted by MTBVT at Ranch Camp and the Cady Hill trails. mtbvt.com 5| Okemo’s Grommet Throwdown, Ludlow Okemo designs a special park for kids 13 and under to compete in a grommet competition. okemo.com 5 | New England Randonnee Race Series: The Magic, Magic Mountain Two looped randonnee courses: one competitive course and one shorter recreational course with a bootpack. Both at Magic Mountain. nerandorance.blogspot.com 6 | Susan G. Komen Snowshoe for the Cure, Stratton Raise funds to support breast cancer patients and research by participating in a 3K and 5K snowshoe walk or a 3K snowshoe race. komennewengland.org 12-13 | Skirack Ski Swap, Burlington Sell your downhill skis, snowboards, cross-country skis, snowshoes, boots, bindings, poles, roof racks, fat bikes and more for store credit or cash. skirack.com 12 | Mini Shred Madness, Killington Introduce kids to park skiing and riding for a fun competition, free coaching and giveaways. Also runs February 23 at Pico Mountain. killington.com

60 Holidays 2018 vtskiandride.com

12-13 | Mid Winter Freezer Telemark Clinic, Bromley Improve your carving technique with video movement analysis and personalized lesson plans. Intended for skiers who can confidently navigate blue square terrain on telemark equipment. bromley.com 13 | MMOC Dion Snowhoes Winter Magic Snowshoe Race, Magic Mountain Race a 5K on snowshoes up the MMOC Uphill Trail at Magic. dionwmacsnowshoe. com 15 | Green Mountain Skimo Race Series, (weekly, through March 5) Bolton Valley Friendly, competitive skimo races, every Tuesday evening. catamounttrail.org 19 | Bolton Valley Splitfest, Bolton A day filled with free demos, food and local beer from Lost Nation Brewing. Explore Bolton’s backcountry terrain on splitboards. boltonvalley.com 19 | Warren Miller’s Face of Winter, Stratton This year’s Warren Miller film features three SMS graduates—Sophie Caldwell, Jessie Diggins and Simi Hamilton. gosms.org/summit-series 24-27 | Skiing for Runners, Craftsbury Outdoor Center A week of fun, challenging cross-training to help runners develop the skills they need to ski, snowshoe and run their way to fitness in the depths of winter. craftsbury.com

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24-Feb. 3 | 44th Stowe Winter Carnival, Stowe Expect “snowgolf,” on-snow volleyball, professional ice carving competitions, ski movies and more at this family-friendly winter festival. stowewintercarnival.com 25 | VTSSM Red Bench Forum: How Climate Change Impacts Skiing, Stowe Come for a beer at the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum and a conversation with activist and author Bill McKibben about how climate change has and will impact skiing. vtssm.org 25 | Annual Farmers’ Appreciation Day, Jay Peak Jay Peak offers each local Vermont farm four free day tickets. jaypeakresort.com 25-27 | Smuggs Ice Bash, Smugglers’ Notch Winter’s biggest climbing event is at the Notch and at PetraCliffs in Burlington. Free gear demos, clinics, slideshows, competitions, a party and prizes. smuggsicebash.com 26 | Mad River Glen’s 70th Anniversary Gala, Mad River Glen Party like it’s 1949—the year the ski area was founded. Celebrate seven decades of skiing at Mad River Glen. madriverglen.com 26-27 | USASA Southern Vermont Snowboard and Freeski Series, Mount Snow Catch slopestyle competitions at Carinthia Parks in one of the longest-running USASA series in the country, known to attract some of the world’s top riders. mountsnow.com 26-27 | 13th Wounded Military Heroes Weekend, Bromley This weekend-long event helps veterans who have been wounded in action experience skiing or snowboarding with their families for free. bromley.com 27 | Ski for Heat and Chicken Wing Challenge, Bromley Finish your basket of six extra hot chicken wings in three minutes, and Bromley will donate $25 to Ski for Heat, a fundraiser to help Southern Vermont residents in need of winter heating assistance. skiforheat.org

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vtskiandride.com Holidays 2108 61

THE GREEN MOUNTAIN CALENDAR

30|Lawson’s Finest Beer Lover’s Dinner and Full Moon Snowshoe, Mad River Glen Join brewer and naturalist Sean Lawson for a one-hour full moon snowshoe followed by a buffet local-vore dinner paired with a cash bar of Lawson’s Finest brew. $50 includes snowshoe, dinner and one beer. madriverglen.com

FEBRUARY 2 | Vans #HiStandardSeries Snowboard Jam, Mount Snow With no rotations beyond 720 degrees or inverted maneuvers allowed, this competition is truly about style. mountsnow.com 2 | Road to Ruin Mad Dash Downhill, Magic Mountain Skiers and riders race in a single start, mad dash under the Black Line lift. First one to the bottom wins, no points for style. Great spectating from the tavern. magicmtn.com 2 | 4th Annual Face (Snowshoe) Race, Suicide Six Ski Area A snowshoe race for bragging rights up The Face, a black diamond, and down Easy Mile. Course is approximately 1.5 miles with 600 feet of vertical gain. Don’t miss the post-race party at Perley’s Pourhouse. woodstockinn.com 2-3 | 38th Annual Craftsbury Marathon, Craftsbury This classic ski marathon is a wave start cross-country ski race of 25 or 50K, held on a 12.5K loop with three aid stations. craftsbury.com 2-3 | Intro to Trees and Bumps Telemark Clinic, Bromley Practice the thinking and advanced technique required to ski bumps, trees and ungroomed terrain with style. bromley.com 3 | 82nd Annual FISK Trophy Race, Suicide Six Ski Area Get out your alpine skis and follow in the tradition of skiing greats like Bode Miller, Jimmy Cochran and Chip Knight by participating in the oldest alpine trophy ski race in North America. woodstockinn.com 8 | 16th Annual Mom’s Day Off, Bromley Show a photo of your child(ren) at the ticket window and ski/ride Bromley for a day for just a $25 donation to Southwestern Vermont Regional Cancer Center. bromley.com

Travel with confidence at Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott®, a hotel with outstanding service for an easy and comfortable stay at an exceptional value. We look forward to welcoming you to our thoughtfully designed guest rooms and suites with plenty of room to work and relax, the perfect place to recharge between your Vermont adventures.

Fairfield Inn & Suites Waterbury Stowe 1017 Waterbury Stowe Rd. Waterbury VT. 05676 802-241-1600 Fairfield.com/BTVWB

To reserve your room, call 1-800-MARRIOTT or visit Marriott.com

62 Holidays vtskiandride.com

9-10 | 24 Hours of Bolton, Bolton Valley North America’s only 24-hour backcountry ski and splitboard race features a daytime loop in Bolton’s backcountry and an overnight loop on Bolton’s groomed terrain.

Relay teams welcome. nativeendurance.com 10 | Mansfield Nordic Skiathlon, Craftsbury Outdoor Center Men and women U16 and older compete in a race that requires switching skis halfway through, with 6K of classic skiing and 6K of freestyle. mansfieldnordic.org 14 | Valentine’s Day Kissing Special, Mad River Glen Kiss your partner, whoever they may be, at the ticket office and you both ski for half price. madriverglen.com 14 | First Cliff House Restaurant Summit Series Dinner, Stowe Ride the gondola after-hours to a special evening and dinner at the top of Vermont in the middle of winter. Also runs March 3, 17 and 31. stowe.com 16-17 | Frost Mountain/Rikert Eastern Cup, Rikert Nordic Center Nordic skate skiing interval starts on Saturday with a classic mass start on Sunday for a variety of distances ranging from 5K to 15K. rikertnordic.com

17 | Winter Wild Skimo Race Series at Ascutney, Brownsville A 3.1-mile trail run with 800 vertical feet of climbing. The course, designed by Jim Lyle, contains steep climbs, single-track, double-track, winding descents, all to be navigated by the light of headlamp as the start is at 6 p.m. winterwild.com 17 | Citizens Skiathlon, Rikert Nordic Center This fun skiathlon race series is open to all skiers and will feature two race starts: one for juniors and one for adult racers. nensa.net 18 | Curling Clinic, Okemo Join Upper Valley Curling and the Woodstock Curling Club for a two-hour curling clinic at Okemo’s Ice House at Jackson Gore. okemo.com 23-24 | Winterfest, Magic Mountain Two days of après parties, buffet dinner, live music and fireworks. magicmtn.com 23-24 | 34th annual Kare Anderson Telemark Festival, Bromley Tip with some of the best tele skiers in the East, participate in clinics for all ages and abilities and compete in a USTSA-sanctioned race on Sunday. bromley 23| Military Veterans Only Intro to Backcountry Touring Course, Bolton Valley Military veterans can enroll in a free two-day, hut-based course that offers guiding, gear and instruction in backcountry ski touring or splitboarding. bit.ly/boltonvalleyvets

8-10 | The 7th Annual Vermont Open, Stratton This annual celebration of snowboarding features live music and an epic rail jam open to riders of all ages and abilities for a prize purse of over $20,000. stratton.com 10 | Vertical Downhill Challenge Race, Bromley A fun, free and competitive alpine downhill ski race open to all skiers. bromley.com 16 | Wild & Scenic Film Festival, Stratton Catch this series of environmental and adventure films showcasing beautiful landscapes and the challenges facing communities working to protect them. stratton.com 16 | New England Rando Race Series presents “The Sun,” Bromley Race uphill using skins and then race back down to the mountain’s base. Part four in a five-part annual series. nerandorace.blogspot.com 16-17 | 7th Annual 24 Hours of Stratton, Stratton Form a team or compete as an individual in this 24-hour ski and ride party. Lifts will be open for a full 24 hours. Catch the opening party on Friday. stratton.com 16 | Sugar Daze, Okemo Celebrate sugaring season with live outdoor music, local beers and food. okemo.com

23 | IFSA Southern Vermont Freeskiing Extreme Challenge, Magic Mountain Skiers and riders tackle the Black Magic trail to find out the best skier/rider on the mountain. magicmtn.com 23 | Abe-BERM-ham’s Fatbike Slalom, Suicide Six Ski Area A quarter-mile banked slalom downhill fatbike race mellow enough for kids but with enough berms and features to challenge advanced adults. woodstockinn.com

MARCH 2 | Winterbike, Kingdom Trails, East Burke The East’s largest winter fatbike festival returns to Kingdom Trails. mbtvt.com 2 | 2nd Annual Master of the Mountain Extreme Biathlon, Magic Mountain Compete to be named the best skier or rider in the East in this mad dash down Black Line. The course is half extreme ski competition and half giant slalom. magicmtn.com 2 | Skiing History Day, Bromley Dust off your woolens and join the International Skiing History Association for this new event, featuring a vintage skiwear slopeside parade and a multigenerational alpine downhill race. Don’t miss the exhibit at the lodge or the after party. bromley.com 2 | Light the Night Rail Jam, Okemo Okemo will be building a brand new rail garden specially designed for this nighttime event on Bull Run. Skiers and riders of all ages are welcome to compete for a $5,000 cash purse. okemo.com

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2-3 | Bill Koch Nordic Festival, Rikert Nordic Center Anyone is welcome to compete in cross-country ski events such as orienteering, beanbag biathlon and tandem ski races followed by live music. rikert.com 3 | Jack Jump World Championships, Mount Snow Rig your own jackjump (a skiing device with a bench attached to one ski) for this slalom race followed by an award ceremony and raffle. mountsnow.com

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vtskiandride.com Holidays 2018 63

LiftLines FOOD FIGHTS

We recently threw out a question on our Facebook page: What’s the best on-mountain meal you’ve ever had in Vermont. While some of the 83 answers strayed from strict on-mountain meals, the list is so good it’s worth sharing. Here it is, edited. Consider it the people’s guide to ski town dining.

BEST THING YOU’VE EATEN AT AN ON-MOUNTAIN RESTAURANT IN VERMONT? Venison stew at the top of Smuggs! —Brett Garner The Yurt at Killington. Ski up to this tented structure with a wood fire inside. They have a wonderful menu inspired by local farms. Terrific wine list too. —Sandra Guibord Muller Fish Fry and Lawson’s Finest at Mad River Glen’s General Stark’s Tavern is a classic. Duck Fat Poutine at Bolton Valley’s James Moore Tavern is also a must. —Alex Showerman Stowe Mountain Resort, Octagon, breakfast sandwich with cheddar, bacon, caramelized onions and arugula. The best!!! —Jay Pilcer French Onion soup or Fish Soup with all its trimmings at Chez Henri, Sugarbush. —Stephane Perillat

BBQ pork shanks at Bar 802 in Stratton village! Hands down the best around ski town USA!—Greg Schanck Cheeseburger, rare, fries, and a Single Chair in General Stark’s Pub at Mad River Glen. —Bill Porter Grilled ham and swiss sandwich at Bullwheel Pub at Mount Snow and craft beers! —Bob Matthews Grizzlie’s at Stratton has these pickle fries and I could eat a bucket of them with that spicy sauce. —Ashley Hermann New England clam chowder in a bread bowl at Smugglers’ Sterling/Madonna Base Lodge. —Anny White Hands down, the chicken sammy from Castlerock Pub at Sugarbush Resort. —Selina Thomsen At Jay Peak Resort, in the old tram, Miso Hungry’s spicy miso ramen. —Danielle Brabon Okemo pulled-chicken sandwich. —Nancy Lew Grilled cheese, American on white. Middlebury College Snow Bowl. —Jeff Noordsy Buffalo wings and B.L.T. at Magic. —Grant Braddish Magic Mountain’s Black Line burger is my go to. —Patrick Haskell Von Trapp Bierhall [Stowe] shaved chicken sandwich. —Karen Ballard Everything and anything Doc Ponds [Stowe]! —Esbert Cardenas Jr. Bloody Mary at the Killington Peak Lodge. —Jason Rickles @Jason Rickles: The one with the lobster claw! — Brian Johansson Sushi Yoshi at Superstar in Killington. —Rex Racer Mac and cheese at The Bullwheel on Mount Snow. —Angelika Toomey Jay Peak’s Tower Bar Poutine. —Judy Strom Piecasso Pizza! The Bench’s skillet chocolate chip cookie, both on Stowe Mtn. Rd. And Chez Henri’s onion soup at Sugarbush. —RJ Austin Piecasso Pizza [in Stowe] is one of my son’s favorites. —Edward S. Gilbert Jr. Gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches at Walt’s at Glenn House, Sugarbush North .... especially on full moon Saturday evenings. —Che Elwell Smugglers’ Notch Resort snowshoe adventure dinner at the top of Sterling Mountain. —Hugh Johnson Every resort... help yourself to a couple of free crackers (located adjacent to the soup), add a little ketchup, mustard, and relish... for $0 you’re in business. —Calef Letorney

JOIN THE CONVERSATION ON FACEBOOK OR INSTAGRAM: TELL US, WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE APRÈS SKI BAR? 64 Holidays 2018 vtskiandride.com

Left: (top to bottom): Burger (stock); Andrew Lanoue/Jay Peak; John Atkinson/Sugarbush. Right: Chandler Burgess/Killington; Lisa Lynn, Stowe; Pizza, MetroCreative

A grilled cheese sandwich from Cochran’s while watching your kids ski race/train is hard to beat. —Barry Lyden

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serving dinner every night and lunch friday - monday

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