Murphy’s Annex, Building

BUILDING ACCESS

WITH A NEW BASE LODGE, VERMONT ADAPTIVE SKI AND SPORT IS CHANGING THE LANDSCAPE FOR ADAPTIVE ATHLETES. BY LISA LYNN

On a snowy day, the parking lots are packed and the base lodge at Sugarbush’s Mt. Ellen is buzzing. A father and daughter walk out to the snow where an orange fence is set up, marking a steep drop. The father reaches out with his glove tentatively to touch the fence. “What is this?” he asks. He is blind. His daughter tells him, then they meet their guide and head up the lift.

Nearby, the doors at the lower level of the lodge swing open and skiers who have been indoors picking out their sitskis funnel out.

Inside, in an adjacent room, a group of parents with their children, many of whom have cognitive disabilities, are getting ready for the Sunday race series and connecting with their guides. They all seem to know each other and are laughing and joking with their guides.

“We are here for everyone and for anyone who has any kind of disability,” says Kim Jackson, Vermont Adaptive’s director of communications. “People often think of us as just for athletes with physical disabilities, but the majority have cognitive challenges,” she says.

“Here,” in this instance is Vermont Adaptive’s newest facility, the 4,000-square-foot, $2.7 million Murphy’s Annex at Sugarbush’s Mt. Ellen lodge. It opened in December 2021, replacing what had been a crowded, 400-square-foot space in the lodge that dated to the 1990s. Now, a big ground-floor room houses more than a dozen sit-skis, which can be easily moved in and out to the slopes and is accessible from the parking area directly adjacent to the lodge. “It’s great to be able to fit these indoors now,” says Jackson, noting that at times it could take an hour to properly fit a skier to sit-ski, something which previously happened outdoors. There are locker rooms, a room upstairs with big windows and a walkout deck that faces the slopes. There’s a room with an aquarium, toys, bean bag chairs, a kitchen and a quiet area. There’s even a room for support dogs. The wing is open to the rest of the Mt. Ellen base lodge. “It’s great that we’re not segregated off from the rest

Murphy’s Annex is the new structure on skiers’ left at Mt. Ellen’s base lodge. Photo

courtesy Vermont Adaptive.

of the lodge. After skiing, people can wander in and get a beer at the bar with everyone else,” she says.

“This building has made a world of difference,” says Josh Carpenter, a volunteer who drives from Craftsbury each weekend to take his daughter Lelia skiing with Vermont Adaptive’s Sunday race program.

Murphy’s Annex is named for Mike Murphy, son of Sugarbush founder Jack Murphy. Mike grew up skiing at Sugarbush—literally starting at 9 months old on his parents’ backs. He became a strong skier, but in 1977 he was in a serious motorcycle accident. “When I recovered consciousness, I realized I was in a hospital and I looked down and saw I had one good leg and the first thing I thought to myself was, ‘Well, that’s good, I’ll still be able to ski,’” Murphy recalls.

In 1977, there were not many programs for people with disabilities. He taught himself to ski on one leg and ended up making the U.S. national team for adaptive skiers. In the 1982 World Championships in Switzerland, he won the silver medal in slalom, which is on display now at Murphy’s Annex.

Murphy had been living in Colorado at the time, but came back to Vermont and discovered Vermont Adaptive, the program that Laura Farrell had started at Ascutney in 1987. Later, Murphy helped connect Sugarbush to the program, a program that then-owner Win Smith and new owners, Alterra, have embraced and supported.

The building is the second in Vermont Adaptive’s plan for three permanent facilities. The organization’s primary base and headquarters at the Andrea Mead Lawrence Lodge at Pico was completed in 2013. The third permanent facility is slated for Burlington’s waterfront where, currently, the Community Sailing Center partners with Vermont Adaptive to offer sailing and other watersports.

There are many organizations around the state that provide adaptive sports equipment and programming — Adaptive Sports at Mount Snow and the Bart Adaptive Sports Center at Bromley are two notable ones. And many ski areas now offer lessons using adaptive equipment. Organizations such as the Northeast Disabled Athletic Association and Green Mountain Adaptive help connect people with the adaptive lessons and programming they need.

But Vermont Adaptive has served as the backbone of adaptive sports infrastructure, providing equipment and facilities, as well as lessons and programs. In addition to its basecamps at Pico, Sugarbush, Bolton Valley Resort and Burlington’s Community Sailing Center, the organization has been working around the state to make outdoor recreation more accessible.

One example is the mountain biking program that the organization launched in 2017. Since then, it has worked with trail organizations around the state, from Kingdom Trails to Slate Valley, Millstone to Stowe. “Biking deep into the woods or pedaling on a gravel or unpaved bike path are not accessible for everyone,” said Jeff Alexander, director of strategic partnerships and business development at Vermont Adaptive, in a release.

Vermont Adaptive has a fleet of adaptive mountain bikes that it will bring to trail heads. “Our bikes roll differently and have a different center of gravity,” he explained. “Tire size is unique. For trail builders, considering off-cambered turns and the width of bridges and trails is important.” For many, an adaptive mountain bike is one way they escape the pavement. “We want everybody to be able to soak in the freedom and outdoor exploration that mountain biking offers,” he said.

In addition to the winter sports and cycling, Vermont Adaptive offers kayaking, canoeing, stand-up paddle boarding, sailing, hiking, rock climbing, tennis, and horseback riding. And alongside, the organization has a focus on environmental education.

“Having an accessible building is key to accessible skiing,” said Murphy about the new Annex at Sugarbush. But much the same can be said for the other sports that Vermont Adaptive, and other organizations, offer access to.

On June 18, 2022, Vermont Adaptive’s annual Charity Challenge returns as an in-person event. Based out of Killington, it will again feature its signature road bike rides, hikes and even a paddle. This year, along with a mountain bike option, it will also host a gravel ride.

SUNDAY RACER

FOR NEARLY 20 YEARS GRACE KIRPAN HAS JOINED THE VERMONT ADAPTIVE RACE TEAM AT MT. ELLEN EACH SUNDAY. SHE’S WON MEDALS, AND MORE.

Grace Kirpan, right, and her mother Patty at Vermont Adaptive’s new Mike Murphy Annex at Mt. Ellen, Sugarbush. Photo by Angelo Lynn

I’m going to get a photo with Hugh Jackman!” says Grace Kirpan, laughing as she pounds her fist on the bar of the chairlift. We’re riding up the mountain at Sugarbush’s Mt. Ellen and Kirpan, 30, is telling me about her upcoming trip to New York. “We’re going to see ‘The Music Man’,” she says with a big grin. Jackman, of course, is the star.

Grace is a star in her own right. She loves musicals and was in “Best Summer Ever,” the feature film put on by Bristol’s Zeno Mountain Farm in 2020, and produced by Maggie Gyllenhall and Peter Sarsgaard.

The New York trip is one she’s been looking forward to, and one that got canceled when Jackman got Covid, and then rescheduled. It is one of the few trips Kirpan has been able to take since Covid 19.

“Covid has been really hard,” says her mother, Patty Kirpan. “So many of the activities we’d do with Grace we couldn’t do because of it – basketball, bowling, movies, theater. Thank heavens we can still ski and get outdoors.”

Grace was lucky, Patty adds, in that her jobs at Red Hen Bakery of Moretown and Rabble Rouser Chocolates in Montpelier, let her take work home during Covid.

In the past, Grace, who has Down syndrome, has played basketball in Barre, gone bowling and swimming in Berlin and done track and field at Harwood Union and U32– all with Special Olympics programs. Before Covid, Special Olympics served 2,000 athletes in the state, giving them the opportunity to compete in sports that range from bocce to snowboarding, and hosted four state-wide competitions.

Covid curtailed some of those competitions and activities, but not Grace’s skiing. For the past 20 years, nearly every Sunday in the winter, Grace has joined a group at Mt. Ellen that coach Norm Staunton, a staff member with Vermont Adaptive, calls “my race team.”

On this Sunday, like others, Grace slides off the lift and skis over to the Crackerjack trail to position herself in the start gates. Staunton straightens her skis, gives her a little pep talk and sends her off.

Staunton watches his student move through the gates— red, blue, red, blue. Grace skis in total control making PSIA-perfect wedge turns, mixed in with some parallel. “There’s no timing,” says Staunton. “Just getting everyone to go through the gates helps with technique.” In the lodge, he’s posted the goals for the day on a white board: 8 runs total, 4 through the gates.

“It was hard for me to teach her to ski,” says Patty. Grace is her second youngest, the tenth of 11 children Patty and her husband Gary raised in Moretown. Patty was a skier and a kindergarten teacher for many years. Her husband doesn’t ski.

“We tried teaching her when she was 10, but then someone told us about Vermont Adaptive’s program and we’ve been coming here ever since,” she says. “From the start, they were great. They had the equipment, the know-how, the tethers, the coaches, the volunteers. It’s been awesome.”

Staunton has led the race program for nearly 20 years. “I had friends with disabilities growing up and I’ve worked with the adaptive community for most of my life,” he says. He has an MBA from University of Vermont and attended the Master’s in outdoor education program at the University of New Hampshire, where he focused on adventure with people with disabilities. He’s also a member of the PSIA Eastern Division Adaptive Development Team.

Staunton looks each skier in the eye as they approach the start gate and gives a bit of advice. One young woman in her teens skis up to the start and tells Staunton she wants to try a jump in the terrain park. “I’m telling you the same thing I’d tell any other skier: go look at the jump first then just roll over it,” says Staunton, encouraging the racer to try new things, while being cautious.

At the bottom of the run, a few of the volunteers and parents form a “parade” with the students, a follow-the-leader train where they zig zag down to the lift.

“Norm is just great with these kids,” says Josh Carpenter, whose daughter Lelia is in the Sunday program and is friends with Grace. She too has Down syndrome. The Carpenters drive from Craftsbury each weekend to participate and Josh, a psychiatrist who specializes in wilderness therapy, is also a volunteer. “Each Sunday is like a father/ daughter date for us here,” he says, as Lelia, who lives in a therapeutic community nearby, rests her head on his shoulder. “The whole community here at Vermont Adaptive is really special, it’s like a big family that you can share pretty much anything with.”

When I ask Grace what is the best thing about the race program she doesn’t hesitate. “Skiing with Josh and Barry,” she says.

She’s been skiing with Josh Carpenter for more than 7 years and, now with Barry Whitmore, another volunteer.

“I started volunteering with Vermont Adaptive because of the free skiing,” Whitmore says. “But it became about so much more. It’s something I look forward to each week.” Volunteers have to commit to five days beyond training, and help out at events, but for those who have committed, Vermont Adaptive will also help them get their PSIA certification.

When I tell Barry and Josh what Grace said, they laugh. “Really?,” Whitmore says, “I thought the best part about the race program is going to the Special Olympics at Pico. Or, more precisely, the dance party after.” Grace, who overhears this, nods her head several times and grins.

Covid put the Special Olympics winter competition at Pico on hiatus again this winter. There were no medals or ribbons or dance parties. “Grace is really competitive, as are many of the others in the program. The medals and ribbons are really important,” says her mother Patty. “But most of all? It’s the social aspect.”

Ultimately, that social interacion is as much what sports is all about as times and trophies. And though Covid has put a damper on the annual show at Pico, the Vermont Adaptive Sunday Racers program at Sugarbush is not to be denied. “We’re still having an end of season party here on March 20,” Patty says. “You should come.” —L.L.