VT SKI + RIDE 2021 Fall Season Preview

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FREE! FALL 2021

SKI +RIDE

Vermont’s Mountain Sports and Life

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The Futures of Skiing Opening Day Antics Best New All-Mountain Boots A World Cup Woman to Watch

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CONTENTS

FEATURES GALLERY: V T S T R E E T S p. 23

Photographer Peter Cirilli captures Vermont’s urban riders in action.

DREAM HOME: S M A L L I S B I G p. 26

These two families wanted a small place to call home in Vermont. What they built is stunning.

ESSAY: T H E T W O

F U T U R E S O F S K I I N G p. 31

What does a green, egalitarian future for skiing look like? And what stands in its way?

COMPETITION: J U M P I N G B A C K I N

p. 46

A UVM ski racer not only jumped back into World Cup competition, she went to the head of the class. Here’s how Paula Moltzan did it.

FIRST TRACKS N E W S | OPENING DAYS,

COLUMNS

p. 6

If you want to win the Game of G.N.A.R., you had better go for first chair on opening day. This guy did.

N E W S | SKIMO GOES OLYMPIC, p. 8

Plus, what Vermont will pay you to move here, a new kind of trail map, the new mask and vaccination mandates and more.

L O C A L H E R O | BREAKING BARRIERS, p. 13

| A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE,

T H E T O P | THE FUTURE OF SKIING?

p. 5

G E A R

| THE NEW ALL-MOUNTAIN BOOTS,

p . 53

These touring boots ski down just as well as they go up.

R E T R O

| THE ORIGINAL SKI AREA MOGUL p. 57

Long before there was Vail or Alterra, there was Fred Pabst, Jr. .

C A L E N D A R | GREEN MOUNTAIN EVENTS ,

Vasu Sojitra just summited and skied Denali. On one leg.

A D V E N T U R E S

F R O M

Skiing is going in two directions. And both have merit.

p. 15

Vermont is to famous authors what Hollywood is to actors. . ,COVER: Mike Nocek slays opening day at Pico in 2020. Photo by Tucker Marshall

p. 59

C H A I R L I F T Q / A | IN SEARCH OF LOST SKI AREAS ,

p. 64

A trained meteorologist, Jeremy Davis found another passion: lost ski areas.

THIS PAGE: White slopes, red leaves and Killington’s ready for another season. Photo by Tucker Marshall

vtskiandride.com Fall 2021 3

EDITORIAL P u bl ish e r , Angelo Lynn angelo@vtskiandride.com E dit C r e a t ive E dit

o r / C o - P u bl ish e r , Lisa Lynn editor@vtskiandride.com D ir e ct o r , David Pollard

o r ia l I n t e r n , John Vaaler

C o n t r ibu t o r s: Brooks Curran, Dan Egan, David Goodman, Ali Kaukas, Bud Keene, Brian Mohr, Lindsay Selin, Doug Stewart, Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

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Photo by John Atkinson

WHAT IS SKIING’S FUTURE? It is easy to hate on Vail Resorts and Alterra, the two conglomerates that now own five of Vermont’s 22 ski areas between them—with another out-of-state corporation, Powdr, owning another two. Locals like to blame these big companies for many of the changes to ski towns and ski culture that Richard Solomon writes about in his thought-provoking essay published here, “The Two Futures of Skiing,” p.32.

In it, Solomon looks at the history of skiing and proposes an alternative, green, egalitarian future where ski areas are owned and shared by the community.

To a certain extent, that future already exists here in Vermont. Though seven resorts are owned by corporate overlords, seven more are operated by non-profit entities.The remainder are independently-owned areas, coops or private clubs. At these smaller places (see “The Best Little Ski AreasYou Never Skied” at vtskiandride. com), skiing is accessible ($5 for a lift ticket at Brattleboro Ski Hill). The clientele is largely local. There is a sense of community.

It is important that these areas survive as they create new skiers, young and old, regardless of income, and contribute to the community as much as the summer baseball diamond does.

But is that other future so bad? Those corporate overlords give back mightily to their communities, employ thousands, attract visitors who feed the local economies and, let’s face it, provide some pretty sweet amenities. As we went to press, Vail Resorts announced a spate of new lifts, including new six-pack chairs for Mount Snow and Stowe. Soon, Killington will be hosting thousands for the World Cup and finishing off its stunning new base lodge.

While we don’t agree with everything that Solomon writes, we felt that his was an important viewpoint to share. Let us know what you think the future of skiing should be on our social media pages or at our website. —Lisa Lynn, Editor

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CONTRIBUTORS A former ski instructor and whitewater guide, R ich a r d S o l o m o n has written for Slate and Current Affairs, where a version of his essay “The Two Futures of Skiing,” p.32, first appeared.

Solomon is a graduate student at University of Chicago where he studies political science.

A former ski racer at Green Mountain Valley School and UVM, R y a n M o o n e y has spent the last few winters as a photographer for the U.S. Ski Team and as a ski tech for his fiance, World Cup racer Paula Moltzan. Mooney is also a strong competitor in whitewater paddling.

Vermonter T u c k e r M a r s h a l l is another guy who is as good with his camera as with skis. Marshall, who competes on The World Pro Ski Tour shot our cover, PIco on opening day 2020 and his home mountain, Killington (see p. 3). Marshall’s Trademark-Media does film and photo work.

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vtskiandride.com Fall 2021 5

FIRSTTRACKS

OPENING DAYS

Photo by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

I f y o u w a n t t o e a r n p o in t s in t h e G a m e o f G .N .A .R . , d o n ’t m is s o p e n in g d a y .

6 Fall 2021 vtskiandride.com

O

pening day. First chair. If those words don’t get your blood running, you’re not a skier. Whether it’s a mid-October day at Killington with glitter flying and breakfast burritos going to the early birds, or a surprise December dump at Pico (our cover shot) or Mad River Glen (photo at left), that first day of ski season is a party that shouldn’t be missed— no matter how long the line is. And there’s some serious status to getting first chair of the season.

Pro skiing legend Shane McConkey immortalized the status behind “first chair.” In his Game of G.N.A.R., (developed with his buddy Rob Gaffney), you could earn 3,000 points for getting first chair on KT22 at Squaw Valley (recently named Palisades), according to Gaffney’s Numerical Assessment of Radness. McConkey was so known for his first chair frenzy that an ad for Volante’s Machete ski showed him using the ski as a weapon to massacre a crowd lined up ahead of him.

Liftline antics like McConkey’s don’t (usually) happen in Vermont.

But there’s still a competition to get the first run of the season. Just ask Mount Snow legend Brian Smuda. Smuda has been making the day trek to Mount Snow from his home in Enfield, Ct. for most of his 35 years.

Seven years ago, he came up the night before.

“It all started the year I quit drinking,” he says. “I was out in Dover with friends at OMT towards the bar’s close and knew my sobriety would work to my advantage to try for first chair.” He did and got it. In subsequent years, he became so determined to keep the streak going he camped out overnight. “I got my sleeping bag and lawn chair and set up right next to the lift,” he says.

“Mount Snow has been my family and opening day is like a reunion,” Smuda says. Skiing has also helped him conquer some of the symptoms of tardive dyskinesia, a condition which causes involuntary movements.

“It helps me focus and keeps me in control of my body,” he says. In 2018 he underwent Deep Brain Stimulation surgery. “Eighty-six days later, I was back for first chair,” he says.

You can’t miss Smuda. “I usually wear my mullet wig with a purpleand-teal women’s one-piece fart bag I got at thrift shop,” he says. His fanny pack carries Bluetooth speakers and blares ‘80s pop. “I figure, hey why not have fun,” he explains. “At times people will ask me if I’m on drugs but I simply smile, and say: ‘Nope, I’m 100% sober.’”

For that we give him 10,000 G.N.A.R. points. —L.L.

Mad River Glen’s opening day on Dec. 7, 2019 coincided with powder so deep Brooks Curran got face shots (above). That same year, Brian Smuda (first on left), nabbed Mt. Snow’s first chair.

vtskiandride.com Fall 2021 7

SKIMO GOES OLYMPIC

Long before alpine racing existed, there was ski mountaineering: skin up, ski down, repeat. In 1924, the first Winter Olympics included skimountaineering and the sport continued for three more Olympics.

For years, the Mad River Valley Mountaineering race (shown at right) challenged skiers to skin up and down a course that took them, at one point, from Mad River Glen to Sugarbush. Jay Peak also hosted an uphill/downhill. In July, the International Olympic Committee approved skimo for inclusion in the 2026 Games. The Games will include 5 separate skimo events, including a relay, a sprint (uphill, a hiking section and a descent through gates) and a longer event with a mass start that will have racers ascend 4,300 to 6,200 vertical feet as they move through checkpoints. While the Mad River Valley and Jay Peak events have been retired, if you want to try your hand at skimo, the Northeast Rando Race Series is coming back to Vermont this season with races scheduled at Magic Mountain (Dec. 18), Burke (Jan. 19) Middlebury Snow Bowl (Feb. 5), Brandon Gap (Feb. 12), and Bromley (Mar. 5).

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That’s what Vermont will pay you to move here to work, whether it’s as a remote worker or for a job with a local business.

The New Worker Grant Program and the Remote Worker Grant Program cover up to that amount in relocation expenses (see thinkvermont.com for details).

According to the Vermont Futures Project, Vermont is nearly 11,000 people short of the number of new workers it needs every year to keep up with job openings and at 3%, the current unemployment rate in Vermont is one of the lowest in the country. It is similar to what it was pre-Covid but since the pandemic, resorts have had a harder time bringing in seasonal workers from abroad.

Staffing has been an issue throughout the state and in many towns, restaurants and other businesses have had to cut back on hours. So please be patient if your burger arrives late, and tip well.

Fall 2021 vtskiandride.com

Photo top by John Atkinson, bottom courtesy of Renoun.

$7,500

Tattoo These Skis

Vermonter Zoë Myers would earn our respect for any number of things. For starters, she’s a teleskier and former ski patroller at Mad River Glen. Then consider the fact that she built her own tiny house (pictured here) in Warren, has woven her own pack baskets out of an ash tree she harvested and turns wooden bowls. But Myers’ main work is as a tattoo artist with The Perch Folk in Waitsfield— emphasis on the word “artist.”

Her designs are intricate, often inspired by nature: trees with flowing roots and branches, flowers, birds in flight. Recently, she combined her passions to create a custom graphic, “Arc of Petals,” that will appear on a limited edition set of Renoun’s Endurance skis as well as on cans of a new “Arc of Petals” release from Burlington’s Foam Brewers, a 6% IPA. Renoun will be raffling off a pair of the skis and co-hosting a release party with Foam Brewers in Burlington on Nov. 5, along with their “Vermonters Day” special.

vtskiandride.com Summer 2021 9

D e e p C u t s , S t e e p F in e s

A NEW KIND OF TOPO MAP

Alex Gemme, Nathaniel Klein and Jacob Freeman were Middlebury College students teaching skiing at the Middlebury Snow Bowl when they decided to make a 3-D model of the ski area from scrap wood.That started an idea for a business. Now, their Treeline Terrains produces 3-D woodcarved topographic models of ski areas, mountains, lakes and other landscapes. Their goal is to “create topography you can touch,” the three business partners say.

Treeline Terrains has made models of Sugarbush, Camel’s Hump, Mt. Mansfield, Lake Champlain and other landscapes, and makes custom models, examples of which can be found on their website, treelineterrains.com. Models start at $70.

The “maps” allow you to trace trails and rivers with your fingers and feel the rise and fall in elevation. It’s like reading the landscape with your hands. The trio is currently working to develop 3-D models of Sugarbush for Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports, whose mission is to empower individuals with disabilities. Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports Director of Communications Kim Jackson notes, “They have the potential to really help our participants with visual impairments.With the help of these models, our athletes can understand where Mt. Ellen is at Sugarbush Resort They help prepare them for an outing with us. It’s a great, valuable project.” —Christopher Ross

It may be glading season, but before you pack an axe consider that the state of Vermont can impose a $50 fine for every bush or small tree that’s cut illegally on state land. And that goes up to $2,000 for every tree over 22 inches in diameter. On Green Mountain National Forest land, fines go as high as $5000 and/or six months in jail. Last March, the state attorney general T.J. Donovan filed a suit against Thomas Tremonte for cutting 839 shrubs and trees on land abutting his in Westfield, Vt. to make a backcountry ski zone. That land was part of Hazen’s Notch State Park. That said, if you want to cut a small Christmas tree (under 20 feet) on state or federal land, all you need is a $5 permit.

VAX UP, MASK UP

This winter, if you want to dine indoors at any cafeteria-style restaurant at a Vail-owned resort be prepared to make a reservation, put on a mask and show proof of vaccination. While Vermont has had one of the lowest rates of Covid-19 in the nation and has relaxed state-wide mask mandates, anyone over 12 who wants to dine at cafeterias at Mount Snow, Okemo and Stowe will have to follow Vail Resorts’ restrictions. The company has not yet released how it plans to check for vaccination status. Need a new mask? For every mask Burlington-based apparel company Ski The East sells (like the one at left, $16), it donates one to a school in need. To date, they have donated more than 36,000. skitheeast.com

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Fall 2021 vtskiandride.com

vtskiandride.com Summer 2021 15

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BREAKING BARRIERS Having just one leg didn’t stop UVM grad Vasu Sojitra from skiing Denali this summer. Or from doing much else. By Dan Egan

Photo by Ted Hesser; courtesy Vasu Sojitra

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ix dudes, 1000 pounds of gear, 17 days, a 6,000-meter peak and 10 legs,” that’s how 2013 University of Vermont grad Vasu Sojitra described his descent of North America’s highest peak on June 20, 2021. If you do the math, that is two legs short of a normal expedition: two of its members, Sojitra and Peter McAfee were the first two amputees to ski from the summit of Denali in Alaska. Their feat will be featured in this fall’s Warren Miller Film, “Winter Starts Now.” Sojitra, who lost his leg at nine months old, brushes off the feat. “I have a simple saying I like to repeat to myself during big climbs and adventure races: ‘I’ve done hard things and I have the capacity to do harder things’,” says Sojitra.

Mountain guide Don Nguyen was on Denali in June with clients at the same time Sojitra was skinning up. “As a guide my main instruction to clients is efficiency; don’t waste energy. But for a one-legged person like Vasu, I don’t even know what to tell him because he has had to develop his own pace and climbing system. He summited Denali faster than my able body climbers,” emphasized Nguyen.

Sojitra’s parents immigrated from India.

Vasu was nine months old and they had only hours to act when doctors informed them that their second son had septicemia and would lose his life if they didn’t amputate.

Growing up in Connecticut, Sojitra tried to use a prosthetic leg, but found it slowed him down. “He came home one day and said he wasn’t going to use it anymore,” said his mother, Rama.

Sojitra started skiing at age 5, and taught himself to ski on trips to Vermont. Later, at University of Vermont, Sojitra gained notoriety for ripping the local mountains and backcountry with his college buddies, and joined the Outing Club. In 2014, fellow UVM grad and filmmaker Tyler Wilkinson-Ray showcased Sojitra skiing tree runs in northern Vermont and in the Chic Chocs in his short film, “Out on a Limb.”

Sojitra later moved to Bozeman, Mont., where he met famed mountaineer Conrad Anker in a climbing gym. Anker, who works for The North Face, signed him on as the brand’s first disabled athlete. “He has ignited the conversation at The North Face about inclusion, disabilities, and what can be done— important stuff,” stated Anker.

Sojitra has over 46,000 followers on Instagram and is using his platform to advocate for inclusion, diversity, the disabled, public land access, and native people.

“Consider me your friendly neighborhood disrupter, with a goal of bridging gaps between abled and disabled, communities of color, normalizing what human is, what public access is and where our public lands came from,” he says. “If we understand we are stewards of the land, that can elevate the conversation in a way that protects and saves our planet. It’s about inclusion for me especially in the outdoor recreational space,” he says.

When asked what he would say to a room of outdoor industry leaders, Sojitra’s answer is straightforward: “Help us by providing the resources for the underserviced communities of color and disabilities. And build relationships with these communities by hiring a diverse staff within the leadership of your companies.

The research shows the more diverse the leadership the more profitable the organization becomes.” n

vtskiandride.com Fall 2021 13

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Adventure

A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE Sinclair Lewis slept at what is now the state’s poshest inn. Rudyard Kipling played snow golf here and Robert Frost hiked the hills. Vermont is to writers what Hollywood is to stars. By JohnVaaler

Courtesy Twin Farms

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n the midst of a divorce with the Main Street author Sinclair Lewis, journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote to her future ex pleading to keep their farmhouse in Barnard, Vt. “Give me Vermont,” wrote Thompson. “I want to watch the lilac hedge grow tall and the elm trees form, and the roses on the gray wall thicken, and the yellow apples hang on the young trees, and the sumac redden on the hills, and friends come, and your two children feel at home.”

Thompson and Lewis are just some of the literary greats who have made Vermont home. Going back to the 19th century some of the most widely acclaimed American writers ended up hanging their hats here.

Rudyard Kipling played snow golf at his home in Dummerston. John Irving was an avid cyclist and customer at Putney’s West Hill Shop.

Wallace Stegner summered in Greensboro. Bennington was home to Shirley Jackson (best known for her masterpiece short story “The Lottery”), and Bennington College bred a brat pack of writers that included Bret Easton Ellis and Donna Tartt.

Writers and poets came for a variety of reasons. Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent 20 years in exile in tiny Cavendish. Nobel-prize-winning poet Louise Gluck helped to found the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, near where she lived. The change in seasons certainly inspired Robert Frost, who taught at Middlebury College.

Plenty of travelers every year tour the Hollywood boulevards where movie stars live.

But only in Vermont are you able to hike to, ski to, or even stay at the former places of so many great authors.

This fall and winter, get a taste of the sense of place that drew these writers here by taking a literary adventure tour.

S T A Y A T S IN C L A IR L E W IS ’ P O S H T W IN F A R M S Literary power couple Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson met in 1927. Lewis — whose novels such as Main Street and Elmer Gantry lampooned commercialism and American society — fell in love with

vtskiandride.com Fall 2021 15

guests back to the top after each run. A room (complete with three meals and all activities) at Twin Farms costs between $2250 and $3600 a night.

Just a mile east of Twin Farms lies Silver Lake, a few minutes drive from Lewis and Thompson’s old home. The lake is a popular spot for canoeing and paddleboarding and, in the winter, ice skating. On the northern shore of the lake is Silver Lake State Park, with 40 campsites for those who might not have Trump-sized checkbooks.

On a weekday when Silver Lake is less busy, you might see what Sinclair Lewis found so charming about living in Barnard. “I like Vermont because it is quiet, because you have a population that is solid and not driven by the American mania,” Lewis said. “That mania which considers a town of four thousand as twice as good as a town of two thousand, or a city of one hundred thousand, fifty times as good as a town of two thousand. Following that reasoning, one would get the charming paradox that Chicago would be ten times better than the entire state of Vermont; but I have been in Chicago, and have not found it so.”

16 Fall 2021 vtskiandride.com

Robert Frost (above) loved to hike the trails and woods near his cabin. Today you can ski to his cabin from the Rikert Nordic center. At top,

HIKE OR SKI TO ROBERT FROST’S CABIN For those who prefer the road less traveled, hike (or come winter, snowshoe or ski) the mile-long Robert Frost Interpretive Trail nearby off Route 125, just a few miles from the Rikert Nordic Center and the Middlebury College Snow Bowl. The trail traverses marshland on an elevated boardwalk before crossing the South Branch of the Middlebury River and Beaver Pond.

In early winter, if you meander along the trail, you might see birches as the former Vermont poet laureate described them in his poem “Birches”: “Loaded with ice on a sunny winter morning/ After a rain.They click upon themselves/ As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored / As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.”

The boardwalk was recently rebuilt to be wheelchair accessible and opened in spring 2021. Close to a dozen of Frost’s poems are now posted along the trail, including one of his most famous, “The Road Not Taken.”

Just across Route 125 from the Frost Interpretive Trail, the road you

Twin Farms, where Sinclair Lewis promised his wife fires, lamp light and lots of books to read.

Courtesy Twin Farms; Angelo Lynn

Thompson, a columnist and public speaker.

Lewis convinced Thompson to marry him by saying that he would move with her to a farmhouse in Vermont. “There will be apple trees and flaming lilies, and the moon over the low mountains and you and me, after dinner, sitting….on the terrace, and inside, when it becomes chilly, the fireplace and lamplight and lots of books,” Sinclair Lewis wrote to Thompson. After a honeymoon in New York City, Lewis made good on his promise and they bought Twin Farms, a 1795-era farmhouse with 350 acres of property located in Barnard.

Thompson was one of the first American journalists to be expelled from Nazi Germany due to her criticism of Adolf Hitler’s regime.

Her journalism about fascism’s rise in Europe provided her husband with material for his 1931 novel It Can’t Happen Here, which tells the story of the U.S. President Buzz Windrip, an authoritarian demagogue who establishes a dictatorship in America. Following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, the novel’s sales surged. Ironically, in August 2017, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, then senior officials in the Trump White House, made headlines when they visited Vermont for an expensive weekend at Twin Farms, which is now a boutique hotel.

Today,Twin Farms is a luxury resort with 20 suites or cottages that offers a variety of sports including bicycling, croquet, canoeing, cross country skiing, and six downhill ski runs. A high-powered Sherpa snowmobile can transport

should take is the half-mile dirt road (or in the winter, follow Rikert’s Nordic ski trails) that leads to the Robert Frost Farm and Cabin. Frost stayed at this modest cabin at Homer Noble Farm during the summer and fall months from 1939 to his death in 1963. There, he tended to the apple trees, wrote and taught at Middlebury College.

According to author and Middlebury College Professor of Creative Writing Jay Parini. “I would say Frost is the poet of the seasons. And not just four seasons, but 50 seasons. He broke the seasons down into little micro-seasons. He’s got early fall, mid-fall, late fall, depths of winter.”

During his tenure in Ripton, Frost produced A Witness Tree — the first of five poetry collections he would write while living here. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1943. Frost recited the book’s most famous poem, “The Gift Outright,” for President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961. It’s opening still resonates today: “The land was ours before we were the land’s./ She was our land more than a hundred years / Before we were her people.”

The simple farmhouse and the cabin are both the property of Middlebury College and off limits to visitors, but the land around them is open to skiers and hikers.

In winter, stop for a moment to listen to the “sweep of easy wind and downy flake,” or gaze east at Worth Mountain, home of the Middlebury College Snow Bowl. As Frost wrote, “The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight; New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil.”

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cl a y t e n n i s c o u r t s t o V e r m o n t a n d “ s n o w g o lf ,” a ft e r a v i s it by C o n a n D o y le .

S ir A r t h u r

P L A Y A N D S T A Y A T K I P L I N G ’S N A U L A K H A “There are only two places in the world where I want to live,” Rudyard Kipling wrote. “Bombay and Brattleboro.”

Born in India, Rudyard Kipling came to Brattleboro in 1892 on his honeymoon with his wife, Carrie, where they visited Carrie’s brother Beatty Balestier. The visit went so well they decided to move to Vermont.

The Kiplings built their house Naulakha in nearby Dummerston. With a design inspired

by Mughal architecture and other Indian influences, Kipling commented that Naulakha was meant to look like a “houseboat floating down the Connecticut River Valley.” It was here that he wrote The Jungle Book, Captain Courageous and some of his Just So stories.

Today, you can rent out Naulakha from Landmark Trust USA for $545 a night. The four-bedroom home is still filled with much of the furniture and books that Kipling had when he lived there. The house also has a

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pool table and an expansive kitchen.

During his time at Naulakha, Kipling tried out several sports — and not always in season. Some believe that Kipling was one of the first participants of the sport “snow golf.” The story goes that Kipling picked up the sport after Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle visited the estate and showed Kipling his golf clubs. “Even years later, (the house’s residents) were finding painted balls that Kipling would shoot,” Landmark Trust USA Executive Director Susan McMahon said. A tennis court on Naulakha’s grounds (still in use today) may be another seminal addition to Vermont sports. “They say it’s the first clay tennis court (in Vermont),” says McMahon.

Kipling left the state following an argument in 1896 with his brother-in-law Balestier.

If you can’t rent the house (and play snow golf or tennis there), you can enjoy something else that has been around since Kipling’s day: Go apple picking at Scott Farm, also part of the Landmark Trust property.

The orchards, located one mile away from Naulakha, have been cultivated since the late 1800s. More than 120 varieties of apples grow there now, including the juicy, rich Hudson Golden Gem, the crisp Cox Orange Pippin and the Esopus Spitzenberg, which Thomas Jefferson considered “unsurpassed as a dessert fruit.” The farm also specializes in preserving heirloom varieties.

In fall, it’s “pick your own” and the farm’s market is open seven-days a

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week until Thanksgiving. Other activities hosted

by Scott Farm in the fall include the Heirloom Apple Days Celebration on Oct. 10, a Crêpe Night on the second Wednesday of each month, and classes throughout the autumn on apple-pie making, gluten-free cooking and cider brewing.

Aside from Kipling, Scott Farm has another literary connection: The farm was a shooting site for the film “The Cider House Rules”, an adaptation of the John Irving novel.

The Highland Lodge sits off the Craftsbury trails that Stegner hiked and near the town where he summered each year, Greensboro. Today you can stay in the Wallace Cabin there.

These trails have trained national champions and generations of family skiers.

HIKE OR SKI WALLACE STEGNER’S GREENSBORO Wallace Stegner’s novels are more often associated with the American West than Vermont. But for more than 50 years, the Pulitzer-prize winning novelist and his wife packed up their station wagon and drove from their California Bay Area home to spend their summers in Greensboro, in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Stegner was so embedded with the Greensboro community that he was asked to write the forward to the town’s official history.

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In it, he wrote: “From the first day I saw it, I responded to Greensboro because it had what I lacked and wanted: permanence, tranquility, traditional and customary acceptances, a stable and neighborly social order.” In Greensboro, Stegner also wrote parts of his novel Angle of Repose.

Greensboro, where his novel Crossing to Safety is set, is home to Highland Lodge, which was established in the 1920s. Since its founding, the resort has been especially popular as a summer stay for the families of Ivy League professors. At the Lodge, you can ski out the door and access the 105 kilometers of groomed cross-country ski and bike trails maintained by the Craftsbury Outdoor Center and Greensboro Trails Association.

Reserve Highland Lodge’s Wallace Cabin (named after Wallace Stegner), stroll to the beach on Caspian Lake or weave through the meadows and hills Stegner once traversed on the Barr Hill Nature Reserve Trail just east of the lodge. The trail is a .8 mile walk through pines, red maple and yellow birch. Barr Hill rises 2,100 feet, and from its summit you can see Jay Peak to the north, and even Mount Washington in New Hampshire.

In Crossing to Safety, Stegner writes of a fictional “Folsom Hill” — no doubt modeled on Barr Hill: “I wonder if I have ever felt more alive, more competent in my mind and more at ease with myself and my world than I feel for a few minutes on the shoulder

T h e t r a i l s o n B a r r H il l i n G r e e n s bo r o h a ve l it t l e s in c e W a l l a ce

c h a n g e d S te g n e r

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of that known hill while I watch the sun climb powerfully and confidently and see below me the unchanged village, the lake like a pool of mercury, the varying greens of hayfields and meadows and sugarbush and black spruce woods, all of it lifting and warming as the stretched shadows shorten. There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters.” n

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NO SNOW? NO LIFTS? NO MOUNTAIN? NO PROBLEM. VERMONT’S URBAN LANDSCAPES MAKE FOR SOME SWEET EARLY-SEASON RIDING. PHOTO GALLERY BY PETER CIRILLI Shooting at night on January 19th, 2021 in front of the Capitol Building in Montpelier was a gutsy move for photographer Peter Cirilli and pro rider Sean Dillon, especially as the legislature was in

Photo by Ansel Dickey

session. “We were a little worried we would be kicked out in a matter of minutes but the Capitol police officers who showed up were interested in what we were shooting,” says Cirilli.

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P

hotographer Peter Cirilli, a 2016 Champlain College grad, has become known for his artistic takes on both skateboarding and snowboarding. A pro now, he has shot for the likes of Ben & Jerry’s, Burton, Darn Tough and Nordica and this past summer began work on a book about Vermont’s skateparks.

Here, he shares some of his best shots of street riding. “This is really my passion,” he says. “Whenever I can, I grab my camera when I head out with friends.”

Inspired by skateboarding and the pioneering moves of urban freeskiers, street riding (or skiing) has taken off—even in Vermont

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where dirt roads outnumber paved ones and true “cities” are few and far between.

Last spring X Games medalist Zeb Powell (featured in VT Ski + Ride’s Winter 2021 issue) moved to Burlington — in part for its proximity to mountains and terrain parks such as Sugarbush’s. But his real reason? To explore what could be done on the walls and rails and urban features of Vermont’s largest city.

Same for pro riders Alex Caccamo and Sean Dillon (shown here.)

For them, setting up the shot, finding and shoveling snow, and then knowing how you are going to ride a rail or wall is all part of the game.

Cirilli headed out with Alex Caccamo to shoot around Burlington’s Hospital Hill last year. “It was early season after one snow storm that left us with little to no snow,” he remembers. “Alex and his friend Casey were there for about 3 hours pushing snow and shaping the hip into what it was.

After riding it in a few times Alex was going bigger than anyone I have ever seen on this iconic spot and pulled off a frontside 180 tail grab” says Cirilli of the photo at right. “Alex also gathered all the snow he could to build enough of a jump to get to the top of the wall to the backside wallride, (bottom right). “

Caccamo and Cirilli also went in search of rails around Burlington. “We needed to somehow find speed to hit the rail. Luckily, there was a pile of pallets next to the building we were at. Stacked some snow, then some pallets, then snow and we were in business,” Cirilli says. Caccamo

credit

pulled off a frontside bluntside.

vtskiandride.com Fall 2021 25

Dream Home

SMALL IS

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One is in southern Vermont with a view of Stratton, the other nestled in the woods near Stowe and Smuggler’s Notch. One was designed as a studio/garage, the other as a family retreat. One was a design collaboration between the owner and a local firm, the other the concept of a nationally-acclaimed architect.

Beyond that, these two homes share much in common: both were built by people who wanted to escape urban and suburban environments, who were passionate about the outdoors and wanted to connect to the Vermont landscape.

Both did so with a house that was just big enough.

REDISCOVER VERMONT’S ANCIENT ROADS, M ich

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ON TWO WHEELS OR ON FOUR.

vtskiandride.com Summer 2021 41

A STRATTON STUDIO

O

riginally, I just wanted someplace where I could cut mountain bike trails,” says Michael O’Brien of the 20 acres he bought not far from Stratton Mountain. For years, O’Brien and his family had been skiing at the mountain, driving up on weekends from the New York metro area and staying at the condo they owned on the access road.

While their kids were younger the condo was ideal. But as the kids grew up and headed off to college, the couple had more time and needed less space. Kathleen, a skier, signed on to ski patrol at Stratton.

Michael bought a split board. And he got into mountain biking. “I found this parcel of land that was all trees and shrubs and at first thought it would be a great place for snowmobile and mountain bike trails,” he says.

Then, he wanted a shed for this bikes and snowmobiles. “We’d drive by Vermont Barns’ offices all the time so one time I stopped in,” he recalls.

That’s how the collaboration with Wadsworth Design Build (the company that owns Vermont Barns) started. “Each time we talked, things got a little bit bigger,” remembers Zach Whipple, the designer/builder with Wadsworth who managed the project. O’Brien wanted a garage A kitchenette, a loft bedroom that’s accessed by a metal ladder that mechanically lifts and slides away when not in use, and a bathroom fit out the upper levels above the garage. The interior is done in with laminated Douglas fir and the flooring is a durable vinyl tile that resembles wood. Sliding doors offer a seamless view to the cantilevered deck.

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with two doors so he could drive his snowmobile in one side and out the other without having to back it up. He wanted a place he could store his mountain bike, and maybe some gym equipment. “Then we decided that a shower was a good idea and next thing there was a kitchenette and a sleeping loft,” Whipple says with a laugh. “The whole process was pretty organic and evolved as we worked together.” But when all was said and done, the footprint remained at 475 sq. ft. with a total living area of 1,200 sq. ft. Eventually, there may be a larger home, but for now, it’s where they go to get away, to ride bikes, to chop wood and get a sense of what living in Vermont is all about.

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Photos left courtesy Wadsworth Design Build; above, courtesy Olson Kundig

A WOODSY RETREAT

W

e have neighbors literally five feet on either side of our house,” says Jonathan Barr of the 1907 Victorian his family lives in the heart of Seattle, Washington. That urban setting is across the country from where his wife Katherine Sargent grew up in Morrisville, Vt., just north of Stowe.

“I grew up walking in the woods with my father and helping our family sugar in the spring,” says Katherine. Many of Katherine’s extended family still live there and the Barrs visit Vermont often. They wanted a homestead nearby where they could spend family vacations and holidays.

“That sense of place and sense of family is important to us,” says Jonathan.

“I wanted our two kids to grow up with that.”

A few years ago, they began scouting a 40-acre lot that had been in Katherine’s family for two generations and arranged to buy 5 acres from the family trust. The site, set far up a dirt road on a hillside in Sterling Valley, would be a vacation homestead of sorts. “It was a woodsy wonderland and we wanted a house that would blend in and be durable,” Katherine says. “I love that in the summer there are so many mountain

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bike trails and swimming holes nearby,” says Jonathan. The Catamount and VAST snowmobile trails also run near the property and in the winter, the family snowshoes the area and has built a sledding hill down the driveway.

Jonathan had already become enamored of the widely-acclaimed 1,000-sq. ft. Delta Shelter that noted Seattle architect Tom Kundig designed for clients who wanted a weekend cabin that they could close up and not worry about.

He surprised Katherine with a visit to the Olson Kundig offices and asked Kundig to design them a similar box-like structure using simple, weatherproof materials. “We wanted something small, but big enough to be a gathering place for family and someplace our kids would keep coming back to,” says Jonathan.

The original plan called for a garage on the ground floor with two bedrooms and a bathroom above with the main open living area/kitchen on the top floor.

“Having a good local builder here really made a difference,” said Jonathan. “Brendan O’Reilly of Gristmill Builders in Stowe took a look at the plans and said ‘If you just bump out the back a few feet I think you can fit in another bedroom and bathroom.” That’s where a bunkroom now sits that can sleep up to five kids, with a pocket half bath just next

vtskiandride.com Fall 2021 29

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to it. “The whole house really benefits from that little bit of extra space.”

The Barrs had also originally wanted a cantilevered deck. But after blasting the ledge the house would sit on, opted instead for a less expensive and more practical set of two stone terraces. “I actually love how that anchors the house into the hillside,” says Jonathan.

The combination of Cor-Ten steel siding, big glass windows by Andersen, and the plywood undersiding on the roof help the house blend into the rocky hillside, hidden among the towering pines that surround it.

The extensive overhang on the roof was designed to maximize shade in the summer and to provide shelter in the winter from falling snow.

“It’s amazing how in the winter the roof is angled perfectly so the sun still blazes in,” says Jonathan. And one of his favorite features is the exposed plywood underside of the roof and ceiling. “Every time I look up, it’s like a Rorschach test — it’s beautiful,” he says.

The floors are concrete with radiant heat and Gristmill fabricated the treads on the stairs from maple harvested from another plot of land the Sargent family owns, a sugarbush in Morrisville. The stove, made by Morrisville-based HearthStone, adds to the feeling of winter warmth.

Though the house is only 1,750 sq. ft., it feels big. “The house was designed to really make use of the space and to avoid the kind of clutter that comes, for example, with closets.We actually don’t have any closets,” says Katherine. “The way it was designed and Brendan built it, you just have everything that you need, and if something doesn’t work there, at the end of the day you probably don’t need it,” says Jonathan.

When they are not using the house, the Barrs rent it out through Stowe Country Homes. But they try to spend summers and Thanksgiving or Christmas there every year and often come back to help with sugaring on the family lot in the spring. “For holidays my mom and brother who live in Virginia come up and we turn over the two main bedrooms to them,” says Katherine.

“Our kids are in the bunkroom and we sleep upstairs on the big couches,” says Jonathan. “It’s tight but just like old-school ‘70s style vacationing.” Which is just what they wanted.

A blue bathtub (top left) from Signature Hardware has a view east to the Worcester range and sits opposite a small shower. The bathroom is shared by the two master bedrooms on the main floor. Up a flight of stairs is the roomy living room and open kitchen with a concrete island. For holidays, there’s room for family with a long table and four barstools at the kitchen island and a

Interiors courtesy Stowe Country Homes, Exterior courtesy Olson Kundig

modular sofa from Room and Board that can comfortably sleep two.

vtskiandride.com Fall 2021

Essay

THE TWO What does a green, egalitarian vision for skiing look like?

And what stands in its way? By Richard Solomon

At left, skaters at the Spruce Peak Village complex at Stowe Mountain Resort. At right, a rider making the most of an early dusting of snow at the Lyndon Outing Club, the Northeast Kingdom ski hill that was founded in 1937 and still operates as a non-profit.

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Photo left courtesy Spruce Peak; right courtesy Lyndon Outing Club

FUTURES OF SKIING vtskiandride.com Summer 2021 vtskiandride.com Fall 2021 3 3

I

T H E C O S T O F A L I F T T I C K E T . . . may have gone down thanks to price wars between the Epic and Ikon season passes. Vail Resorts reduced its Epic Pass prices by 20% this season to $799 and the Northeast Value Pass to $595 (good at 14 Northeast and Midwest ski areas) while Alterra’s Ikon Base Pass (good at 13 resorts, nationwide) is $779. But walk up to the window at Vail or Alterraowned resorts in Vermont, and you could pay $170 and up for a day ticket. By contrast, a day ticket for the T-bar at non-profit Brattleboro Ski Hill is $5.

n fully-automated luxury communism, nude skiing will be the vogue.”

Hans told me. I often have casual conversations with strangers on chairlifts and I soon forget them. But the ideas this old German nudist began putting forth —he continued to expand on his conviction that skiing should be an egalitarian sport—stayed with me.

On the one hand, it’s odd to cast alpine skiing as the sport to flourish in the afterglow of a socialist revolution. Skiing is, after all, a pastime for rich white people: Over 60 percent of skiers in the United States earn a six-figure salary, and about 85 percent of skiers identify as non-Hispanic whites. Ski towns like Stowe, Vt., Jackson Hole, Wyo. and Aspen, Colo. are fever dreams of the U.S. social hierarchy, where beautiful vacation homes lie empty much of the year while a shocking number of workers sleep in their cars.

Skiing is expensive, and that’s the point. James Bond, the Davos conference, fur-clad snow bunnies—a raft of imagery extols the elite cosmopolitan allure of ski culture. We go to the mountains to escape the masses, and a luxury is only a luxury when few people have it.

And yet, my nudist friend inspired an idea. To rush through a snowladen forest of spruce trees or watch fireflies glitter in the zephyrs of summer is a joy that should belong not only to aristocrats but to all people.

As a ski instructor and raft guide, exposing soul-drained urbanites to the winter sunshine or misty mountains is the most rewarding feature of my work.The moment an elderly Hispanic lady or a young black man that I’m teaching discovers, “Hey, I can ski, too,” is deeply fulfilling.

All people deserve nice things. “Cultivated leisure,” as Oscar Wilde wrote in The Soul of Man Under Socialism, is “the aim of man.” The treasures of our land, water, and air are a common inheritance, and we must strive to democratize their enjoyment. Natural delights are part of the good life, after all. “The chance to find a pasqueflower,” wrote ecologist Aldo Leopold in Sand County Almanac, “is a right as inalienable as free speech.”

So what does a green, egalitarian vision for skiing look like? And what stands in its way?

One obstacle to Hans’ dream is our lack of time. Despite incredible labor-saving innovations, like the diesel engine, washing machine, and transistor, average leisure time in the U.S. has declined significantly since World War II. Capitalist-driven market competition tends to translate productivity gains into more output, even when people don’t need more stuff and workers themselves don’t need more hours. This “consumerist bias,” as sociologist Erik Olin Wright called it, reduces our freedom to enjoy the natural world. As the technological frontier advances, that sparkling future of shorter workweeks and longer holidays will remain ever a mirage on the sun-drenched horizon.

Second, our mountains and other beautiful places are being sold off.

Beaches from Florida to California increasingly host no-trespass signs, surveillance cameras, fences and armed guards. The Alps—once lauded as the “Playground of Europe”—are debased through consumerism and price inflation to the playground of the wealthy. This happens because rates of return on assets typically exceed the growth of wages and the economy as a whole. As economist Thorstein Veblen aptly put it, a “leisure class” emerges whose habits are characterized by conspicuous consumption and waste and tied to the display of status. Their disposable income creates a market incentive for adventure outfitters to cater to the whims of the überrich.

Swanky ski towns replace modest ones. Expensive restaurants replaced C o r po r a t e c o m fo r t : A t O k e m o , t h e S u n bu ca n be

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dive bars. The wealthy bid up housing costs. A rising tide lifts all prices, but only some boats. This “inflation inequality” makes a ski trip or beach vacation more expensive for the rest of us.

Finally, the snow is melting. Capitalist firms face competitive pressure to reduce costs, and externalizing those costs to the environment is a good strategy. Since the Industrial Revolution, 200 years of carbon and methane pollution has exacted its revenge. Average snowfall in the U.S. has receded by 20 to 60 percent over the past century. Since the 1980s, the ski season is 34 days shorter. Faced with such a collective action problem, markets deliver only a partial cure.Will climate change disrupt snowfall in the Sierra Nevada? This startup will spray clouds with silver iodide to induce an early birth of white gold. Will winter eventually become too warm even for that? Very well then, time to sell mountain biking as The Next Big Thing.

Photo left courtesy Okemo, right courtesy Northeast Slopes

The Rise and Fall of the Völksport

It wasn’t always this way. The folkloric roots of skiing were remarkably egalitarian and non-commercial. Long used as practical means of locomotion across arctic environments, skiing first emerged as a widespread leisure activity in mid-19th century Norway. Fashioned from slabs of wood with crude bindings, early skis were relatively cheap and simple. Ski lifts hadn’t been invented yet.

After the 1814 Treaty of Kiel forced Swedish rule over the fjordlands, rural Norwegians took to local hills and forests to affirm their cultural heritage in the face of a foreign occupier. Rather than being a cosmopolitan luxury, Skiidrett (or “ski sport”) culture celebrated folk tradition, Norse gods like Ullr and Skadi, and romantic conceptions of nature and nation.

Scandinavian immigrants also brought skis to the United States, particularly the Midwest. According to economic historians Jeremy Atack and Fred Bateman, these mid-1800s homestead economies of the rural North approached a wealth distribution “more nearly equal than has been found almost anywhere.” The Nordic style (where the heel detaches from the ski) soon percolated into the mining camps of the Rockies and the Mittelgebirge region of central Europe—places like the Black Forest, Harz and Jura mountains. Hotels and equipment manufacturers did well but profits remained diffuse.

The masses eventually adopted skiing as the classic winter sport, in tandem—paradoxically—with its elevation to elite luxury. Historian Andrew Denning shows this process was intimately connected with the Alps’ “visceral allure.” Previously viewed as a wasteland, the Alps of the early 1800s began to host resorts like Davos, St. Moritz, and Chamonix, selling thermal waters and crisp air to a growing European elite. Swimming, nudism, and vegetarianism flourished, and the Sommerfrische (or “summer freshness”) retreat came to evoke the aristocratic Grand Tours of the 17th and 18th centuries. Railroads reduced week-long journeys to mere hours, and idyllic reports struck a chord with affluent British and Germans, who flocked to the mountains in both summer and winter.

With its unique speed and versatility, the ski edged out the ice skate and toboggan in popularity as a winter sport. Steeper slopes prompted innovators like Mathias Zdarsky to set the heel in a steel binding, splitting downhill “alpine” skiing from its cross-country, Nordic roots. CelebrityY a n k e e ing

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athlete Fridtjof Nansen’s 1888 traverse across Greenland created a splash in the budding mass media. To ski was sexy, adventurous, and Edenic—a venture into the wild, yet also fashionably modern.

The skiparadies, as it came to be called, always relied on a certain conceit about the human place in nature and society. In the “infinitude of the snowfield,” claimed Bavarian skier Eugen Oertel in 1909, one could escape society and “cast off the shackles of our civilized life,” fulfilling the Nietzschean call to “become who you are.” In tandem, the Long Depression of 1873 to 1896 marked a time of profound social upheaval in Europe. Taylorist production—with its emphasis on scientific management and economies of scale—destroyed guilds and family businesses. People crowded into cities, which came to represent filth and disease. Mass politics highlighted class, ethnic, and gender conflicts.

To cope with the modern condition, new philosophies emerged.

Max Weber plotted the processes of disenchantment, Gustav Le Bon explained the herd mentality, while Sigmund Freud charted the raw interplay of the id, ego, and superego. Skiers, says Denning, had their own response to modernity: seek refuge in nature and escape society’s decadence. Informed by the Romantic aesthetics, skiers saw the mountain as sublime, teeming with austere beauty and terror, and beyond ephemeral human institutions.

As ski culture reached a critical mass among leisured urbanites, these fantasies found an ally in the investor class, film industry, and sports media. Olympian Jean-Claude Killy—like LindseyVonn and ShaunWhite have today—received lucrative endorsements from brands like Chevy,

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Schwinn Bicycles, and Nivea. In a 1925 ad, Mercedes-Benz juxtaposed the skier with its sleek automobiles, while James Bond outwitted his villains on the slopes of the Jungfrau for the 1969 film “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” Movies like the 1931 “White Ecstasy” dazzled audiences with the death-defying aplomb of ski acrobats “drunk with the wine of speed,” as the British mountaineer Arnold Lunn once described.

The ski industry grew and consolidated, helped along by Alpine states eager to develop rural backwaters. Fiat magnate Giovanni Agnelli pushed the Italian fascist regime to create the first purpose-built ski village of Sestriere in the 1930s, extending the autostrada and train lines to service urbanites from Milan and Turin. Benito Mussolini himself posed shirtless with ski poles, elevating winter leisure to the ideal balance of body culture and patriotic masculinity. (One wonders if Vladimir Putin took a page from Il Duce for his own topless calendar.) Postwar Vienna aggressively developed infrastructure in the Alps, spending almost 500 million schillings (about $170 million today) of Marshall Plan funds for hotel improvements and ski lifts. Purpose-built resorts in France and Sun Valley, Idaho quickly replicated the Italian model, placing every aspect of the ski experience—hotels, transport, ski school— under centralized ownership of a state-backed, private developer. As it became more popular, the ski vacation increasingly relied on capitalintensive resorts and expensive equipment. As the editorial staff of Der Winter bitterly observed in 1967, “skiing has become aVolkssport, [and] theVolk has become affluent.”

It wasn’t all snooty consumer culture. As European economies

recovered from World War II in the 1950s and 1960s, leisure time came to be recast not as a luxury, but as a fundamental human right. Countries with strong labor parties and social democratic traditions, such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, England, and France, legislated a minimum number of annual vacation days. In France, a group of modernist architects led by Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand dreamed of connecting the masses to the Alps through a “national plan” with a “network of fast transportation.” The rugged landscape would become a “field of study and experimentation for urban planning and architecture” and be accessible to everyone through an iron-clad right of public use.

The brand new Fifth Republic led by Charles de Gaulle evidently didn’t give a damn about this utopian vision and in 1958 adopted a law that gave private investors free rein over a large swath of mountain commons— to be seized (and farmers dispossessed) for pennies. Nevertheless, Perriand’s egalitarian, accessible vision of a ski vacation left its mark in the visually arresting architectural design of France’s Les Arcs ski resort.

The Takeover by Ski Inc.

Few and far between, these socialist experiments in skiing have been commodified or dwarfed by the rise of monopolies such as Vail Resorts, Inc. and Alterra Mountain Co. The first publicly trades at about $12 billion and the second represents the private equity firm KSL Capital and the Henry Crown family, who jointly own the $5 billion enterprise.These companies eat resorts like pork-belly futures. In 2016,Vail bought Stowe in Vermont for $41 million and Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia a l l y- r u nig

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for a record $1 billion. Not to be outdone, Aspen Skiing Co.—which became Alterra —acquired Intrawest’s six U.S. and Canadian resorts for $1.5 billion, including Steamboat Springs in Colorado, Quebec’s Mont Tremblant, and Stratton in Vermont. Then it acquired Mammoth Resorts’ four mountains in California and Deer Valley in Utah. Together, these two corporations control about 37 percent of U.S. national skier visits, their season passes cover 110 resorts worldwide, and their g i t R e a l , ” a s i t s s l o g a n s a y s , fo r i t s l o ca l fa r m in g c o m m u n it y s in c e 19 3 6.

Photo left courtesy Stratton Mountain Resort; right courtesy Norhteast Slopes

W it h t h e o l de st co n t inu

T H A T B U R G E R W I L L B E $ 2 0 . . . If you order an organic, grass-fed beef Pat LaFrieda special with Cabot cheddar, Applewood bacon, sauteed onions and mushrooms at Mulligans in Stratton’s base village. A grass-fed burger cooked on a griddle on a Coleman two-burner at Northeast Slopes is $4 or $6 if you go for the special with sauteed onions and cheddar. At Mad River Glen’s General Stark Pub, the Local Classic cheeseburger will set you back $12.50 —and another $2 if you add bacon.

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T H E N E W C O M M U T E . . . to Vermont ski areas for the über-wealthy is by private jet or helicopter.

Tradewind Aviation does private charters to Stowe from Westchester, N.Y. This winter, it may resume commercial flights, which started at $524 one way last season. Wings Air offers custom helicopter flights from Manhattan to Stratton or Killington.

One way to Stratton for 5 passengers starts at $6,800. Or you can book a bus trip through a local tour operator that will often bundle in your travel and lift ticket for the normal price of a day ticket.

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At Sugarbush, a snowcat takes paying guests up to Allyn’s Lodge for a luxurious candlelit dinner or, on powder mornings up the mountain for first tracks before the lifts open.

holdings flaunt pre-tax (or EBITDA) profit margins over 25 percent.

Their success is due, in part, to climate change and an aging demographic. The Western snow season has shrunk 34 days since 1982. A heavier reliance on snowmaking pushed smaller operators into bankruptcy.

Only players with deep pockets survived. Cloud drift, precipitation, and

THE GREAT EQUALIZER ... may be backcountry skiing. With Vermont developing backcountry ski zones such as those at Brandon Gap, Dutch Hill in southern Vermont or the Lake Willoughby area in northern Vermont, skiing is again accessible and free, once you own the equipment. Aspen, Colo. recently announced it would be charging for uphill skiers.

Bolton Valley Resort, which has a backcountry touring center, also requires a paid pass to ski up.

Resorts such as Sugarbush and Killington require uphill travel passes but offer them for free.

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temperature are fickle things, but by consolidating, the industry can spread losses from one region across the others. Season passes, like Vail’s Epic Pass and Alterra’s Ikon, trade early commitment for a steep discount—another good hedge against Mother Nature. They also own the whole mountain.

That $15 burger at Mount Snow? Vail Resorts’. Your rentals, ski school lesson, bus from the airport, hotel package, even that seemingly indie chocolate shop on Main Street—all go to the corporate Goliath. It’s like a casino where the house always wins.

At the same time, ski culture faces an inexorable demographic decline.

Baby Boomers and Gen Xers vaulted skiing into its golden age.Their kids have not kept up; total skier days per a thousand people are declining by 2.2 percent annually. As the gray-haired have retired, Vail and Alterra— along with their predecessors—discovered you can sell a lot of luxury real estate to granddad. Ski towns such as Aspen, Colorado and Jackson Hole, Wyoming— once famous for their Bohemian charm—began to sport egregious post-Bauhaus condos. Resort developers set up fractional ownership and time-share strategies to sweeten the deal, luring white collar workers from San Francisco to New York to purchase vacation homes in the “New Ski Villages.” Landlords who used to rent to local tenants found Airbnb-style rentals more lucrative.

Some industry watchers, like Chris Diamond, think all this is awesome. His book Ski Inc. 2020 even called it a “North American Renaissance.” Who doesn’t benefit from a cheap season pass, huge capital investments, and grandpa’s condo? Everyone—except low-wage seasonal workers, novice skiers, wildlife, and local culture.

The Epic and Ikon passes, for instance, are a great deal if you’re a powder hound who shreds more than 20 days a year and can pay $1,000 up front. It’s also a great deal if you’re a company shareholder.

By relieving competitive pressure from day lift tickets, Vail, Alterra, and other vertically-integrated groups can raise day ticket prices 4.5 times the rate of inflation. This hurts casual skiers and beginners. In Europe, where vestiges of a more diffuse ski economy remain, day tickets in the Alps are noticeably cheaper.

Defenders of the industry say big profits are good because companies can invest in lift infrastructure, open new terrain, or pay workers more. But a peek at Vail’s shareholder report shows that since the 2018 Republican tax breaks, Vail has spent $1.2 billion of its profits buying back its own stock to reward investors. These buybacks don’t result in jobs or new ski terrain. In the past five years, Vail also spent a lot of its spare money on acquisitions, which really just means the owners change.

Improvements, of course, might be necessary to gain market share, but with a shrinking base that means poaching skiers from other resorts.

More terrain, new lifts, luxury homes—this “arms race” to attract skiers is self-defeating because no one actually needs more juniper, powder, and piñon tree glades to shred, especially not novices.

As Hal Clifford writes in his excellent book Downhill Slide, the industry has built “magnificent temples to skiing, but new skiers by and large are not coming.” This high rate of capital expenditure pushes snow sports further into the realm of costly luxury.

Workers suffer most from Ski Inc.’s real estate spree. From

Bend,Oregon to Vermont’s Mad River Valley, adventure land faces a housing crisis of unprecedented scale. Stories of workers sleeping in their cars, tents, or just leaving are sadly common. Lake Tahoe housing officials report 76 percent of locals pay more than a third of their income in rent. In Summit County, home to Breckenridge, Keystone, and Arapahoe Basin, one investigation in 2016 found that the median rental lease hovered at $1,900 per month. Consequently, a ski-worker’s life is increasingly a commuter’s one, filled with the daily drudgery of traffic jams, road rage, and suburban sprawl. The Lake Tahoe study for instance found 59 percent of the workforce commute.

When local governments try to fix the failures of the free market, they often rub against the elitist attitude of the landed gentry. In 1998 Vail’s town council proposed new housing for 1,680 people. Wealthy homeowners, outraged at the notion mere ski bums might live next to their trophy homes, killed the plan. In Mammoth, over half of homes are empty most of the year. In Winter Park, it tops 90 percent according to recent U.S. census data.

Ski towns are also sick of the Mickey Mouse kitsch. Like Holiday Inn and Carnival Cruise Lines, industrial-scale tourism companies seek to standardize the visitor experience.That sense of specialness, community, and austere beauty is commodified until it fades away, then replaced by a more fantastical, cartoonish version of what once was. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard once called this the hyper real: “models of a real without origin or reality.” Jugglers, musicians, and storytellers entertain guests next to fires fed by natural gas trucked in from thousands of miles away. The

When Ascutney reopened as a non-profit ski area, it offered Thursday night races off its rope tow. The upper mountain trails, which are not lift-served, can promise powder for those who skin up.

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resort universe is outfitted with log cabins, gold miners, escape rooms, wood trolls, and haunted forests— “a blow-up sex doll simulacrum of a life” wrote Hal Clifford. Is it a surprise, then, that Disney once flirted with designs for a ski resort in Sequoia National Park? After dark, all who remain in these New Ski Villages are tourists; the actual residents have driven home, 30 miles away. In all these ways, the modern ski town is a façade.Vail and Alterra may posture as home-grown in the High Rockies, but their souls live in a tax haven called Delaware.

A Diminishing Resource

Frosty is melting. As it turns out, pumping millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere every day for 200 years is an eminently bad way to power the modern world. The consequences are immediately palpable. Since 1940, snow levels in Colorado have receded 20 to 60 percent, mirroring a general decline of snowfall in the United States over the past 100 years. Temperatures in the Alps rose 2°C over the 20th century. Since 1980, the average U.S. ski season has shortened 34 days, with similar reductions in Switzerland. Looking to the future, scientists in the EPA’s Climate Division published projections in 2017 showing a 50 percent reduction in ski season length across nearly all ski areas by 2050.

A separate Climate Impact Lab model in 2018 forecasted that Truckee, California—the home of Lake Tahoe, Squaw Valley, and Boreal—may likely witness annual below-freezing days plummet from 41 to 26 by mid-century. Park City and Deer Valley’s total may drop from 194 to 111.

Because of elevation, some areas like the High Rockies may manage better, but our fine Champagne powder will probably melt into slushy Sierra cement more often.

The industry response to the climate crisis has been slow and lukewarm, with few resorts venturing beyond internal sustainability initiatives.

Around 75 percent of American ski areas have adopted campaigns pledging more food waste dehydrators, gravity-powered snow cannons, and solar, hydroelectric, and wind power. But the results are often underwhelming. According to Vail’s 2020 progress report for example, net emissions have decreased by only 0.5 percent. Such P.R. stunts surely enhance the brand among outdoor-loving patrons, but their impact on the climate is likely minuscule.

When lofty ethics do clash with finances—say when resorts on arid public lands want to block the Forestry Service from regulating their water rights—the façade of sustainability crumbles. Over the last five years, pro-fossil fuel candidates like Mike Enzi (R-WY), Scott Tipton (RCO), and Paul Cook (R-CA) have received tens of thousands of dollars from corporate executives like Jackson Hole president Jerry Blann, Vail CEO Rob Katz, and Mammoth CEO Rusty Gregory. The short timehorizon of the stock market encourages such structural myopia, as investors obsess over quarterly returns while the Earth hurtles toward a climatological point of no return.

To be fair, some places like Aspen are more vocal in the public arena. In 2006, Aspen filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, arguing the EPA has the right to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. In 2018 they targeted three swing-state Republicans with millions of postcards from guests, pushing them to #GiveAFlake about climate change.

In 2019, employee uniforms began sporting the logo of Jeremy A t C o ch r a n ’ s S k i A r e a i n R ich O n F r ida

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Jones’s “Protect Our Winters”—the climate-action nonprofit which aims to make outdoor recreationists climate voters. Aspen’s push appears in large part due to the charisma of Auden Schendler, sustainability director for the ski company and author of Getting Green Done.

But even the crusading ambitions of one tree hugger in the corporate hierarchy will run up against structural limits. For one, market mechanisms place pressure on firms to manifest quick returns. A freeriding problem emerges. Anything too radical will offend the client base or board of directors, so proposals for a carbon tax or caps on emissionintensive activities like aviation are not on the agenda when the ski industry meets with Washington. Aspen, after all, receives a private jet every hour in the high season. Why threaten that?

Second, a corporate ski lobby faces what political scientist Mancur Olson called a problem of “diffuse benefits and concentrated costs.”

The benefits of a healthy climate for snow enthusiasts are spread across time and diluted by the natural vicissitudes of weather. In contrast, the regulatory decisions on the fossil fuel industry are discreet, immediate, and existential. Polluters, then, will be vastly better organized to defend their interests. An epic showdown between Ski Inc. and Exxon Mobil & Co. is thus a fantasy—“a peashooter against a bazooka” admits Schendler.

Finally, Ski Inc.’s uneven public advocacy on climate change is vastly overshadowed by what may be charitably called “adaption.” Instead of funding a robust environmental lobby, the ski industry flirts with startups who promise artificial clouds, “glide carpets” and driverless snowcats.

In Vermont, Mount Snow now has 100 percent snowmaking coverage and other ski areas are moving that way. Some resorts in France and Spain have to cover up to 80 percent of their snowpack artificially, which only delays the inevitable. Last year, one desperate French resort in the Pyrenees even helicoptered in snow to save the season.

Stories like these neatly illustrate the paradox of how an industry that suffers from a slow-moving environmental catastrophe increasingly relies on the very carbon-intense production that started the whole mess.

Many resorts are adapting ski lifts for summer mountain biking. Craft beer festivals, golf courses, rock climbing walls, ziplines, even roller coasters are increasingly touted as the way to “diversify revenue streams.”

In other words, snow sports are a lost cause when it comes to the future of the industry. In these ways, corporate brands are at best unreliable vehicles to solve a collective action problem like climate change. It’s up to the ski bums to save skiing.

Paradise, Regained?

So what is the Ghost of SkiingYet to Come? Two futures come to mind. In the bleak one, the planet warms, the snow season is cut in half, small ski areas close to the masses (often in the lower altitude Midwest and New England) go bankrupt or get eaten by the Vail-Alterra duopoly.

Those that remain are slushy, short-seasoned, and crowded. Meanwhile, the rich find evermore remote playgrounds to frolic, such as the mountains of New Zealand, Alaska, Japan, and Iceland. Leisure time continues its decline. An oligarchic, Goliath-of-an-industry chases after a dwindling group of second-home owners.The ski bum becomes an anachronism, the focus of sepia-toned docuseries. Mountain towns are gentrified of their charm and replaced by sterile Stepford villages. Alpine wetlands continue

I T ’ S A R I C H S P O R T ..and getting richer. Household incomes for skiers and riders have steadily increased over the past decade with gains in visitors earning $200,000 or more rising from 18.9% to 25.2% and for those earning $100,000 or more rising from 29.2% to 35.5%. At the same time, the percentage of visitors earning less than $50,000 has fallen from 27.3% to 16.8% and visitors earning $55,000 to $99,000 dropped from 24.6% to 22.5%.

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to be drained, rivers sucked dry, and wildlife habitat destroyed all to satisfy the adrenaline thrills of a shrinking cadre of enthusiasts.

In the other vision, skiers band together to create a climate justice advocacy group as powerful as the NRA. Unlike a methane-fed stock market, our time horizon includes grandchildren. We want healthy coral reefs for them to snorkel in. Powder days of historic proportions.

Well-fed rivers to splash in and wade. The quiet grandeur of old-growth forests. Some mock this as tree-hugger schmaltz, but I see it as one of humankind’s greatest virtues. What could be less in our rational selfinterest than fighting for a natural world we personally may never enjoy?

Call it irrational, but it’s beautiful.

Skiers, river rats, scuba people, dirt-bags, surfer bros, biker girls, cavers, bird fanatics, anglers, hiking vagabonds—we are a powerful voter bloc and possess sizable consumer power. Given that the natural world is under relentless assault by a pollutive and commodifying force, the outdoor community must become thoroughly politicized.

Groups like the Sunrise Movement, Protect Our Winters, and National Resource Defense Council are already mobilizing outdoor enthusiasts as a powerful voter bloc for Mother Nature. And because adventure meccas often lie in states with teetering conservative politics (Utah, Maine, West Virginia, and Alaska), our votes and consumer presence afford us an outsized voice.

There are also many ways to reverse the decline of ski culture and nurture alternatives to corporate consolidation. For one, we can push Congress to legislate more leisure time. Expand the mandatory number of annual vacation days. Establish federal holidays. Legislate paid leave for parents. The inequality that prices out the poor from nice places and leaves vacation homes empty most of the year can be addressed through taxes, taxes, and more taxes: on inheritance, global wealth, higher incomes, and absentee homeowners.

Empowered local governance can counter Disneyfied sprawl. Imagine deed-restrictions, affordable housing projects, eco-friendly building materials like straw bale, limits on commercial development, a capacity reservation system, and greener infrastructure for wildlife. The company town and resource colony are storied places in the American West, where boom-bust cycles followed the fortunes of rapacious timber, mining, and railroad giants. Ski towns are not condemned to the same fate. In fact, the advent of telework, accelerated by Covid-19, invites us to picture a world where the ski town depends less on a single behemoth for its livelihood.

Newcomers wouldn’t just consume the place and jet back to the coast, but rather set down an anchor and stay a while.

Socialized Skiing

Imagine a world where ski resorts are placed under public, nonprofit trusts. It’s not hard; they already exist. Bridger Bowl outside Bozeman, Montana has operated as a non-profit since the mid-1950s. Ascutney Ski Area in Vermont operated from 1947 until 2010, when it shuttered its doors and sold its lifts under mounting debt. Local residents then voted to buy the resort under the umbrella of a small nonprofit with the help of Trust for Public Lands.

Today, of Vermont’s 22 public ski areas, seven are now owned or operated by non-profit entities: Ascutney, Brattleboro Ski Hill, Cochran’s, Hard’Ack, Lyndon Outing Club, Middlebury College Snow Bowl, Northeast Slopes and Suicide Six. In the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, a grassroots effort led the Antelope Butte Foundation to purchase an abandoned ski hill in 2010,

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V T S K I T O W N S A R E G R O W I N G F A S T ...in fact, they represent the 10 fastest-growing towns in Vermont with Stowe, Ludlow and Dover leading the way. Last season, Dover saw the number of new homes sold go from 126 to 230. The amount of money spent on new homes in Vermont also increased by nearly 80%, going from $799 million in 2019 to $1.43 billion in 2020. with blessings from members of the Crow Nation. Taos, in New Mexico is the first ski area to operate as a certified B Corporation, which mandates that public good be a metric of success alongside profit. All together, close to 10 percent of the 470 ski areas operating in the United States are owned by non-profits.

Revenue that might otherwise go to shareholders, acquisitions, or executive salaries go straight back into financing improvements or making a ski trip affordable. To guard against the vicissitudes of weather, the network could negotiate a revenue-sharing agreement. Like our national parks, a universal season pass can provide a measure of financial security and affordable access.

This model, of course, is markedly different than skiing now. It’s not consumerist. It’s not about the display of status. It will most likely rely on volunteers, federal grants, donations, and community support. But winter leisure’s salvation relies not on mega-hotels or heliskiing, but on the affordable, authentic, and humble.

Outdoor adventure is littered with these communal models. The non-profit Boy Scouts of America still own spectacular places, such as the Philmont Scout ranch in New Mexico, Sea Base in the Florida Keys, and the Northern Tier bases in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota and Canada. These are managed for their members. Recreational Equipment Inc. (or REI) is still technically a consumer co-operative and gives members a vote in the board of directors elections. Last summer I worked as a whitewater raft guide in the Smoky Mountains for the Nantahala Outdoor Center, which began in the 1970s as a workerowned raft company.

Finally, consider what I tentatively call a Public Lands Fund. The idea is simple. The U.S. Treasury or a non-profit manages a pool of assets in the public name. Timber, oil, commercial fishing, ski companies, rafting outfitters—really any enterprise that directly profits off public resources is subject to the fund’s purview. Every adult is eligible for one, non-tradable share, which pays an annual dividend based on the yield of the underlying assets. Citizens have the right to vote on shareholder matters, either directly or through a proxy.The share cannot be sold and is retired upon death.

Far from a pie in the sky idea, it’s quite realistic and has several advantages. For one, a public fund effectively democratizes ownership of corporate profits but shelters the dynamic managerial structure from an ossified, Soviet-style bureaucracy. It reduces poverty. It subjects corporate

leadership to a broader set of interests than profit maximization. It affirms the Public Trust Doctrine that the Earth’s bounties belong to the people, not distant shareholders. More than 120 ski resorts (accounting for 60 percent of all ski traffic) operate on national forests. If a private firm extracts value from a public asset, why shouldn’t the public benefit?

It’s also eminently achievable. Already, the first sanctioned glading on National Forest land has been done in Vermont, thanks to the work by the Ridgeline Outdoor Collective (formerly the Rochester/Randolph Sports Trails Alliance) at Brandon Gap. Backcountry skiing reduces the costs and the carbon emissions that lift-served skiing represent.

Since the 1980s, the Alaska Permanent Fund has paid every Alaskan resident an annual dividend (usually ranging between $1,000 and $2,000) from the state’s oil royalties and a diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, and real estate. The program is so popular, a full 64 percent of residents would rather establish a state income tax than reduce dividends to fill the state’s projected budget shortfall. In Norway, the birthplace of skiing, various state-owned wealth funds own almost one-third of all equity listed on the Oslo stock exchange and about 76 percent of the country’s non-home wealth. To put in perspective, that’s more than twice the share of national wealth owned by the People’s Republic of China.

Such examples prove that a democracy can cheaply administer a large portion of society’s wealth on behalf of the public without significant problems. A Public Lands Fund also doesn’t require a sweeping, revolutionary moment. Norway is liberal, but Alaska isn’t. Philanthropy,

scrip tax, and other levies on the stock market can gradually dilute the power of private investors until the fund attains majority ownership.

When I ski by myself, I often ponder the geometric miracle of the snowflake or the alluring depth of a powder glade around the bend. But the visions of a green future—“real utopias” as Erik Olin Wright called them—also flash across my mind incessantly. To shred the gnar is a wild, exhilarating thing that everyone deserves. Our public lands provide us these awe-inspiring encounters, but their use has been perverted and commodified. A cloud of climate anxiety looms above. However imperfect, the models above provide inspiration for an emancipated vision of leisure—a world liberated from the tyranny of work, democratic, green, and chock-full of natural wonder and physicality. It’s a world where you can raft the Grand Canyon, sail the Acadian coastline, or ski the Alps.

On the chairlift, I recall Hans told me that our modern social order is like concrete. To sledgehammer the thing is brutish and unlikely to do much, but to sandpaper the edges is inadequate. For this reason, such ski dreams of his may seem like an exercise in pointless fantasy—fated “to bleach on the plains of the past under a hallucinated utopian sun,” wrote British Marxist E.P. Thompson.

But in the boom-bust rhythms, small cracks in that concrete will form. There, radical projects can sink their roots. If neglected, the delicate sprouts will shrivel and die. If nourished, the stems will swell and in the fullness of time split the asphalt asunder. That is my hope.

The choice, my friends, is ours. n

These trails have trained national champions and generations of family skiers.

JOIN US THIS SEASON! Middlebury’s Rikert Nordic Center

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46 Fall 2021 vtskiandride.com

Paula Moltzan, second from right, jumped back into a spot on the U.S. Ski Team’s A Team after a stunning performance racing World Cup as an independent skier in 2020/21.

Look for Moltzan, along with fellow slalom teammates Keely Cashman, (far left) Nina O’Brien (third from left) and A.J. Hurt, far right at the Killington World Cup in November.

With Mikaela Shiffrin also competing, it’s an all-star cast.

By Lisa Lynn | Photography by Ryan Mooney

vtskiandride.com Fall 2021 47

This past season, Moltzan showed that Mikaela Shiffrin isn’t the only U.S. slalom racer who can podium in a World Cup.

a foggy Sunday morning in late November 2018, Paula Moltzan, then a sophomore at University of Vermont, stood at the top of Superstar at Killington. It was the last day of the Women’s World Cup. The horizon was a liquid gray. In the murky light it was hard to tell where snow ended and sky began.

It was the second time that Moltzan, a former Junior World Champion and NCAA champion, had faced this steep and gnarly World Cup slalom course. A year earlier, she’d stood in the same place, hoping to earn back her spot on the U.S. Ski Team, a position she had held for five years and abruptly lost after a poor season. Since her World Cup debut in 2012, Moltzan had competed in 17 World Cup events. She had only scored points (meaning a top 30 finish) in one.

That first year at Killington, in 2017, Moltzan had blasted out of the start on her first run. But her skis slid out as she arced around a gate. She went sliding down a slope that was as unforgiving as asphalt and crashed into the fencing.

Moltzan picked up the pieces. Bruised, she headed back to campus and went to class the next day. She wouldn’t be racing World Cup. Instead, she focused on her studies as a biology/chemistry major and trained with her Catamount teammates for the college circuit. At age 23, her chances of making it back on the team were few. But she was going to try.

When she came back to Killington a year later, in 2018, something was different. “I think I’d learned to take everything with a grain of salt,” she remembers. “I had gotten a taste of college life and knew that there was more to life than just ski racing.”

Though she had only five or six days on snow to train that season, Moltzan finished the first run in 28th. The top 30 racers would get a second run. “I was kinda shocked when I qualified and I knew I had to capitalize on that if I wanted to make ski racing my career,” she said. “It was either going to go really badly or really well.”

On the second run in uncharacteristically warm conditions that slushed up the course, Moltzan flashed through the gates. With the

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start order reversed, she was the third one on the course. When she looked up at the scoreboard at the finish her jaw dropped and she punched the air with her fist. Her time put her in first place for that run, a lead she held as skier after skier descended. She ended up with the fourth-fastest time for the second run, just 0.04 seconds off Mikaela Shiffrin’s lead. Her combined time put her in 17th overall, her career-best finish.

“I never really felt like I made it in ski racing until that day in Killington,” she said on the phone from Burlington this past fall, where she was visiting her sponsor, Skida. “After that, when I found out that I could start at some World Cups in Europe I figured I should find out what else was in the tank.”

What has happened since then is a remarkable story of how one woman defied the odds, proved age doesn’t matter as much as some might think and forged her own path to the World Cup, all while competing at the NCAA level and completing three years of college.

Now 27, Moltzan is the second-ranked slalom skier on the U.S. Team, just behind Mikaela Shiffrin, and moving up steadily. In 2021, she earned five top-10 World Cup finishes and her first World Cup podium.

So, what changed?

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ike former World Cup winners Lindsey Vonn and Kristina Koznick, Moltzan grew up skiing at Minnesota’s tiny Buck Hill where there’s 262 feet of vertical drop.

“My parents were both ski instructors so I was on skis by the age of 2,” she says. “Ski school was like daycare for them, as they had to work weekends,” she recalled. At 5, she started training with the development team on weekends. At age 11, she joined the Buck Hill Ski Racing Team, started by legendary race coach Austrian Erich Sailer.

She earned her first FIS points in 2009, at the age of 15, and went on to earn silver in the giant slalom in the Junior Nationals that year.

Ski racing had become a top priority for the teenager. “I was in public school and my teachers started complaining that I was missing too many classes and something had to change,” she said. Her family

began looking into ski academies.

“We looked all over,” she remembered. “The Vail Ski & Snowboard Academy is part of the public school system there, so it made the most sense at the time to go there, plus they had a great coach, Dan Stripp.”

She enrolled for her junior year and by senior year, at 17, had made the U.S. Ski Team. In 2015, she became the first American woman to win the Junior World Championships in slalom and earned 20th in the World Championships. Over five years, she worked her way up from U.S. “D,” or development team, to the C team, then B team. She put off college to make ski racing her life.

Then came 2016. Of the seven World Cups she entered that season, only once did she make it into the top 30, the criteria for earning FIS points that would determine her ranking. That April, she got a call from Paul Kristofic, the women’s head coach. “PK told me I didn’t have the criteria to make the team. There wasn’t much I could say or do. I was pretty bummed,” she recalls. “Getting not renamed to the team is an emotional whirlwind. It’s someone telling you that you are not good enough.You go into shut down and denial.”

In spring of 2016, Moltzan found herself out of a job. At the time, the news was even harder to take as the criteria for someone her age, then 22, to make the U.S. Team was tougher for women than it was on men.

To make the B team, a woman born between 1991 and 1996 (Moltzan was born in 1994) had to achieve a top-25 World Cup start list rank (based on World Cup points). For younger athletes, the criteria are a top 30 or top 45 rank, depending on year of birth. Men have two more years to reach those same criteria.

“We still have a long way to go toward equality in ski racing,” Moltzan told VT Ski + Ride in 2018 after the Killington World Cup. “Women have to perform better two years earlier than men do, which means there’s not a lot of room for women like me who want to ski race at the World Cup level and attend college.”

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ollege: That hadn’t been something that Moltzan had planned on for that year. “It was April and I hadn’t applied anywhere and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I was talking with Jimmy Cochran and next thing I knew I had a spot at UVM.” Cochran, the two-time Olympian, was assistant coach at UVM at the time. Moltzan was excited to work with him. UVM was also where her boyfriend, former Green Mountain Valley School racer, Ryan Mooney, was planning to go.

She started classes that fall.Though Cochran soon left UVM to help run the family ski area in Richmond, his cousin Tim Kelley, himself a former World Cup racer, stepped in as a coach. “Tim really got me and knew what I needed,” Moltzan said at the time.

Bill Reichelt, the head coach at UVM for the past 20 years, watched her progress. “Paula would give it her all and then crash hard, but she’s rugged,” Reichelt recalls. “I remember watching her train on Main Street in Stowe and go flying off the hill into the woods. I saw Ryan, her boyfriend, waving his arms and I started to run up to her, reaching for my tourniquet. These days, with the skis so sharp, we all carry tourniquets and my first fear was that she was cut.”

She wasn’t and picked herself up again and got back on the next lift up. “She would do that. Other people might call it a day after a crash like that, but Paula would keep training,” says Reichelt.

vtskiandride.com Summer 2021 43

“I couldn’t do this without him,” Paula Moltzan says of Ryan Mooney, her ski tech and, now, fiance. The couple have been together for 9 years and plan to marry in 2022.

What changed that year, though, was that Moltzan was now part of a team. In NCAA racing, a school’s win is based on how the team as a whole does – both Nordic and alpine. “It wasn’t just about my performance it was about how the 12 members of the team did. I didn’t have to win every race, but I did have to finish,” she remembers.

“I think what college racing did for Paula was it taught her to operate her governor,” Reichelt says. She began to ski less recklessly.

And at the end of her freshman season, she won the race she still says she is most proud of: the NCAAs at Cannon Mountain, N.H. While at UVM, Moltzan also got to watch her fellow Catamount and friend Laurence St. Germain compete on the World Cup for Canada. With renewed confidence, Moltzan had the itch to get back into international competition.

In the fall of 2017, she sent a letter to the U.S. Ski Team asking if she could compete in a time trial in Colorado – her only chance to earn herself a starting position at Killington’s World Cup that Thanksgiving weekend. Moltzan won the time trial.

All she had to do after that was finish in the top 30 to earn a chance to continue to compete in another World Cup. But that didn’t happen…yet.

M

oltzan was back at the World Cup in Killington in 2018, this time with the mantra of “finish, just finish.” “I think being in college taught me that there was more to life than just ski racing,” she said. “I was training less than I ever have, but just having more fun skiing and the pressure was off.”

Shiffrin, as predicted, won the race, but Moltzan ended up 17th, just three places behind her UVM teammate Laurence St. Germain and five places ahead of U.S. Ski Team’s Nina O’Brien. It was her best

50 Fall 2021 vtskiandride.com

finish ever and she was ecstatic.

That finish secured Moltzan the opportunity to start in other World Cups. The challenge was she would have to do so on her own, without U.S. Ski Team support. “Fortunately, a lot of the events were happening at the same time I was off from college for the holidays,” Moltzan said. Mooney signed on as her official ski tech. They raised about $15,000 and headed to Europe as a ski racing team of two.

While the national teams had coaches, trainers, physical therapists, containers of skis to choose from, and organized practices, Moltzan and Mooney had to finagle their way as a two-person squad. The U.S. Team helped out where they could. “Paula was friends with some of the Swedes, and they let us train with them too,” Mooney recalls.

Her first race was a World Cup in Courchevel, France on Dec. 22, 2018. There, she finished 15th – a career best. Then it was on to Croatia and then to Flachau, Austria where she finished 12th.

Something was clicking.

For the rest of January and February, Moltzan traveled back and forth between New England, where she was still competing for UVM on the NCAA circuit, and the World Cup, where she scored a 16th in Slovenia in slalom and then an 18th in Are, Sweden in the World Championships. In between, she was studying for her major in biochemistry and keeping up a 3.8 grade point average.

“I think one thing that helped is I was actually skiing less but managing my time better,” Moltzan recalls. That often meant arranging a course schedule around six days of training a week during the season, getting to Stowe by 7:30 a.m. for three-hour practice sessions, and traveling on weekends for races.

“There are not many ski racers who can compete at the World Cup level while going to college,” notes Reichelt. UVM teammate Laurence St. Germain ended up taking time off while racing for Canada and competing at the PyeongChang Olympics. For U.S. Ski Team racers like Nina O’Brien and A.J. Hurt, Dartmouth’s summer semester has allowed them to take winters off. Moltzan completed her junior year and then, in 2019/20 as she rejoined the team and aged out of NCAA eligibility, decided to take time off.

Traveling with her this whole time was Mooney. Mooney grew up in a family of whitewater paddlers who operate Crab Apple Whitewater, a rafting company in Charlemont, Mass. He attended Green Mountain Valley School in Waitsfield, Vt. on a scholarship.

“Like all scholarship students, I had to work while I was there, so I tuned skis,” he says. “When Paula was on the U.S. Team, she always had someone else do it for her—I’m not even sure she knew how,” he says with a laugh. “It just made sense that I would tune them for her, and I liked to do it,” he says.

The two first met in 2012 at a summer training camp in Valle Nevado, Chile. Mooney was 16 at the time, Paula was 18. “She was one of the hot U.S. Ski Team girls,” he remembers. They hung out as friends at first, then ran into each other at another camp in Colorado and things progressed. When Moltzan started at UVM, Mooney was there too, already a sophomore. In the fall of 2020, the two went for a walk on the Burlington waterfront, and Mooney proposed.

After Moltzan’s stellar season as a solo racer, she earned a spot back on the U.S. B Team. She took time off from school (at 26, she

In the summer, Paula Moltzan and Ryan Mooney (far left) spend their time guiding on the Deerfield River in Massachusetts. Or just rolling on it.

was no longer eligible to compete in the NCAAs circuit) and Mooney followed as her ski tech and photographer, shooting her racing, goofing off with her friends and fellow teammates A.J. Hurt and Nina O’Brien, and taking side trips together to see parts of Europe when they could.

The 2020/21 season turned out to be Moltzan’s best yet, starting with a 10th in giant slalom in Soelden, Austria. At the parallel World Cup in Lech she had made it to finals and was neck and neck with Slovakia’s Petra Vhlova, the world champion in giant slalom, with just three gates to go when Moltzan crashed.

But she already had her silver in hand and the knowledge that to get there she had beaten some of ski racing’s best: Switzerland’s Lara Gut-Behrami and Italy’s Marta Bassino. Moltzan also managed to win the Italian National Championships and place fourth in the World Championships in parallel slalom that season.

“I’m competitive,” Moltzan admits. Getting on the course with another skier gets her juices flowing. In the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Moltzan will be a contender in the parallel slalom, as well as the slalom.

Though Covid cut the season short and both she and Mooney contracted the virus, she still managed to finish the 2020/21 season ranked 11th overall in slalom, the second highest ranked American slalom racer after Mikaela Shiffrin. In June 2021, for the first time, she was named to the U.S. Ski Team’s A-Team.

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n the U.S. Ski Team’s A-Team. Three-quarters of her way through college. Engaged. Paula Moltzan has already ticked off some big boxes. Still, this summer saw her training harder than ever. “We set up this gym in this former woodshed on the Mooney’s property,” Moltzan says. There she would do the workouts sent her by

her U.S. Ski Team coaches using second-hand weights.

“Paula is so tough it’s hard to keep up with her,” says Mooney. “She will do these 3-hour runs up and down mountain bike trails near us and if she gets done early, she’ll just keep running in place until she hits exactly three hours,” Mooney says.

In between workouts Moltzan and Mooney worked as river guides taking clients down the rapids on the Deerfield. Negotiating whitewater, says Mooney, is a bit like navigating slalom gates. “You’re always focused on the next move, sort of looking ahead, flowing down the river and around the rocks.”

This November when Moltzan once again stands in the World Cup starting gate at Killington, things will again be different. Her ranking will earn her a higher start position, no longer in the back of the pack skiing in others’ ruts. Her spot on the A-Team has earned her more support – both in terms of access to the training and technology the U.S. Ski Team dedicates to its A-players, but also financial support. Her sponsors now include Rossignol, POC, Leki, Aqua Vitae and Skida.

And she will have the support of two extended families— including grandparents and siblings and cousins—watching from the grandstands. “All of my family and all of Ryan’s family will be there.

That’s huge; they are the ones who have been so supportive,” she says.

They will be cheering for what has become known in her circles as #ThePaulaProject.

After that? If all goes as planned, more World Cup races, the Olympics in Beijing and, next September, a wedding near the Mooney’s home in Charlemont. Then house hunting in Vermont.

“I’m definitely finishing my last year of college at UVM,” she says.

But first, she has some unfinished business on skis. n

vtskiandride.com Fall 2021 51

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G E A R THE NEW ALL- MOUNTAIN BOOTS M o re a n d m o re b o o t m a n u fa a r e lo o k in g t o d e liv e r t h e H o ly b o o t s : t h e a ll- m o u n t a in t o u r in g p e r f o r m s g o in g d o w n a s w e ll a s B y M a r k E llin g

Courtesy Fischer

T

c tu re rs G r a il o f b o o t th a t g o in g u p .

he true backcountry boot is an out-of-bounds animal—lightweight and built for ascending with a maximum range of motion in touring mode and comfortable for uphill travel. The boot, of course, has tech binding compatibility and a fully-rockered and aggressivelylugged outsole for walking and scrambling as needed, ostensibly on mountain ridges and rough terrain.

Beyond that, there’s as wide a range of touring boots as there are skis. Increasingly, though, boot manufacturers are focusing on that sweet spot: the all-mountain touring boot that could be your quiver-of-one if, say, you spend more than half of your time on the mountain but also want to skin up to ski some backcountry. Even Lange, long the favorite of Eastern ski racers, has come out with a boot for this season that is its first true AT/All-Mountain boot.

The 2021-22 “All-Mountain” boots continue to look and act more and more like alpine ski boots. They hold on the groomers yet have the range of motion, rockered sole and light weight that will get you up skinning up Brandon Gap or Tuckerman Ravine comfortably—and in time for first tracks.

What makes this type of boot especially good for Vermont —or most anywhere in the East— is that here the uphills are often short and steep and your downhills are either technical scrambles through trees and puckerbrush or precise turns on the icy, rocky, technical terrain of Mt. Washington.

These new touring boots – we call them All Mountain— have the classic stiffness of alpine boots that will let you ski trees like they were race gates. But they also boast the comfort, light weight and versatility of a touring boot.

Shon Racicot, owner of The Boot Pro Ski Shop in Ludlow, has been fitting ski boots and selling ski equipment since

1987. His shop at the base of the Okemo Access Road is a go-to place for alpine touring gear and he’s seen a significant increase in sales of AT equipment in the last few years, especially in boots.

“The new AT boots have come a long way and we are starting to see the downhill performance you might get with an alpine boot,” notes Racicot – who adds the disclaimer that he uses two boots: one for touring one for resort skiing, “because I’m at heart a racer and still like the precision of an alpine boot and being able to crank out the turns on the groomers,” he says.

“But these new boots with liners and shells that can be molded are much easier to fit than the AT boots of the past.

The use of new liner materials have also made boots warmer.

And manufacturers have started producing boots in wider lasts which makes the fit more comfortable for a variety of foot shapes,” he says. He points to the Atomic Hawx Ultra Xtd 130 as one boot that even has a heat-moldable shell and a 98 mm last that can fit narrower feet.

“Plus, with walk modes and rockered Vibram soles, if you’re walking around the lodge and you won’t skid out on your way to the bathroom,” Shon says with a laugh.

The boots noted here are just some of the best of the new breed and represent the top line boot, but many come in a variety of flexes and also have similar women’s models.

“You may not want or need a 130 flex,” says Racicot.

“And what’s a 130 in one boot in this category definitely is not in another so it’s important to try them on. The best boot is the one you are comfortable in,” says Racicot.

“Getting a good fit in an AT boot is even more important because on the uphill, you are pushing the boot away from you. You may not want the shell as tight as an alpine boot

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G E A R because your toe is going to reach for the front of the boot in the throw.“ Also note that most of these boots are compatible with newer alpine bindings but check to make sure they will work with your binding set up (pin or tech bindings, MNC, GripWalk, Shift, etc.) before you plan to click into your favorite pair or AT or frontside skis.

Last spring, Mark Elling and his team at America’s Best Bootfitters were able to get out on five of these (the Fischer, Lange, Scarpa, Scott and Tecnica) and their impressions are noted here.

Don’t wait until the snow falls to shop as many of these boots will sell out in the early season and you will want to make sure you’ve broken them in before the first big powder day.

ATOMIC HAWX ULTRA XTD 130

L a s t w i d t h : 98 mm | F l e x I n d e x : 130 | W e i g h t : 1580 g.| P r i c e : $ 7 9 9 . 9 5

At first glance, Atomic’s stiffest alpine touring boot looks just like a standard four-buckle badass alpine boot. And it offers the tight fit that alpine racers look for thanks to a 98 mm last, heat-moldable shell (yes, even the shell is heat-moldable!) and liner. Lock down the Free/Lock 2.0 walk lever, cinch up the power strap and it promises you will be ready to rip hard snow, as well as the soft stuff. With a sole that will work with tech, frame, MNC, Grip Walk-compatible alpine bindings and a 54 degree range of motion, this is a boot you can easily wear from the frontside of the mountain to the backside. While we were not able to test this boot, Shon Racicot of Boot Pro gives it high marks all around.

DALBELLO LUPO AX HD

a wide-profile cuff closure, it has a forgiving and versatile fit. All Lupo models are compatible with GripWalk and ISO 9523 Alpine Touring bindings, thanks to tech inserts. By swapping out the rockered soles for alpine soles the boots can also fit in all alpine bindings as well but are not certified ISO 5355.

FISCHER TRANSALP PRO

L a s t w i d t h : 94 mm | F l e x I n d e x : 120 | W e i g h t : 1280 g. | P r i c e : $ 8 5 0

Super-light, with a narrow last, a lace-up liner and a single power buckle system, the Transalp Pro showcases its mountaineering heritage but delivers surprising performance on the downhill.

It looks minimalistic but with an eye toward design this boot is like a piece of anatomical sculpture. It’s technical (look at the mechanical advantage buckles) but simple in that all the elements contribute to a functional up or down. Elling’s testers were shocked at how strongly this light little boot skied. As one wrote “Somehow this little bugger can put a fat ski on edge and drive it through whatever is in its path. It was accurate in its steering and responsive to both minute and substantial edging movements.” A couple of testers put it head-to-head (one brand on the left foot, the other on the right foot) against the more alpine power-centric Lange XT3 Tour Pro and both said that if they had their eyes closed, they couldn’t have known which one was which. The touring capability was fantastic here, with a light feel on the foot and a long range of motion of nearly 80 degrees.

The boot is compatible with tech and MNC bindings.

LANGE XT3 TOUR PRO 2021-2022

L a s t w i d t h : 100 mm | F l e x I n d e x : 120 | W e i g h t : 1960 g. | P r i c e : $ 5 9 9 . 9 5

L a s t w i d t h : 99 | F l e x I n d e x : 130 | W e i g h t : 1520 g. | P r i c e : $ 9 5 0

While it might be a little heavier than its brethren in this category, the Dalbello Lupo AX HD is a beefy, three-piece boot for strong skiers that gives you a few key options to tune it for alpine touring too. A removable tongue gives it one of the widest ranges of motion – 67 degrees —in this category. Pull it out if you’re doing a tour with little downhill and you can also save 125 grams. Thanks to the Dynalink buckle that crosses the ankle area far lower on the cuff than on most boots, your feet will still feel locked in. At $599.95, this is a great boot if you are getting started in the backcountry touring game and don’t mind taking the tongue in and out during transitions. Plus, with a 100 mm last, heat-moldable liner and

This is Lange’s first foray into the true backcountry boot category, with a fully-rockered Vibram ISO 9523 sole and a lightweight fullthermo EVA liner. This looks an awful lot like a classic Lange four-buckle alpine boot but it’s light enough to pass in the BC group and its 53-degree range of motion in touring mode fits right in with the category’s best. The best part? The XT3 still skis with all the performance of a 130-flex Lange. Very few boots fit the human foot and leg properly, allow a long and natural stride with minimal weight and then manage to crush the downhill—this is one of those few. The XT3 Tour Pro is compatible with 9523 touring bindings, such as MNC and tech bindings.

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SCARPA MAESTRALE XT

L a s t w i d t h : 101 | F l e x I n d e x : 130 | W e i g h t : 1490 g. | P r i c e : $ 8 9 5

When Mark Elling asked his testers to describe the Maestrale XT in as few words as possible, he got several different answers that all said something like: fits right, skis strong. The XT’s light weight and touring range of motion (56 degrees) are top shelf —and it embeds a RECCO reflector in the touring strap. But even the most descent-centric in our group of bootfitter testers loved this boot—they say it fits like a boot should and skis like a boot should, and all that functional uphill stuff is icing on the cake.

The XT is strong to the edge, but not to the point of locking the ski into a hard carve when not desired.

Testers said the fine tuning was there, as was the quickness of response in tight spots, but they were most impressed with how much stability and power was transferred to the ski edge at high speeds and on hard snow. While the intent may not be to ride the chair often with this boot, it would handle anything area skiing might throw at it so long as the tech binding of choice was up to the task. For hard-charging or heavier and taller skiers looking for a true BC boot that rips, this is the one—the XT crushes its little bro Maestrale RS at the top end of skiing performance requirements. It is compatible with tech and AT bindings.

SCOTT FREEGUIDE CARBON

L a s t w i d t h : 101 | F l e x I n d e x : 130 | W e i g h t : 1490 g. | P r i c e : $ 9 0 0

With the catchy name evolution of the former Superguide to the all-new Freeguide Carbon testers were hopeful that it came with more than new badging, and they were not disappointed.

The Freeguide is one of the better BC boots we’ve tested in years for its well-rounded blend of fit and performance, both up and down. Testers say it’s a tricky one to get on but well worth the effort. “We’re generally not fans of pulleystyle Velcro buckle-power-strap combination closure systems, but this one works, and in conjunction with the Boa liner lacing system produces a comfy clamp on the lower leg for serious ski tipping leverage,” they said. Testers liked the relaxed stance angles that allowed for maximum touring efficiency but without locking them straight out of a dynamic position when needed on descent. Range of motion is about 60 degrees.

The carbon powered lower shell, while more difficult to custom fit, provides a crisp feel underfoot, that paired with a Grilamid and carbon upper boot managed to avoid feeling twitchy. Cuff rotation was in line

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m o u n t a in bo o t s , T e cn ica

’s

C o ch is e g o t a m a k e o ve r fo r 2 0 2 1/2

2 .

with the best of the category and the boot feels light on the foot without feeling flimsy. Compatible with tech and MNC bindings.

TECNICA COCHISE 130

L a s t w i d t h : 99 | F l e x O n d e x : 130 | W e i g h t : 1824 g. | P r i c e : $ 9 0 0

Tecnica helped kick off this whole trend in 2010 when Arne Backstrom, one of Tecnica’s pro skiers, added tech inserts to his race boots. The Cochise 130 was the end result and Tecnica.

It became one of the very best alpine touring/freeride boots on the market and Tecnica had little to gain by changing it. So, what did they do this year? Changed the whole damn thing… shell, liner, cuff release mechanism, new Vibram soles…all of it. The medial side of the shell is thickened to provide more power to the inside edge and the new T-Drive style cuff release mechanism is more rigidly designed and also locks out to avoid a premature release. Tecnica must have puffed out a big sigh of relief when everybody absolutely loved it. Elling’s testers sure did. “This year’s Cochise skied stronger—nicely done for a boot with a hinge.” It’s a bit lighter but still a beefy boot that is more frontside than backside. But it has a better fit, better hiking range-of-motion (50 degrees), better gizmos. Compatible with GripWalk and tech bindings.

Mark Elling is a full-time professional bootfitter at Mt. Bachelor, OR; Educational Director at the Masterfit University Bootfitter Training centers (MasterfitUniversity.com), director of the America’s Best Bootfitters test program (Bootfitters.com), author of The All-Mountain Skier: The Way to Expert Skiing, and a level III PSIA Alpine instructor. Additional reporting by Lisa Lynn.

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Fall 2021 vtskiandride.com

R E T R O V T THE ORIGINAL SKI AREA MOGUL A t o n e t im e , F r e d t h e P a b s t B lu e R o w n e d 2 5 sk i a re R e so rt w a s t

P a b st, J r. , ib b o n b r e w a s . B r o m le y h e o n e th a t

t h e s c io n o f in g f a m ily , M o u n t a in stu c k .

Photo courtesy Bromley Mountain Resort

F

red Pabst Jr. is a pale, mountainous, cantankerous fellow with a white mustache and a habit of massaging his bald head with his fingertips when he talks, which he does most of the time. He is, in all likelihood, the only man who ever built, owned and operated 17 different ski areas, with all of them going broke at the same time. He is certainly the only man who ever washed his hands of a family fortune in beer to do so.” That’s how Arthur Zich started his 1962 Sports Illustrated profile of Pabst, Jr. What Zich and many others went on to note was how much hard work (and fun) Pabst put into doing it and the legacy he has left behind. Growing up in Wisconsin as part of the Pabst Blue Ribbon brewing family (his grandfather had started the company), Fred Jr. started skiing at three and would skijor behind the sleigh when the family’s coachman drove into town for groceries. He built his first ski jump at 18, started the first intercollegiate ski team in the Midwest and later headed to Norway to learn to jump from the experts there. He eventually went to Harvard Business School and joined the family business.

But not for long.

A tinkerer and DIYer, Pabst began designing and building rope tows and J-bars. He built his first ski area in St. Sauveur, Quebec and founded Ski Tows Inc., the first true ski area “conglomerate.” It would install some of the first ski tows in towns and villages around New England, the Midwest and Quebec. At one point Pabst owned and operated 25 different ski areas with lifts.

Bromley, in southern Vermont, was the ski area that stuck. In 1935 John Perry, David Parsons, and Rolando Palmedo (who helped found Stowe and Mad River Glen) had flown over the mountain and traced out potential runs. Pabst first set up a tow on Little Bromley but eventually bought and developed the area across the road – at the time a dirt cow path —but only by convincing the farmer who owned it to move to another parcel Pabst purchased for him.

Pabst bought a farmhouse at the base of Bromley, a

spread named Chanticleer, moved in, and Bromley opened for business in 1938-39. A few years later, Pabst moved two of his J-bars and strung them end to end to make a mile-long tandem lift serving 1,300 vertical feet, one of the longest at the time.

The farmhouse evolved into a base lodge and the Wild Boar Tavern (still there today). Before machines groomed the trails, Pabst cleared them of stumps and rocks, planted rye grass and mowed so skiers would enjoy smooth turns on as little as 4 inches of snow. One expert trail was named “Pabst Blue Ribbon” in recognition of his family heritage.

Recognizing how inconsistent snowfall impacted his business, he invested three-quarters of a million dollars in 1966 to install a top-to-bottom snowmaking system, a first in Vermont, which left him wondering “whether this kind of expenditure can ever pay for itself.” By 1968, Bromley had more than 50 snowguns, 18 miles of snowmaking pipe, and 9 million gallons of stored water Pabst also implemented state-certified slopeside childcare as part of his goal for a family ski mountain. No detail was too small for Pabst, he’d wake up at 4:00 am to personally call in Bromley’s snow report to various media outlets.

Pabst served as president of the ski area until 1971 and died of a heart attack six years later at age 78. n

P a b st m a y h a v e sta rte d t h e m u lt i- r e s o r t s k i r e s o r t t r e n d , b u t t o d a y B r o m le y M o u n t a in R e s o r t is o n e o f t h e f e w r e m a in in g in d e p e n d e n t ly - o w n e d s k i a r e a s in V e r m o n t . A f t e r c h a n g in g h a n d s s e v e r a l t im e s , it w a s p u r c h a s e d b y J o e O ’D o n n e ll, w h o s t ill o w n s it , t h o u g h t h e m o u n t a in is n o w r u n b y T h e F a ir b a n k G r o u p .

Fred Pabst was inducted into theVermont Ski & Snowboard Museum Hall of Fame posthumously in 2013.To watch the tribute film made to him, visit the museum in Stowe.

vtskiandride.com Fall 2021

Vermonter's Day A Special Event for Vermont Skiers

Signup at renounskis.com/VT 0 0 Fall 2021 vtskiandride.com

THE GREEN MOUNTAIN CALENDAR SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

18 | Magic Mile for Cancer, Magic Mountain A point-to-point running race up the Red Line Ski Trail at Magic Mountain. One mile long, approximately 1,500 feet of vertical gain. magicmtn.com

2-3 | Green and Gold Weekend, Mad River Glen Celebrate fall with a Birds of Birdland scavenger hunt for kids a Meet the Raptors presentation on Sunday,foliage rides and other fun. madriverglen.com

18-19 | 5th Vista Beast Challenge Disc Golf Tournament, Bolton Valley Resort Amateurs and pros play two rounds of 18 holes, one round each day. Boltonvalley.com

2 | Alpine BrewGrass FallFest, Magic Mountain Green Chair lift rides ($30, includes the music) to a festival featuring Saints & Liars and other bluegrass bands. Brews, views and music from 12-4 at Sunshine Corner followed by bands at the Tavern in the evening (5;30-10). Food and brews available all day. magicmtn.com

19 | Trapp Cabin Trail Races, Stowe All races begin and end in the Trapp Family Lodge Meadow. The 5K follows Lodge Spur to Luce Hill Loop, following the single track trail back to the finish. Walkers welcome!

The 10K continues on to Tap Line, follows Chris’s Run to the cabin and returns on Growler and Tap Line to the finish. The half-marathon is by far our most popular race and attracts over 60+ racers from all over New England. The course does a doubleloop of the 10.5K. greenmtnadaptive.org/events/trapp-cabin-5k-10k-and-half-marathontrail-races-2021/ 19 | TAM Trek, Middlebury There is a race for everyone at TAM Trek. Our 19-mile Trail Around Middlebury attracts serious trail runners from, around the state, and outside of Vermont. We also offer a challenging 10K course for runners looking for a shorter and equally scenic race. Our 2-mile family fun run attracts families and run/walkers from around Addison County.

Starts and finishes in Wright Park and celebrates at the finish line with live music, local raffle prizes, and a post-race buffet. maltvt.org/tam-

3 | Allen Clark Memorial Hill Climb, Mad River Glen A commemorative bike race from the intersection off Routes 17 and 100 up 1,600 feet to the top of Appalachian Gap. Benefits Vermont Adaptive. madriverglen.com 9 | Fresh Hops Festival, Sugarbush Ten of Vermont’s most innovative breweries together to feature the special flavors of fresh hopped beer. Only 300 tickets available. Guests receive a pour card for fifteen 5 oz. pours and a commemorative glass. Please leave pets at home. sugarbush.com

SKI SWAPS

23-26 | OCR World Championships, Stratton The three days obstacle course World Championships offers five different races to accommodate all types of athletes. The flagship 3K and 15K distance races are only open to qualified age-group and professional athletes. The 100 meter spring, team relay and charity open require no qualification and are open to anyone looking to experience a world class event. stratton.com

Oct. 1-3 | Pico Ski Swap, Killington Pico Ski Club accepts consignments of gently used, clean ski, snowboard and winter athletic clothing (no street clothing please), and modern alpine and snowboard equipment. Backcountry, telemark and skinning/AT skis accepted, but not traditional cross-country skis accepted. All equipment must meet current safety standards. picoskiclub.com/swap

24-26 | Vermont Climbing Festival, Cochran’s, Richmond An event for new and current climbers to socialize, participate in clinics, see keynote speakers and gain new skills while camping out. vermontclimbingfestival.com

Oct 8-10 | Smugglers’ Notch Ski & Snowboard Club Swap, Colchester The Smuggler’s Notch Ski Swap is back at. St. Michael’s College this year with good new and slightly used equipment there for the whole family as well as consignment items. Oct 8th -- 4:30 - 7pm consignment drop off; Oct 9th -9:00am - 6:00pm; Oct 10th -- 9:00am - 2:00pm. snscvt.com

25 | Killington Brewfest, Pico, Mendon Wet your whistle with a backdrop of Vermont’s finest autumn foliage and enjoy live music, fabulous food offerings and over 80 of the finest craft beers in the region. Unlike years past, this event will be 100% outdoors with beers, food, music, and facilities located at the base of Pico. killington.com 25 | Wine & Harvest Festival, Mount Snow, Dover Over 70 vendors, including over 20 Vermont wineries, distilleries, cideries, and breweries to enjoy. Festival-goers may shop, taste, and savor a truly unique Vermont experience in the tented festival area at Mount Snow Resort. Mountsnow.com 26 |West Hill Gravel Grinder, Putney A gravel road adventure exploration of Putney, Dummerston, Brookline, Athens, Westminster and Brattleboro. Windham county offers some of the finest gravel riding in the East and raises funds for local trails. westhillshop.com 26 | 28th Vermont 50 Ultra Run & MTB, West Windsor This 50 mile trail race lets mountain bikers and ultra runners enjoy a challenging and scenic course that is like no other. Net proceeds go to Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports. Vermont50.com 30-Oct. 2 | Vermont Antiques Week, Okemo The skating rink at Jackson Gore at Okemo is the site for this year’s Vermont Antiques Week, in tandem with Black River Antique Show at Ludlow Community Center on Oct. 1 and a number of open houses at area antique shops. Vermontantiquesweek.com

Oct 8-10 | Killington Ski Club Ski Swap, Killington The Monster Ski, Snowboard & Bike Sale hosted by the Killington Ski Club will return for funbelievable deals on new and used ski and snowboard equipment.

Along with a great selection of street and mountain bikes. Many local shops participating. Killington.com Oct. 17 | Waitsfield Ski & Skate Sale, Mad River Glen, Waitsfield.

Held under a tent at Mad River Glen and all participants must be masked. This outdoor ski and skate sale has a consignment drop off on Oct. 16. Benefits the local school. waitsfieldschool.org Nov. 5-7 | Cochran’s Ski & Ride Sale, Richmond, Find great deals on race gear for kids and adults and help support this Vermont classic ski area, now in its 60th year. Cochran’s.com Nov 19-21 | Okemo Mountain School Ski Swap, Ludlow, VT Sell your old gear (please no skis, boots, or bindings older than 7 years) at this annual Ski Swap on consignment: 25% of the selling price goes to Okemo Mountain School. You may also choose just to donate your equipment – all donations are tax-deductible. All gear must be dropped off at Jackson Gore Inn Nov. 13, 14 or 17 (10 am – 3 pm) and may not be brought to the swap during sale hours. Okemomountainschool.org

vtskiandride.com Fall 2021 59

W H E N YO U R B O OT S F I T B E T T E R , YO U S K I B E T T E R

THE GREEN MOUNTAIN CALENDAR

S H O P P R O F I L E S | S K I B O OT R E V I E W S | F I T T I N G A DV I C E

UNIVERSITY

OCTOBER (CONTINUED)

Certified Bootfitters

9 | Vermont State Doubles Disc Golf Championship, Sugarbush Sugarbush and Disc Golf Vermont are pleased to present the 2021 Vermont State Double’s Championship. Registration $80/player sugarbush.com

NORTHEAST

9-10 | Community Weekend, Sugarbush Celebrate autumn with a free festival with pumpkin carving, scenic lift rides, disc golf, hikes, harvest-inspired dining, music, kids’ and all-mountain activities. sugarbush.com .sugarbush.com

Connecticut

Wethersfield The Alpine Haus (860) 563-2244

Massachusetts

9 | 10th Annual Leafblower Fall Classic MTB Festival, Stowe Hosted at Ranch Camp on Mountain Road, with group mountain bike rides for all abilities, vendors, homegrown food, local libations, and live music, there is no better way to cap off the season than with this one-day community bike bash. mtbvt.com

Newton Boston Ski+Tennis (617) 964-0820 Wachusett Mtn. Mountainside Ski & Sport (978) 464-2300 x4 Westborough Boston Ski+Tennis (508) 616-2024

New Hampshire Newbury Bob Skinner’s Ski & Sport (603) 763-2303 Plymouth Richelson’s Feet First (800) 371-3447

New York

Ludlow/Okemo Mt. Northern Ski Works (802) 228-3344 Ludlow/Okemo Mt. The Boot Pro (802) 228-2776 Stowe Inner Bootworks (802) 253-6929 Stratton/Bromley Green Mountain Orthotics Lab (802) 875-1122

Ellicottville Mud Sweat n’ Gears (716) 699-8300

Warren/Sugarbush Alpine Options (802) 583-1763

Glenmont/Valatie Steiner’s Sports (518) 427-2406

Warren/Sugarbush Mountainside Ski Shop (802) 583-9299

New York City U.S. Orthotic Center (212) 832-1648 Rochester Foot Performance Ctr. (585) 473-5950 Windham Mt. Boot Lab at Windham Mt. Sports (518) 734-4300

Vermont Killington Northern Ski Works (802) 422-9675

60 Fall 2021 vtskiandride.com

MID-ATLANTIC

New Jersey Morris Plains Pelican Sports Center (973) 267-0964

Virginia Leesburg Pro-Fit Ski & Mtn. (703) 771-7669

For the most complete information on alpine skis visit our partners at RealSkiers.com

9-10 | Harvest Weekend, Stratton A festival weekend with a BrewFest and Mountain Chili Cookoff on Saturday, scenic lift rides, fall foliage, and delicious food along with the season finale of mountain biking and golf, the music of Ghost of Paul Revere and others. Stratton.com 9 | Oktoberfest, Mount Snow Oktoberfest is back with the beer, bratwurst, and Oom-pah music. Enjoy a selection of beers from German and domestic breweries as well as authentic German fare. If safety protocols allow, there will be annual games like the keg toss, yodeling contest and stein holding. Mountsnow.com 9-10 | 49th Woodstock Apples & Crafts Fair and Food Truck Festival, Woodstock Leaf season gets its own celebration during the Woodstock Apples and Crafts Artisans Fair. Shop with over 100 vendors and purveyors of Vermont crafts and food.

Woodstockvt.com 10 | North Face Race to the Summit, Stratton Run a 2.18-mile race up Stratton Mountain and vie cash prizes. stratton.com 10 | Best Whip Mountain Bike Contest, Burke Mountain Resort Celebrate the end of our downhill mountain biking season. A $10 entry fee could win you awesome prizes....and a possible sweet photo op. Riders are judged on amplitude, execution, and style as they get airborne and perform a tail whip. skiburke.com 10 | Wôlowôzi: Indigenous Cultures Celebration, Smuggler’s Notch A celebration of indigenous cultures with Abenaki singer/songwriter Bryan Blanchette accompanied by Blackwolf and Padraic, a vendor village with crafts and food trucks and movies about America’s indigenous peoples. smugglersnotch.com 10 | Braintree 357 Circus Ride, Braintree/Randolph The iconic Circus Ride from the mid-90’s New England Mountain Bike Festival days in Randolph returns. Once a famed old-school mtb ride now squarely falls into the new gravel/adventure bike norm: smooth gravel, rowdy woods roads, 2 mountain gaps, historic farmsteads, and amazing views all wrapped up with food, beer, live music, and a laidback vibe atop picturesque Braintree Hill. The Circus Ride is 38 miles and 6000’ vert and is named the circus that traveled from Randolph to Rochester over Randolph Gap and back in the early 1900’s, with elephants pulling wagons. braintree357.com 14-17 | 29092 Stratton Run/walk/crawl up Stratton Mountain. Take the gondola down. Repeat 17 times in three hours until you climb 29092 feet, the height of Mt. Everest. Celebrate with live music at the base, food and beer. stratton.com

16 | 12th Annual Bean & Brew Festival, Jay Peak Sample locally-roasted coffees, New England’s finest beers, ciders, and more at the Stateside Base Lodge, with live music and playing lawn games. jaypeak.com 16-17 | Vermont State Disc Golf Championship, Smuggler’s Notch This two-day PDGA B Tier sanctioned event brings together the best disc golf players in the state at one of the top venues. smuggs.com 24 | Vermont City Marathon, Half Marathon and Relay, Burlington Vermont’s biggest running race has been shortened this year to a half-marathon due to Covid-19 but you can still watch top runners race the streets. runvermont.com 22-24 | Antiques Expo and Craft Show, Essex Junction Champlain Valley Expo is the site of this annual fall craft and antiques expo. cvexpo.og 30 | Wobbly Barn Halloween Party, Killington A legendary party with season passes going to Best Costume and Best Couple, The Wobbly Barn Nightclub opens at 9 pm with the wizardly skills of DJ Stevie B on the 1’s & 2’s. Door proceeds benefit the Killington Volunteer Fire Department. Killington.com

NOVEMBER 13 | NENSA Invitational Rollerski Event, Stowe Watch some of U.S. Ski Team and the best cross-country skiers in the world race from Nebraska Valley uphill to the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe. nensa 20 | The Big Kicker, Sugarbush Celebrate the start of ski season with a rail jam, live music and a groovy scene at Mt. Ellen’s base area, sponsored by Lawson’s Finest Liquids..sugarbush.com

11 | Wall of Fame Ceremony, Sugarbush Sugarbush inducts the 2021 class into the Wall of Fame in a fantastic evening of camaraderie and celebrations. sugarbush.com 17 | SugarBash 63rd Birthday Celebration, Sugarbush Celebrate Sugarbush’s 63rd Birthday with the Sugarbash from 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM in the Castlerock Pub. sugarbush.com 18 | NE Rando Series Skimo Race, Magic Mountain A U.S. Ski Mountaineering Association sanctioned skimo race. All participants must have USSMA licenses or day licences. nerandorace.blogspot.com

OPENING DAYS (ESTIMATED)

Opening days are estimates and subject to change due to weather. At press time many resorts had not yet released their dates. See vtskiandride.com for updates.

Mid-October | Killington, Killington Nov. 19 | Mount Snow, Dover Nov. 19 | Stowe Mountain Resort, Stowe Nov. 20 | Okemo, Ludlow Nov. 23 | Sugarbush, Warren Nov. 24 | Jay Peak, Jay Peak Late Nov. | Bromley (weekends only, weekdays starting in December), Peru Dec. 4 | Smuggler’s Notch, Jeffersonville Dec. 11 | Mad River Glen, Waitsfield

24 | Gobble Gobble 5K Run & Walk, Stratton Run or walk for a chance to win gift cards and other prizes and work up an appetite for a Thanksgiving meal. stratton.com 26-28 | Homelight Killington World Cup The best women slalom racers in the world come to Killington to race a giant slalom on Saturday and a slalom on Sunday of Superstar. Expect Mikaela Shiffrin, and others plus a vendor village, films, live music and more. killington.com

DECEMBER 2-4 | Warren Miller “Winter Starts Now” Film, Middlebury & Burlington This year’s Warren Miller film features UVM’s Vasu Sojitra (see p. 13) descending Denali and plenty of other live action. At the Town Hall Theater in Middlebury, Dec. 2, followed by a show at the Flynn in Burlington n Dec. 4. warrenmiller.com 4 | NE Rando Series Vertical Race and Skills Clinic, Berkshire East, Ma. NE Rando kicks off the ski mountaineering series with a 1k vertical race at 8 am followed by a clinic: transitions, descents, skating and more. nerandorace.blogspot.com 9 | Earn-Your-Turns Roundtable, Sugarbush Sugarbush Resort and the Mad River Valley Backcountry Coalition present the third annual Earn Your Turns Roundtable Discussion, bringing together skiers and riders interested in uphill travel alongside land managers, ski area operators and the US Forest Service to discuss the opportunities and challenges presented by this growing sport .

Learn about uphill travel, proper etiquette and a panel discussion. sugarbush.com 10 | Annual Brewfest, Smuggler’s Notch Vermont has the highest number of breweries per capita and BrewFest highlights some of our state’s excellent breweries plus regional favorites and craft ciders. A DJ spins tunes and the Mountain Grille puts on a tasty appetizer buffet. smuggs.com

Home of

Red Bench Speaker Series “Topics Relevant to Todayʼs Skiers & Riders”

ʻ21/ʼ22 Season Presented Virtually September - April Learn More & Register: www.vtssm.org/redbench

vtskiandride.com Fall 2021 61

DRINK VT

The Green Mountain State is home to some of the best breweries, wineries, cideries and distilleries in the world. Call ahead for a reservation or to order take-out brews and drinks. For more information, links and maps to each location check out www. vtskiandride.com.

VERMONT BEER, WINE, CIDER + SPIRITS

133 North Main St, St. Albans, VT 802-528-5988 | 14thstarbrewing.com 14th Star Brewing Co. is veteran-owned Vermont craft brewery on a mission to brew world-class beer while enriching the communities we serve. Using the freshest local ingredients, we impart military precision and creativity into every batch of 14th Star beer.

Reserve ahead and find your favorite 14th Star brews in our Brewery Taproom. Our beer is also available on tap and in cans statewide and Brewed With A Mission™ to give back to various charitable and veteran organizations.

316 Pine Street, Burlington, VT 802-497-1987 | citizencider.com Come visit our Cider Pub, where we bring together locally crafted cider and food and drinks to go. We work with local growers and makers to bring good food and cider to the people. A community of folks who believe that cider loves food. Try some cider or try a bite and celebrate local community at it’s best.

Cider for the people, made by the people.

116 Gin Lane, Montpelier, VT 802-472-8000 | www.barrhill.com Open daily, 2-8 p.m;

We’re now offering cocktails to go and a free bar snack with every order at our distillery overlooking the Winooski River in downtown Montpelier. We use raw northern honey to capture the countless botanicals foraged by honeybees in our award-winning Barr Hill Gin, barrel-aged Tom Cat Gin, and Barr Hill Vodka.

3597 VT-74, Shoreham, VT 802-897-2777 | champlainorchards.com Visit us at our Shoreham Farm Market 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.

FIND MAPS AND MORE AT

vtskiandride.com/drink-vermont

Rt 100 Waterbury Center, VT 802-244-8771 | coldhollow.com Open seven days a week.

Taste real, modern day hard ciders…made from our own real sweet cider made in a real Vermont barn. Taste the difference. We’re Vermont to the core.

610 Route 7, Middlebury, VT 802-989-7414 | 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 Tues.

- Sat. noon to 5 p.m. serving beer to go. ou 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.

1859 Mountain Rd, Stowe, VT 802-253-4765 | idletymebrewing.com

155 Carroll Rd, Waitsfield, VT 802-496-HOPS | lawsonsfinest.com

Our beer line-up represents a traditional take on classic European brewing with a healthy dose of the Vermont hop culture. Whether your preference is a brown or pale ale, Helles Lager or our famous Idletyme Double IPA, we have a beer you’ll love! And it’s brewed right here at our pub and restaurant.

Visit our family-owned award-winning brewery, timber frame taproom, and retail store located in the picturesque Mad River Valley. We produce an array of hop forward ales, specialty maple beers, and unique brews of the highest quality and freshness, and offer light fare. en daily.

Did you miss the

LAST CALL? 8814 Route 30, Rawsonville, VT Junction VT Rt 30N and VT Rt 100N 802-297-9333 | craftdraughts.com An intimate shop with over 300 craft beers plus ciders, meads and two rotating Vermont ta s for growler fills. must stop for craft beer lovers traveling through southern Vermont.

Don’t miss the

Next issue ads@vtskiandride.com

6308 Shelburne Rd, (Rte. 7)Shelburne, VT 802-985-8222 | shelburnevineyard.com Open Thurs.-Mon. 12-7, by reservation.

Taste 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.

1333 Luce Hill Rd., Stowe, VT 802-253-0900 | 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.

Come visit our bierhall and restaurant at the brewery!

17 Town Farm Lane, Stowe 802-253-2065 | stowecider.com Fresh-pressed hard cider crafted in Vermont.

Ciders range from super dry and preservativefree to others containing local fruits, hops, and uni ue barrel aged offerings. Visit our tasting room at 17 Town Farm Lane across from the Rusty Nail, in Stowe.

1321 Exchange St, Middlebury, VT 802385-3656 | woodchuck.com As America’s original hard cider, we have always done things our own way, forging a tradition of quality and craftsmanship with every cider batch we craft. At Woodchuck, our cider makers meticulously oversee the details of every cider before any bottle or keg leaves our cidery. It’s this attention and passion for cider that ensures we always deliver a premium hard cider that is true to our roots. Enjoy the brand that started the American cider revolution.

VERMONT BEER, WINE, CIDER + SPIRITS

Find out more: 802-760-8550.

The Chairlift Q+A

IN SEARCH OF LOST SKI AREAS For over 20 years, Jeremy Davis has made finding and recording the history of lost ski areas his pet project.

If we were on a (working) chairlift, where would we be?

No question, Burke Mountain. In college, I structured my classes so I could ski there three or four days a week. I miss those days! Now, I really love the indie ski areas, places like Burke, Suicide Six and Magic.

Before we jump into talking skiing, tell us about your job as a weather forecaster and your predictions are for this winter?

I went to Lyndon State because it had a fantastic meteorology program (Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel is also a grad.). Now, most of the forecasting I do is marine forecasting for private clients —yachts that are doing round-the-world races or ocean passages and commercial boats.

I do climatology studies, forecast routes and try to keep our clients safe from hurricanes, typhoons and heavy weather.

It’s a La Nina year so that tends to mean more snow than average but the trend has been toward warmer winters so we will see how that all plays out.

What got you interested in looking for lost ski areas?

As a kid in the early 90s, I took a couple family ski vacations where I came across lost ski areas like Mt. Whittier in New Hampshire. Here was this place that was 1,200 vertical feet, had a gondola and T-bars and it had been abandoned for five years.

That piqued my interest and I started to drag my family in search of more.

64 Fall 2021 vtskiandride.com

How did you find the “lost” ski areas?

Back then, it was pre-internet so I would look at old road maps and guidebooks. I’d find pictures and old postcards at antique shops. There were a couple of books too that had chapters on lost ski areas, like Glenn Parkinson’s First Tracks: Stories from Maine Skiing. When I could finally drive, I started to visit a lot of these places.

What’s the coolest “lost” ski area?

You really have to give credit to Clinton Gilbert’s rope tow which Bunny Bertram put up on Gilbert’s farm in Woodstock, on the backside of what is now Suicide Six. That was in 1933 and it really kicked off the sport.

Is there one “lost” area that has made a big impression on you?

One of the neater ones that I’ve come across is Snow Valley, just east of Manchester where the double chairlift is still standing in the woods.

You have these huge trees growing up around the lift and the safety bars are all raised. You just wonder who was the last person to put the safety bar up. It’s been abandoned for about 40 years—that’s a long time and because most lifts are worth they are typically sold off. It’s just an incredible site. The fact that it hasn’t fallen over or collapsed or had the cable snap is pretty amazing. That will happen someday.

Vermont now has about two-dozen ski areas that are operating and open to the public in some form. How has that number changed?

I believe that in total Vermont has had about 130 to 140 ski areas.The peak came in the 1970s. At one point there were around 70 areas that had operating lifts that were open to the public, and more if you count private rope tows people put up in their backyards.

Have you seen lost areas come back?

Certainly Mount Ascutney. That was a major ski area with chairlifts and a resort and a base before it went bankrupt. Now it’s back as a community-run ski hill.

Then there are places like Hogback and Dutch Hill in southern Vermont.They are no longer ‘ski areas’ but they are being developed for backcountry skiing. It’s great to see them come back. n

Photo courtesy Jeremy Davis

J

eremy Davis didn’t set out to be a ski area historian. “I went to Lyndon State College (now Northern Vermont University) to study meteorology and because it was close to Burke and skiing,” says the Massachusetts native. He graduated in 2000 and now works as a forecaster for Weather Routing Inc. in Glenn Falls, N.Y., where he lives with his husband, Scott. But Davis’ other passion is recording the history of lost ski areas. Davis started the New England Lost Ski Areas project in his college dorm room in Vermont, 20 years ago. Now his website, nelsap. org, lists more than 670 ski areas and includes history on ski areas from Washington to Afghanistan, thanks to his own research as well as crowdsourcing.

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