Revival

Ask any old Vermonter about their early days as skiers and they will almost always tell you that learning to ride a rope tow was an integral part of growing up. You will also hear: “When I was a young kid, every town had a tow.” Those days are long gone, or maybe not so much. Ascutney, St. Albans, Randolph Center, Bellows Falls, and Brattleboro – okay the latter has a T-bar — and Ascutney have thriving little community-run ski areas where rope tows play a starring role.

Let’s not forget South Stratford, in service since the 1960s. During a visit on a Sunday afternoon, I got to talking with the volunteer liftie who allowed that the previous summer they had to replace the tow rope. Seems that cows graze on Harrington Hill in the summer and they love scratching against the rope. “Wears it out, don’t you know,” he said.

I’m not sure Epic Pass resorts have that issue.

Tyler Wilkinson-Ray’s 2013 film United We Ski paid homage to many of the classic small ski areas in Vermont like Hard’ack Hill up in Saint Albans, The Lyndonville Outing Club, Cochran’s Ski Area in Richmond and maybe the most classic of all – Northeast Slopes in East Corinth. But also starring in the film were some private little backyard tows hidden away in Vermont’s hills.

During the pandemic winter of 2021, inspired in no small part by that film, I set off on a quixotic quest to visit as many of these backyard Vermont ski areas as I could.

As this journey began, I was warned by my friend Lisa Gosselin Lynn (editor of this magazine) that it could be an endless task. “You won’t find them all,” she predicted. She was so right.

Every inquiry made of long-time ski friends seemed to deliver yet another rumor of a hidden tow: The Masters racer from Mount Snow with the rope tow in his yard; the two other people from Norwich with rope tows built for their kids. Tucked up at the top of a long dirt road in Duxbury yet another hidden spot. In Stowe, a newly installed tow. Near

Burke Mountain yet another rope tow squirreled away behind a ski house usually occupied by patrollers. Huntington and Warren have families that love to ski in their backyards. If you can find just the correct side road in Roxbury Gap, you might notice a rope tow servicing a modest 100 feet of vertical; yet for those willing to skin up from there, your reward will be 500 more vertical feet of open glades.

Within a few weeks of undertaking this quest, I had already located and identified more than 25 private ski spots. Now, I have not been able to ski all of them (yet)—an early March melt cut the journey short. But between visiting all 22 public ski areas associated with the Vermont Ski Areas Association and successfully ferreting out of a whole bevy of backyard spots, I was pulled up 37 different lift-served hills in Vermont in the winter of 2021/22 —which just might be some kind of record.

Accessing the backyard tows was the real challenge. Folks with these tows tend to be pretty private (we’ll use first names only in this story). They don’t like to attract attention from entities like the Vermont Tram Board, so the lifts need to be free (otherwise subject to all sorts of laws and insurance regulations) and off the radar. But it didn’t take long to learn that folks with rope tows know one another. Get talking to one person with a tow and you will learn about others. It turns out that every county in Vermont other than Grand Isle has at least one private tow.

Private Idahos

One of the first backyard tows I was privileged to ski was the Tar Bowl in Jericho. The face of the Tar Bowl is steep and protected by the dense cover of mature coniferous trees. Paul built the tow back in 2020 for himself and the kids. Just a very simple drive powered by an electric motor. But he also peppered the forest with low energy LED lights and at night it is a spectacular place to hang out. As Paul said, “We just did a Wednesday night ski. The neighbors show up with their kids each week and do loop after loop down a couple of gladed runs.”

If you ski Tar Bowl, you will visit the Whiskey Box for some trail magic. Affixed to a tree trunk alongside one run is a beautifully crafted small cabinet with its door secured by the rear cluster from a bike. Inside are treats for all – Dr. McGillicuddy’s and whiskey for those of age, an over-sized jar of M & M’s for the younger set.

The next visit was to Herbert Hill in Huntington. In the open meadow near the rope tow is a beautiful 16-foot x 16-foot cabin. In the gabled end, a diamond shaped window peeks at the Summit Ridge of Mount Mansfield. While the author was skiing laps, the owner, Michael, was sledding, and his son was riding his snowboard. On Sunday afternoons, as many as 30 neighbors arrive for a session of lift-served sliding on skis, boards and sleds.

As the owner, a retired Burlington police officer, said: “My wife and I talked it over a few years ago when the kids were still young. We figured we could spend a bunch of money on a family trip to Disneyworld or maybe we could do something that would be fun year after year right at home.” They built the tow.

Northeast Slopes claims the oldest and fastest rope town in the country. It’s been serving local skiers since the tiny ski area opened on what was a hill farm in East Corinth in 1936. Lift tickets are $15.

For the most part, rope tows are pretty affordable. A ski trip with two kids for a week to Utah can easily cost at least $6,000 to $7,000. You can install your own tow for about that same number. If you are a good tinkerer, you can also build one for even less.

There are a couple of outliers in the world of backyard skiing. A couple of ski racing enthusiasts built an amazing private ski area at their remote estate near Woodstock, complete with a Poma lift, a high end grooming machine and an elegant summit cabin that sleeps dozens.

Generational Playgrounds

A benefit to visiting these backyard ski areas was discovering hidden places along the backroads of Vermont. In Moretown, up a long dirt road photographers Brian Mohr and Emily Johnson (who wrote about their tow for this magazine in 2018 ), welcome friends and family to the Barnebakken where their two daughters learned to ski.

One of the more memorable journeys was to the McKusker homestead perched at the top of Rochester Gap at 2,000 feet above sea level. Angus McCusker is very well-known in the ski world as one of the founders of the Ridgeline Outdoor Collective – an organization behind some pioneering backcountry recreation initiatives, including the glades at Brandon Gap and the proposed state-long Velomont mountain bike trail.

But Angus is also passionate about backyard rope tows. He has three in his family forest. From the “baby tow” in the front yard you can see the trails of Killington and even Ascutney and New Hampshire’s White Mountains. The baby tow, which by the way is a misnomer, is powered by a garden tractor which does double duty in the summer mowing the highland meadows.

Off to the side is the kid’s tow – so-called because it can only transport those weighing less than 80 pounds. There is a third very long, very steep tow that services black diamond terrain. The day before I arrived, Zeb Powell, Maggie Leon and a few other pro riders on the famed Red Bull Tour paid a visit, fresh from their huge event at Stratton. When promoters told the riders they were headed for a backyard rope tow in the Vermont woods, the pros grumbled. Until the vans arrived and the