Sugarbush Resort Magazine 1718

2017/18

THE STORY OF VERMONT’S

NATIONAL FOREST Plus: Life on the Long Trail Golfing for Kids Artisan Bread & Butter

2017/18

EGAN’S

VERTICAL REALITY INDEPENDENTS’

DAY Plus:

Woods Craft Valley Shopping Spree Artisan Bread & Butter

sugarbush.com

Adventure Awaits There’s something more to the Sugarbush experience than our legendary terrain variety, meticulous snowmaking and grooming, fabled history, and authentic Vermont mountain setting.

Come discover what makes Sugarbush different.

For the best deals on season passes, discount tickets, lodging and more, visit sugarbush.com.

800.53.SUGAR

#SUGARBUSH

Former Golden Lion

– NEWLY RENOVATED IN 2016 – Rustic Farmhouse Chic Style

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12 Standard Rooms

Mad River, hiking & biking trails.

5 Efficiencies 1 Three-Bedroom House

We offer room blocks for

5 Condos 1/4 mile from Lodge

weddings and special events.

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Always Good Times

Good times is what Elan is all about, and the best times are those spent with friends and family in the mountains. Whether it’s a family weekend road trip to your favorite local destination or a backcountry adventure with your best buddies, it’s always good times when you surround yourself with the ones you’re closest to.

HJVB

29 Independently Yours In a ski resort economy increasingly defined by corporate conglomerates, Sugarbush and neighboring Mad River Glen stand out.

BY PETER OLIVER Plus: Sugarbush Joins the Mountain Collective

37 The Wilderness Among Us The well-loved Green Mountain National Forest, with its 900 miles of multi-use trails, celebrates its eighty-fifth anniversary.

BY KELLY AULT Plus: Life on the Long Trail

42 Getting Schooled

At Green Mountain Valley School, students don’t need to choose between elite skiing and school life.

BY KIMBERLEY REYNOLDS Plus: Launching Pad

48 Vertical Reality

Extreme skiing legend John Egan has made a career of testing his limits—and teaching others to test theirs, too.

BY KATIE BACON

Photo: Green Mountain Valley School’s Abi Guimond racing on Inverness

SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

JA

Inside Lines 6 One on one with Win Smith, owner and president of Sugarbush Resort

EDITOR

Wintertime 8 WORKING HIS MAGIC

Candice White

MANAGING EDITOR

An afternoon out on the slopes with Terry Barbour, Sugarbush’s new Ski & Ride School director Plus: Specialty Camps and Programs

Katie Bacon

PRODUCTION EDITOR Amy Stackhouse

Summertime 12 LESSONS FOR A LIFETIME

12

Sugarbush’s offerings for junior golfers go beyond the basics of the sport.

MAD RIVER GLASS GALLERY

16

CONTRIBUTORS

Where to find local meat and produce from some of the Mad River Valley’s larger farms

Shopping 16 RETAIL THERAPY

Finding high style and one-of-a-kind items in a valley (thankfully) low on chain stores Plus: Local Ski and Ride Shops

John Atkinson Hans Jonathan von Briesen

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Eugene Krylov Brian Mohr/Ember Photography Jason Morris Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

From Eden to Paradise and beyond: Tips for skiing in the trees at Sugarbush

SUGARBUSH RESORT

34

JASON MORRIS

Mountain Life 26 Photos of the Sugarbush community.

Style 34 ARTISAN BREAD & BUTTER Sugar-Kids 54 MIND GAMES

1840 Sugarbush Access Road Warren, VT 05674 800.53.SUGAR sugarbush.com

ON THE COVER WINTER: John Egan on Lift Line Photographer: John Atkinson

Discover Sugarbush with a crossword puzzle, word search, and riddles

SUMMER: A view from the Long Trail, looking south toward Mt. Ellen.

Photographer: Brian Mohr/Ember Photography

58 Dining Directory 62 Lodging Directory Timeline 64 A quick history of Sugarbush Sugarbush Close-Up 66 Facts and figures about the mountain

For comments or suggestions about Sugarbush Magazine, contact us at communications@sugarbush.com.

Sugarbush is operated under special use permit with the Green Mountain National Forest and is an equal opportunity provider.

and the latest developments there

72 Events Calendar 2017–18 22

HJVB

4 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

Kelly Ault Cory Ayotte John Bleh Nadine Mumford Peter Oliver Kimberley Reynolds

STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS

How Sugarbush is shrinking its carbon footprint Plus: Meet the SEW Committee

73 Closing Shot

Audrey Huffman Jen Schonder

Food 14 VALLEY FARM TO TABLE

Training Ground 22 WOODS CRAFT

ART DIRECTOR ADVERTISING MANAGER

Environment 20 GREEN MOUNTAIN

PRESIDENT Winthrop Smith Jr.

Route 100, Waitsfield aitsfield, VT T 802-496-3272 www.spor www .sportiveinc.com tiveinc.com

The Largest Bogner Selection in Northern New England

INSIDE LINES JA

People often ask me, “What is your exit strategy for Sugarbush?” As we approach our seventeenth year owning the resort, and with the growing consolidation in our industry, this is a logical question to ask. Sugarbush is owned by a small group of families, with my family holding the majority interest.

We enjoy being independently owned because it gives us the freedom to manage Sugarbush in a way that we feel is best for our guests and for the Mad River Valley community. This is a responsibility we take very seriously.

As the ski industry consolidates, the question arises of whether smaller, independently owned and operated resorts can compete with the emerging Goliaths. We respect the larger corporations, their financial firepower, and their breadth of reach, but we believe there is room for independents like us. To be successful, we have to offer a quality product and excellent service to those guests who value what we have to offer. By remaining independent and privately owned, we can focus on the long term and not be intimidated by and beholden to quarterly performance. We do not have to grow for the sake of growing, and can make quick decisions, placing our guests’ interests first. Our decision makers are not located in a remote boardroom, but, rather, in the lift lines, on the mountain slopes, in the restaurants, and on the golf course with you. This year we joined the Mountain Collective, a group of sixteen independently owned ski areas in the United States and Canada, with affiliates in Chile, France, and Japan. As the only eastern resort in the Collective so far (we took Stowe’s place upon Vail’s announced purchase of the resort), we are honored to partner with such an exclusive group of western mountains. (See “Independently Yours,” page 29.)

Our mission here at Sugarbush is to cultivate a spirit of lifelong adventure and camaraderie. Decades ago, my family chose Sugarbush over other ski areas for those two notions: adventure and camaraderie. We came not only to enjoy skiing and recreating, but also for the camaraderie we discovered here. Since our earliest days, we have felt that life is better here in the Mad River Valley. Now, as owners, we are committed to making Sugarbush even better in the years ahead, operating in as responsible an environmental fashion as we can, and supporting our local community along the way.

We begin the 2017–18 season with two new fixed-grip quad chairlifts: the Village Quad at Lincoln Peak and the Sunshine Quad at Mt. Ellen. These will greatly enhance our beginner experience at both mountains. We replaced the snowmaking pipe on Which Way at Mt. Ellen, making the trail more accessible to all levels of skiers and riders. We purchased additional lowenergy snowmaking guns, and replaced an older air compressor with a new adjustable compressor that allows us to control the amount of air we produce, and thus reduce our energy consumption. We just replaced our scanners with RFID gates, significantly enhancing the guest experience in the lift lines. Since our purchase of Sugarbush in 2001, we have installed seven new lifts, and invested $65 million in the mountain.

I have enjoyed seeing our community expand as families have moved into Clay Brook, Rice Brook, and Gadd Brook Slopeside—our newest condominiums. When you visit us next, I hope you will stop in and see these ideal four-season homes, which represent one of the last opportunities to own slopeside—with ski-in and ski-off convenience.

We look forward to seeing you this season and sharing some adventure and camaraderie with you.

Cheers,

Win Smith President, Sugarbush Resort

6 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

An unmistakably authentic atmosphere. A genuine Vermont country setting. A local spirit that reflects the diversity of characters who live here – farmers, artisans, and adventurers, to name a few. Come discover Sugarbush living.

Two-, three-, and four-bedroom slopeside homes now available at Gadd Brook Slopeside.

SUGARBUSH RESORT REAL ESTATE

Sugarbush Resort, Warren, VT 800.806.1070 SugarbushLiving.com

JA

WINTERTIME

Working His Magic An afternoon out on the slopes with Terry Barbour, Sugarbush’s new Ski & Ride School director

BY JOHN BLEH

Sugarbush Ski & Ride School director Terry Barbour 8 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

h

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Three Course Gourmet Breakfast Cozy, Well-Appointed rooms Gas Fireplaces, Steam Showers Whirlpool Tubs

h

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802.496.2276 www.theroundbarn.com

I

JA

t was an incredible April day, full of the type of peel-away corn snow photographers dream about when they look to shoot spring skiing. I’m not talking a 65-degree day with push-piles of mush.

This was true corn snow that had frozen overnight before thawing just enough in the afternoon to make stellar conditions.

I had planned to take a run or two with the new Sugarbush Ski & Ride School director, Terry Barbour, before heading indoors to interview him. But it turned out that the skiing was just too good, so we combined chairlift interviews with spring turns as I took in pointers from Terry. I’d learn about him on the lift; he’d improve my skiing on the hill. It seemed like a more appropriate way to get to know a ski school director.

Terry—or T-Bar, as he is most commonly known around the resort and the ski industry—is usually sporting a smile. He is pleasant and agreeable, humble and softspoken. In fact, when he first applied for a job as a ski instructor, in 1978, the staff at Greek Peak in central New York wouldn’t hire him, citing that he was too quiet.

But Terry was not deterred, and wound up teaching at Greek Peak for seventeen years. In 1987, he became a Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) Eastern Examiner, furthering his teaching credentials. Several years later, he and his wife, Tange, moved to Vermont, when she started working at IBM. Terry accepted a job at Stowe as the training supervisor for ski instructors and stayed there until 2001. The job left him time to join the PSIA National Demo Team, training instructors nationwide.

Terry, with Sugarbush passholders, sporting his usual smile It was a pretty big honor, even if he didn’t state it that way to me—there are usually only fifteen skiers on the Alpine Team, with tryouts every four years for four-year positions. You get judged on skiing, coaching skills, presentation skills, and coachability.

From Stowe, Terry moved on to be the ski school director at Mad River Glen, where he stayed for fifteen years, until coming to Sugarbush.

• Halfway down our first run, I noticed the conditions change when we came across a more northern-facing slope with firmer snow. Naturally, I complained about it. Terry quickly reminded me that “there are only two kinds of skiing: good and good for you.” The good is what we had most of the afternoon.

JA

SPECIALTY CAMPS AND PROGRAMS FIRST TIMER PROGRAM Offered throughout the winter season Multiple programs designed to introduce first-timers (age 13+) to skiing and riding.

Graduates may receive a free season pass, and a pair of Elan skis or Rome snowboard (supplies are limited).

WOMEN’S DISCOVERY CAMPS January 26–28 and March 5–7 An enriching two-and-a-half-day experience for women focused on blending learning and fun.

ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS: BOOMER Tuesdays: January 10–24,

February 27–March 13 Technical skill development in a social atmosphere exclusively for those 65+.

10 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

The good for you are those tough conditions you don’t like to ski—ice, rocks, breakable crust. Those conditions are meant to make you better.

Like most ski gurus, Terry has a multitude of metaphors for skiing. “Skiing is like a three-part dance with the mountain, gravity, and snow.” “Skiing is like riding a bike or a motorcycle: you don’t whip your rear wheel around to turn, you roll ever so slightly and lean into the turn.” “You should always use gravity to your advantage, not fight it.”

“Focus on DIRT: duration, intensity, rhythm, and timing.” The list goes on.

Focusing on efficient movements is the backbone of Terry’s teaching, and he instills this theory in his staff. “Terry talks about skiing efficiently a lot,” says Meridith

ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS: Saturdays: January 27–February 10,

February 24–March 10 ALL MOUNTAIN RIDERS CAMP Snowboarder-focused camp for riders comfortable on black diamond terrain.

BLACK DIAMOND CLUB Lesson series for expert skiers comfortable on black diamond terrain.

SKI MOUNTAINEERS An introduction to alpine touring skills and equipment for skiers comfortable on black diamond terrain.

For more information, go to sugarbush.com.

To sign up for these or other programs, call 888.651.4827 or email skiandrideschool@sugarbush.com.

JASON MORRIS

Terry demonstrating his technique McFarland, the adult programs coordinator in the Ski & Ride School. “If you ski efficiently, you can ski forever. It allows your body to rest in motion. Just look at Terry. He skis with a flow, an effortless movement over any terrain or condition.” The more efficient your movement, the better the chance that you will be able to enjoy the sport your whole life—and that goes for both staff and guests.

This season will be Terry’s second as Ski

& Ride School director at Sugarbush, yet skiing with him you would think he’s been here all his life. Of the hundred people we shared the mountain with that spring afternoon, he probably knew half of them.

We couldn’t stop to buckle our boots or get on a lift without a fun-loving “Hey, T-Bar!” from a guest or a lift attendant. You could argue that he had a head start getting to know people around here from his time at Mad River Glen, but I have a feeling it goes deeper than this.

After a while, my feet started barking at me; too many bumps in too-old boots. I made a side comment about it halfway down Ripcord. Terry quickly corrected my stance, having me focus on standing on the arch of my foot rather than the front while working on moving diagonally forward in the cuffs of my boots. I skied back to Heaven’s Gate with noticeable improvement.

Terry explained that one of the best parts of his job is being able to show people an experience they probably wouldn’t have if they were on their own. As they improve their abilities, the sport and the experience become that much more enjoyable. For

those who haven’t skied in a while or are frustrated, he hopes he can reenergize their passion for the sport in a fun and adventurous way.

His time at Sugarbush is just beginning.

With a year under his belt, Terry hopes to simplify the offerings at the Ski & Ride School to make options more approachable.

Look for him to continue many of the popular learn-to-ski programs while streamlining others. He believes that as long as he and his staff get people passionate about the sport, they’ll see long-term success.

His own passion for the sport certainly rubbed off on me that afternoon. Eventually, with a quiver full of new pointers, I had to head back to the office. It was only appropriate that Terry quickly found someone else he knew, and continued skiing to the end of the day. And so I left Barbour in his element: on the snow, after spending the afternoon working his magic— and helping me reenergize my skiing.

John Bleh has been a member of the Sugarbush communications team since 2011.

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802.583.6504 2017/18 11

Lessons for a Lifetime Sugarbush’s offerings for junior golfers go beyond the basics of the sport.

BY NADINE MUMFORD

W

Sugarbush’s head golf pro, Roger King, teaching a Junior Golf Camp

hen a child learns the game of golf, they learn a multigenerational sport. It’s a game they can play with their friends, parents, and grandparents. Roger King, Sugarbush’s head golf professional, introduced his five-year-old daughter to the game last year. As the youngest kid out there, butterflies on the course distract her, and she talks to her father about things that have nothing to do with pitching, putting, or chipping. Roger smiled at the memories of the two of them taking on Sugarbush’s course, and said, “It’s four or five hours with my daughter, outside and unplugged.”

Roger teaches young new golfers that it’s okay to swing and miss the ball. He is determined to keep golf fun for the younger generation. “We want kids to want to come back,” he said. So he invents versions of kickball involving a Nerf ball and a golf driver.

They play games in which the kids try to drive a ball far enough to hit a large target out in front of them, and Roger always makes time for the kids to ride around in the golf carts.

Sugarbush’s specialized golf programs draw in children of all ages, and he often pairs older kids with younger ones. He has 12 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

them teach each other, which also helps break through any age barriers. The kids easily make friends while simultaneously improving their golf game. Meanwhile, Roger applauds their successes—and restores their confidence if they’re edging toward a frustrated meltdown.

At the end of each program, Roger follows up with parents to discuss the skills their child is learning. He encourages parents to let their children show them their new skills, along with what they are excited about.

The value in kids’ golf goes beyond the

technicalities of learning a new game, and the goal of the kids’ programs is not to create flawless players. A person’s golf swing will change with their body and their experience as a player. It is the etiquette and sportsmanship golf demands that shape kids as players and, more importantly, as people. Roger is dedicated to teaching kids honesty, integrity, social skills, eye contact, and hand-eye coordination through golf. He said, “It’s more than just golf. It’s activity. It’s conduct. It’s movement. It’s athleticism.”

And with Roger, it’s also fun.

JA

SUMMERTIME

Sugarbush Junior Golf Camps This four-day camp starts with a warm-up, where the kids play soccer, run, and stretch in preparation for a morning of golf. Roger explains and demonstrates the technicalities of a golf swing. Campers work on their full golf swing and their short game in between golf cart rides and silly golf-related games.

At the end of each morning session, campers enjoy lunch together in Hogan’s Pub. Kids between six and seventeen are welcome.

Junior Golf Clinics On select Saturdays throughout the golf season, Roger offers kids (ages six to seventeen) a two-hour golf clinic.

Junior golfers will gain course knowledge and learn golf etiquette while playing fun games and strengthening their skills. This is a great time for parents to sneak in a quick nine-hole game, and maybe even a drink at the pub.

SNAG Program Learning to play golf can be a challenging experience, especially for younger kids.

SNAG (Starting New At Golf) offers a kidfriendly way to teach new learners the basics. The equipment involves colorful shapes, lines, and fun targets for kids to work with. SNAG takes place in the Sugarbush Health & Recreation Center, allowing golf to be a winter sport, too.

JA

Junior Golf Pass Junior golfers (ages eleven to eighteen) can enjoy unlimited access to the golf course and range balls for $299 per season.

(Children ten and under are free.) Golf as a family activity is growing at Sugarbush, and in the last two years purchases of the Junior Golf Pass have tripled.

To sign up for these or other programs, call 802.583.6725.

Nadine Mumford is a born and raised Vermonter and works in communications at Sugarbush Resort.

Young golfers tee up at the driving range.

802.583.6725

sugarbush.com

Play one of Mother Nature’s

#SUGARBUSH

masterpieces.

A ROBERT TRENT JONES, SR. DESIGN

A sampling of our

PREMIUM GOLF PASSES

(unlimited golf, cart & range balls included)

FAMILY GOLD PASS

$3098 FALL | $3398 EARLY | $3598 REGULAR Includes spouse and dependent children

GOLD PASS

$1549 FALL | $1699 EARLY | $1799 REGULAR Ages 40 and up

FORE30S PASS

$899 FALL | $949 EARLY | $999 REGULAR Ages 30 – 39

FORE20S PASS

$419 FALL | $499 EARLY | $549 REGULAR Ages 19 – 29

FALL RATES THRU 11/1/17 | EARLY RATES THRU 3/31/18 | REGULAR RATES BEGIN 4/1/18 2017/18 13

FOOD

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Fayston and Waitsfield Elementary Schools. Big Picture Café and Theater, Mix Cupcakerie, The Hyde Away, Mad River Barn, Mad Taco. The Butchery, East Warren Community Market, Mehuron’s Market.

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American Flatbread, Big Picture Café and Theater, MINT. 1824 House, Featherbed Inn, Inn at Round Barn Farm. East Warren Market, Knoll Farm Store.

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The Mad River Valley is a working landscape of farms whose products make their way to local schools, restaurants, inns, and grocery stores.

Here’s a look at some of the larger farms in town, and where you can find the food they grow.

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Valley Farm to Table

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Fayston Elementary School, Green Mountain Valley School, Harwood Union Middle and High Schools, Waitsfield and Warren Elementary Schools, Yestermorrow Design/Build School. American Flatbread, Big Picture Café and Theater, Canteen Creemee Company. Lareau Farm Inn, Inn at Round Barn Farm, West Hill House B&B. The Butchery, East Warren Community Market, Irasville Country Store, Lawson’s Finest Liquids, Mehuron’s Market, Paradise Deli, Village Grocer, Warren Store.

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Local Folk Smokehouse, Mad River Glen.

Tucker Hill Inn. Irasville Country Store.

American Flatbread, Home Plate, Peasant, Sugarbush. Lareau Farm Inn. Mehuron’s Market.

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American Flatbread, The Sweet Spot.

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Air port R

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-beef -lamb --pork --poultry -fruit -vegetables

POULTRY FRUIT VEGETABLES

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SHOPPING

Retail Therapy Finding high style and one-of-a-kind items in a valley (thankfully) low on chain stores

BY CANDICE WHITE

Items on display Upstairs at the Warren Store

T

here was a time when it was difficult to do any substantive shopping in the Mad River Valley. I don’t mean necessity shopping, like underwear or sneakers, but more the thrill-seeking, depression-smashing splurge shopping made famous by the likes of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City. You’d still be hard pressed to find Manolo Blahniks here (but seriously, when and where could you actually wear those in Vermont?). However, the Valley has a coterie of stores that pack some punch in their areas of expertise: art, jewelry, sportswear, and play. And what you purchase here won’t be seen staring back at you from urban window displays in every city you visit.

Here’s my list of go-to stores: The Artisans’ Gallery (Bridge Street, Waitsfield, 802.496.6256) represents over 150 Vermont artisans whose work ranges from photography and watercolors to handpainted bird houses and pottery. I covet the hand-painted wooden fish by artist and fisherwoman Rachel Laundon. Woody Jackson’s iconic Holstein cows appear on brightly colored oil and watercolor canvases, and, more affordably, on giclée prints.

Gary Eckhart’s watercolor scenes of rural Vermont evoke emotions ranging from calm serenity to unease. Multi-sized wooden bowls (originally created by Peggy Potter, now made by Cobalt & Curry) painted in rich colors like eggplant and lime green make the perfect wedding gift. And items like woodpecker door knockers, hand-wrought iron fireplace tools, and earrings made by

16 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

glassblowers and metalsmiths are tempting too. Open daily: 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

Whether it is the wide pine flooring, the big sunny windows overlooking Bridge Street, or the complimentary miniature coffees from their Illy espresso machine, a sophisticated sense of style permeates 4orty Bridge Boutique (Bridge Street, Waitsfield, 802.583.4022). Discover unusual items for your wardrobe: a Mongolian lamb purse; Italian scarves in solids and designs; cashmere sweaters with whimsical phrases (“Pray for Snow”); cozy striped wool socks; and gorgeous handmade silver necklaces, earrings, rings, and bracelets with precious and semiprecious stones made by owner Sheri DeFlavio. Open daily: Sun.–Wed., 11 a.m.–5 p.m.; Thurs.–Sat., 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

I think of The Collection (Mad River Green

Shopping Center, Waitsfield, 802.496.6055) as my occasion store—Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, birthday parties, and Christmas gifts.

Their back room is dedicated to kids—crafts such as face-painting kits and art supplies, LEGOs, temporary princess tattoos, “paper” dolls (actually made from wood), stuffed animals, and classic board games (remember those?). Unique home and gift items range from vintage ski signs to moose and bear pillows to hooked floor rugs. The snorting you hear in the background? That’s Lily and Miska, the resident pugs, who add some character to an already whimsical shopping experience. Open daily: Mon.–Sat., 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Sun., 10 a.m.–5 p.m. (until 3 p.m. in the summer).

Whippletree Designs (Mad River Green Shopping Center, Waitsfield, 802.496.9694)

ALPINE SHOP V

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(802) 862-2714

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AlpineShopVT.com

1184 Williston Road, South Burlington, VT

/AlpineShopVT

2017/18 17

MAD RIVER GLASS GALLERY

Unconventional blown glass on display at the Mad River Glass Gallery

Artisans’ Gallery FINE ART AND CRAFT

20 BRIDGE STREET

WA I T S F I E L D , V T HANDPICKED • HANDMADE 802.496.6256

4

vtartisansgallery.com Pastel by Marilyn Ruseckas

18 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

embroiders anything, from colorful tote bags and tea towels to baseball caps and sweatshirts. I recently admired a plush white toddler bathrobe embroidered with the child’s name on the chest, as well as a stack of white chef’s aprons inscribed in red thread with the bride and groom’s names and engagement party date, to be given as party favors. Initials, family crests, farm logos, favorite animals— you name it, Heidi will embroider it. Open daily: 9:30 a.m.–5 p.m.

Do you have memories of a favorite toy store, with a wooden doll house in the corner whose tiny family was at work making dinner, a perfect stack of blocks decorated with farm animals, and a back room filled with a small selection of children’s books?

Peanut & Mouse (Mad River Green Shopping Center, Waitsfield, 802.583.3669) is such a place. Owner Jill Rickard stocks eco-minded children’s items—trucks made from recycled plastic, kid-sized watering cans, play food like petit fours and bananas made from felt, bath toys, junior-sized picnic baskets, and made-in-America all-cotton dresses and shirts. She even has a small book collection that includes my all-time favorite Easter

book, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes. Open daily: Mon.–Fri., 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m., Sat.–Sun., 9:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

Before Cheryll Patty, the owner of Sportive (Main Street, Waitsfield, 802.496.3272), reveals her charming Australian accent, you’ve already noticed her impeccable sense of style. Her store is a reflection of that: timeless, ageless ski and après-ski wear made by some of the world’s finest designers. Fur-hooded jackets, cashmere sweaters and hats, and tech layers from the likes of Bogner, Kjus, Toni Sailer, Sportalm, and PJ’s. You may see some of the same merchandise in the storefronts at Beaver Creek, but priced far higher than what you’ll find right here in Waitsfield. Open daily 10:30 a.m.–6 p.m. in winter; weekends and limited weekdays off-season.

Everyone knows the Warren Store (Main Street, Warren, 802.496.3864) for their “Number Six” turkey sandwich, the “Long Trail” cookies, and Lawson’s Finest beer, but the treasures found Upstairs are unexpected. Beaded bracelets, colorful leather clutches, embroidered belts, and unusual sweaters for women; plaid shirts, cotton Ts, leather gloves, and ties for men; and bright Zutano outfits and classic toys for children. Gift items include pottery coffee mugs and bowls in luscious colors, reusable lunch bags, and hand-crafted candles. Open daily: Mon.–Fri., 10 a.m.–6 p.m., weekends and holidays, 9 a.m.–6 p.m.

The display at Mad River Glass Gallery (Main Street, Waitsfield, 802.496.9388) will blow your preconceptions of blown glass out of the water. The Fish Vase collection presents orange clown fish and pink and yellow angelfish literally swimming out of tall, slender blue vases; the Kyoto Lantern series includes a lantern that’s a red rectangle with thin and wavy horizontal black stripes sitting on four black legs, topped by a small bundle of black twigs and illuminated from within. Owner/artists David and Melanie Leppla’s Sea Urchin, Sea Fan, Safari, and Cairn series offer further unbelievable twists on conventional blown glass. Open daily: 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

Candice White has written for publications that include Vermont Life, Mothering online, and Seven Days Vermont. She has worked at Sugarbush since 2008.

LOCAL SKI AND RIDE SHOPS Alpine Options (Sugarbush Access Road, Warren, 888.888.9131): Member of America’s Best Bootfitters for alpine and backcountry boot fittings. Here you’ll find rentals, try-before-you-buy demos, and junior lease programs, as well as a large selection of outerwear for the whole family. Brands include Arc’teryx, Eider, Hotronic, Lange, Marmot, SCARPA, Völkl, and many more. Open year-round: daily 8:30 a.m.–6 p.m. in winter (expanded hours on Fridays and Saturdays); 10 a.m.–5 p.m. in summer.

Clearwater Sports (Main Street, Waitsfield, 802.496.2708): Equipment for telemark and backcountry skiing, snowshoeing, and rocket sledding. Full line of outdoor gear needs, including headlamps and climbing skins. Seasonal guided tours on snowshoes, sleds, kayaks, and canoes. Brands include Patagonia, Teva, prAna, and Merrell. Open year-round: Mon.–Thurs., 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Sat., 9 a.m.–6 p.m.; Sun., 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; closed Wednesdays in late spring.

Farmhouse Rental and Repair (Lincoln Peak, Sugarbush Resort, Warren, 802.583.6504): Friendly, veteran staff specializing in rental and demo skis and snowboards for all abilities and conditions.

Wintersteiger equipment provides a factory-edge tune. Demo skis from Völkl, K2, Head, Elan, and Fat-ypus; demo snowboards from Burton, K2, and Never Summer. Rental skis from Elan and Head; rental snowboards from Burton. Open daily from mid-November through early May, half hour before lifts open to half hour after lifts close.

Infinite Sports (Mehuron’s Shopping Plaza, Main Street, Waitsfield, 802.496.3343): Rentals, demos, and junior seasonal lease program.

Custom boot fitting and Wintersteiger tuning equipment. Vast selection of outerwear for the whole family from Spyder, Ibex, 686, Hestra, Oakley, and CandyGrind. Skis from Dynastar and Scott; boots from Dalbello and Lange. Open year-round: Sun.–Thurs., 9 a.m.–6 p.m.; Sat. and Christmas week, 9 a.m.–8 p.m.

Mountainside Ski Service (Mountainside Drive, Warren, 802.583.9299): Members of America’s Best Bootfitters providing full assessments for alpine, telemark, backcountry, and snowboard boots. Full-service ski and snowboard tuning; alpine daily and seasonal rentals; alpine demo center for Rossignol, Elan, Dynastar, and Head. Open daily during ski season: 8 a.m.–6 p.m.; closed nonholiday Wednesdays, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. Splinters Boardshop (Sugarbush Access Road, Warren, 802.496.7441): A dedicated snowboard shop run by snowboarders for snowboarders, providing equipment, outerwear, clothing, and accessories for the whole family. Brands represented include Vans, Burton, Volcom, Dinosaurs Will Die, and CandyGrind. Open daily in winter: 9 a.m.–6 p.m.

Vermont North Ski Shop (Sugarbush Access Road, Warren, 802.583.2511): Run by professional skiers (Vermont North Pro Team), specializing in Dynastar, K2, Rossignol, and Kästle skis; Poc and Smith goggles; and Flylow, Obermeyer, Scott, and Helly Hansen outerwear for the whole family. Also stocks Ski the East and bigtruck. Open Columbus Day through Easter: 8 a.m.–6 p.m.; closed non-holiday Wednesdays.

2017/18 19

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ENVIRONMENT

Green Mountain How Sugarbush is shrinking its carbon footprint

BY CANDICE WHITE

Summertime at Lincoln Peak village

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ow does clearing your tray at Gate House Lodge relate to climate change? Putting four-stream waste receptacles in the Gate House cafeteria is one of the many ways in which Sugarbush is working to slow the change of the earth’s climate. These receptacles allow guests to divert a portion of their trash out of the landfill and into recycling, composting, and reuse. (Mostly eaten grilled-cheese sandwich: compost; hot chocolate cup: trash; remaining hot chocolate: liquid; cup top and empty water bottle: recycling; reusable plastic plate: washtub.) Over the past two years, the resort has increased landfill diversion rates by 5 percent and composting tonnage by 200 percent.

Those numbers mean less trash in the landfill, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and more reuse and recycling.

Fighting climate change is not new to Sugarbush, but the resort has grown more nimble in its ability to quantify its efforts and set goals for future reduction.

In 2011, Sugarbush joined the National Ski Areas Association’s Climate Challenge, a voluntary program to help ski areas develop greenhouse gas inventories, set goals for carbon reduction, and decrease their overall carbon footprint. The Climate Challenge helps resorts track emissions and waste disposal along with use of petroleum fuels, electricity, wood, and solar energy.

“The Climate Challenge has allowed us to wrap our arms around the data,” says Margo 20 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

Wade, director of planning for Sugarbush, who heads up the data collection. “It took us three years to get a comprehensive understanding of the different data inputs.”

For example, the resort has forty-five separate Green Mountain Power accounts that feed into the data and allow the resort to track power usage and associated emissions. Since 2012, Sugarbush has reduced electrical usage by more than three million kilowatt hours (roughly 25 percent) by investing in energy-efficient snowmaking guns, phasing in LED lighting, and, more recently, supporting a Vermont-based solar array development.

Resort emissions and fuel consumption are tracked through close monitoring of biodiesel use (powering vehicles like groomers and heavy equipment) and of the power and fuel needed for facility heating and cooling. To cut down on emissions, Sugarbush implemented a resort-wide no-idling policy for all vehicles.

Since investing in the four-stream waste receptacles, Sugarbush has been carefully tracking waste reduction and expanding the implementation of composting and recycling around the resort (along with encouraging practices such as the use of refillable water bottles). Incidentally, Act

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148, Vermont’s Universal Recycling Law, bans all recyclables (as of 2015) and food scraps (as of 2020) from the landfill.

Not all of the resort’s environmental initiatives are tracked in the Climate Challenge. Tesla charging stations were installed in the underground parking garage of Clay Brook Hotel in 2015, and the resort provides 30 percent of the annual financing to fund public transportation with the Mad Bus. The resort’s green housekeeping uses nontoxic, biodegradable cleaning products, and supplies resort properties with bath products packaged in biodegradable or recycled material. Clean water initiatives include storm water and runoff management, and stream and brook repair to protect aquatic habitat. Rumble’s Kitchen (formerly Timbers) is a member of 1% For The Planet, which has guided the resort to donate more than $50,000 to environmental organizations (including Vermont Land Trust, Friends of the Mad River, the Mad River Path Association, and the Vermont Fresh Network). The Winthrop H. Smith Family Foundation has made significant contributions to the

Sugarbush’s four-stream waste receptacles in Gate House Lodge preservation of open space in Vermont (Camel’s Hump State Park, Blueberry Lake National Forest, Scrag Town Forest, and Bragg Barn). And the ongoing efforts of the resort’s Safety/Environment/ Wellness Committee (see sidebar) have contributed to the staff’s embrace of effective environmental initiatives.

While the Climate Challenge does not track all environmental initiatives, it has helped the resort get a handle on its overall carbon footprint. With that understanding, resort leadership can continue to set policies for further reduction . . . right down to dealing with the crusts of that grilledcheese sandwich.

MEET THE SEW COMMITTEE What do recycling, drinking (water), and a regular fitness regimen have in common?

All are part of the mission of Sugarbush’s Safety/Environment/Wellness Committee.

SEW began in 2014 as the next iteration of the resort’s original Green Team, started fifteen years before. The Green Team’s charter was to initiate enhancements throughout the business by preventing pollution and environmental degradation, while using resources more efficiently and improving recycling efforts. These goals JA

Sugarbush staff practice how to clean up a toxic spill.

needed to be met without compromising business objectives. Early policies started by the Green Team included resort-wide waste reduction, energy reduction, and recycling initiatives, as well as participation in the Resort Green Up Day (a staff-wide spring cleanup) and the Way to Go! Commuter Challenge (staff commuting alternatives like biking to work and carpooling, to lessen greenhouse gas emissions).

The SEW Committee combined the Green Team’s initial charter with the added challenge of improving staff wellness and safety. Recent wellness initiatives include the introduction of the thirty-day fitness challenge, a contest that inspires employees to log their daily jogs, bike rides, and yoga classes to win prizes. Safety initiatives include improved nighttime lighting in parking areas, office ergonomics training, and regular evaluation of resort procedures ranging from staff knowledge of the Skier/Rider Responsibility Code to lift evacuations. On the environmental side, the SEW Committee augmented the resort’s implementation of four-stream

waste receptacles in Gate House Lodge last year with a team of “Trash Talkers”— staff members and volunteers who educate guests about the new system. The installation of the first water bottle filling station in the fall of 2016 was another SEW initiative to promote the use of reusable water bottles and allow employees to fill their company-provided collapsible water pouches. (This also satisfied an employee wellness and safety initiative: statistics show that well-hydrated employees are less susceptible to workplace accidents.)

Implementation of the resort-wide no-idling policy began in earnest in the fall of 2016 to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, with SEW’s help. Current projects include increasing the number of recycling and composting receptacles in public and private resort locations.

While the SEW Committee has quickly earned a following among employees, its recognition extends beyond the resort: since its inception, the committee has received three Governor’s Awards for the good work it is doing.

2017/18 21

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TRAINING GROUND

Woods Craft

From Eden to Paradise and beyond: Tips for skiing in the trees at Sugarbush

BY JOHN ATKINSON

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Finding untracked snow in the Sugarbush woods t’s a beautiful day in the Mad River Valley, and the stars have aligned. I’m off for the day, the kids are in school, and the mountain got several inches of fresh snow last night. After a few runs tracking up the trails and evaluating the snow, a group of us is ready to wander into the trees.

We do something easy to test things out, a run that mimics the elevation and aspect of a bigger route we’ve been eyeing.

We roll off Heaven’s Gate and drop into Paradise, playing close to the trail, ducking in and out of the woods. The steep pitches are balanced by the general openness of the trees, but speed control is always important, and we gather frequently to ensure that everyone is safe.

All goes well on the first foray—the conditions are prime. Then we’re off to explore wilder ways. After a bit of hiking, we enter the chute, the sun breaks out, sparkly snow fills the air, the line is fresh, and we float the run in giddy glee.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? So what are

22 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

the techniques to get into the woods and find good snow? And where are the good places to start?

Progression Sessions The best way to ease into the trees is to begin with trails like Sleeper, Murphy’s, Birch Run, and Moonshine that have widely spaced trees. Practice making turns next to the trail edges and around the trees. Get comfortable in the bumps; you’re likely to find them off-piste, too.

Once you feel ready, start in Eden, SemiTough Woods, or some of the Lincoln Peak mountain bike trails like Grand Stand and Big Birch. Eden is great because you can easily exit back to the trail if needed.

When you’re comfortable in these gentler, wider glades, next steps include steeper, tighter runs like Christmas Tree, Gangsta’s Grotto, Tumbler, and Exterminator Woods.

Mastering tough trails like Rumble and Black Diamond are great training tests too. When you’re ready for the toughest off-piste terrain, look to the tops of the mountains in between the expert trails and along the ridgelines.

All About That Base A proper snow base is essential for keeping you above most of the hidden stumps, roots, shrubbery, and downed trees that typically line our forest floors. That doesn’t mean you should stay out of the woods before there’s a good base; you’ll just

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need to look at it as an adventure that may not include actual turns.

John Egan, U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Famer and Sugarbush’s chief recreation officer, says, “I start foot-packing my favorite runs early in the season before it is deep enough to ski. That way, I get to inspect and improve the lines before any big storms hide obstacles. Foot-packing is also a great escape strategy, if you get somewhere and determine it’s not quite ready.” (Footpacking is like side-stepping, but with more emphasis on packing the snow.)

For clues on how well the woods have filled in, test the conditions on a natural snow trail like Lixi’s Twist, Semi-Tough, or Domino. If these are skiing well, the off-piste might be too.

While there is nothing as good as checking for yourself, you can also refer to the Sugarbush snow report or ask at Guest Services for more information.

Location, Elevation, Orientation Real estate agents have one rule: “Location, location, location.” Skiers and riders can follow a similar rule: “Location, elevation, orientation.” The closer to the ridgeline, the deeper the snow: mountainenhanced snowfall reaches its maximum 24 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

Safety First (Or At Least Third) Some good basic pointers for woods skiing are well known: travel in groups of three or more; wear goggles and helmets; and take off your pole straps.

But there is much more to staying safe, especially as you head deeper into the woods and into more advanced terrain. Before you leave the trail, use this mental checklist.

Remember, you don’t have to be far from the trail to be far from help.

• Know where you’re going—or don’t go: Exploring new places is fun, but plan first.

Use topographic and other maps to help determine entry and exit points, along with locations of streams, cliffs, and other land features. Identify escape strategies along your route. Carry a compass and know how to use it.

• Dress for success: Wearing proper clothing is essential. Consider carrying an extra layer or small bivy sac to use for shelter, in case of unplanned delays or weather issues.

• Fixer-upper: Carry a small multi-tool that works with the fittings on your bindings and boots. One loose screw can ruin your run or your day.

• Skin to win: The ability to go uphill in

deep snow can be a lifesaver. Carry climbing skins or snowshoes, in case you get lost or cliffed out.

• Use your phone as a phone: Charge it and leave it in your pocket as a backup safety tool to call for help. Live-tweeting your run and shooting pictures is fun, until you really need your phone.

• Tell someone trustworthy about your travel plans. ©BRIAN MOHR/EMBERPHOTO

A Sugarbush Blazer launches a jump in Slide Brook Basin.

at the highest elevations closest to the summits. Aside from temperature inversions, which are uncommon, higher elevations are typically colder and preserve snow better. Orientation is the direction that slopes face, which can influence how much sun and wind affect them.

In a windy, mountainous place like Sugarbush, snowfall is almost never evenly distributed. With Sugarbush’s prevailing northwest winds, common leeward areas where snow piles up extra deep include east-southeast-facing spots like Paradise, Castlerock, and near Lower FIS. Solar gain can also play a major role in snow quality and depth, especially later in the season when the sun is higher in the sky. Even if it’s cloudy, strong rays can still warm the snow enough to change its texture. South-facing slopes are most affected, like North Lynx, Gate House, Inverness, and Sunshine Quad (formerly Sunny D). After a thaw-freeze cycle, these areas are usually the first to re-soften when temps start to climb.

Preparing for uphill travel in the woods Make a Plan, Stan Just knowing where to go is usually not enough. You’ve also got to know why, when, and how to go. If you’ve done your homework, all of this information and planning can add up to great runs all day and all season long. For an off-piste master class, book a clinic with Egan or another coach on the Ski & Ride School team to learn more about these techniques.

Skiable lines exist between (and beyond) most of the trails at Sugarbush. There are nearly 4,000 acres to explore from Brambles to Jester, so build your skills and knowledge to wander far and wide.

To take a lesson with John Egan or another tree-skiing coach, call 888.651.4827 or email skiandrideschool@sugarbush.com.

John Atkinson is Sugarbush’s senior photographer and lead snow reporter, and serves as executive director of the Mad River Riders mountain biking alliance.

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2017/18 25

MOUNTAIN LIFE

Adventure & Camaraderie Scenes from the past year at Sugarbush

26 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

2017/18 27 25

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17/18

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Independently Yours In a ski resort economy increasingly defined by corporate conglomerates, Sugarbush and neighboring Mad River Glen stand out.

BY PETER OLIVER

Win Smith and Rumble

ALAN HURWITZ

Lincoln Peak verybody, it seems, knew Rumble. run by their type of management. For the last year or so has been the explosive Handsome, athletic, and engaging, he longtime Sugarbushers, a sense of psychic growth of multi-resort conglomerates. The might emerge from his daytime do- ownership comes with a mountain where a biggest kid on that block is Vail Resorts, which recently added Whistler Blackcomb in micile, a small hut at the Lincoln Peak base, strong independent streak breeds loyalty.

Independence, both as a business British Columbia and Stowe Mountain Resort to meet and greet, canine style, or to pose in selfies taken by incoming skiers. Rumble framework and a definition of character, is in Vermont to a star-packed, fourteen-resort something Sugarbush shares with its Valley portfolio that includes, of course, Vail itself was a centerpiece in many a family photo.

So when the Bernese mountain dog, best mate Mad River Glen. In a ski resort world as well as Park City Mountain Resort in Utah friend of Sugarbush’s principal owner Win that is increasingly becoming swept up in a and Heavenly Valley Resort in California.

More recently, Vail has been given a run Smith, made a peaceful passage to Pet corporatization trend, independently owned for its corporate money by the Aspen Skiing Heaven this spring, social media was flooded areas stand out.

Just a handful of noteworthy independents Company (Skico), which has gone on its own with Rumble remembrances. Photos were posted. Loving tributes were stacked one are still out there on the North American aggressive spending spree. In partnership atop another. Heart and sad-face emojis were landscape, including Alta Ski Area in Utah, with a private equity firm, Skico this spring ubiquitous. At Lincoln Peak, Rumble’s empty Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Wyoming, bought Intrawest, whose major resorts included Steamboat home was anonymously For long–time Sugarbushers, a sense of psychic ownership comes Resort in Colorado, festooned with a garland Tremblant in Quebec, and paper hearts. with a mountain where a strong independent streak breeds loyalty. and Stratton Mountain “I think about you in Resort in Vermont. the daylight and when the This is their type of mountain, populated by their type of skiers, That was quickly stars shine bright,” wrote imbued with their type of atmosphere, and, by extension, run by followed by the one heartbroken eightpurchase of Mammoth year-old as a eulogy to their type of management.

Mountain as part of a Rumble. A confluence of personal love and loss mixed with the and Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico. Indeed, four-resort California package. Powdr, owner collective grief and sadness that are shared Michael Berry, outgoing president of the of Killington Ski Resort, and Boyne Resorts, whenever a cherished member of the family National Ski Areas Association, estimates owner, prominently, of Big Sky in Montana that the number of major independent ski and Sugarloaf and Sunday River in Maine, are is suddenly gone.

That Rumble touched so many people areas is only about a dozen. Sugarbush and other big players in the multi-resort game.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with so intimately says a lot about a ski area Mad River are prominent among them.

If there is an analogy here, however the trend toward consolidation. From a that has cultivated its own, unique identity along with a streak of independence. imprecise, it is that independent resorts are business perspective, it can make great A sense of loyalty and connectedness, like family-owned inns in a world of Hyatts sense to be part of a corporate behemoth. kinship and belonging—a sense of soul— and Radissons. Carrying that analogy right Size typically affords relatively easy runs deep. Skiers who have become into the Mad River Valley, think of an elegant access to large chunks of capital when Sugarbush regulars over the years take establishment like the Pitcher Inn in Warren improvements or new developments are in their bond with the area personally, just making a go of it in a world of sleek, high- order, and bigger companies can typically negotiate better deals with suppliers. as they took Rumble’s passing personally. rise hotels.

This needs to be put into the context of Want a new, high-speed lift or a spiffy new This is their type of mountain, populated by their type of skiers, imbued with their the current state of the ski resort industry. base lodge? Boom! The money is there, type of atmosphere, and, by extension, Making big news in the world of skiing in and construction begins. It’s not always so 30 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

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easy for the independents, who have less have a few of their own cards to play. For one, Pam’s brother Al runs Nashoba on behalf of financial leverage. Vail Resorts is said to they can be much more nimble in responding the family and is out on the mountain every be investing more than $100 million in to customer wishes and demands. “The nice day to make sure all is up to snuff. “It’s a company-wide improvements just this year. thing about Sugarbush is that Win is there,” personal touch on the hill,” said Pam. “As Braced by the Economics 101 principle of said Berry. “People know he is accessible. a privately owned company, you’re able to implement any change quicker and easier economies of scale, conglomerate resorts He’s an engaged owner.”

Say you want a change in the grill menu in . . . and possibly with a little more charm.” can also offer skiers season passes at A more important card in the independents’ reduced rates; their exponentially expanded the Gate House Lodge. Heck—the guy sitting customer base assures a healthy revenue next to you on the chairlift could very well deck is the nebulous but primal concept flow even if profit margins are smaller. This be Smith, indulging in one of his more than of character. No ski area in America has past winter, Vail Resorts reportedly sold 120 skiing days of the year. Or you might find been more successful in carving out its own 650,000 of its Epic Passes. At Stowe, locals Smith tucked into his tiny Gate House office— character niche than Mad River Glen. Owned were overjoyed when the Vail Resorts not much more than a closet with a desk by a cooperative of ski area enthusiasts, acquisition was followed immediately by and a chair—attending to paperwork before Mad River is about as far from the world a slash in season pass prices. Not only heading out on the mountain for another run. of corporatization as you can get and still function as a business. that, but season passes could be It might seem that, in a business dominated by multi-resort giants, Nobody, big or small, outcharacters Mad River. sweetened with independents like Sugarbush and Mad River Glen At the core of that various privileges character is the adhesive and discounts at don’t stand a competitive chance. But the independents have ethos of community. “The other resorts on the a few of their own cards to play. part that hits home is conglomerate menu. family—the idea of the Finally, a corporate brand identity usually assures consistency Tell him what you want, and a menu change Mad River family, looking out for one another,” and quality of service; when you book a room might be in place the next day. No need for said Mad River regular Chuck Derrick. “The at a Hyatt or a Radisson, for example, you’ve the request to filter through multiple tiers of community aspect is as important as the got a good idea of what to expect. However, a corporate management, where, as in the old skiing itself.”

Familial togetherness is something you’d slide toward the cookie-cutter homogeneity kids’ game of telephone, the message can that corporate consolidation often implies become more muddled and incoherent with expect at a place like pint-sized, family-run Cochran’s Ski Area in nearby Richmond. But is unlikely. Ski resorts are not hotels. Even each exchange.

Someone with a fine-tuned perspective on it exists at Mad River, too, where many skiers, if they fly the same corporate flag, Vail, Whistler, and Stowe are profoundly different the merits of independence is Pam Fletcher, as members of the owning cooperative, mountains topographically and profoundly former U.S. Ski Team member and a frequent pitch in like a family in the governance different resorts culturally, and each retains Sugarbush visitor. The Fletcher family and maintenance of the place. Small-hill founded (in 1964) and still owns Nashoba intimacy and internationally acclaimed bigits own discrete and loyal following.

Indeed, it might seem that, in a business Valley Ski Area in Westford, Massachusetts. mountain skiing are not mutually exclusive concepts. “It’s not just a dominated by multifamily experience,” said resort giants, indepenDerrick. “It’s a killer dents like Sugarbush skiing experience.” and Mad River Glen A big part of Mad don’t stand a competiRiver’s character also tive chance. And it won’t derives from an atavistic be easy. The season connection to its origins pass deals now offered almost seventy years ago. by the corporate guys Mad River is an enduring have put the squeeze on anachronism and a living the independent guys to shrine to its founder, respond. One strategy Roland Palmedo, who Sugarbush took a few brought the area into months ago to get into existence in the late the multi-resort pass 1940s, not long after game was to link up with helping to found Stowe. the Mountain Collective (In fact, when Mad River (see sidebar). replaced the original, And the independents Win, Lili, and family celebrating the holidays at Lincoln Peak 2017/18 31

JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

SUGARBUSH JOINS THE MOUNTAIN COLLECTIVE The Mountain Collective is an international alliance of independently owned ski destinations collaborating to offer one pass giving access to every resort in the program. The pass covers two days of skiing or riding at each participating resort, plus a 50 percent discount off their day ticket price after that. (Early purchasers receive a third day at one “designated” resort.) Pass pricing begins as low as $399 for adults and $1 for kids twelve and under, depending on time of purchase. (Sugarbush Premium Passholders enjoy an automatic 50 percent discount off their day ticket price at the Mountain Collective resorts.)

Participating resorts include Alta, Aspen Snowmass, Banff Sunshine, Coronet Peak/The Remarkables, Jackson Hole, Lake Louise, Mammoth Mountain, Revelstoke, Snowbasin, Snowbird, Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows, Sugarbush, Sun Valley, Taos, Telluride, and Thredbo Alpine Village. Mountain Collective global affiliates Chamonix (in France), Valle Nevado (in Chile), and Hakuba Valley (in Japan) offer two days of skiing or riding, but do not include the 50 percent discount off day tickets.

Passes are available at www.mountaincollective.com.

—JB aging single chairlift in 2007, it spent an extra $500,000 for a custom-built, historic restoration that was an exact replica of Palmedo’s original—“right down to the wooden slats,” according to marketing director Eric Friedman.) In 2012, Mad River became the first ski area to be added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In the early years of the industry, this was the blueprint for almost every ski area in the country: from the 1930s into the ’60s, ski areas weren’t just independently owned, they were independently conceived as the dreams-come-true of founding visionaries.

That’s as true of many resorts now under the corporate umbrella as it is of independents like Sugarbush and Mad River, even if the original vision of the founders may have changed over the years with changes in ownership. Scroll the credits, west to east: 32 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

Mad River Glen’s general manager, Matt Lillard, enjoys some fresh powder there.

Mammoth Mountain—Dave McCoy. Squaw Valley—Alex Cushing. Jackson Hole—Paul McCollister. Taos Ski Valley—Ernie and Rhoda Blake. Sun Valley—Averell Harriman. Alta— Alf Engen. Vail—Pete Seibert. Killington— Preston Leete Smith. The list goes on.

And the list includes Sugarbush, the brainchild of Damon and Sara Gadd and Jack Murphy in 1958. During the course of its history, after various sales, the resort went through its own incarnations as a corporate entity, most notably in the late 1990s, as a part of the American Skiing Company, the Les Otten–owned conglomerate of resorts in New England, Colorado, and California.

So when Sugarbush was bought in 2001 by a partnership led by Win Smith, in some ways it represented a full-circle return to its roots.

No more absentee ownership or chip off the big corporate block; this was like the good old days, with the owner on board on a daily basis, invested not just financially but also emotionally in the resort’s success.

Like a mother raising kids, Nashoba’s Pam Fletcher has watched over the years as skiers have come through the mountain’s ski school and moved on in the world of skiing.

She talks of an almost spiritual connection that comes from transmitting a love for the sport to generation after generation of skiing fledglings. The lifeblood of Nashoba is the Fletchers’ evangelical enthusiasm for skiing that touches all who ski there.

So when Fletcher visits Sugarbush and skis with Smith, she feels a kindred bond to the fervor with which he takes to the sport.

“He loves to ski and he loves to ski fast,” said

the onetime Olympic downhiller. Put another way, Smith skis as often as he does not just as a means of supervising the smooth running of the business but also because he’s crazy about skiing. And that passion, re-stoked on an almost daily basis, inevitably percolates throughout the Sugarbush organization, to be shared by everyone from the ticket checker to people in the highest tiers of management. You’re not likely to find that kind of top-down contact high at a corporate conglomerate.

In a time of sweeping corporatization, independently owned ski areas might seem like orphaned waifs in the company of giants.

Challenges certainly abound, especially in the cutthroat arena of season pass and day ticket pricing; it is not unlike the local hardware store trying to battle Home Depot on the price front.

But no one is clamoring for either Sugarbush or Mad River to jump aboard the corporate train. There’s no risk of getting sucked into the maw of corporate consolidation anytime soon. Character, community, family, personal connection—independently owned areas can dish out such soft-focus stuff in spades. And sometimes it might be delivered in the warm breath and nuzzling greeting of a friend named Rumble.

Peter Oliver is the author of seven books, and his feature articles have appeared in many national publications. He is a previous winner of the International Skiing History Association’s Ullr Award and Colorado Ski Country’s Lowell Thomas Award.

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THE WILDERNESS AMONG US ©BRIAN MOHR/EMBERPHOTO

The well-loved Green Mountain National Forest, with its 900 miles of multi-use trails, celebrates its eighty-fifth anniversary.

BY KELLY AULT

Author Kelly Ault and Audrey Huffman skin up Mt. Abe.

I

WAITSFIELD HISTORICAL SOCIETY

t was April, with temperatures in the sixties, when my friend Audrey Huffman and I skied off the Heaven’s Gate chairlift at Sugarbush’s Lincoln Peak. We met Brian Mohr, who was leading us on a ski tour beyond the resort boundary to the summit of Mount Abraham. A local photographer, Brian has been at the forefront of the state’s development of backcountry ski trails as a board member of the Catamount Trail Association.

Leaving the wide trail and skier traffic behind, we entered an opening in the woods and immediately found ourselves awkwardly maneuvering a steep, narrow, and twisted chute. Trusting Brian as our guide, Audrey and I followed with quick turns in the needleladen snow, ducking beneath low-hanging The Mad River Valley over 100 years ago branches. I spied a white-painted blaze on a tree trunk, the signature trail marker of Hampshire’s White Mountains, New York’s function as it should. These places have the Vermont’s Long Trail.

Adirondacks, and as far away as Europe— greatest biodiversity.”

Brian was referring to the surrounding “I call this the Long ‘Tunnel’ in winter,” said DeBonis hinted that Taylor may have had Brian, smiling, when we caught up with him. conservationist intentions. “He believed that if Green Mountain National Forest (GMNF), “This trail is designed for hiking, not skiing.” Vermonters had a relationship with the land, which encompasses more than 400,000 It is true that the Long Trail was designed they would care about it, and would become acres and is the largest contiguous expanse of public land in Vermont. We were skiing in in 1909 to be America’s first long-distance better stewards of it.” an “alpine/subalpine special area,” a GMNF hiking path. It was the vision of James P. • Taylor, secretary for the Vermont Chamber of Brian, Audrey, and I continued to ski past designation, which balances both recreation Commerce, who hoped to “make the Vermont intermittent white blazes, within a deep use and ecological protection. Although less restrictive than mountains play a larger part in the life of the Vermont’s historic flood of 1927 was a turning point in the GMNF “wilderness” designation to people.” He drew up the Vermonters’ disposition toward the forest. As a response the south, this desigfirst map of what would eventually become the to the flood’s devastation, the National Forest Reserve nation’s explicit charge to educate recreationLong Trail, stretching Commission established the GMNF through a series of ists mirrors Taylor’s 272 miles up through purchases between 1932 and 1935. pioneering philosophy: the state between the People who experience Massachusetts and Canadian borders (see “Life on the Long forest that I imagined to resemble author C. the mountain environment will tread lightly Trail,” page 40).

S. Lewis’s Narnia. We serpentined through and take care of it.

The unique ecological features of Also inspired by Taylor, the Green Mountain stunted spruce trees draped with lichen and Club (GMC) was formed the next year, with a by mossy caverns, the likely residences of Vermont’s forests were not always valued, mission “to protect and maintain the Long bobcat or black bear. A fluttering partridge nor was protection guaranteed throughout Trail system and foster, through education, startled me out of my reverie, and the song history. In the 1800s, merino sheep farming the stewardship of Vermont’s hiking trails of black-capped chickadees regularly and potash production initiated the largescale clearing of Vermont’s forests. and mountains.” The GMC spent the next two punctuated the stillness. decades constructing the trail and was later Not long after reaching the 3,900-foot Combined with unregulated logging to recognized by the Vermont state legislature saddle just south of Mount Little Abe, we meet the demands of the nation’s building as “the founder, sponsor, defender, and paused at an east-facing vista. The Mad River of factories and homes, Vermont’s lumber protector” of the Long Trail.

Valley’s pastoral landscape splayed below. production reached its peak in the early Mike DeBonis, executive director of the Audrey pointed out the striking juxtaposition 1900s. Consequently, Vermont’s land base GMC, describes Taylor as a great salesman. of the Valley’s agricultural patchwork as seen was 80 percent deforested and at risk for “He had the skills and gumption to sell the from our perch in the remote wilderness. fires and floods.

Ethan Ready, public affairs officer for the idea, and he got people behind it.” Although Brian noted the importance of the lack of Taylor was influenced by the growing roads in the forest where we stood. “We need GMNF, identified Vermont’s historic flood development of hiking elsewhere—in New to set aside large areas of land to let nature of 1927 as a turning point in Vermonters’ JA

38 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

©BRIAN MOHR/EMBERPHOTO

Brian expressed different concerns: the various kinds of development pressure on land across the state. He cited an overall reduction of forest cover during the last decade, due to overdevelopment, fragmentation, and energy development.

“Much of Vermont’s land is private, and although there is solid support for keeping lands intact, we do take our forest for granted,” he cautioned.

At the same time, Brian is optimistic about the ability of public land managers, private landowners, conservation and recreation partners, alpine ski areas, and businesses to prioritize protection. “There are great organizations that support all the activities that Vermonters and visitors enjoy,” said The Mad River Valley today, from Scrag Mountain Brian. “As a community, we have the disposition toward the forest. Overflowing communities across the state to discuss opportunity to work together to maintain the interconnected landscapes we have.” waterways widely damaged villages and civic and business matters.

The GMNF counts on partnerships in This landmark issue in Vermont’s history farmland, highlighting an urgent need for watershed protection. Towns began to was a victory for the members of the GMC who order to manage its nine hundred miles viewed the parkway as a threat to the Long of multiple-use trails. “We have a long reforest by planting trees.

This newfound desire for restoration co- Trail and the Green Mountains. The visibility of history of collaborative trail and recreation incided with a political opportunity from the public discourse voicing a clear preference partnerships in Vermont,” said Holly Knox, Washington, D.C. Ready explained that the for preserving Vermont’s unspoiled natural district recreation program manager for U.S. Congress had passed the Weeks Act environment over economic development the GMNF. “Our partnerships work together to share resources, knowledge, finances, in 1911, allowing the federal government to fueled a land conservation movement. and labor to provide outstanding trail and • incorporate lands into the National Forest Today, Vermont’s forest cover statistic recreation activities.” And the National system. As a response to the flood’s devastaForest System Trails tion, the National ForSugarbush Resort’s collaboration with the GMNF Stewardship Act, which est Reserve Commisdates back to the 1950s, when the resort was granted passed the U.S. Congress sion established the GMNF through a series permission to construct the ski area, which over time in 2016, directs GMNF staff to augment their of purchases between would cover 1,745 acres of national forest. It is one paid seasonal trail 1932 and 1935.

At the same time, a of three alpine ski resorts and six Nordic ski areas to crews with increased volunteers to help with controversial proposal operate through a lease agreement in the GMNF. National Forest System by the National Park Service to build a scenic highway along the is reversed, with over 80 percent of the trail maintenance.

One of the GMNF’s natural allies ridge of the Green Mountains was dividing state blanketed by woodlands. “Reforested Vermonters across the state. Heated debate mountains and hillsides provide forest products from the beginning has been the GMC. about the “Green Mountain Parkway” was and recreational opportunities,” said Ready. Beyond maintaining the Long Trail, the reported in the media to be so polarizing At the same time, he continued, “the GMNF organization educates hikers about that “every citizen in the state became a is one of the most recreated National Forests the forest’s ecosystem. GMC executive parkway or anti-parkway man.” During in the nation . . . with three to four million director Mike DeBonis described how the 1935 Vermont state legislative term, visitors annually. These outdoor enthusiasts summit caretakers are employed during disagreement between the house and are contributing significantly to our local the summer months to point out alpine vegetation to hikers and direct them to senate chambers prompted the governor communities and the overall economy.”

As positive as that is for the state, Ready clearly marked footpaths. “Mount Abraham to call a special session, where lawmakers supported the proposal. However, the acknowledged the potential impact of the is a priority,” said DeBonis. “It is one of issue was ultimately decided by public seventy million people who live within a three summits in Vermont with a unique referendum. In March 1936, Vermonters day’s drive. “Public land is under increasing composite of alpine tundra vegetation, soundly voted down the parkway on Town pressure to serve the people of this region in plants that are remnants of the last ice age.” This “soft stewardship” approach is Meeting Day, an annual gathering in a variety of ways.”

2017/18 39

“Are they naked?” my wife, Lauren, asked. Just two hours into our thru-hike of Vermont’s famed Long Trail (stretching from Massachusetts to Canada), and the first couple we met was completely naked. We realized then that the journey was going to be more than just a long-distance hike. We anticipated sore muscles and mountaintop views during our sixteen-day, 272-mile journey. But it was the unique events we couldn’t predict that made our adventure extraordinary.

COURTESY OF CORY AYOTTE

LIFE ON THE LONG TRAIL

Near Glastenbury Mountain, in the heart of the “Bennington Triangle” (an area feared by Native Americans and in which several people have gone permanently missing), we met one Appalachian Trail thru-hiker (the two trails are conjoined for 100 miles) Lauren and Cory Ayotte with their dog, Tenney, on the Long Trail whose belongings were sprawled all around him. As we got closer, we could hear a staticky JFK speech effective in protecting fragile areas, he projecting from his radio. Locking eyes with us, he repeated multiple times, “Hi! added. “People with good information I’m DC on the AT.” Not sure what to make of his greeting, we booked it toward the tend to make good decisions.” summit, where a fire tower provided spectacular views of the wilderness around us.

• As we gazed over the land below, we wondered if “DC on the AT” was really a hiker or Sugarbush Resort’s collaboration with if he was one of the mythical creatures that allegedly inhabit the Bennington Triangle. the GMNF dates back to the 1950s, when Several days later we met a group of the 10,000 free-spirited members of the Rainbow Family of Living Light. They had chosen Forest Service Road #10 in southern Vermont for their annual gathering, a crossing point on the trail. Arriving at this remote dirt road, we immediately felt their presence. Law enforcement vehicles lined the road to ensure a peaceful assembly. The lush green forest turned into a sea of tie-dye with hordes of folks coming back from Little Rock Pond. One individual stopped us to explain at length how our dog, Tenney, was the master of the universe and that we must follow her lead through life. (Fortunately for us, Tenney had a keen sense for staying on the trail.)

As we continued, the strange encounters dwindled, but never the majesty of the trail. After roughly 150 miles we hopped over the ridgeline between Lincoln Gap and Appalachian Gap. This was one of our favorite sections: the tremendous views of the spine of the Green Mountains coupled with the view of Lake Champlain validated why we live in this area. This high-elevation ridge is home to Sugarbush, and every step we took, we found ourselves pointing out favorite Mad River Valley spots and ski trails, and retelling epic stories of years past. Hiking through home territory and seeing friends rejuvenated us for the mountains that still lay ahead.

The area north of Mount Mansfield was rugged. We were constantly going up and down steep mountainsides like yo-yos. After a day of hiking twenty-four miles, our exhausted bodies arrived at Tillotson Shelter, where we met Green Mountain Club trail workers.

Expecting rain the next two days, they were heading out of the woods earlier than expected. With loads of food still remaining, they cooked a large stir-fry for hungry hikers, generosity that was much appreciated after our toughest day. Roughly thirtyeight hours after that glorious meal, we hit the end of the trail—the Canadian border. Our transformative experience was over. I was elated; a long dream of mine had just come to fruition, with some surprises along the way that I couldn’t have foreseen. For me, looking back, the Long Trail is more than just a hike through Vermont’s wilderness, and my appreciation for our journey has continued to grow.

— Cory Ayotte Cory Ayotte works in the marketing department at Sugarbush Resort and has experience at numerous ski resorts throughout New England.

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SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

the resort was granted permission to construct the ski area, which over time would cover 1,745 acres of national forest.

It is one of three alpine ski resorts and six Nordic ski areas to operate through a lease agreement in the GMNF. (Sugarbush also works closely with the GMC. In 1997, for instance, the resort granted the GMC a trail easement permanently protecting the 162 acres of privately held land along Mt. Ellen’s ridgeline that hosts a portion of the Long Trail.) “A variety of tools are necessary to work together in mutual and collaborative ways,” explained Margo Wade, director of planning and compliance for the resort.

Wade listed numerous guiding and operating documents, including biannual operating plans, special-use permits, and a master development plan, that clarify federal requirements for operating, maintaining, and expanding resort infrastructure. In the master development plan, said Wade, “we set out the existing conditions—where we are today with ski area operations—and our hopes and dreams—where we hope to be in the future.”

Projects, such as new or expanded trails, lifts, and facilities, often require a formal environmental analysis to mitigate impacts on wildlife, from black bears to bats, as well as on air, water, and humans. In recent

years, agreed-upon strategies to protect the Bicknell’s thrush, an at-risk eastern North American songbird, have led to avoiding resort activity—such as vegetation removal—in the species’s upper-elevation habitat during the nesting and breeding season, from May 15 to July 31.

As the GMNF celebrates its eighty-fifth anniversary this year, public access to the forest is more valued than ever. Knox points to the emerging sports of backcountry skiing and riding—involving hiking up to ski or snowboard down slopes in the woods, often beyond resort boundaries—as one of the growing uses of the forest. “It’s been exciting to see partners, like the Catamount Trail Association, run with new ideas and be resourceful with opportunities,” she said. Sugarbush has also responded to the popularity of off-piste skiing by establishing safety and uphill skiing rules.

• Emerging from the woods, Brian, Audrey, and I skied up to the 4,005-foot summit of Mount Abraham and found ourselves encircled by some of the tallest peaks in the Northeast.

Part of the Green Mountains’ Presidential

Range lay to the south—Mounts Grant, Cleveland, Roosevelt, and Wilson. Beyond them, the ski trails of Killington Resort were visible on the flanks of Vermont’s second-highest summit, Mount Killington (4,241’). To the east, Mount Washington (6,289’) loomed white on the horizon as the high point of New Hampshire’s Presidential Range. To the north, one of the highest sections of the Green Mountains, known as the Monroe Skyline, stretched toward the distant Camel’s Hump (4,081’). And west across Lake Champlain, the conical Mount Marcy (5,343’) was in clear view within the Adirondack Park.

Taking in the 360-degree panorama of this forest mosaic, framed by bluebird skies, I knew that Taylor had it right. Even my brief exposure on the ridge that day was awe inspiring. It was easy to imagine how countless Vermonters and visitors over the decades have come for a day hike or a multiday journey along “Vermont’s footpath in the wilderness” and left as ambassadors.

As we began our ski back, Audrey pointed out a grouping of radio and telecommunication towers appearing faintly on the horizon.

In addition to being a helpful reference point for where we were headed, they symbolized the stark contrast between the rugged mountain and the modern uses of Lincoln Peak. “This ridge links today’s escape into the wilderness with our responsibilities back home,” Audrey said.

The public’s desire to enjoy Vermont’s forests and mountains has been a driving value in decisions about public and private land over the last century. And that desire will continue to counter the pull of industry moving forward. “Recreation opportunities are dynamic over time, necessitating that we work together to plan for what uses are compatible with what landscapes,” said DeBonis. “Vermonters’ long history with collaboration will help us continue to find the right balance into the future. None of us can do it alone.”

Kelly Ault is the public engagement director of the Vermont Early Childhood Alliance and a freelance writer. She lives in Middlesex but is usually found exploring Vermont’s woods with her husband and two teenage sons.

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2017/18 41

JILL NOLAN

Getting Schooled At Green Mountain Valley School, students don’t need to choose between elite skiing and school life.

BY KIMBERLEY REYNOLDS t’s 7:45 a.m. on a Tuesday in May, and the GMVS campus is awake. Some students hurry to the Weiss Academic Building to buckle down for classes, while another stream of students heads over to the Racing Performance Center, or RPC. Each one has a locker in the newly minted 30,000-square-foot center, a state-of-the-art facility with a multipurpose gym. They lace up their indoor-only trainers, split off into age groups—U16s, U19s, etc.—and head into the weight room.

Strains of Drake waft through speakers, mixing with the thrum of the Keiser pneumatic resistance squat racks. Free weights thud onto the Mondo Sportflex flooring, and the students change stations in their rounds of circuit training. The U19 women move through their stretching routine—calf, hamstring, hip flexor, ab-/ adductor, quad—and then head to the machines. The movement is almost balletic, as commands are barked out by the women’s head coach, Dani Koch. “We never really stop training,” he comments. The temperature, although climate controlled, heats up as the groups move through a tough strength routine, followed by a stretching and cool-down period. When the students walk out the door, it’s 9:30 a.m., just in time for

I

GMVS’s Hannah Utter on the Inverness Race Course at Mt. Ellen

COURTESY OF GMVS

morning classes. The rest of the day will be filled with afternoon classes, more training, maybe even a lacrosse game (GMVS offers both men’s and women’s Division II soccer and lacrosse), dinner, and then an evening of homework.

This is a typical non-winter day at the Green Mountain Valley School, a small ski school academy nestled in the Mad River Valley. Winter gets even busier. Breakfast at 7 a.m., gate training at Mt. Ellen by 8 a.m., all the way through until a late lunch, and then classes until 6 p.m. Homework and ski tuning must be completed before bedtime, often as late as 10 p.m.

But then, GMVS has always been a place where a student could do it all. “The heart of the school is—ironically, with the focus on skiing—a place where students do not have to give up dreams of academic greatness or other sports, or theater, or the school prom,” said former headmaster Dave Gavett. “I think few schools are able to offer students access to truly being ‘all that you can be.’”

This is in sync with the GMVS philosophy: develop the whole person, and create wellrounded scholars, athletes, and citizens who live by the ideals GMVS endorses in its mission statement: “Discipline, Responsibility, Respect, Independent Initiative, Total Commitment, and Effort.”

This credo echoes the steady day-to-day pace of academy life and has shaped legions of student-athletes who have passed through the school’s doors.

Now in its fifth decade of operation, the school has just begun a new chapter. In July 2017, it welcomed Tracy Keller as head of school, a role that Dave Gavett filled for nearly thirty years.

• GMVS, or “The Mad Acad,” opened for business in the winter of 1973, with twelve winter-term students. Al Hobart, along with his wife, Jane (a local elementary teacher), Ashley Cadwell, Bill Moore, and John Schultz, were at the helm. Ski school academies already existed, but Hobart and his crew wanted to wow the competition by building an impressive academic résumé.

This included an MBA from Dartmouth, a Wellesley graduate with a master’s degree from Brown, a Pure Math graduate from MIT, and two Middlebury graduates, one

The early days of GMVS, at the Schultzes’ home in Moretown an economics major and the other with a Vermont teaching certificate.

The students arrived in the winter for a five-month tutorial program; they lived at the Hobarts’ ski chalet on Bragg Hill and in

The GMVS philosophy is to develop the whole person and create well-rounded scholars, athletes, and citizens who live by the ideals GMVS endorses in its mission statement: "Discipline, Responsibility, Respect, Independent Initiative, Total Commitment, and Effort." a rented chalet nearby, and brought their work from their home schools. Far from today’s routinized organization of school and sports, the operation ran by the seat of its pants. Transportation to and from Mt. Ellen and Sugarbush was in Hobart’s station wagon or Cadwell’s ailing van;

individual tutorials were held wherever space could be found.

The pictures from that era capture the heady atmosphere. One shows a group of forty kids and coaches standing on a huge snowbank, as well as atop the roof of the Schultz home and barn (the second campus for the fledgling academy), bundled up in down puffs and sweatshirts, wearing broad smiles, and hardly dreaming that their experiment would blossom into a fully accredited school with its own curriculum and campus.

The academy moved to its current site on Moulton Road in 1978. The dorms were built around a cornfield, which later became a soccer field, and the whole “Let’s give it a try” attitude burgeoned and grew into the community we see today, complete with a LEED-certified library, the Weiss Academic Building (renovated in 2014–15), the Racing Performance Center, the Dave Gavett theater, additional dormitories, two sports fields, and a student center.

The facilities GMVS uses to train at Sugarbush have gotten more sophisticated over the years, too. The school has its own dedicated training area at Mt. Ellen, the Kelly Brush Race Arena, boasting a T-bar, revamped Poma, and the Inverness and Brambles trails, all maintained

by Sugarbush. With the mountain’s 2017/18 43

LAUNCHING PAD GMVS skiers have gone on to train and compete at the highest levels. Here are a couple of recent highlights.

USSA National Training Group Out of all of the U19–21 ski racers in the entire country, three GMVS athletes were named to the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association’s National Training Group (NTG) for the 2016–17 season: Hannah Utter (’17), Jimmy Krupka (’16), and Ben Ritchie (’19). To put this in perspective: only four women qualified in the U19–21 age category, and only five spots were available on the men’s squad, with two GMVS athletes filling those slots.

The NTG is the premiere venue for young athletes to hone and develop their skills.

Athletes are selected based on objective criteria built on international rankings, performance, and head-to-head competition.

As Krupka wrote from Park City, Utah, where he and Ritchie were currently training with the Development Team: “At GMVS, the importance of fundamental skills is stressed from a young age. . . . When I joined the NTG, I had a solid base to work from.”

Utter credits GMVS with much of her success. “A lot of my teammates came into [the NTG], and they weren’t really ready for the demands of the physical training and the time management,” she said.

Ritchie adds that his year with the NTG “was amazing. The travel, the coaching, and being able to train and race with the top guys was unbelievable. You get to see where you stand against some of the guys that race World Cup.” JA

U.S. Ski Team The year that Drew Duffy graduated from GMVS (’13), both he and his brother Danny were nominated to the U.S. Ski Team. That might bring to mind one of the winningest duos in skiing history: twins Phil and Steve Mahre, who took gold and silver (respectively) at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. But while Danny has moved on to a successful academic and ski racing career at St. Michael’s College in Vermont, Drew has thrived on the team (and has been sponDrew Duffy at Sugarbush sored by Sugarbush since last year).

“I mean, this is my dream. I feel I’m still on the lower end of where I want to be. I want to be racing with the big guys, like Nyman [Steven, U.S. downhiller and Super G skier] and Ligety [Ted, Olympic Gold medalist]. It’s a tough process.”

He said it can take longer than an athlete anticipates. “Not everyone is Mikaela Shiffrin or Henrik Kristoffersen [the youngest male Olympic medalist in alpine skiing]. I think a lot of people, when they’re eighteen and graduating high school, think, ‘Oh, I’m not even close to that level.’ But give it a few more years and maybe.”

He said luck sometimes plays a pivotal role. In 2015, he won the Super G event at U.S. Nationals, starting from the thirtieth position. “That was completely unpredicted. I was having a terrible season, and . . . I shouldn’t have really won, but I don’t really know what happened that day.”

Watch List: Also keep an eye on the following GMVS athletes who will compete on the World Cup Circuit in the coming year: • AJ Ginnis (’11)—U.S. Ski Team member and 2017 U.S. Alpine Slalom champion • Ali Nullmeyer (’16)—Canadian World Cup Team member • Charlie Raposo (’14)—British National Ski Team member • Thomas Walsh (’13)—U.S. Paralympics Alpine Skiing National Team member 44 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

snowmaking capabilities, GMVS can get athletes on snow in early November; in addition, Sugarbush is able to host some of the first races of the season in New England. (The area is used not just by GMVS athletes but also by U.S. Ski Team members, thanks to GMVS’s designation as a U.S. Ski Team High Performance Center and, together with Sugarbush, a U.S. Ski Team Development Site.)

As the school and mountain facilities have changed, the student body has grown to an enrollment of 117 students—both alpine and Nordic skiers—but one thing is constant: the vision remains true to its 1973 roots of developing the whole person.

• This resonates with the current leadership.

Tim Harris has served as interim head of school for the past year. “We attract people that are drawn to our mission of developing the whole child,” Harris said, as he ticked off the core tenets that comprise the GMVS mission statement. Harris commented that the families who embrace GMVS, and the students who attend, “clearly see that we are different, and that we have a strong academic program, a great college record, and that we also have an athletic program that can satisfy the needs of a world-class athlete as well as someone who is working on the goal of becoming a top-level athlete.”

GMVS even manages to put on a fullscale musical production each fall. Recent productions include Shrek, Beauty and the Beast, Les Misérables, and Legally Blonde, complete with live orchestra and Broadwayinspired singing. As Gavett recalled, “I asked Al Hobart and Ashley Cadwell my first year at GMVS if I could start a theater program, and, in true GMVS fashion, they simply said, ‘Go ahead.’”

Past and current students capture this spirit. Thomas Walsh (’13) had starring roles in several theater productions during his time at the academy. “GMVS taught me to be respectful, self-reliant, independent, fiscally responsible, and to take ownership of my actions. What I learned at GMVS has spilled over into everything I do,” he said.

Thomas will likely compete on the U.S. Paralympics Alpine Skiing National Team in the 2018 Paralympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. (In 2009, at the age of fourteen, just days before Thomas was to

Thank you to Sugarbush Resort for providing us with a world-class training venue!

GREEN MOUNTAIN VALLEY SCHOOL

Fostering a life-long love of learning, sport, and adventure Alpine and Nordic Ski Academy for grades 7-12

www.gmvs.org 802.496.2150

2017/18 45

JA

GMVS’s training ground at Mt. Ellen—Inverness and the Kelly Brush Race Arena attend GMVS, he was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a rare disease in which cancer cells are found in the bone and soft tissue; he had a series of major surgeries, including on his pelvis and his lungs.)

Daron Rahlves (’91), a U.S. Ski Team member and World Cup champion who participated in four Winter Olympics, said, “The perseverance and work ethic I learned from GMVS in the classroom, gym, and outdoors . . . propelled me into an amazing ski career that lives on to this day.”

Mike Riddell, the father of GMVS student Lydia (’20), loves to see his daughter doing what she is passionate about, both on and off the snow. “What the GMVS kids learn about themselves and life goes much further than going around red and blue gates,” he said. “GMVS is supportive and invested in guiding Lydia’s growth and development as a student- athlete. It’s a fabulous training ground for life.”

Hannah Utter (’17), who was in the U.S. Ski Team’s 2016–17 National Training Group (NTG), valued the dual demands of skiing and academics. “Being a student-athlete, instead of just an athlete who just does school, prepares you to manage your time and to work a little harder,” she said. She’ll soon be skiing for Dartmouth College, where she’s a member of the class of ’21.

Jimmy Krupka (’16), who, like Utter, was part of the 2016–17 NTG (and was selected again for 2017–18), said he was pushed along

by GMVS’s “grueling” training program and high-level facilities. “GMVS prepared me very well for skiing at a higher level with the Development Team,” he said.

Perhaps Utter summed it up best: 46 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

“Well, I think you can’t be fully prepared for anything, but just getting your ass kicked for five years gets you ready.”

• When I spoke by phone with the incoming head of school, Tracy Keller, her husband and their two-year-old son were heading out the door to ski. After a misplaced ski sock was found and Keller’s family left for the mountain, we settled in for a brief but uninterrupted

With families shopping an array of choices in independent and charter schools, from STEM education to a focus on the arts, new head of school Tracy Keller believes that ski academies have their own niche, which gives them an advantage. conversation, her four-month-old daughter happily cooing in the background.

Keller grew up in Rutland, Vermont, and started ski racing when she was six years old. She went on to race for Dartmouth. By her senior year, she was captain of the ski team and thought she was going to attend law school, but first she wanted a fresh start in a new environment.

“Sight unseen, I took a job at Sugar Bowl Academy [not far from the Donner Pass in California] as a teacher, coach, and dorm

parent,” she said. As the years passed, and she assumed more responsibilities, she realized that she wasn’t going to attend law school, so instead got her master’s degree in secondary education from the University of Nevada, Reno. One thing led to another, and when the head of school stepped down, she served as interim head, eventually assuming the top role after a nationwide search. She held that role for ten years.

Keller was not deterred by the fact that the world of ski racing—both in terms of who coaches at the highest levels and who leads the ski academies—is heavily dominated by men (she is one of only two women heading a ski academy in the U.S.). “A lot of it, I attribute to being a member of the Women’s Ski Team at Dartmouth and being surrounded for four years by women who really didn’t see [being a woman] as a barrier,” she said. “For me, being a part of that team fostered the sense that we can do whatever we put our minds to.”

With families shopping an array of choices in independent and charter schools, from STEM education to a focus on the arts, Keller believes that ski academies have their own niche, which gives them an advantage.

If students want to ski competitively, she explained, the easiest path is to be “on the ground at a ski academy.” Part of her role will be to articulate what that ski academy experience has to offer.

She thinks another part of her role as head of school is to honor GMVS’s history and culture. At the same time, she said, “We are at a point where we can expand in the ski academy market, and say, ‘Hey, the ski academy model is valuable in so many different ways.’” She hopes to take GMVS to the “next level,” and incorporate some of the work she did at Sugar Bowl. During her tenure there, Keller helped bring the school and ski club to new heights, earning CAIS (California Association of Independent Schools) accreditation, achieving U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association Gold Certification (a measure of a school’s organizational and athletic success), doubling enrollment, and spearheading a successful $13 million capital campaign.

A daunting challenge? Perhaps, but Keller is tough, thoughtful, and not afraid to take on that task. With her at the helm, GMVS is ready to start on its next chapter.

Kimberley Reynolds lives in Warren, Vermont.

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2017/18 47

Extreme skiing legend John Egan has made a career of testing his limits—and teaching others to test theirs, too.

BY KATIE BACON

T

o understand John Egan as a skier and as a person, it helps to understand the story behind the hot-pink onepiece suit he had a habit of wearing as he was filmed skiing some of the toughest lines on the planet. The suit was a gift from John’s idol, Patrick Vallençant, a French extreme skier who had several first descents of slopes previously considered too steep to ski.

On John’s first trip to ski in the Alps, he would trail Vallençant and his crew, climbing up a couple of hours behind them and

John Egan in his lucky pink ski suit, with brother Dan close behind

PHOTO PROVIDED BY: DEGAN MEDIA

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photos: John Atkinson / Sugarbush Resort

PRESENTS

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John and Dan Egan checking out their lines on the set of a Warren Miller film. then skiing the same spots. One day John ran into Vallençant off the mountain, and told him that he and a friend had been following the French skier around. Vallençant had noticed, and admitted that his group had waited for John on the far side of a couloir, wondering how he would cross it without a rope. As John remembers it, Vallençant asked him, in his French accent: “‘How did you get down the other day? We wait and laugh for over an hour because you never come!’ And I said, ‘Oh, that was scary, man, you had to climb back up an extra 150 feet and get more speed and jump over it.’ He said, ‘You jumped? You jump, we ski!’” After that, John started guiding with Vallençant, and representing his sportswear company, Degré7. In early 1989, Vallençant shipped the pink suit, made by Degré7, to John, along with a note. The suit was still stuck in customs when Vallençant died in a rock climbing accident.

The way John thinks about it, that suit saved his life twice. Once he was wearing it when he was caught in an avalanche.

Another time, in what has become perhaps the most famous clip in ski movie history, John and his brother Dan were skiing fast

50 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

in unison, John behind Dan, down along the edge of a cornice at Wyoming’s Grand Targhee. John saw Dan hit what looked like a puff of snow, and heard a loud cracking sound. A block of snow the size of an eighteen-wheeler started crumbling away

’ ““I’ ’ve never really cared about being better than the other guy, ”I wanted to be better than I was yesterday; I wanted to push my limits and see where my limits were. Really for me it was a challenge between me and the mountain.””” right in front of John, leaving him with the tips of his skis over a thousand-foot abyss.

Instinctively, using the tails of his skis as springboards, he changed direction midair, landing back on the snow—but just barely.

The clip of John defying death became the opening segment of Warren Miller’s 1991 film Extreme Winter, and the pink suit went on to become a uniform of sorts for extreme

skiers. (As John told me, “Back in the day, pink was not a big color for guys. One-piece pink suits really were not. So to wear that, you better ski like a badass.”) Over the years, as the Egan brothers built their own extreme skiing entertainment business, they would sponsor other skiers—but only if they wore the pink suit. “I can’t tell you how many great skiers have worn that pink suit,” John says.

“Patrick’s magical powers went with it, I guess. I felt like the suit was a good omen.”

• John grew up testing the limits of speed and danger, but as a drag racer, not a skier.

His best friend’s father raced cars, and John would spend weekends at his house or at the racetrack, tinkering with motors to try to get them to go faster. By the time John was twelve, he had a go-cart that could reach 98 miles an hour in a quarter mile. He also raced bikes, and, as he grew older, a pro stock car. He tried to keep his mother in the dark about it all by storing his trophies at his friend’s house. “My mom had no idea what I was doing on the weekends, but one day she found all my trophies, which had the name, date, and how fast you went, and she flipped out. She was not happy at all.”

tour. But he found over time that his heart wasn’t in it—those types of competition didn’t capture what he loved about the sport. “I’ve never really cared about being better than the other guy. I wanted to be better than I was yesterday; I wanted to push my limits and see where my limits were. Really for me it was a challenge between me and the mountain.”

It was John’s brother Dan, younger by six years, who showed John that extreme skiing could be a career. Dan brought a business degree and marketing expertise to the partnership, which helped them build Egan Entertainment Network, as well as businesses running extreme skiing clinics and guiding other skiers. But he also matched John’s sense of daring, and their blood connection helped them figure out together how to take on ultra-challenging new slopes while skiing in fluid unison.

(Dan points out that there’s lots of footage of the brothers skiing in side-by-side couloirs, separated by thick walls of snow, yet matching each other turn for turn.) If the two climbed up a slope together, they’d talk about what they saw along the way and how

John’’”s title as Sugarbush’’s ““chief recreation offfiicer”””

hints at the sense of fun and adventure he brings to his role helping people of all ages and levels fi ffiind where their edge is———that place that’’s challenging and a little bit scary. to ski it. And whichever one was “feeling it” that day would head down first. “Both of us have a unique way of approaching the unskiable. Between the two of us, one would unlock it for the other. Having that mirror image was what other skiers didn’t have,” said Dan. Together, John and Dan guided groups down first descents in remote parts of the world, from Greenland to Kamchatka to the tip of South America. These trips got at the very heart of why John has chosen to build his life around skiing. “We went to these remote places that were difficult to ski, and tried to ski them before other humans had skied them. It wasn’t about

JA

Meanwhile, the Egan family—five boys and two girls—grew up skiing at Cranmore in New Hampshire, and at Blue Hills, near where they lived in Milton. But it wasn’t until John decided to ski-bum at Sugarbush instead of going to college—another choice that did not sit well with his mother—that he started on the path to extreme skiing.

When John arrived at Sugarbush in 1976, the head of the ski school was Sigi Grottendorfer, an Austrian ski racer who spent the rest of the year teaching at Portillo in Chile. Instructors could follow Grottendorfer from Vermont to Chile and back, which made Sugarbush an appealing place for excellent teachers for whom skiing was both their year-round livelihood and their passion. As John describes it, “You had the best of the best here, and they were all sharing their secrets. But it was nothing that was pretentious. They were like, ‘Hey, kid. Try this.’ They saw potential, and they shared what they knew.” It was at Sugarbush that John first started “exploring the woods and the landscape and not really worrying about how to get down a trail, but how to get down a mountain.” It was also at Sugarbush that John first started making a name for himself. Tom Day, who grew up in Montpelier and would go on to film John and Dan and now films for Warren Miller Entertainment, remembers hearing about “this guy John Egan,” and then coming to Sugarbush and seeing him from a lift. “I saw him ski down under the chair and was blown away. It’s his combination of power, fluidity, control, and how fast he can ski and keep it together. He flows like water down the hill,” Day said.

Around the same time, John started skiing out West, and got a job driving an eighteenwheeler and delivering produce around the country. The schedule suited him perfectly, since he could drive during the growing season and ski during the rest of the year.

But he kept on returning to Sugarbush, and in 1978 was discovered there by Warren Miller, who had asked around to find the best skiers on the mountain. John appeared in the film Ski a la Carte, the first of his more than a dozen Warren Miller films, and also the beginning for him of skiing as a profession, not just as an intense hobby.

In the early 1980s, John skied on both the pro mogul tour and the pro gate-racing

John, up close and personal going somewhere and proving we were the best skier. It was about doing these things that made us feel good. I think that was the biggest point of skiing to me—I was drawn to what was left to explore,” he said.

• Even when John started a family, he kept on exploring the world—in the early years he’d often bring his son Johnny with him, and by the time Johnny was three, he’d already skied on three continents. When he was nine, he climbed with John and twentyfour of his clients up to 15,000 feet in the Andes and then skied down. (Johnny is now an extreme skier based out of Montana.)

But around the time John and his wife had their second child, Willy, Win Smith—in his new role as majority owner of Sugarbush— made John a proposal: why not work at the mountain full time, and see if clients, after following him around the world, would follow him to Sugarbush? That is how John became the mountain’s “chief recreation officer,” a title that hints at the sense of fun and adventure he brings to his role helping people of all ages and levels find where their edge is—that place that’s challenging and a little bit scary. “That’s the best part about skiing and the best part of my job: I get to share what I love with people.” And these days, John continued, “I don’t have to go prove to myself that I won’t die on something each day, because I can get the same thrill out of making five people better.”

Over the years, his job has also expanded to include a more strategic role at the resort, 2017/18 51

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Dan and John Egan at the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame induction ceremony in April 2017 along with helping to run leadership retreats drawing on his expertise making decisions in dangerous, tight situations. As Smith sees it, “You have to have a little bit of flexibility.

He’s not a round peg. You have to find the things that are going to excite him, then he’s going to excite others. And the enthusiasm he has for this place rubs off.”

For John’s part, Sugarbush and the valley surrounding it are home. “He could ski anywhere in the world, but he’s chosen to HJVB

John giving some pointers on Rumble 52 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

make this his home mountain,” said Smith.

Part of the reason is the sense of community John’s found: this is the place where he has raised his sons, where he’s built houses, where he enjoys the four seasons and the challenging terrain, and where he’s found a crew of friends who are as fun to ski with as anyone in the world. “It’s not always the mountain you’re on, it’s who you’re skiing with. There are people who will push my limits right here every day.”

John has been skiing extremes for forty years, a record of longevity especially impressive in a sport that is defined by the risks people take and that values the newest and flashiest tricks. This past spring, John and Dan were recognized for their pioneering place in the world of extreme skiing when they were inducted into the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame. The beginning of the video introducing the Egan brothers hinted both at the unique flair they’ve brought to the sport and at how much the sport has changed: “Decades before GoPro, YouTube, and cell phone video, these crazy brothers from New England were jumping cliffs and skiing steeps.”

When asked what has played into that longevity, and what has enabled him to ski at the edge for so long (though that edge may have necessarily shifted a bit as the years have passed), John comes up with a range of

reasons. Maybe it’s the way things slow down for him while he skis—he explained that it somehow feels as if time is being stretched, the way it is during action scenes in The Matrix. “There’s a mellowness to it, a peacefulness, a zen, and enlightenment that allows you to live through a lot of dangerous things,” he said. Maybe it’s the attention

he’s paid over the years to what’s around him (observing how snow is affected by temperature and the mountain’s pitch) and within him (listening to his gut instincts).

“There’s that sixth sense that allows you to say, ‘Today’s not the day that I’m going to go do that situation over there.’ I had really good partners. We made a lot of good decisions out there, we trusted each other, and we didn’t do things we thought were silly. We always thought we were calculated about what we were doing.” Maybe it’s that he has lived so much of his life at high speed that when he needs to he’s able to

EUGENE KRYLOV

John teaching woods-skiing techniques intuit how to move, instead of pausing to think. “By the time you take a second to think, life has already happened, that cornice is breaking. It didn’t stop while you stopped to think. It didn’t stop at all until it hit the bottom.” Or maybe it’s just, as he said, the “luck of the Irish”—or the luck of the pink suit.

That suit, with its late-’80s style, was retired from the ski slope a while back, and passed along to someone else in the Valley. But the next time you’re out and about in the area on a cold day and see someone working on their burn pile, look closely. He just might be wearing a piece of skiing history.

Learn from the master by taking a lesson with John Egan. Whether you’re interested in tree skiing, cliff jumping, backcountry ski mountaineering, or improving your turns on tamer runs, he’ll help you push yourself to your next level. Pricing and options are spelled out here: www.sugarbush.com/ lessons/egan-adventures/.

Katie Bacon, a writer and editor based in Boston, is the managing editor of Sugarbush Magazine. She is a former editor at the Atlantic and her work has appeared in the Boston Globe and the New York Times, among other publications.

stay fit

Sugarbush Health & Recreation Center (SHaRC) is a fully-appointed year-round fitness and racquet club. Whether you seek group classes, personal training, tennis, swim instruction, family entertainment, or relaxation, a visit to SHaRC will enhance your Sugarbush experience.

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For more information, call 802.583.6700 or visit sugarbush.com 2017/18 53

Suga

Cross word Puzz le

rbus

h Hot

Spot

s

JASON MORRIS

SUGAR KIDS

JA

Across

Down

1. kids’ favorite trail 3. Winding trail down from Heaven’s Gate 4. elevation 4083 ft 5. Gadd Peak hot chocolate stop 6. specialty grilled-cheese found here 8. woods trail off Snowball 10. classic, steep bump trail 12. follow the old gondola route

2. PARKS home 7. Castlerock Extreme course 9. elevation 3975 ft 10. woods-skiing area with a bus ride at the end 11. GMVS training ground

JOKES! 1. What do you get when you cross a bear with a forest?

2. What does Murphy Moose do if he calls when you are not home?

3. Why does Murphy Moose lift weights at the SHaRC? 54 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

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JA

SUGAR KIDS

Mountain Fuel WORD SEARCH Sugarbush’s restaurants, bars, and cafes offer a wide variety of food options year-round – can you find your favorite place and food hidden in the letters?

JA HJVB

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G Y A K F W S H X Y G G A K M Q Y C W K G J M B N N R K Z X T C Q T A W R E D E I X D W T O Q U X H O D E E S H G C K A U I A C A V R E B U N P T O D T N N E G L J F A Y N L U I F T H O T F K A T J O N L P C N N I U Y P D L R I N K S Q I C B C O N C O T P F O M W H L G E E S U Y B Z O O R H X Q U V W T U N A P O N Z U R D N H E M O R T O E A L T X R X C T A P A U B B B C A S F I E W C A Z G C B H E C N O X Q H E N O A H G J R L S O L Z N O R K P T H G O D T O H C T R I O M T O L N I T U U L U F S I S V C F W X G S A L H S A A O P O N P W T T B B C R Q T W X M W U H I A X T C A T T M O G C U I O K I N S E H G T Q I C N E E G A R B B E P I T X L E T V V E P T X S R H U L S J Y N E E L P Q N F J N T U Y B F W R U H E S E O S N L D Q E F E N I T W M L Y L Q L M M W E F C A U D O V C E R G R I C I Z W F J D B H W T S G L O O N V D T H Q B E C U N F O N K L F U K B E A R O N E G G A X E C N B V G G B O E Y B F Y H D S N N P P Z E F E K E R K Q S Y N S I P S K I N N Y P A N C A K E I N O S P E T G O H B C B J R C A F H B X H B X I R W K S E R A L G W Y F U F W S U Y V V V W C E J N Y S W I S V K A W A L T S G M X E C U Z L B O I R Y O I Y S E I R F A E P K C I H C E S U O H E L F F A W P S S L D I A M O C L D Y C I J W M S M X S I Y U P

JASON MORRIS

Crossword Puzzle Answers. Across: 1. Sleeper, 3. Jester, 4. Mt. Ellen, 5. Allyn’s Lodge, 6. Walt’s, 8. Eden, 10.

Stein’s, 12. Organgrinder. Down: 2. Riemergasse, 7. Lift Line, 9. Lincoln Peak, 10. Slide Brook, 11. Inverness.

Jokes. Fur trees. 2. He’ll leave a detailed moose-age. 3. He wants big moose-les.

56 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

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W IN T E R F O O D & B E V E R AGE O P T IONS A R O UND T HE M O UN TA IN

RUMBLE’S KITCHEN Enjoy fresh, American cuisine in an approachable and fun atmosphere. Serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. (Located in the former Timbers Restaurant).

CASTLEROCK PUB Classic Vermont-influenced pub menu with outstanding craft beverages. Features live music on weekends.

THE WÜNDERBAR A legend reborn, Sugarbush’s original après hangout, featuring retro beers, sandwiches, hearty soups and fresh salads in the original Valley House Lodge.

WALT’S AT THE GLEN HOUSE A refurbished Glen House at Mt. Ellen with a small bar and menu that includes gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches, grain bowls, home-made soups, and burritos.

Hours vary by season. For more information, visit Sugarbush.com or call 800.53.SUGAR. 2017/18 57

DINING DIRECTORY RESTAURANT DESCRIPTION PRICE RANGE CONTACT 275 Main at the Pitcher Inn Elegant farm-to-table cuisine and fine wine in a sophisticated setting. $$$$ 802.496.6350

“This may be Vermont’s best restaurant,” writes the New York Times. pitcherinn.com Allyn’s Lodge Fireside Dining Farm-to-table four-course meal served fireside at Sugarbush’s $$$$ 802.583.6590

mid-mountain lodge. Arrive by cabin cat or hike; ski or cat down. sugarbush.com American Flatbread Farm-to-table pizza baked in a primitive wood-fired earthen oven. $$ 802.496.8856 americanflatbread.com Big Picture Café and Theater The Valley’s unofficial cultural center and café, open seven days a week $$ 802.496.8994

from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. bigpicturetheater.info The Blue Stone A rustic pizza shop and tavern in the heart of Vermont. $$ 802.496.3499

Featuring Old World hand-tossed pizza with a New World local twist. bluestonevermont.com The Butchery Full-service butcher shop and fish market featuring local meats $$$ 802.496.FISH

and Wood Mountain Fish. thebridgestreetbutchery.com Canteen Creemee Company Serving fried chicken, burgers, fries, and creemees in the heart $ 802.496.6003

of the Mad River Valley. canteencreemee.com Castlerock Pub Classic Vermont-influenced pub menu with outstanding craft beverages $$ 802.583.6594

and local beers. Open daily in winter, and on summer holidays. sugarbush.com Chez Henri Parisian bistrot in historic Sugarbush Village since 1964. Winter only. $$$ 802.583.2600 China Fun Standard Chinese; takeout only. $ 802.496.7889 Common Man Contemporary American cuisine prepared by chef-owner Adam Longworth. $$$ 802.583.2800

Full bar, diverse wine list, and warm hospitality. commonmanrestaurant.com East Warren Community Market The Valley’s local food co-op, providing prepared foods as well as local, organic, $$ 802.496.6758

and specialty items from cheese and eggs to beer and bakery items. Open daily. eastwarrenmarket.org General Stark’s Pub & Grill Full bar and table service for lunch and après in winter; $$ 802.496.3551

Thurs.–Sat. 4:30–8:30 p.m. in summer. In the Mad River Glen Basebox. madriverglen.com Hogan’s Pub Seasonal lunch menu, local burgers, well-stocked bar, and long Valley views. $$ 802.583.6723

Open daily in summer. sugarbush.com Home Plate Family-friendly Vermont-style grill with a touch of diner, $$ 802.496.9300

featuring great food and exceptional service. homeplatevt.com The Hyde Away Farm-fresh local fare featuring creative entrées, sandwiches, burgers, $$$ 802.496.2322

wings, salads, craft beers, and specialty cocktails. hydeawayinn.com Local Folk Smokehouse Serving house-made BBQ Cajun burgers and more, $$ 802.496.5623

plus twenty-five local and regional drafts. localfolkvt.com Mad River Barn Pub with burgers, entrées, and local brews; family-friendly dining. $$$ 802.496.3310

Open seven days a week. madriverbarn.com Mad Taco Offering some of the most authentic Mexican fare in Vermont, as well as $$ 802.496.3832

a small selection of fine craft and Mexican beers and tequila. themadtaco.com MINT Vegetarian/vegan cuisine located in historic Waitsfield Village. $$$ 802.496.5514 mintvermont.com Mix Cupcakerie Gourmet cupcakes, wedding and special-occasion cakes, pies, $$ 802.496.4944

soups, salads, lunch options, comfort meals, and more. mixcupcakerie.com Mutha Stuffers Eat-in or takeout deli serving a full line of Boar’s Head products and $$ 802.583.4477

local Vermont beers in historic Sugarbush Village. muthastuffers.com Paradise Deli & Market Grocery store and deli. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner takeout. $ 802.583.2757

Located on Sugarbush Access Road.

Peasant Traditional rustic European food, open Thurs.–Mon. after 5:30 p.m.; $$$ 802.496.6856

reservations recommended. peasantvt.com Pizza Soul Authentic hand-crafted, thin crust, gourmet pizza, calzones, $$ 802.496.6202

and strombolis, in historic Sugarbush Village. pizzasoul.com Reks Year-round family-friendly restaurant with a bar and arcade, $$ 802.583.3232

in historic Sugarbush Village.

Rumble’s Kitchen Slopeside restaurant serving fresh American cuisine in a fun atmosphere. $$–$$$ 802.583.6800

Well-behaved dogs welcome on patio. Open year-round.

Shepherd’s Pub A restaurant sourcing food from local farms, with sixteen draft beers and delicious $$$ 802.583.4373

craft cocktails using local and regional spirits. Open for lunch and dinner in season. shepherdspubvt.com Skinny Pancake Serving sweet and savory crepes with local sustainable products. $$ 802.583.7444

Located on the first floor of the Farmhouse. Winter only. skinnypancake.com Sweet Spot Café, bakery, ice cream, and spirits. Serving breakfast and lunch $$ 802.496.9199

seven days a week. thesweetspotvermont.com Three Mountain Café Breakfast sandwiches, lunch to go, pastries, sweet treats, $ 802.496.5470

espresso, and coffee. threemountaincafe.com Tracks at the Pitcher Inn Craft beers, fine wine, and imaginative pub fare. $$$ 802.496.6350 pitcherinn.com Waffle Cabin Outdoors next to Gate House Lodge at Lincoln Peak (just follow your nose), $ 802.558.5691

offering assorted beverages and sweet waffles.

Warren Store Sumptuous baked goods, prepared foods, artisanal beer, and plenty of $$ 802.496.3864

wine choices. Open daily for breakfast, lunch, and staples. warrenstore.com 58 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

$: budget $$: affordable $$$: moderate $$$$: fine

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• Thurs-Sun, 5:00-9:30pm • All Natural Pizza Baked in a Wood-Fired Oven • Farm to table cuisine • Local craft brews on tap • Nightly AprÈs ski bonfire

ph: (802) 496-8856 americanflatbread.com VTSki+RideMagAd_July2017.pdf

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Family-friendly, Vermont-style bar and grill with a touch of diner.

Amazing burgers, salad bar, local beer, homemade desserts, and so much more!

• $85-$135/night, Hearty farmhouse breakfast incl.

• Minutes from Sugarbush & Mad River Glen • Stay 3 nights, 4th night free • Families & Pets accommodated

MAD RIVER GREEN 496-9300 HOMEPLATEVT.COM

ph: (802) 496-4949 lareaufarminn.com

2017/18 59

bakEry & café

pastries • custom cakes • espresso

With magnificent views of the mountains and the Valley, Hogan’s Pub serves up a variety of salads, sandwiches, and burgers for lunch, and cold beer and cocktails for après. Open May through October.

Located at Sugarbush Resort Golf Club

279 Elm Street, Montpelier, VT • 802-223-0200 • contact@birchgrovebaking.com

Extensive selection of quality wines Over 900 WINE FACINGS in all price ranges Over 300 SELECT CRAFT BEERS

~

WAITSFIELD WINE SHOPPE 4330 Main Street • Waitsfield, Vermont 802-583-9463 (WINE) www.waitsfieldwine.com 60 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

SuGaRbuSh.Com

800.53.SuGaR

Built in 1839, this spirited country store combines an eclectic deli and bakery, an award winning wine shop, Vermont artisanal beer and plenty of local color.

From penny candy to contemporary clothing and gifts...”

• •

Open 363 1/2 days a year!

Located 1 mile south of the Sugarbush Access Road off Route 100.

“Best One Stop Shopping in Vermont” – Yankee Magazine

warrenstore.com 802-496-3864

the

vermont craft beers » party platters available » full line of Boars Head provisions

deli

802.583.4477 located in Sugarbush Village | open year round

family restaurant & bar

802.583.3232

arcade » event space available » 12 vermont beers on draft

new

t in a e e l y t s york

follow us on facebook 2017/18 61

LODGING DIRECTORY INN/HOTEL

STYLE

PRICE RANGE

CONTACT

1824 House Relaxed, comfortable, and tasteful B&B on fourteen gorgeous acres in Waitsfield. $$$ 802.496.7555 1824house.com The Battlegrounds One- to four-bedroom condominiums, sleeping four to twelve. Fully equiped. $$–$$$$ 802.583.3000 sugarbushvillagecondos.com Beaver Pond Farm Inn

Distinctive and intimate B&B or full house rental five minutes $$$ from Sugarbush Resort.

Bridges Family Resort & Tennis Club

Couples or family getaway, one- to three-bedroom condos with tennis, $$$ 802.583.2922 pools, and fitness classes. bridgesresort.com

Clay Brook

Luxury slopeside one- to five-bedroom residences with year-round outdoor $$$$ heated pool and hot tubs.

800.685.8285 beaverpondfarminn.com

800.53.SUGAR sugarbush.com

Eagles Resort Freestanding, Swedish-design, two-bedroom homes. $$$ 802.496.5700 eaglesresortvt.com Featherbed Inn

Charming Waitsfield B&B with fieldstone fireplace, and home-baked pies $$–$$$ on Saturdays.

802.496.7151 featherbedinn.com

Hostel Tevere

Thirty beds of European hostel-style lodging; shared bathrooms $ and common spaces.

802.496.9222 hosteltevere.com

Hyde Away Inn

Family-friendly, pet-friendly, nine-room inn with casual accommodations. $$ Farm-fresh restaurant and classic local tavern.

802.496.2322 hydeawayinn.com

Inn at Lareau Farm A classic Vermont farmhouse nestled in the Mad River Valley. $$–$$$ 802.496.4949 lareaufarminn.com Inn at Round Barn Farm Boutique country inn, twelve rooms, cozy fireplaces, farm-to-table breakfast. $$$$ 802.496.2276 theroundbarn.com Mad River Barn Family-friendly lodging with onsite restaurant, pub, and game room. $$$ 802.496.3310 madriverbarn.com Mad River Inn Relaxed atmosphere, with outdoor hot tub and BYOB lounge with pool table. $$$ 802.496.7900 madriverinn.com Mad River Lodge

Brand-new (2017), standard rooms and two-bedroom efficiencies with kitchens. $$$ Located two miles from Mad River Glen and Mt. Ellen.

802.496.6969 madriverlodge.com

Millbrook Inn

Set in a nineteenth-century farmhouse, a homey B&B $$ with views of the Green Mountains.

802.496.2405 millbrookinn.com

Mountain View Inn

Beautiful inn with cozy rooms and delicious breakfasts. $$ Minutes from skiing and town.

802.496.2426 vtmountainviewinn.com

Pitcher Inn

Relais & Châteaux luxury with eleven well-appointed, unique guest rooms $$$$ and exquisite dining.

802.496.6350 pitcherinn.com

Sugarbush Inn

Comfortable and affordable family-friendly inn minutes from the mountain. $$ Open winter only; summer for private groups.

800.53.SUGAR sugarbush.com

Sugarbush Resort One- to four-bedroom privately owned condos, on or near the mountain. $$$ Condominiums

800.53.SUGAR sugarbush.com

Sugarbush Village Condominiums

Fully equipped one- to four-bedroom condominiums close to Sugarbush $$–$$$ and Mad River Glen.

800.583.3000 sugarbushvillagecondos.com

Sugar Lodge

One-half mile from Lincoln Peak. Family-friendly, modern hotel rooms $$ with great ski packages.

800.982.3465 sugarlodge.com

Sugartree Inn

Closest inn to Lincoln Peak; nine great rooms, creative full breakfast, $$$ and outdoor hot tub.

802.583.3211 sugartree.com

Tucker Hill Inn

Peaceful country B&B lodging close to Sugarbush. Fireplace rooms $$$ to multi-person suites.

802.496.3983 tuckerhill.com

Waitsfield Inn

Historic inn within minutes of mountains, centrally located, $$$ walk to shops and dining.

802.496.3979 waitsfieldinn.com

Warren Falls Inn

The Olsen House, a post-and-beam structure built in 1971, offering private $$ rooms with shared baths and communal kitchen.

802.496.2977 warrenfallsinn.com

Warren Lodge (formerly Golden Lion)

Newly renovated (2016), standard efficient rooms decorated with rustic $$$ farmhouse-chic décor. Only three miles from Sugarbush.

802.496.3084 thewarrenlodge.com

Weathertop Mountain Inn Eclectic and spacious European-style inn. En-suite guest rooms. $$$

Hot tub, game room, evening dining.

802.800.3625 weathertopmountaininn.com

West Hill House B&B

802.496.7162 westhillbb.com

Award-winning B&B beside Sugarbush: comfort, hospitality, and great $$$ breakfasts year-round. Complimentary shuttle.

White Horse Inn A twenty-six-room B&B at the entrance to Mt. Ellen at Sugarbush Resort. $$ 802.496.9448 whitehorseinn-vermont.com Wilder Farm Inn Beautiful rooms, delicious breakfast, and wood-burning fireplaces. $$$ 800.496.8878 wilderfarminn.com Yellow Farmhouse Inn King and queen beds, private baths with Jacuzzis, and gas stoves; on shuttle route. $$$ 802.496.4263 yellowfarmhouseinn.com $: budget $$: affordable $$$: moderate $$$$: fine 62 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

WhiteHorseInn-SugarbushAd_Layout 1 7/22/14 11:23 A

Cozy Comfort at the Center of Vermont’s Three Finest Ski Areas

At the entrance to Sugarbush Mt. Ellen & just 5 minutes from Sugarbush Lincoln Peak & Mad River Glen, our 26-room Inn serves a full breakfast in a homey setting at affordable rates.

Serving Vermont beers & wines.

Perfect for groups.

802-496-9448 in Fayston/ Waitsfield www.WhiteHorseInn-Vermont.com

Spacious Swedish Contemporary Homes Rentals & Sales

ROUTE 100 / P.O. BOX 208 WAITSFIELD, VERMONT 05673 802-496-5700 eaglesresortvt.com

Lodging • Restaurant • Pub

Farm-Fresh ~ Local

Family Friendly

Open 7 Nights Food ‘til 10 Classic Tavern Open Late

Tucker Hill Inn

www. tuckerhill .com 496-3983 • tuckerhill@tuckerhill.com

Stay · Eat · Play 1428 Millbrook Rd (Rt 17) Waitsfield, VT 802.496.2322 ~ hydeawayinn.com hydeaway@madriver.com

65 Marble Hill Rd, Waitsfield, VT 2017/18 63

TIMELINE

Damon and Sara Gadd, along with Jack Murphy and Lixi Fortna, open Sugarbush Resort. Sugarbush boasts the “greatest vertical rise in the East” thanks to its three–person top-to-bottom gondola.

The resort installs a Carlevaro & Savio double chairlift, opening up the legendary Castlerock area. This area was immediately known for its expert ski terrain. That reputation continues today.

With a newly rebuilt access road and a new Valley House chairlift, Sugarbush begins attracting throngs of New York glitterati. Vogue dubs Sugarbush “Mascara Mountain” because of its glamorous guest list, including actress Kim Novak, the Kennedy clan, musician Skitch Henderson, and fashion designer Oleg Cassini.

Roy Cohen purchases Sugarbush (in 1977) and Glen Ellen (in 1979). The two areas join under the Sugarbush name.

Glen Ellen is renamed Sugarbush North to reflect the union. (In 1995, it is renamed Mt. Ellen.)

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‘59 Walt Elliott opens Glen Ellen Ski Area. Complete with Scotch-themed trail names, Glen Ellen claims “the greatest vertical descent in the East” with its tiered lifts to the 4,083-foot summit of Mt. Ellen.

‘60 ‘63

Olympic Gold Medalist Stein Eriksen serves as director of the Sugarbush Ski School. Each Sunday afternoon he performs his signature flip on skis.

The Gate House area opens with a new double chair.

‘64 ‘77

‘58

Chez Henri, a Parisian-style bistro, opens in what is to become historic Sugarbush Village.

‘66 Sugarbush is featured in Warren Miller’s film Ski a la Carte.

‘83 Heaven’s Gate chairs are installed, and uphill capacity increases fourfold.

With a plan to operate as a four-season resort, Claneil Enterprises purchases the mountain, ‘84 Sugarbush Inn, the racquet club, the golf course, and numerous condo and townhouse developments.

American Skiing Company purchases Sugarbush and makes major infrastructure ‘90 investments, including installing seven new lifts, three of which are detachable quads.

Three new The Slide Brook Express ferries skiers back and forth to newly renamed Mt. Ellen. chairlifts are Snowmaking improvements include a new 25-million-gallon pond and miles of pipe.

‘95 installed at Mt. Ellen— Warren Miller films local legends John Egan, Doug Lewis, Jesse Murphy, Sally including Green Mountain Express, ‘96 Knight, and Seth Miller at Sugarbush for the film Snowriders. at that time the fastest quad in the

Roy Cohen sells Sugarbush to ARA Service. ARA removes the gondola. Super Bravo and

world, transporting skiers at 1,100 feet per minute.

‘01 ‘06

‘10 ‘13 ‘15 ‘16

‘17 44 SUGARBUSH SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE MAGAZINE 64

Summit Ventures, a small group of local investors led by Win Smith, purchases Sugarbush, and begins to lay the groundwork for a new master plan for the resort that closely reflects the values and philosophies of the original owners, as well as the character and style of the Mad River Valley and Vermont.

Lincoln Peak Village opens to the public. The new facilities include Gate House Lodge, Clay Brook Hotel, and Timbers Restaurant. The new village is modeled on the traditional style of Vermont farmhouses, barns, and schoolhouses.

The Schoolhouse and Farmhouse open.

Construction is completed on Rice Brook Residences, private homes linking Lincoln Peak Village to historic Sugarbush Village.

The original Valley House lift is replaced with a fixed-grip quad, more than doubling its uphill capacity.

Construction is completed on Gadd Brook Slopeside, sixteen private homes at the base of Lincoln Peak named after the resort’s founding family.

The Village Double and Sunshine Double chairlifts are replaced with fixed-grip quad lifts, and RFID gates are installed in lift lines.

NSAA Safety Month

Contest Winners

During the month of January, the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) encourages ski areas to promote safety on the slopes by holding weekly activities that are fun and educational. As part of the program, the NSAA holds several contests. Sugarbush had two winners in 2017!

The winner of the NSAA’s annual Safety Month Photo Contest, showing ski patrol director Colin Cascadden giving a sled ride (photo by John Atkinson)

Waitsfield Elementary School fifth-grader Emma Riley’s winning entry for the NSAA Safety Month Poster Contest

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SUGARBUSH CLOSE-UP

THE MOUNTAINS

SUGARBUSH After years of skiing at the mountain with his family, Win Smith and a small group of investors purchased Sugarbush in September of 2001. They have since embarked on reshaping the Sugarbush experience to reflect the authentic nature of the Mad River Valley while honoring the resort’s rich history dating back to 1958. Incorporating traditional Vermont architecture into the village, hosting cultural events, and highlighting local agriculture in the resort’s culinary offerings are just some of the ways Sugarbush delivers a rich experience for its guests.

In 2006, Sugarbush completed construction of Clay Brook Hotel & Residences and Gate House Lodge. Four years later, two more skier-services buildings—the Schoolhouse and the Farmhouse—were added to Lincoln Peak Village. Rice Brook Residences— fifteen new homes in three buildings—were completed in 2013, connecting Lincoln Peak Village and historic Sugarbush Village. And in 2016, construction was completed on Gadd Brook Slopeside—sixteen private homes named after the resort’s founding family.

Each year, Win Smith and his entire resort team work hard to make good on the

Sugarbush promise: Be Better Here. Since 2001, Smith’s team has invested over $65 million in mountain improvements.

Snowmaking upgrades at both mountains, in the form of new, energy-efficient compressors and snow guns, account for almost $7 million of that investment. More than $8 million has been spent on new lifts.

Recently, the resort replaced the original Valley House lift (in 2015), and the original Village and Sunshine Double lifts (in 2017)— all with fixed-grip quads. The Village and Sunshine lift replacements provide a more seamless experience for beginners at both mountains. Two new PistenBully groomers were added to the fleet this season, one of them specifically designed for PARKS grooming. To improve guest service, the resort also just upgraded its ticket-checking technology to RFID reading gates.

Linking Sugarbush’s rich history, the uniqueness of the Mad River Valley, and the modernity of new amenities, Sugarbush is committed to offering the best in customer service, four seasons of outdoor recreation, and an unrivaled and quintessential Vermont experience.

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With expansive terrain covering 2,600 feet of vertical, Sugarbush brings some of the flavor of western skiing to the East, and boasts one of the largest uphill capacities in the northeast region. The resort offers 111 trails for beginners, intermediates, and experts, spread across two mountains—Lincoln Peak and Mt. Ellen—with a chairlift and a shuttle bus that connect the two. Lincoln Peak Village offers many lodging and dining options, and also serves as home base for the Ski & Ride School and Rentals and Repair. Lincoln Peak offers extensive beginner terrain and lifts, and multiple First Timer programs that may reward participants with a free season pass, and a pair of Elan skis or Rome snowboard (supplies are limited). The legendary terrain of Castlerock Peak, with its narrow, steep, and winding trails, offers seasoned experts a challenge and an old-time New England ski experience. Snowcat adventures? Get up early for first tracks on the Lincoln Limo, take the family on a sunset groomer ride, book the limo for remote fireside dining at Allyn’s Lodge, or plan a private spring skiing experience at Mt. Ellen.

Connected by the Slide Brook Express to Lincoln Peak, Mt. Ellen is the third-

sugarbush.com

Clay Brook A T

800.53.SUGAR

#SUGARBUSH

S U G A R B U S H

Clay Brook Hotel & residenCes Modern luxury meets slopeside convenience with studio to five-bedroom suites, concierge services, ski and boot valet, heated outdoor pool and hot tubs, and onsite dining.

For a more casual stay, explore the classic country charm of Sugarbush Inn or our selection of over 100 privately-owned, resort-managed condos. Complimentary access to Sugarbush Health & Recreation Center and Valley-wide shuttle service included.

Working with Sugarbush to make their visions become a reality.

Let us help you build your dream too!

Multi-Family Residential Custom Residential Commercial Institutional

K i n g s b u ry

ConstruCtion Co., inC. Performing quality work for Sugarbush and the Mad River Valley since 1978.

Let us help make YOUR dreams come TRUE!

Kingsburyconstruction.com (802) 496-2205

191 Alta Woods | Brandon, Vermont 05733 | 802-247-6527 | www.naylorbreen.com 2017/18 67

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Sugarbush isn’t the only draw in the Mad River Valley. Mad River Glen, just a few miles to the north of Sugarbush, boasts some of the most challenging terrain in the East.

The Valley is also home to two Nordic skiing centers, Blueberry Lake and Ole’s Cross Country Center, as well as the Catamount Trail. In Waitsfield, the Skatium Ice Rink provides a unique outdoor skating experience.

SUMMER Many locals will claim that the Mad River Valley is more beautiful in summer than at any other time of year. Sugarbush hosts an eighteen-hole Robert Trent Jones Sr.– designed golf course, and summer mountain activities that include lift-served mountain biking, bungee trampoline, disc golf courses at the base and the peak, and a zip line.

Weddings take place on scenic mountain tops, on the golf course, and in classic barns at the mountain and in the Valley. Themed summer camps for kids offer mountain biking instruction and farm education, as well as traditional activities like hiking, golf, and swimming. Internationally acclaimed New England Tennis Holidays offers multiday tennis camps and instruction at the Sugarbush Health & Recreation Center.

The Mad River, which gives the Valley its name, offers recreational opportunities from kayaking and canoeing to tubing and swimming-hole hopping. Cross-country mountain biking and hiking trails are abundant for all levels. And outdoor dining on the mountain and along the river is a summer pleasure, particularly when coupled with an art or music festival.

LODGING From slopeside luxury to quaint country living, the Sugarbush Vacation Team can assist in finding accommodations to suit a variety of needs and budgets (for reservations, call 800-53-SUGAR or visit sugarbush.com).

The slopeside Clay Brook Hotel & Residences offers sixty-one suites, ranging from king rooms to five-bedroom suites, and features ski-in/ski-out access, full valet service, a year-round outdoor heated pool, a fitness center, and Rumble’s Kitchen restaurant.

Down the road is the forty-room Sugarbush Inn, open all winter and for private groups in the summer. The inn—with nooks for reading and a parlor with an adjoining fireplace room—has the cozy charm of a Vermont country cottage. Sugarbush also offers a mix of resort-managed condominiums surrounding Lincoln Peak. All Sugarbush lodging comes with complimentary access to the Sugarbush Health & Recreation Center, which offers indoor and outdoor pools, hot tubs, steam rooms, the Adventure Zone for kids, rock climbing, tennis, and massage.

For additional lodging recommendations, please call the Mad River Valley Chamber of Commerce at 802-496-3409.

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highest peak in Vermont (serviced by the highest chairlift in the state). Mt. Ellen has steeps, wide-open cruisers, and some great intermediate terrain. Mt. Ellen is an understated experience, with a rustic base lodge that’s home to the convivial Green Mountain Lounge, and with Walt’s at the Glen House, a mid-mountain lodge turned hotspot thanks to gourmet grilled-cheese sandwich selections and local beers on tap. Mt. Ellen is also where you’ll find the Riemergasse Terrain Park, designed with rails, tables, and jumps for all levels, and home to a series of events and competitions.

The Green Mountain Valley School, a private ski academy with Olympian and U.S. Ski Team alumni, trains here. (Sugarbush and GMVS are both U.S. Ski Team Development Sites.) Vermont Adaptive Ski & Sports bases their adaptive programs here, as well.

Whether at Mt. Ellen or Lincoln Peak, skiing in the trees is often the best way to find great snow. Twenty-eight marked areas provide beginner to advanced tree skiing.

The 2,000-acre Slide Brook Basin, tucked in between Lincoln Peak and Mt. Ellen, is an adventurer’s paradise. Guided trips are available with Ski & Snowboard Hall of Famer John Egan and the staff of the Adventure Learning Center’s Ski & Ride School.

Both guided and self-guided snowshoeing adventures are available throughout the winter, and vary in length and difficulty.

Sugarbush also offers a free uphill travel pass to those guests who choose to skin up the mountain before or after the lifts are in operation. (See our Winter Trail Use policy, at sugarbush.com/resort-policies, for details.)

CONFERENCES, MEETINGS & RETREATS TEAM BUILDING ACTIVITIES OUTDOOR ADVENTURES including cat-skiing adventures, backcountry skills, snowshoeing, hiking, golf, and climbing wall DINING from casual to elegant, indoors and out

LIKE US ON FACEBOOK.COM/FERRO.JEWELERS

A wedding to remember in a setting you’ll never forget.

LU XURY ACCOMODATIONS on-site at Clay Brook Hotel & Residences

Photos courtesy of BethanyDan.com

IDE A L FOR INTIM ATE GATHERINGS UP TO 450

Please call 802.583.6370, or email groups@sugarbush.com

For information, please contact our experienced wedding planner at weddings@sugarbush.com or call 802.583.6370.

2017/18 69

SUGARBUSH CLOSE-UP TRANSPORTATION The Burlington International Airport is just fifty minutes from Sugarbush, with direct flights arriving from New York City, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, and seasonal direct flights from Toronto. Morrisville-Stowe State Airport is just under an hour away and offers direct flights from White Plains, New York. Amtrak runs trains from major eastern cities into Rutland (one hour south of Sugarbush) and Waterbury (thirty minutes north). And once you’ve arrived, Green Mountain Transit offers free public transportation services in the winter season within the Mad River Valley region via the Mad Bus. DISTANCE FROM: Burlington: 46 miles

Boston: 180 miles

New York City: 300 miles

Montreal: 139 miles (224 KM)

FIRST-TIME VISITORS can find information on where to go for lift tickets, rentals/demos, Ski & Ride School, and dining options at www.sugarbush.com/discover/first-time-visitor.

MOUNTAIN OPERATION HOURS

MOUNTAIN STATISTICS

4,083

581

1,4 83 BASE

SKIABLE ACRES

SUMMIT ELEVATION

53 2,600 2 28 ELEVATION

MILES OF TRAILS

WOODED AREAS

250

VERTICAL DROP

INCHES

average annual

TERRAIN PARKS

SNOWFALL

LIFTS (16 TOTAL)

Winter: mid-Nov.–Apr.

10 quads (5 high speed)

Weekdays: 8 AM–4 PM at Mt. Ellen; 9 AM–4 PM at Lincoln Peak Weekends/holidays: 8 AM–4 PM

2 triples

Spring: Apr.–May

1 double

Call for spring-adjusted hours.

3 surface lifts

Summer: mid-June–Labor Day Sun.–Thu.: 10 AM–4 PM Fri., Sat., & holidays: 10 AM–6 PM

Fall: early Sept.–Columbus Day Weekends & Columbus Day: 10 AM–4 PM

Times are subject to change.

Please call 800.53.SUGAR or visit sugarbush.com for up-to-date information.

Sugarbush Resort Warren, Vermont

LEGEND EASIER DIFFICULT MORE DIFFICULT MOST DIFFICULT WOODED AREA FREESTYLE TERRAIN SLOW-SKIING AREA FLAT OUT SNOWMAKING

10/7 Community Day Celebrate autumn in Vermont with pumpkin carving, scenic lift rides and hikes, harvest-inspired dining, music, kids’ camps, and mountain activities.

Oktoberfest follows on Sunday.

10/8 Oktoberfest Bavarian-inspired food, drink, and games, along with the Mad Bavarian Brass Band. Compete in our stein hoisting and keg tossing to win prizes.

10/8 Mad Dash A 5K or 10K run, 5K walk, and kids’ race, supporting the Mad River Path Association (madriverpath.com).

11/18 The Big Kicker Kick off the 2017–18 winter season with Mad River Glen and Sugarbush at American Flatbread in Waitsfield.

This unmatched ski-mountain duo throws a freestyle party with rail jams, ski movies, local food and drink, and words of wisdom from the High Fives Foundation and the Flyin Ryan Hawks Foundation.

12/16 SugarBash It’s time to get down and get funky at Sugarbush’s annual birthday celebration. Rock your finest retro gear and dance your heart out to live music.

12/18–22 Valley Ski & Ride Week A tradition at Sugarbush for over fifty years. Join us for five consecutive days of ski and ride lessons led by some of Sugarbush’s finest coaches.

12/24–1/1 Holiday Week Celebrate the holidays at Sugarbush with activities for all ages, from Kids’ Pizza & Movie Night, indoor activities at the SHaRC, gingerbread house decorating, and Kids’ Rail Jam to campfires with s’mores and après live music all week. Bring your furry friend to the eighth annual Dog Parade and Canine Couture contest.

Ring in the New Year at the Family Buffet in Gate House Lodge or at dinner at Rumble’s Kitchen, followed by a torchlight parade and fireworks.

1/25–27 Telemark World Cup The Telemark World Cup brings its globe-trotting trek to Vermont with a stop at Sugarbush Resort. A threeday event featuring world-class, international competitors. Racers 72 SUGARBUSH MAGAZINE

SideSurfers Banked Slalom will participate in classic, sprint, and parallel sprint races throughout the weekend.

1/13–15 MLK Jr. Weekend An action-packed weekend with a kids’ cooking class, pizza and movie night, late-night music, specialty dining options at Rumble’s Kitchen and Castlerock Pub, and a torchlight parade and fireworks.

1/26–28; 3/5–7 Women’s Discovery Camp An enriching two-and-a-half-day learning experience hosted by topnotch coaches. The perfect blend of fun, learning, sharing, and skiing and riding. Video analysis, group meals, après-ski parties, and optional ski demos included.

2/10 Junior Castlerock Extreme Talented young skiers (ages fourteen and under) compete in a challenging and technical run down Castlerock’s infamous Lift Line. A qualifying race for March’s Castlerock Extreme and part of the Ski the East Freeride Tour. Register early—this Sugarbush classic traditionally sells out.

2/17–25 President’s Week A nonstop week of fun, with an ice sculpture display, live music, local artisan market, Sugarbush PARKS Feature Garden, activities for all ages at the SHaRC, and a torchlight parade and fireworks.

3/4 High Fives Fat Ski-A-Thon Lap the Valley House Quad on your widest planks and give out high fives all day for a great cause. Raise money to support the High Fives Foundation, and join the after-party in Valley House Lodge.

3/10 Castlerock Extreme Expert skiers charge the cliffs and dips of Sugarbush’s toughest terrain in the twenty-first annual Castlerock Extreme.

3/17–18 Sugaring Time Festival Celebrate the start of spring and sugaring season with a variety of maple-themed activities. Search for maple nips in a resort-wide scavenger hunt, play maple-inspired games, indulge in maple dining specials, and enjoy tasty samples at Vermont Specialty Food Day.

Pond Skimming

JEB WALLACE BRODEUR

Oktoberfest

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EVENTS 2017-18

3/17 SideSurfers Banked Slalom John Murphy (great-grandson of Sugarbush legend Jack Murphy) and the PARKS team host a communal gathering and friendly snowboard competition on a custom-built racecourse through gates and over banked turns, berms, rollers, and jumps.

3/24–25 Island Weekend Have your beach and your mountain, too! Spring fever takes over Sugarbush, with reggae music, island cuisine and drink specials, a luau, and fun-in-the-sun beach activities.

Independence Day Celebration downhill mountain biking, zipline, hiking, the bungee trampoline, disc golf, and more.

7/4 Independence Day Celebration Start the day with the wacky Warren Parade, followed by mountain activities, a classic American BBQ, live music, and fireworks at Lincoln Peak.

7/8 Mad Marathon

3/31–4/1 Mt. Ellen End-of-Season Party

This scenic course sends runners along beautiful country roads in the Mad River Valley, through covered bridges, past farms, and over streams. Participants can run a relay, half marathon, or whole marathon.

Celebrate another great ski season at Mt. Ellen with live music, special events, and Frendly guests.

RECURRING EVENTS

4/1 Easter Celebration

12/30, 2/3, 3/3 Tour de Moon

Celebrate Easter Sunday with a morning service at Allyn’s Lodge, followed by an Easter egg hunt and brunch at Rumble’s Kitchen.

4/7 Pond Skimming Take the plunge across a 120-foot pond at the base of Lincoln Peak.

Whether you get wet or just spectate, be sure to participate in this annual rite of spring. Awards for best costume, style, and splash.

4/21 Stein’s Challenge Get ready for a head-to-head showdown on one of Sugarbush’s most legendary trails, named after the Norwegian Olympian and former Sugarbush Ski School director Stein Eriksen. Prizes for top finishers.

6/9 Sugarbush Brew-Grass Festival Kick off summer with Sugarbush’s eighth annual brewfest, featuring craft beers from more than twenty Vermont breweries, tasty local eats, and jammin’ bluegrass bands.

6/12–13 Boomer Scramble Championship A two-day golf event for ages 65+.

Sign up as a full team or be grouped with others.

6/23 Summer Mountain Activities Opening Day Discover all that Sugarbush has to offer during the summer months:

A moonlit skin or snowshoe up Mt. Ellen. Whether you’re a seasoned skinner or new to the sport, this night adventure is not to be missed! There will be guided and unguided skinning and snowshoeing to Walt’s at the Glen House, where you can enjoy gourmet grilled-cheese sandwiches and beverages from local brewers. Walt’s stays open until 8 p.m.

Kids’ Pizza & Movie Night Send the kids off for a night of fun with pizza and a movie while you enjoy an evening on your own.

Castlerock Music Series Soak in the sounds of great local musicians at the Castlerock Pub and choose from the more than twenty beers on tap.

Cabin Cat Adventures First Tracks brings you to untouched, early-morning trails at Lincoln Peak on powder days and by private booking; Sunset Groomer Rides provide an early-evening, hour-long adventure to the summit of Lincoln Peak; Fireside Dining at Allyn’s Lodge offers an elegant multi-course dining experience accessed by the cabin cat; and Private Spring Skiing at Mt. Ellen is available in April.

Visit sugarbush.com for dates, times, and more information on all events.

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CLOSING SHOT

Henri Borel, proprietor of Chez Henri, shares a glass of red wine with family and friends to kick off his ninetiethbirthday celebration in January 2017.

Henri came to Sugarbush from France in the early 1960s to become the manager of Ski Club 10. He opened Chez Henri in 1964.

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