FREE! FALL 2015
Vermont’s Mountain Sports and Life
2016 SEASON
PREVIEW 6 TIPS TO GET FIT LIKE A PRO
THE BEST SEASON PASS DEALS
6 FRESH BOUTIQUE HOTELS
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CONTENTS / 01.01 FEATURES DEEP THOUGHTS, p. 18
A look back at the winter that wouldn’t quit. By Evan Johnson
IN THE WHITE ROOM, p. 27
In a backyard shed, Vin Faraci handcrafts skis snow angels would lust for. By Greg Maino
BUD KEENE WILL PUSH YOU TOWARD GREATNESS, p. 31
Meet the coach behind Shaun White, Louie Vito and other greats. By Lisa Lynn
Get ready: it’s not long until the bullwheels turn again at Stowe’s classic gondola barn.
Photo Stowe Mountain Resort
FIRST TRACKS
COLUMNS
TICKETS TO HEAVEN | THE BEST DEALS ON A SEASON PASS, p. 4 With six new ways to save, it’s hard to pass up this year’s deals.
COMPETITION | RACING WITH A TAILWIND, p. 37 No one expected Drew Duffy’s race season to end like this. By Biddle Duke
SKI RESORT NEWS | WHAT’S NEW FOR 2016, p. 8
New base lodges, hotels, snowmaking and more.
COACH | TRAIN LIKE A PRO, p. 39 Six essential exercises will get you fit for winter. By Peggy Shinn
LODGES | NOUVEAU VERMONT, p. 11 Six fresh boutique hotels combine style with a sense of place.
RETRO VT | VERMONT’S FASHION ICONS, p. 41 Vermonters have been fashion trendsetters since the ’30s. By Greg Morrill
LIVING THE DREAM | THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT, p. 13
CALENDAR |
LOCAL HEROS | WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION, p. 15
CHAIRLIFT Q/A | GRACE POTTER, p. 48 The ski racer-turned-rock star on her new album and why the Mad River Valley rocks.
Jack Reynolds built a dream home. You can stay there too.
Oktoberfests, ski films and ski swaps, p. 43
Jake & Kristin Blauvelt, Calvin Decker and Mac Forehand.
vtskiandride.com Fall 2015 1
SOME PEOPLE ARE MOUNTAINS
OTHERS ARE BEACHES
THE WAY TO JAY You can follow the path of least resistance, but you’ll usually find everyone else there. Instead, come to a place that’s as uncommon as you.
IT’S THIS WAY TO JAY
|
jaypeakresort.com
PUBLISHER, Angelo Lynn Angelo@vtskiandride.com EDITORIAL Editor/Co-Publisher, Lisa Lynn Editor@vtskiandride.com Creative Director, David Pollard Assistant Editor, Evan Johnson Evan@vtskiandride.com IT Director, Eric Whittaker Contributing Editors: Biddle Duke, Bud Keene, Greg Morrill ADVERTISING SALES & DISTRIBUTION Christy Lynn, Advertising Manager Christy@vtskiandride.com | 802-388-4944 David Payne David@vtskiandride.com Greg Meulemans greg@vtskiandride.com Circulation and Distribution Manager: Lisa Razo subscribe@vtskiandride.com Business Manager: Elsie Lynn Parini Elsie@vtskiandride.com
AN INSIDER’S GUIDE
Y
ears ago, I had the chance to ski all over the world, thanks to my job as executive editor of SKI magazine. As I traveled, I fell in love with ski town after ski town. I flirted with glitzy Aspen, had an ongoing affair with backcountry British Columbia and a long distance romance with Zermatt. But whenever I came to Vermont, I felt something different. The friends I made on the chairlift, the secret stashes in the woods, the hike to Mt. Mansfield’s Chin (pictured above), the fact I knew the people who raised and prepared your food—drew me in a way no other place could. When it came time to settle down, I chose Stowe. More and more people are feeling that same way: Vermont had 4.7 million skier and rider visits last year—that’s more than any state except Colorado. In this issue, you’ll meet others who moved here to ski or ride, people such as Bud Keene (legendary coach to Olympic snowboarder Shaun White and others) and Jack Reynolds, a Cambridge, Mass., investment advisor who built his dream house in Warren. You’ll hear why world-renowned pro snowboarder Jake Blauvelt and his wife Kristin moved back to their Waterbury Center farm “Blauveria” last summer and how up-and-comer Mac Forehand, 13, convinced his family to move to Stratton from Southport, Conn., so he could train with Stratton Mountain School. For them, and for all who live or visit here, we are making VT SKI + RIDE into a quarterly magazine that will showcase all Vermont offers. We hope it will serve as your insider’s guide to the mountains, the ski culture, the people and the sports we love. For this first year, sign up for a free a digital edition, subscribe to our e-newsletters and watch new videos at www.vtskiandride.com. —Lisa Lynn, Editor
MEET OUR CONTRIBUTORS
HEADQUARTERS VT SKI+RIDE is published four times a year by Addison Press Inc., 58 Maple Street, Middlebury, VT 05753 VT SKI+RIDE subscriptions are available for $24 (U.S.) or $35 (Canada) per year. Subscribe online at vtskiandride.com
Top photo by Angelo Lynn
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ON THE COVER: Corey Clark blasts Jay Peak’s Valhalla last season. Photo by Andrew Lanoue
Our Competition columnist, Biddle Duke grew up ski racing in New England, raised two ski racers and is passionate for the sport. For 17 years, he owned and ran The Stowe Reporter, the award-winning paper that has been central to Vermont ski racing coverage, and its sister paper TheWaterbury Record. He lives and writes from Stowe. Favorite foliage hike: The Ladder Trail on Mt. Mansfield.
Peggy Shinn, who wrote “Train Like a Pro” in this issue, has covered three Olympic Games for TeamUSA.org. Her first book, Deluge, about Tropical Storm Irene, was published in 2013. She lives in Rutland with her husband and daughter, and skis at Pico, where she skins up as often as she skis down. Favorite foliage hike: Deer Leap at Sherburne Gap in Killington—a short hike with a big reward.
A veteran of the outdoor industry, Greg Maino loves spending his time outside on his bike, in a kayak or on skis. The communications and events director for the Catamount Trail Association, he wrote about and photographed “In the White Room,” the story of a handmade pair of skis. His favorite place to ski is the Bolton Valley backcountry. Favorite foliage hike: Maple Ridge Trail on the backside of Mt. Mansfield.
vtskiandride.com Fall 2015 3
Hit multiple peaks with one multi-pass. The $399 Mountain Collective is good for two days each at Stowe (above), Jackson Hole, Alta/Snowbird and seven other areas.
4 Fall 2015 vtskiandride.com
FIRSTTRACKS TICKETS TO
HEAVEN
This year’s season pass deals are better than ever with some passes offering free bonus days at resorts out West, in Japan and even in Australia and Chile. Here are six ways to save on skiing this winter.
I
t used to be that buying a season pass was easy. The only choices you had to make were what mountain you wanted to ski and whether you wanted a seven-day pass or a midweek pass. No longer. The good news? This season there are more season pass deals and more ways to combine resort passes than ever, with multi-resort pass options that include free days at some killer Western resorts (such as Crested Butte, Steamboat or Jackson Hole). The bad news, you may have to hire H&R Block to figure out what the best deal is for you. Which is why we tried to make it simpler here. Keep in mind that many of these passes come with additional discounts at retail shops, Nordic ski area privileges and more. Read the fine print on all the passes as often much of it is in your favor. (For season pass prices see the chart of the following pages.) Here are the best new season pass deals and how to get the most out of them. Keep in mind early season rate deadlines are coming up fast and in some cases, the number of passes sold are limited.
1. Ski around.
Photo courtesy Stowe Mountain Resort
If you always wished you could ski some of the best mountains in North America on one pass, wish no more. The Mountain Collective Pass just added Stowe, Vt. (the only Eastern resort) and Taos, N.M., to its all-star lineup of resorts such as Jackson Hole, Wyo., Snowbird and Alta, Utah; Mammoth and Squaw, Calif.; and Canada’s Whistler/Blackcomb and Lake Louise. For $399, the pass gets you two days of skiing at each resort and 50 percent off additional lift tickets. And if you are really into chasing winter, it is also good at Thredbo, in New South Wales, Australia, Valle Nevado in
vtskiandride.com Fall 2015 5
u
Go Get some northern exposure with a Judge Pass, good at Jay Peak (shown here) and Q Burke.
2. Ski two mountains for the price of one. A number of Vermont resorts are offering discounts on a dual-mountain pass. For about $100 more than you would spend on a Jay Peak season pass, a Judge Pass, for instance, lets you ski both Jay Peak and Burke. Killington’s pass includes skiing at Pico. College students have until Nov. 4 to get a $359 Threesome Pass to
6 Fall 2015 vtskiandride.com
Sugarbush (Mt. Ellen and Lincoln Peak) and Mad River Glen. If you are between 18-26, the Double Down will give you access all season to Stratton and Mount Snow for just $379, as well as $40 mid-week buddy tickets. Bromley also has a deal with Jiminy Peak that gives Bromley season pass holders half price tickets midweek at the Massachusetts resort.
3. Black out and save. Nearly every Vermont resort offers mid-week passes at up to half off the regular pass price. Then there are the “blackout” season passes that still let you ski weekends but keep you off the slopes when they are most likely to be crowded. Killington’s Blackout Pass, for instance, cuts out 17 days (a week at Christmas, mid-January and mid-February) but gives you a pass for just $879 versus the full-season $1,269. Stowe’s Seven pass blacks out Christmas Week and Presidents Day weekend but costs $174 less than the Seven Plus unrestricted pass. If you can live without skiing Saturdays and blacked-out days, Okemo’s Sunday Plus pass is $666. and includes skiing at Mount Sunapee and five days at Crested Butte, Colo. At Bolton Valley, if you forgo Saturday skiing you can get a season pass for $469. And if you just want to ski just on Sundays, Stratton’s Sunday Pass is $319 (subject to blackout days).
4. Go small and win big. If you are learning to ski, or teaching young kids, you may not need 2,500 vertical feet and umpteen peaks. Places such as Bolton Valley, Cochran’s, the Middlebury Snow Bowl and Suicide Six may not have the infrastructure of the larger resorts, but they almost never have crowds and, on busy weekends, you can often still find powder stashes. Best, season pass prices are about half what the larger mountains charge. For instance, a family (of any size, with kids under 16) can get a Cochran’s season pass for $425. An added benefit, both Cochran’s and Bolton offer night skiing and Bolton’s night racing league is a blast. Another option is to think about skiing just one part of a larger resort.
Photo by Andrew Lanoue
Chile and Japan’s Hakuba Valley. There are no blackout dates but sales are limited. Another sweet option: if you buy a Stowe Seven or Seven-Plus pass, you automatically get 50 percent off lift tickets at any of the other Mountain Collective resorts. If you plan to ski around New England and want to head out West as well, the Multi Alpine Experience (M.A.X.) Pass lets you ski up to five days at each of 22 mountains across the U.S. and Canada. In New England, the M.A.X. pass is good at Stratton, Killington and Pico in Vermont, as well as Sugarloaf and Sunday River in Maine, Loon, N.H. and Mont Tremblant, in Quebec. Western resorts include Big Sky, Mont., and in Colorado,Winter Park and Steamboat. If you already have a season pass at Stratton or Killington, you can add on an adult M.A.X. pass for $249. Otherwise, the cost for an adult is $699, with no blackout days. This means you could, conceivably, travel the country and ski 110 days, at a cost per day of $6.35. But that would also mean spending five days skiing in West Virginia. Another good option, the Ultra Pass gives you unlimited, no-blackout-days skiing at Okemo, Vt., Mount Sunapee, N.H., and Crested Butte, Colo., plus three days at Killington for $1,811.54 for an adult. If you don’t plan to go to Crested Butte, you can get all the other benefits of the Ultra Pass with a Peak Pass for $1,419. If you have no desire to load your gear on a plane and want to explore the east, the Nor’easter Pass includes unlimited skiing at Mount Snow as well as at New Hampshire’s Attitash, Wildcat and Crotched Mountain and Big Boulder and Jack Frost in Pennsylvania.
Pico’s season pass, for instance, is a lot less than the Killington/Pico combined pass. Sugarbush offers a Mount Ellen-only pass that’s less than half the cost of the full-resort pass. Smuggler’s Notch has a Morse Mountain pass that is also about half off the full season pass.
5. Take advantage of your age If you are an adult age 30 to 60, you may be S.O.L. If not, there is a deal for you. To start with, many resorts offer free skiing to kids under a certain age (usually around 6) and this year Sugarbush extends free skiing to all kids under 12 whose parents buy a seven-day pass. Fifth graders—Vermonters and visitors alike—can get a coupon book of free lift tickets with a Ski Vermont Fifth Grade Passport (www.skivermont.com). The catch: to use the coupons an adult has to buy a ticket and there are blackout days. If you are planning to ski with kids, or even as a couple, look into the various family passes. Each resort has slightly different options. Stratton, for instance, offers a $200 discount on the second adult in the family who buys a season pass. Vermont has 23 colleges and universities and college students probably get the sweetest deals around, with season passes that start as low as $229 (Jay Peak, Smuggler’s Notch) and rarely go above $400.At many areas, college students can also lock in their passes as late as November, a few weeks after the early bird passes go off sale. College students also get access to more mountains, thanks to things like the Double Down pass, Sugarbush’s Threesome Pass and Okemo’s 4.0 College Pass, which gives access to Mount Sunapee and Killington too. Resorts have also recognized that millennials could use a break and they are eager to woo this cohort before they start having families of their own. If you are under 30, you can take advantage of special passes (under $700) at
many of the major resorts. Resorts also want to keep “senior” skiers, which, at most resorts, means those over 65. This year Jay Peak lowers its definition of a “senior” skier to 60 and Sugarbush drops its “senior” status from 75 to 65. Many resorts offer graduated prices that go down as you age. At Killington, if you are over 80 you can get a “super senior” pass for $80. At Smuggler’s Notch, “seniors” start at age 70 and pay $70 for a season pass (or $20 if you bought before Sept.7). At Bolton, Valley, if you are over 75, a season pass is $49. See, there are some advantages to getting older.
6. Calculate day ticket costs vs. a season’s pass. The biggest conundrum each season is trying to decide if you will ski enough days to make a season pass worth it. If you ski more than 15 days, at most resorts a season pass will pay for itself. That said, ski resorts do offer a number of ways to save on day tickets. Buy Smuggler’s Notch’s Bash Badge ($119 early season rate) and each day ticket after is only $30. Stowe’s Evolution card guarantees you always get the lowest rate which with fluctuating early season day ticket prices can be a real boon and it lets you buy online and bypass the ticket booth. Stratton offers pre-season ticket sales at bargain prices. For instance, during an August sale you could have bought three anytime tickets for $165. The Stratton X2 card also comes pre-loaded with a free day. As we went to press, many of the day ticket prices were not yet available. Resorts would rather have you lock in a season pass before you can calculate if it’s worth it. But chances are, if you don’t get a season’s pass you’ll be less likely to hit the slopes on those days when the drizzle in town was powder on the mountain. That’s why we always say “go for it.” These are just a few of the deals available at press time. Check websites for details, mid-week and family pricing, restrictions and benefits.
THE EARLY DEALS ON SEASON PASSES MOUNTAIN SEASON PASS
EARLY DEADLINE
7-DAY WITH SENIOR EARLY BLACKOUT (ages vary)
UNDER 30 COLLEGE (OR 26)
UNDER 18 (OR 16)
BOLTON VALLEY
21-Sep
$579 $469
$59
$169
boltonvalley.com
BROMLEY
15-Oct
$975
$825
jaypeakresort.com
COCHRAN’S SKI AREA
N/A
$275
*
$425 / family
cochranskiarea.com
JAY PEAK
12-Oct
$779
$689
$559
$389
Judge Pass
jaypeakresort.com
KILLINGTON/PICO
15-Oct
$1269
$819
$669
$589
M.A.X. Pass:
killington.com
MAD RIVER GLEN
15-Oct
$771
$421
$359
$220
Threesome Pass
madriverglen.com
MIDDLEBURY SNOW BOWL 30-Nov
$500
$105
$300
$105-$300
middleburysnowbowl.com
MOUNT SNOW
12-Oct
$1,179
$779
$349
$379
$329
Noreaster Pass, Double Down
mountsnow.com
OKEMO
12-Oct
$1,339
$829
$659
$379
$889
Ultra and Peak Pass
okemo.com
PICO
15-Oct
$439
$339
$229
See Killington
picomountain.com
Q BURKE
12-Oct
$749
$479
$229-$499
$419
Judge Pass
skiburke.com
SMUGGLERS NOTCH
31-Oct
$609
$70
$229
$359
smuggs.com
STOWE
1-Nov
$1,788
$1,604
$896
$599
$399
$563
Mountain Collective
stowe.com
STRATTON
31-Oct
$969
$599
$769
$329
M.A.X Pass, Double Down
stratton.com
SUGARBUSH
16-Sep
$1,399
$749
$349
Threesome Pass
sugarbush.com
$525
$879
$499
$799
$559
$389 $229-$499
$359
$479
MULTI-RESORT PASS (see story for details) weekdays at Jiminy Peak
WEB SITE
vtskiandride.com Fall 2015 7
Resort News 2015-2016 All Access Season Passes
NEW LODGES, LIFTS AND SNOW GUNS BY EVAN JOHNSON
A
Set Yourself Up For Unlimited Smiles This Winter $169 Youth
(ages 7-17) with purchase of parent’s Adult All Access Season Pass
$579 Adult (ages 26-64)
$299 Senior (ages 65-74)
$49 Senior Plus (ages 75+)
Ski Bum Pass*
(all ages)
(ages 18-25) *Limited Quantities Starting at $159
Season Long Ski &
Season Long Ski and
Snowboard Leases for
Ride School Programs
all ages starting at $99.
are also on sale now.
$139 Night Pass
Prices Go Up After Sept. 21 2015-16 Bolton Valley Season Pass holders receive a $100 gift certificate to Wendell’s Furniture, discounts at Alpine Shop, free skiing at partner resorts and more. See boltonvalley.com for details.
877-9BOLTON
8 Fall 2015 vtskiandride.com
fter five years of sitting idle, Ascutney Mountain may become a ski area again. This winter, a local nonprofit hopes to have a rope tow running from the base area to what had been the mid-station. The current plan is to leave the uppermost third of the mountain for backcountry skiing, accessible by hiking or skinning. There’s a new reason to stick around for night skiing (and the weekly evening corporate race and freestyle competitions) at Bolton Valley this winter: The new South of Solitude restaurant at Timberline will feature burritos and tacos madeto-order from fresh ingredients. You can get VIP parking at Bromley Mountain with a Parking Pass, which will be great if you have a little one who wants to try the newly upgraded Learning Zone with regraded terrain. Bromley also turned up the horsepower on snowmaking with upgrades to 50 guns. Jay Peak has determined that you (and your kids) will never get bored there. For 2016, it is planning a 15,000-square-foot entertainment center, including a 120-seat pub/movie theater, a climbing center and a virtual reality arcade. Jay is also building 36 new mountain cottages this winter, and showing others how easy it is to close the loop by recycling 40 tons of food scraps and creating compost. If you haven’t yet ridden it, hustle to Killington’s new Beast Mountain Coaster, a 4,800-foot-long alpine coaster that runs through the woods with 360-degree corkscrew turns, or try the mountain’s expanded mountain bike trail network. After, check out the $750,000 remodeling of the Ovations restaurant at the Killington Grand hotel. Plans call for an open-air bar and restaurant in the hotel’s lower lobby this season. This winter also look for expanded snowmaking, new ticket scanners, and a permanent airbag and full ramp on lower Superstar. What we love about Mad River Glen is that it doesn’t change its aesthetic. In 19 years of co-op ownership, Mad River has invested over $5 million in capital improvements, preferring to preserve the MRG experience rather than overhaul it. That said, if you want to pitch in to cut some glades, maintenance days are Sept. 12, 19 and Oct. 3. On Aug. 18, Magic Mountain announced that negotiations were underway with a prospective new owner. Season pass sales have been suspended while negotiations continue and are expected to go back on sale in October. Magic will honor all season passes purchased at the early bird rate. This winter the Middlebury College Snow Bowl will be uphill friendly with a new designated route for skinning during operating hours. The ski shop at the mountain will also begin a full leasing program for skis and snowboards, along with its existing rental, repair and tuning program. At nearby Rikert Nordic Center, the fat bike rental fleet has been so popular the Center has put in new trails for snowshoeing and fat biking. New snow guns have allowed the Nordic Center to open in mid-November and log 140 days of Nordic skiing the last two years— the most in Vermont.
Determined to outfox climate change, Mount Snow has raised more than $50 million through a state-sponsored EB-5 project for the Mount Snow West Lake Water Project, which will increase snowmaking capacity by six times. Though completion of the full project is a year or more away, communications director Dave Meeker said skiers and riders would see benefits this winter as the installation of larger pipe “means a huge improvement in how fast we get water to the guns.” The $50 million will also fund construction of a new three-story Carinthia Ski Lodge, beginning in 2016. Double the bubbles, double the fun, may be the thinking at Okemo Mountain Resort, which replaces its Jackson Gore Express Quad with a second bubble chairlift—a four-passenger named Quantum Four. A new chairlift will access a new novice trail, Suncatcher, while another million-dollar investment in snowmaking will allow Okemo to cover 98 percent of its trails. Also this winter, look for a new radio frequency ticket scanner that should speed up the lift lines. In December, Q Burke cuts the ribbon on a new 116-room hotel and conference center with 4,800-square-feet of reception and meeting space, plus a day lodge, restaurant, pub café and outdoor venues for events. The best part? The new hotel’s first guests can ski for free between Dec. 11-26. Q Burke is also completing the first $1 million of a three-phase snowmaking expansion. This summer, Smuggler’s Notch Resort expanded its mountain biking with a two-acre downhill skills park. For the winter, look for expanded snowmaking and a new evening guided snowshoe outing, among many other activities. If you haven’t tried the longest, most thrilling zip line in the East, head to Stowe Mountain Resort before fall activities close Oct. 18 to try it and the new TreeTops adventure course. While you’re there, check out the new 200,000-square-foot Spruce Peak club house, which includes a three-story climbing gym, retail shops and locker space for club members. The club house will overlook an outdoor ice-skating rink. The resort also invested another $3.4 million in snowmaking and built a 116-million-gallon water storage area it has named Peregrine Lake. Stratton Mountain Resort’s venerable 1961 base lodge is getting a $9 million makeover, expanding the building by 4,000 square feet and adding 350 seats to the cafeteria. The redesign will expand Grizzly’s Bar and Restaurant and feature 100 light fixtures from renowned local lamp maker Hubbardton Forge of Castleton, Vt. New Yorkers will love the new weekly bus run by Hampton Jitney that departs NYC each Friday and returns Sunday evenings. Also new: web cams at the summit, base lodge and Sun Bowl, plus, at last, a cell tower in the Sun Bowl means you can play hooky on Mondays. Not wanting to speed past Vermont’s most beautiful time of year, Sugarbush Resort will keep its golf course, mountain biking, zip line, disc golf and family activities in full swing into October. This winter, Sugarbush unveils its new high speed Valley House Quad, which replaces the old double. The lift will more than double the number of guests it can transport uphill (748 to 1,800 per hour), and reduce the ride time to eight minutes. The new lift will extend the base lower on the mountain adjacent to Super Bravo, and is scheduled to be ready for opening day, Nov. 21. Neighboring Mount Ellen is scheduled to open Dec. 18 and will start lifts at 8 a.m. through March, which will allow early birds to get first tracks and taste the fruits of the resort’s $5 million upgrade in snowmaking. The newest slopeside condominiums at Gadd Brook at Lincoln Peak, are also due to be finished later this season. Last, say happy birthday to the oldest ski area in the state. Suicide Six, now managed by the Woodstock Inn & Resort, celebrates its 80th anniversary with snowmaking improvements and added terrain features. The Woodstock Inn & Resort will also offer rentals from Tubbs snowshoes and Fischer skis.
vtskiandride.com Fall 2015 9
◆
Lodges touches: Vermont soaps, Johnson Woolen Mill bathrobes, and free cruiser bikes in the lobby. It’s a great place to start or end a weekend. In the fall, sit at the fire pit and sip a local brew from the Juniper Bar or listen in on DJ Fridays or Jazz Wednesdays when local talent such as Audrey Bernstein and others make the lobby a hopping scene. www.hotelvt.com. If you are planning to visit Smuggler’s Notch, European Artists’ B&B has views of Camel’s Hump and Mount Mansfield and three rooms tastefully decorated in the style of artists Egon Schiele, Pablo Picasso and Vassily Kandinski. Parisian hostess Laure Torkler prepares all-local breakfasts and will even do a four-course dinner, on demand. www. theeuropeanartists.com In Stowe, two new hotels are making waves this season. Last spring, Edson Hill, an old grande dame of a resort, lifted her hoop skirt and had a stunning makeover by owner Susan Stacy of the Boston design firm Gauthier-Stacy. Now, bright cream-colored walls, soft new carpets, easy chairs and antique games greet guests at the inn set high on a hill with its own network of cross-country trails. www.edsonhill.com. Just down the Mountain Road, Stowe’s Ye Olde Pickwick Inn is being reborn as Field Guide, a thoroughly hip addition to the Lark hotel group. Headboards are made of slabs of
NOUVEAU VERMONT
Six fresh new boutique hotels are combining a sense of style with a Green Mountain sense of place.
The fire pit is a hot spot at Hotel VT (top). Stowe’s newest hotel, Field Guide (top right) opens Oct. 1. The European Artist’s B&B , (right, lower).
V
ermont is known for its intimate, high-end inns, places such as Stowe’s Topnotch and the Trapp Family Lodge, Warren’s The Pitcher Inn, Barnard’s Twin Farms, the Woodstock Inn and Manchester’s Equinox Resort. Now, there’s a new crop of boutique lodges with affordable rates that start at under $200 a night. With contemporary design and a nod to local craftsmanship, these places effortlessly combine a sense of style with a true Vermont sense of place. Blessedly un-stuffy, they also keep a skier’s comfort front and center. And their bars have become hot après-ski watering holes. Just off the waterfront in Burlington, Hotel VT has been capturing worldwide awards for the past couple of years for its clean design, attentive service and perfect Vermont
vtskiandride.com Fall 2015 11
The bar and lounge at Woodstock’s 506 Main at Inn on the River invite you to stop, sip and stay.
tree trunks, and barnboard warms an otherwise stark, clean bathroom. The hotel is set to open October 1. The best part: you can walk to many of Stowe’s downtown bars, shops and movie theater. www.fieldguidestowe.com. In Woodstock, Aaren Macksoud and his wife, Paulina, have expanded their year-old Inn on the River and its res-
SLICES • CREATIVE ENTRÉES • GLUTEN-FREE MENU • HEALTHY KIDS MENU CRAFT BEERS • GAME ROOM • DELIVERY
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1899 M O U NRTOAAI ND STOWE VT 05672 • 802.253.4411
PIECASSO.COM 12 Fall 2015 vtskiandride.com
taurant/bar, 506 Main. The charming young couple also own a suite of swank hotels on Zanzibar and in Nairobi and Berlin. Paulina Rugaz Macksoud is an internationally acclaimed designer and it shows in everything from the antique bar (formerly a monastery’s office desk) to the cushions she designs (with sayings such as “Keep Calm and Move to Vermont” and sells at the gift shop. The bar’s lounge is a chic and comfy place with lots of old wood tables and soft leather chesterfield couches. The couple have two young children and, accordingly, there’s a playroom outfitted with a toy kitchen, a game room for teenagers, a pool room for adults and an indoor pool and hot tub. Aaren, who grew up in Woodstock, also wants to make use of the building’s old ski lockers and is working on a deal where if you book a certain number of weekends, you can keep your skis there. www.ontheriverwoodstock.com Finally, Manchester will soon be home to three new hotels. The first to come online, The Taconic, will be Kimpton Hotels entrée to Vermont. The largest of all the hotels mentioned here, the 87-room hotel will have a conference room and ballroom and is slated to open this fall. www.kimptonhotels.com.
Photo courtesy Inn on the River
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Living the Dream
The five-bedroom house and furniture such as this bed, was designd by Dave Sellers and built with local timber.
THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT
Photos by Carolyn L. Bates
“I
skied a lot of other places but there was something about the Mad River Valley and Sugarbush that is just different,” says Jack Reynolds. Reynolds should know, he’s been making the drive from his home in Cambridge, Mass., where he runs an investment firm, to Warren every year since 1987. “The mountain and the valley are just laid back and friendly,” he says. “It’s a community I wanted to be a part of.” In 1987, Reynolds bought a house in Warren. It worked for him and his young family at the time. But as his daughters grew up and he divorced and then remarried, he decided to remodel. That’s when he called his friend the Warren-based architect Dave Sellers. Yale-trained, Sellers has made the AIA list of 40 Outstand-
Jack Reynolds didn’t start out to build his dream ski house. Warren’s Upper Pines Lodge just took on a life of its own. ing Architects Under 40, and Architectural Digest’s list of 100 top architects in the world. He’s also a founder of the Madsonian Museum of Industrial Design in Waitsfield and the inventor of the Mad River Rocket sled. “As we started designing and building, Sellers exceeded my every expectation,” says Reynolds. “Including my budget,” he adds with a laugh. Local craftsmen built the new house using wide tree trunks to form posts. Big windows and skylights provide views through the forest (which Reynolds carefully worked with an arborist to selectively clear). The five bedrooms feature custom furniture, some designed by Sellers, including the master bed made entirely of local wood. Reynolds’ collection of antique quilts covers the walls and his toy collection is on display.
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Dream Homes Reynolds still comes up most weekends to ski in the winter and to bike or soar gliders in the fall and summer. But when he’s not using Upper Pines Lodge, he takes rentals. “I’m very selective,” he says. “I like to think of this as a guest house where I want to welcome people who can appreciate this home like I do.” The weekly rate ranges from $2,900 to $3,500 depending on the season. www.Upperpineslodge.com —L.L. Reynolds and Sellers (right) collaborated on everything from the outbuilding to the chef’s kitchen to the dining
Photos by Carolyn L. Bates
table Sellers designed.
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Best Place to Bring Your Kids Up Skiing!
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- Powder
Magazine
madriverglen.com
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Local Heros
WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION…
We know they rip in the winter, but what happens when the snow melts? Four of Vermont’s top athletes tell us how they spent their summer.
Photo by AngeloLynn
JAKE & KRISTIN BLAUVELT Ages: 29 and 29 OCCUPATIONS: Jake: pro snowboarder and filmmaker; Kristin, holistic private chef CLAIM TO FAME: Jake: won the U.S. Open for snowboarding in 2004. His 2013 feature “Jake Blauvelt, Naturally” showcases his freestyle riding in spectacular terrain in remote areas around the world. Considered one of the top 10 freeriders worldwide Jake has a line with Oakley and is sponsored by RIDE snowboards and adidas. Kristin, a former heli-riding guide in Haines, Alaska, has a culinary degree from Bauman College of Holistic Nutrition and Culinary Arts in Santa Cruz, Calif. LIVE IN: Waterbury Center RIDES: Stowe
Jake and Kristin bring in the harvest at “Blauveria,” before setting off for a winter of worldwide riding and filming.
We just moved back East last summer after having been in Bellingham, Wash. We both grew up in Stowe and our families are here and we wanted to be near them.We are really into gardening so that’s pretty much what we do all summer. Raising our own food and eating healthfully is super important to us. The food here in Vermont is incredible. Everyone here talks about food and people are really serious about eating locally. We buy a half a cow from our cousins, the Von Trapps in Waitsfield, and usually get our other meat locally from other farmers. During the summer, we grow all of our own vegetables so I think the only thing we buy at the grocery store is rice. Kristin used to work for Laughing Moon Chocolates in Stowe and we bought our house and land (we sometimes now call it “Blauveria”) from the owner, Leigh Williams and her thenpartner, Phil Sweet. They had planted an apple orchard, blueberry bushes and grapes and hops. A pig used to live in the greenhouse. That’s where we now grow our tomatoes and a huge crop of basil. Kristin uses the basil, along with
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Local Heros
CALVIN DECKER Age: 23 OCCUPATION: Ski patroller/arborist CLAIM TO FAME: Finished second in the 2014 Tour Divide; won Australia’s Monaro Cloudride, 2015 LIVES IN: Mendon SKIS: Pico, Killington
One of the best times I’ve had bike packing was this past August when I I mountain biked the Vermont Bike Packers Route from Massachusetts to Canada in 38 hours. In 2013 I’d ridden from Maine to Washington and in the summer of 2014 I did my first backpacking race, the Tour Divide, 2,750 miles from Canada to Mexico along the spine of the Rockies. In Canada, I had met Steve Watson who organizes a similar race in Australia so this past April, I went to Australia to do the Monaro Cloudride, a 1000-kilometer ridgeline race in southeastern Australia. There’s 24,000 vertical meters of climbing and last year only three people finished. This year, out of 18 starters, only four finished. (Editor’s note: Decker was the youngest in the field and not only won but came within an hour of the course record.) When I came back home, I’d heard about the Vermont Backpackers Route and decided to try that. The Vermont Bike Packing Route was put together by a group of local riders. It’s a new route that links a lot of sweet Vermont singletrack and forest roads into a 301-mile route with very little pavement. I wanted to ride that and to do it fast. I started at the Massachusetts border at 6:00 am and headed north along trails. On the first day, I linked trails that ran from Stratton, past Pittsfield and Killington, up to the Chandler Ridge singletrack, in Moosalamoo National Recreation Area, just south of the Middlebury Snow Bowl. I got some sleep and then, after an early start, rode to Lincoln, through the Mad River Valley and Stowe, and up past Morrisville. I finished at the Canadian border in just under 38 hours. The time to beat was 54 hours, which was set by George Lapierre. But he did it on a singlespeed. —C.D.
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MAC FOREHAND Age: 13 OCCUPATION: Student CLAIM TO FAME: Placed first in rails (age group 10-13) and third in slopestyle (age group 13-15) at the 2015 USASA Nationals. Invited to train with the U.S. Freeskiing Rookie Team. Sponsors: Rossignol and Smith Optics. LIVES IN: Stratton SKIS: Stratton Last year I went to the Nationals and was disappointed with my performance. The next year I trained really hard with my Stratton Mountain freeski coach Brian Knowles and podiumed on both my events in 2015. I was pretty psyched to win the rails and finish third in slopestyle at Copper this past April. I’ve been skiing in the Stratton Mountain Seasonal program since I can remember and began training with Stratton Mountain School and my coach Jesse Mallis this summer. I really wanted to focus on getting better at a few tricks. I found the hard work definitely pays off. Earlier this past summer I went to Quebec where we trained at a facility in a pool. It was really fun to go off the jumps and land in the water. With the water ramps I perfected a lot of tricks that I was able to bring to snow at Momentum Ski Camps in Whistler. At home in Stratton, my buddies and I spent a lot of the summer heading down to the quarry in Dorset where we do a lot of the same tricks we do on skis off the cliffs into the water At the end of the summer, my sister Savannah and I went to Perisher, Australia to train. My sister is 17 and on Stratton Mountain School’s mogul team. We had so much fun! I loved seeing all the kangaroos and some of my friends even ate kangaroo. Now that I’m back from my summer training, my family and I packed up the car and will be living at Stratton full time.We’ve been living in Connecticut and going back and forth but I love Vermont —it’s just quiet here and we live in the woods, not in suburbs. My parents love it here too. I’m going into eighth grade at the Stratton Mountain School. The best part about living here is that I’ll ski at least five days a week, and weekends too if I want to.—M.F Watch Mac Forehand show his moves on rails and in the pipe at www.vtskiandride.com
Photos courtesy Calvin Decker and Mac Forehand
our garlic, to make this amazing vegan pesto. This winter we’re hoping to take off around the world and film a series we are pitching to Netflix. So often you see these snowboard videos of people riding in incredible places but there’s really nothing about the culture. We’d like to do something kind of like Anthony Bourdain does in his show “No Reservations.” We’d really get immersed in the people and their culture and there’s both great culture and riding in places like India and Iceland. The best part is we get to do this together. Kristin has no problem keeping up, she rips. And she’s an incredible cook. —J.B.
Find Your Winter Mountain Hardwear Athlete, Michelle Parker making it look easy in the new Barnsie Jacket.
Find the Barnsie and all the latest Mountain Hardwear products at these premium retailers. Outdoor Gear Exchange Burlington, VT www.gearx.com
AJ’s Ski and Sports Stowe, VT www.stowesports.com
Summit Ski and Snowboard Framingham, MA www.summitskishop.com
The Ski Monster Boston, MA www.theskimonster.com Photo: Eric Berger
D E TH E
OU P GH TS
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IN 2014/15, VERMONT GOT MORE SNOW THAN ANYWHERE IN THE LOWER 48.
HERE’S A LOOK BACK AT THE WINTER THAT WOULDN’T QUIT
AND A TOAST TO THE COMING SEASON.
Photo by Andrew Lanoue
BY EVAN JOHNSON
Another day in paradise: Ryan Craven charges The Ridge at Jay Peak in mid-March, 2015.
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October 30: After an early season storm strikes Stowe’s Jay Bowen is rewarded at the top of Mt. Mansfield with a skier’s favorite Halloween treat.
Nov. 26: There was plenty to be thankful for around Thanksgiving. One of the first snowstorms of the season delivered 11 inches to Mount Snow in Dover in a day.
Dec. 11: White-outs and black-outs hit Killington. During the second big snow of the season, Killington had a resort-wide power outage, but got lifts running again in less than one hour.
Photos, top to bottom: courtesy Jay Bowen, Mount Snow, Chandler Burgess
here is nothing like waking to the muffled sounds of a world newly buried in snow. I call it “snow silence” and I can recognize it immediately. It came the Tuesday morning after a busy Martin Luther King weekend. This storm was a gift to Vermonters, blanketing the Green Mountains in 10 inches overnight. I threw my skis in the car. The storm could not have been more perfectly timed; the lot at Sugarbush was a ghost town and in 10 minutes I was on the lift. As my world was reduced to contours or suggestions of its former self, I contemplated my deadline-driven day-to-day existence. Then I realized I had just one hour to enjoy an exercise of hedonism before heading to a press conference. The first blasts of wind restored me to my senses. After storms, the cold doesn’t just plaster you in the face, it tries to force its way inside you; testing the seams of your jacket, boring into your eyes and nose and chilling your chest with every inhalation. Through gold-tinted goggles, I watched the remaining shroud of clouds peel from the summit of Mount Ellen to the north. At the top of Lincoln Peak I looked down at 2,400 vertical feet of untouched snow and was immediately overwhelmed. I had just under an hour to ski as much as I could: where to start? After the briefest moment’s contemplation, the fall line on Ripcord was the natural choice. The minutes passed in that serene silence as I blasted through turns. At the bottom, I hopped on again for round two. Halfway up, the wind picked up, stopping the lift for several precious minutes. With dwindling time, I flew down through another endless powder run to the lodge. I had just enough time to change out of ski pants. I burst through the door to my meeting wild-eyed, breathing hard and grinning ear-toear like a maniac. No one was there. A few minutes later, John Atkinson, Sugarbush’ s official snow reporter, arrived to lead the meeting. He was still wearing his ski boots, dripping melting snow all over the carpet. If there were a prize awarded for “best winter,” Vermont would have claimed first for the season we had last year. Ranking far ahead of its western cousins, Vermont’s 19 alpine ski resorts logged the most snow in the continental United States, averaging 240 inches per resort and attracted more skier visits than any state except Colorado. Jay Peak led the way with 357 total inches over the season. Killington Resort supplemented over 200 inches of the natural stuff with snowmaking, bringing base depths on Superstar to 30 feet— enough to keep skiers and riders hiking to the trail into summer. Don’t take our word for it, consider the story of Stowe-based ski legend Jay Bowen, who skied just about every day from late October until the Fourth of July. His top location? Vermont, where he says he skied 11 months straight. For a guy who has skied for Teton Gravity Research and Warren Miller films, that’s saying something. And he’s now chasing winter in South America. Looking forward, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released its official outlook for the 2015-2016 winter, predicting what could be the strongest El Nino event in 50 years. For now, Vermont is predicted to have an average snowfall, but if the polar vortex returns, the Northeast may have another winner on the way. It’s still a few weeks yet before the temperatures dip and we start to keep an eye on the forecasts. For the sake of nostalgia and as a way to get ready for the winter around the corner, here’s an illustrated tour of the epic winter of 2014/15.
Jan. 17: At Mad River Glen, the woods are already starting to look lovely, dark and deep.
Photos, top to bottom: Mad River Glen, Tim Fater, Jeb Wallace-Broadeur
Jan. 18: Jeff Oliveira heads off to find some untracked powder in the Jay Peak side-country.
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Feb. 2: Cassandra Russo remembers this day at Stratton: “I went out by myself and it was dumping the absolute lightest, but largest snowflakes I have ever seen. I chose to take one of my favorite trails on a powder day, Upper and Lower Spruce, because it is usually untouched in the morning. As I glided through the snow on the upper portion of the trail, I was alone and time seemed to go in slow motion with each turn. I then spotted a lone skier toward the middle of the trail and heard him hooting and hollering as he made his turns. It was only when I reached the end of the trail that I realized my face was sore from smiling the whole way down. The skier paused where the trail intersects with another and I stopped and we both laughed with mutual giddiness. We then simply high-fived and started down the rest of the trail. Best day ever.”
Feb. 5: At Smugglers’ Notch, 12 to 14 inches of snow fell in 24 hours, adding to the 39 inches from the previous week. Below, Snow Sport University director Harley Johnson enjoyed the powder while her husband, Smuggs’ Snow Reporter Hugh Johnson, took the photo—a pretty nice way for the couple to celebrate their 10th anniversary.
SNOW STAKE MEASUREMENTS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD April 5: 90 inches
90”
March 8: 85 inches
80 May 3: 75 inches
70 Feb. 1: 60 inches
60 50 40
Dec. 25: 32 inches
30 20
Nov. 17: 12 inches
10
Oct. 30: 5 inches
0
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Photos, top to bottom: Stratton Mountain Resort, Hugh Johnson/Smuggler’s Notch
Jan. 11: 55 inches
March: Plowing the pow at Sugarbush, which was already well on its way to a season total of 249 inches.
April 5: A huge crowd braves heavy snow at the top of the gondola at Stowe for Easter services.
Photos, clockwise from top: Eugene Krylov, Stowe, Q Burke
March: At Q Burke, the highest recorded snowfall in five years made for some soft landings.
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April 24: Jay Peak’s Beaver Pond backcountry reflects a season that seemed to never end.
Photos, top to bottom: Andrew Lanoue, Jay Bowen
July 4: Jay Bowen (left and below) celebrates 11 months of Vermont skiing with a brew and Stowe’s last 10 to 12 inches.
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IN HIS BACKYARD SHOP,
IN THE
VIN FARACI
HANDCRAFTS CUSTOM SKIS EVEN A SNOW ANGEL WOULD LUST FOR.
WHITE ROOM STORY AND PHOTOS BY GREG MAINO
“DREAM IT. BUILD IT. SKI IT.”
That’s Vin Faraci’s motto and how he came to create WhiteRoom Skis. Faraci didn’t set out to become a ski builder; he just couldn’t find a pair of skis he truly loved. So, in 2010 he set up shop in a shed behind his home in Hyde Park and began to build his first pair of skis. The first ski were, by Faraci’s own admission, experiments. “The first pair might have gone in the ski press backwards,” he admits with a laugh. He
only let friends and family ski the early prototypes and spent countless hours researching shapes and getting feedback from them before he built more. By 2013, WhiteRoom had evolved and Faraci was building not just any skis but doing what custom surfboard shapers are doing with boards: creating works of art. As a result, WhiteRoom makes some of the most beautiful custom skis you may ever see. When working with a customer, Faraci first designs the ski itself based on information the cus-
tomer provides in his design template.Then, he creates intricate designs for the top sheets using beautiful wood veneers with inlays of abalone shell along with custom metal leafing and or wood burning. One customer wanted to give a pair of skis to her son as a memorial to his father. The customer’s husband had passed away late one fall night surrounded by his family. After his passing her twin sons went for a walk down a dark country road. As they were walking, an owl swooped down and then up
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over their heads until it was silhouetted against the moon.This scene is soulfully captured on the topsheet of the skis pictured here (below and opposite). The photos show the stages of construction. Faraci uses locally sourced wood for the cores. He usually uses ash in the center, maple where the binding screws will be since it holds screws well, followed by a thin strip of yellow birch, and lastly poplar on the outside. The poplar is used because it’s easy to shape, and helps create a smooth, accurate sidecut. The skis themselves can come in any size but Faraci uses three general shapes; a traditional shaped ski that can be made with various tip, waist and tail dimensions depending on how wide a ski you want. Once the dimensions are set, Faraci can alter the rocker or camber profile to change the performance of the ski based on the intended use. His “4 Dimension” skis give the tip a slight reverse sidecut with rocker and
sidecut underfoot.This design is very versatile and can be skied in a variety of conditions. His “5 Dimension” skis incorporate rocker with reverse sidecut in the tip and tail, and camber and traditional sidecut underfoot. This design feels more loose in the tail and can be smeared and pivoted easily in deep snow. Faraci likes to point out that these skis are not just beautiful they are intended to perform at the highest level and be very durable. “I get lots of compliments on the aesthetics of my skis and I love that. But honestly, the biggest compliment a skier can give me is that they love how their skis perform.” Faraci only builds 10 to 15 pair a year and charges about $925 a pair. It takes a few months to build them but when you get them, you can be guaranteed no one else in the lift line will have skis like yours. Suggestion: you might want to lock them up when you go in for lunch.
#2 Using a router and ski blank, Faraci trims and shapes the material that will become the ski’s base.
#3 Heating up the metal edges and then letting them cool down slowly softens the metal and makes it easier to create precise, round bends to go around the tips.
#4 Using the ski blank Faraci pre-bends the edges before gluing them to the base material.
#5 The final fit of the edges and bases needs to be very precise because the next step is gluing the edge to the base so that it’s ready to go into the press.
#6 Gluing the edges to the base material requires patience, concentration...and a lot of clamps!
#7 Next, Faraci applies epoxy to the bases. He will spread it around, taking care to ensure all of the edge pockets are filled in.
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#1 Local wood is used for the cores: ash in the center, maple under the binding screws, followed by a thin strip of yellow birch, and lastly poplar on the outside.
#8 - Skis are built in layers. Here Faraci lays down the core over the base and layers of fiberglass and carbon fiber before being pressed.
#9 - The full laminate, hot off the ski press which helps cure the epoxy and gives tips and tails their shape.
#11 Using a belt sander, Faraci cleans up the edges and the sidewalls.
#12 After the skis are cut, the edges are cleaned up and a router is used to create the sidewall bevel.
#10 Once out of the press, the process of cutting the skis is pretty straight forward: You flip the skis over and use the edges as a guide for your first cut.
#15 The final pair, with a custom inlay of various wood veneers showing the owl in the moon.
#13 The sidewall gets finished with a sharp knife before making the final pass with the hand router.
#14 Faraci concentrates as he puts the finishing touches on the sidewall.
WIN A PAIR OF WHITEROOM SKIS On Thursday, November 5, the Vermont Backcountry Alliance, the Catamount Trail Association and the Rochester Area Sports Trail Alliance (RASTA) will be raffling off a pair of WhiteRoom skis at the annual Vermont Backcountry Forum in Rochester, Vt. You can buy raffle tickets ($20 each on down to 10 for $100) at www.catamountrail.org and don’t need to be present to win.
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“Bud has this way of looking you in the eye and if he tells you can do a trick, you can do it, even before you think you can,� says Jake Blauvelt.
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BUD KEENE WILL PUSH YOU TOWARD GREATNESS
Photo by Gabe L’Heureux
The coach behind Olympic stars Shaun White, Louie Vito, Gus Kenworthy and many others, Stowe’s Bud Keene is snowboarding’s spiritual leader. BY LISA LYNN
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Before he picked up a snowboard, Bud dreamed of being a mountaineer. In the early 1990s he lived in California and did a number of first ascents in the Sierra.
technical stuff. I wanted to show him the first ascents and routes I did when I was his age.” They also did the less-technical Mountaineer’s Route on Mt. Whitney. He pulls up an app on his iPhone. “See, we did 46,264 steps—that’s 474 flights of stairs—and covered the 20 miles in 9 hours.” Much of July, Bud was at his day job: coaching the next Shaun Whites, Louie Vitos and Jake Blauvelts at the BKPRO snowboard camp at Mt. Hood. This is what he does. And he does it better than anyone in the world.
Photos courtesy Bud Keene
Robert “Bud” Keene is 55, 5’6’’ and built like a spark plug. His face and hands are those of a man who has lived outdoors for much of his life and there is something about him that makes you realize that if he wanted to, no matter your size or age, he could kick your ass. When he looks you in the eye, you don’t look away; he won’t let you. “As a coach I have a reputation for being intense and I don’t necessarily mind that,” he says, his blue eyes staring—not at my chin or hands or shoulders—but right in my eyes in a slightly uncomfortable way. He hedges, and then says with a grin—eyes now twinkling like blue ice crystals— “But I’m also present, like I really care. Which I do.” He glances away. “Some other coaches will kind of nod, hide behind their dark glasses or give advice without really connecting. They might let a kid look at his shoes and say, ‘Ok, yeah, yeah…I know, ok.’ But I need to see people’s faces and just as importantly let them see mine, to make sure that we are relating and that they know what they have to do.” And that’s one reason why his nickname, “Bud,” just seems to fit. Bud is sitting at the The Whip in Stowe. His stubby, gnarled fingers—fingers that have worn Olympic rings and pulled him up the stony face of El Capitan—are wrapped around a cold glass of beer.The server recognizes him. “Hey, isn’t that Shaun White’s coach?” he whispers when Bud gets up. Bud is happy and relaxed. It is August and he is back from a week of climbing with his eldest son, Zak, 23, in Yosemite and the Sierra. “We did a lot of
“As a coach, I have a reputation for being intense. I don’t really mind that. But I’m also present, like I really care. Which I do.”
Backstory:
There is a boy. He is 13 years old. He sits at home in Virginia Beach,Va., reading about mountains and those who climb them. It is the 1970s. Italy’s Reinhold Messner is climbing the Eiger in Europe and making first ascents in the Himalaya. American Ned Gillette is circumnavigating Denali and Mt. Everest. The boy is one of seven children. His parents are not adventurers, but they take the kids camping and hiking in the Shenandoah every year and, once, to Killington.The boy plays lots of baseball, and sometimes surfs and skateboards. He dreams of building a log cabin in the mountains and of spending his days climbing peaks. At 19, he follows his father’s path and enlists in the Navy. He is a good sailor, finishing out his enlistment, and he excels at celestial navigation. But it is not what he wants to do. He tries college, studying engineering at Virginia Tech. He moves to California’s Russian River Valley for a bit, before moving back home. This does not quite work out either. One of his sisters is a successful fashion designer. One day the two sit down and make a list of all the places they would like to live: Paris, Monte Carlo, and other exotic destinations, including one place they can actually afford, Stowe, Vt.They move there. He gets a job as a chef’s apprentice, and spends three months learning to ski. It is December 1983. In February, after seeing a man named Lowell Hart walk through town with a snowboard on his back, the boy pleads with Lowell to take him up on the mountain.The next day, the boy buys a Burton Woody Performer. It has a wooden base, no edges and aluminum fins. Snowboards are not allowed on the mountain, so he hikes up and gets chased down and hikes back up again and gets chased. Pretty soon, the boy figures it out:This, this is what he wants to do.
At 26, Bud joined Ned Gillette’s expedition to row the 28-foot Sea Tomato from Cape Horn to Antarctica. Bud planned to be the first to ride the seventh continent.
Bud Keene is one of the winningest coaches in snow sports history. Since 1989, when he started the snowboarding program at the Mount Mansfield Ski Club, he has worked with riders such as U.S. Open winner and big mountain rider Jake Blauvelt; Kyle Clancy, who went on to podium in pretty much every snowboard discipline; Thomas O’Brien, a World Cup-winning racer and member of the first-ever U.S. Snowboard Team; Travis Kennedy, Colin Langlois and others—all current or past top sponsored pros. Bud went on to be an assistant U.S. Snowboarding Halfpipe coach at the 2002 Olympics where the American men took all three medals and Kelly Clark, of West Dover, Vt., won the gold. He was promoted to head coach in 2003 and worked with a small dream team of athletes preparing for the 2006 Olympic Games in Torino, Italy. Among eight of them, they took home two golds, two silvers and two fourth places.That spring, he was invited to Washington, D.C., where the U.S. Olympic Committee gave him its highest honor: National Coach of the Year. In Torino, Bud put the world on notice and launched his young medalists— Shaun White, Danny Kass, Gretchen Bleiler and Vermont’s Hannah Teter—into stardom. But once the games were over, Bud was ready to dial it back and spend more time with his family in Stowe. He left his U.S. coaching role, announced his retirement and went home to his wife and two sons, then ages 14 and 9. Home wasn’t what it had been. He and Lucie, his wife of over 20 years, broke up. Not long after, Bud reconnected with Shaun White. It is 1985, the boy is now good at snowboarding. He loves to cook and has a good job as a chef’s apprentice at Stowe’s Topnotch Resort. He reads Outside and sees a notice from adventurer Ned Gillette, who is taking applications to join a crew in his expedition to be the first to row from South America to Antarctica across Drake Passage, the roughest body of water in the world. The boy tells a local friend and bartender about this.“Ned lives in Stowe, you know,” the bartender tells him.The boy is stunned. He calls Ned Gillette. He tells him about his time in the Navy and how he knows celestial navigation.There is a long silence. Finally Gillette says, “I don’t normally do this, but I will meet with you.” Gillette begins their meeting by saying flatly,“You’re a nice guy, but you’re not coming on this trip.” Still, something impresses him about the kid, and so he offers to allow the boy to help in setting up logistics and running errands for the expedition. One day, Gillette tells him to take his Saab with the rowing shell and go practice.The shell and
the boy come back in one piece. After two months of this Gillette unexpectedly drops a bomb:The boy, 26, is now on the team with Gillette and two others. They fly to Patagonia and wait for a month for the conditions to be right for a crossing. In the meantime, they paddle the fjords, climb and bathe in icy falls.The conditions, radioed to the group by weather forecaster Bob Rice, keep coming in as “red alert – don’t go.” An orange signal means “get ready,” and green means “go.” The forecasts are all red, the wind and the currents are too strong. One day, running out of time for an attempt, the crew gets antsy so they head out anyway.The boy’s snowboard is strapped to the boat as he also plans to be the first to ride Antarctica. The boy sees waves he thinks must be 40 feet high, the 28-foot open-cockpit rowboat, the Sea Tomato, gets rocked and rolled. It is all they can do to get back to safety. They will try again next year, Gillette assures the team. But by the time they do, the boy has gotten his first snowboard sponsorship with Sims. He chooses snowboarding. Gillette does the passage without him. Two years later, in 1988, the boy, his wife Lucie, Lowell Hart and Jim Martin head back to South America.This time, they are there to be the first to snowboard the highest mountain on the continent, 22,834-foot Mt. Aconcagua.They set the world record for the highest altitude descent by riding down from over 22,000 feet. By the 1990s, he is back in Stowe, coaching at Mount Mansfield. He coaches Jake Blauvelt who, in return, lets him fell trees on his grandfather’s property. Using those trees, the boy, now the man everyone calls “Bud,” builds his dream house: a log cabin. Everyone knew there was something special about Shaun White, even before the 2006 Olympics, but no one so much as Bud, who had begun working with him one-on-one in New Zealand in 2005. “I can’t say what it is, but when you see talent, you know it,” Bud says. “It’s just my job to help that talent progress.” Bud had gone back to the U.S. Team as the freestyle development coach and he proposed to continue to work with Shaun as his personal coach. With Bud at his shoulder for weeks on end, Shaun kept on upping the ante, not only for himself, but for snowboarding as a whole. At the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Shaun had sewn up the gold medal after his first run with a record-high score of 46.8 out of 50. He didn’t even need to do the final run, but as Shaun stood at the starting gate, Bud goaded him. “You can go out there and run it straight,” he said, nonchalantly. “Or you can f-ing stomp it!” (unbeknownst to Bud, a camera microphone broadcast his f-bomb on live TV). Shaun stomped it, throwing a crowd-raising first-ever Double McTwist 1260 at the end and earning the highest score ever in Olympic halfpipe snowboarding: 48.4 out of 50. What could come after that? Perhaps the biggest challenge for any coach is to help a superstar continue to improve. As part of his current job with the New Zealand team, Bud has to forecast four years out what the next winning tricks and runs are going to be. “When I was competing, the hardest trick in the world was a 540. Then it was double corks, then triples, and now even quads,” Bud says. “The training gets more intense, the gymnastic element more demanding, the jumps get higher and the penalties for failure more profound.” Going into the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Bud and Shaun worked hard on a new trick: the triple cork 1440—four complete rotations while flipping off axis—sort of like a spinning planet in orbit. While Shaun could land it in open course slopestyle and on airbags, two of his attempts to land one in the halfpipe resulted in injuries. After that, as the documentary “Russia Calling” shows, Shaun was pain-
vtskiandride.com Fall 2015 33
“W
He het ask pau her som ses. yo eo “I’m u th ne no in els t so k e to m yo , I k eon u c no e w an w a ho , o ll th tak r y e e es u ou lem nn th en ece ink ts.” ss ary yo risk u c s. W an he ’t, y nI try ou’r som e r eth igh ing t.” or
00 September 2015 vtskiandride.com
Photos courtesy Bud Keene
look at any gymnastics comp: you have these 13-year-old girls doing triple corks off the mat. And they stomp it in their bare feet!”
fully unable to pull one off. The film, produced by Shaun, shows Bud cheering him on, dousing him in Lake Tahoe’s frigid waters (part of Bud’s signature ice water bath therapy), feeding him smoothies and telling him he can do it. It also captures Bud muttering to himself and Shaun crying in frustration on his shoulder. In the film, Shaun tries and tries to launch the triple as a million dollars worth of cameras and film crews wait patiently, but he just can’t. “It’s hard to show up at the mountain and have somebody go ‘are you ready to do this trick?’ The same trick that the first time you tried it, it put you in the hospital and the next time you tried it you nearly cracked your pelvis,” Shaun says to the camera. “There’s a saying by Henry Ford,” says Bud. “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” He pauses. “I’m not someone who takes unnecessary risks.When I try something or ask someone else to, I know all the elements. I think things like cliff diving are scary as hell. There’s no practice, there’s no coaching, there’s no landing pad.” Shaun and Bud spent seven weeks practicing the triple cork on air bags in a private pipe in the Sierra before the camera crews showed up. Shaun had it nailed on the air bag. It was just a matter of doing it on snow. “When I say ‘red’ it means a kid is not ready for a trick,” says Bud. “But if I say ‘it’s all green,’ it means the conditions are right and you’re ready for it.” Shaun had a green light then, and at the Sochi Olympics. In Sochi, he dropped out of the slopestyle and finished fourth in the halfpipe. “Shaun and I, we’re taking a break now, just like we always do leading up to a Games,” says Bud. In the meantime, he’s been busy working with other athletes such as the 2014 ski slopestyle Olympic silver medalist Gus Kenworthy, and the New Zealand National Team, including the famous Wells brothers. The “PRO” part of Bud’s BKPRO camps stands not for “professional” but for “progression,” and that is what Bud looks for. At the BKPRO camp in Mammoth this past April, 22-year-old Yiwei Zhang (whom the Chinese Ski Association plucked out of a gymnastics class at age 11), became the first person to land a cab triple cork in the half-pipe. It didn’t hurt that he idolized Shaun White, trained with Bud and had been studying Shaun’s video footage. “I’m not necessarily for turning gymnasts into snowboarders,” says Keene, acknowledging a trend that’s happening in China, Brazil and other countries. “But I’m all for seeing snowboarders learn more about gymnastics. After all,
It is winter 2011, and Bud is at the X Games in Aspen with his fiancée, Alexandra Sharpe, a blonde British beauty who is the spa director at Topnotch in Stowe. “When I met Bud in 2010 he was taking a break,” she says. At the time he had returned to Stowe to work with his brother at his car dealership in Morrisville. He saw her glance at him at a bar, asked her out the next day and they were married 11 months later.“I didn’t snowboard and I had no idea who he was in that world,” she remembers. Bud is remarkably good at keeping his accomplishments to himself. Few in the snowboard world know of his climbing skills. Not all his climber friends know of his snowboarding. In Aspen, they walk down to the street and are instantly mobbed.“Bud isn’t wearing his gear or logos, but people recognize him and they just keep swarming him,” Sharpe says. “At one point Norwegian Olympic medalist Kjersti Buaas comes up and throws her arms around him and says to me,‘Bud is our spiritual leader.’ She is not even someone he is coaching — she’s speaking for the entire international freestyle community.” Later, after watching the halfpipe, the two head to the beginner slopes and there, the man who coached so many Olympians, begins to teach his future wife to ride. “You know what I like to do best now?” asks Bud. “I’m happiest just snowboarding down a bunny slope with Alex and watching her get better. It’s really not at all about winning. My goal is to simply help people do what they want to do. Coaching—and life—are all about progression.” Watch Yiwei Zhang do a triple cab cork at BKPRO at www.vtskiandride.com
Minding the gap, Bud leaps a crevasse, left, during his first descent of Ecuador’s 20,564-foot Mt. Chimborazo, left, in the 1980s. Top, Bud in the halfpipe and, right, with his wife Alex.
vtskiandride.com Fall 2015 35
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1.800.4VTARNG 36 Fall 2015 vtskiandride.com
COMPETITION BY BIDDLE DUKE
RACING WITH THE
WIND
After watching two friends die in an avalanche, Drew Duffy had a dismal racing season. No one expected what would happen next.
Photo courtesy USSA
O
n the morning of January 5, 2015, Drew Duffy, a 19-year-old from Warren, Vt., woke up to another snowy day in Austria. For him and the other members of the U.S. Ski Team who had come to Solden to train, that wasn’t necessarily good news. Racing gates would be impossible in the pounding snowfall. So, instead, they headed to the top of the mountain for some deep powder runs. On the first run, six of the world’s top skiers—five Americans and a Brit—dropped into an untracked slope off the glacier. It looked perfect. It was steep. It was too perfect. The deep snow broke loose. The massive avalanche swept up Duffy and his mates. The avalanche battered down the slope, burying two of the group, Ronnie Berlack, a Burke (Vt.) Mountain Academy alum, and Bryce Astle, of Sandy, Utah. Astle and Berlack were Duffy’s close friends. He’d grown up racing against Berlack in Vermont. For years, they had both dreamed of making the national team. After an intense seach of the debris with probes, Astle and Berlack’s bodies were recovered. Duffy’s ten years of racing and training has been a journey of successes and failures, of picking himself up and dusting himself off, of hard work, and perseverance. Over those years, the Duffy family had been scraping the money together so Drew, his sister and brother could pursue this expensive sport at the highest level. In late spring of 2014, after a strong season, Duffy was named to the lowest rung on the U.S. Ski Team, the D Team. He trained hard that summer, and it paid off with a promising start in the season’s first big races in December in Canada. “I was feeling good, on a high coming out of those races,” he recounted recently. After Christmas, he and his teammates arrived in Eu-
rope to prepare for a run of races. It had been a rocky start, weather-wise, in the Alps, with little snow, cancelled events and spotty chances to train. Then it began to snow, and snow and snow. The January 5 avalanche battered his friends Astle and Berlack mercilessly in what was reported to be as much as 15 feet of snow, crushing and then suffocating them. It also crushed Duffy with sadness and paralyzed his racing season. Racing for him was suspended for almost a month. He resumed competing in late January but his best result over the next two months was a disappointing 16th in the Junior World Championships in Norway. By the time U.S. Nationals came around in late March— where America’s top racers in every Alpine discipline would be crowned—Duffy was in a slump. The 2015 U.S. Nationals were held at Sugarloaf, Me. Duffy’s parents, Sean, a regional sales manager for a flooring company, and Betsy, a server at Warren’s The Pitcher Inn, had driven over from Vermont to watch the downhill portion held the week before, only to see him ski out of the course and not finish. That was followed by five North American Cup races in Waterville, N.H. Again, Duffy failed to finish in all of them, either falling or skiing out of the gates, except for a Super-G, where he placed a disappointing 19th. His parents decided to skip the rest of the Nationals and instead take their daughter, Anna, another promising young skier, to races in Canada. Ordinarily, the couple would not have missed Nationals. Both are passionate about the sport and their kids’ successes with it: older son, Danny, is a former U.S. Ski Team member who will race for St. Michael’s College this season. The couple routinely take time away from their working lives to be at every possible finish line for their children. In this case, they would have split up, with Betsy going to
Duffy, 19, shows the form that earned the kid from Warren, Vt. a spot on the U.S. Ski Team.
vtskiandride.com Fall 2015 37
Last April at the U.S. Nationals in Maine, Duffy surprised the world with his finish.
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one child’s event, and Sean Duffy to the other. “But given how Drew had done up to then we decided to both go to Canada,” Betsy Duffy said. Duffy’s season seemed cursed. In keeping with how things had been going, at Sugarloaf he pulled bib number 30 in the draw for his favorite event, the Super-G. Bibs are handed out in groups of 15. The first seed, with stars like Ted Ligety and Steve Nyman, would receive bibs one through 15. The second seed, which would include lower-ranked ski teamers and other top racers, would run 16 through 30. Everyone else would run after that based on their rankings. If you were in the second seed like Duffy was you’d hope for bib 16, maybe 20 at worst. Bib 30 would have him running at the very back of the lead pack, probably with a rougher course and the race already decided from among the early starters. Duffy took it in stride. “Starting 30th was a good thing. I was around guys I could beat and everything just felt good. I was in a little bit of a slump going into it, so I told myself I just want to ski and not overthink it.” By the time Duffy was on course, three veterans of the U.S. Ski Team, who had started 4th, 6th and 7th, were being congratulated for their victories in the sunny finish area. Thirty-three-yearold Steve Nyman, with a downhill World Cup victory and several World Cup Super-G podiums earlier in the season, was the apparent
VERMONTERS ON THE U.S. ALPINE SKI TEAM
I
t’s no surprise that a fifth of the 50 skiers named to the U.S. Alpine ski team this summer hail from Vermont racing programs. A cradle of American skiing, Vermont has been producing the nation’s top skiers for the past 50 years, skiers such as Olympic champions Billy Kidd, Barbara Ann Cochran and Tiger Shaw (who is currently chief executive of the United States Ski and Snowboard Association, which manages American ski racing and the national team). The team is broken into four groupings, A through D, with A teamers offered the most funding. The USSA also names a university team of top collegiate racers. This year’s team members with Vermont roots are: A TEAM: Mikaela Schiffrin, Burke Mountain Academy B TEAM: Ryan Cochran-Siegle, Cochran’s Ski Area and Mt. Mansfield Ski Club; Nolan Kasper, Warren and Burke Mountain Academy; Kieffer Christianson, Burke Mountain Academy C TEAM: Tim Kelley, Cochran’s Ski Area and Mt. Mansfield Ski Club; Drew Duffy, Warren and Green Mountain Valley School; Nicholas Krause, Stratton Mountain School; Nina O’Brien, Burke Mountain Academy D TEAM: Patrick Kenney, Burke Mountain Academy; Alice Merryweather, Stratton Mountain Academy NATIONAL UNIVERSITY TEAM: Griffin Brown and Sandy Vietze, University of Vermont Robby Kelley, from Cochran’s Ski Area and Mt. Mansfield Ski Club was also named to the team but declined the offer, preferring instead to compete on the international circuit on his own. Keep your eyes on this column for that story in the next issue.
38 Fall 2015 vtskiandride.com
winner with a time of 1:19.77. No one was likely to challenge that time; the edge and excitement had faded in finish-area announcer Peter Graves’s voice.The podium line-up had been decided. Then Duffy’s interval times began appearing on the big timing screen at the finish and the crowd began to shift their attention back to the race course. Duffy was skiing fast and clean. It was unheard of, but a guy running 30th was actually a serious threat. Then the young Vermonter came through the finish a stunning .04 seconds ahead of Nyman. As he pulled up, Duffy looked at the timing screen and smiled calmly. “Cool,” he said, looking slightly unsure of his own victory. A second later he was swarmed by coaches and fans. Sean, Betsy and Anna Duffy had spent the day driving north to a ski resort in Canada. Due to poor cell service and other interruptions they hadn’t checked the results online. That night, long after their son was crowned national Super-G champion, a friend approached them in a hotel lobby. “Congratulations on Drew’s result today,” the friend said. “Huh?” the Duffy clan responded collectively. But soon they were jumping up and down in elation. “Imagine,” Betsy told me later, “that’s how we learned Drew had won.” The Nationals were a turning point. Duffy would go on to win another major Super-G in Aspen a few weeks later and finish second in a downhill. Part of the inexplicable magic of this story is that Duffy was convinced that his friends Berlack and Astle were with him all along. In both runs of the two-run downhill Duffy felt a tailwind. It blew only for him. “It was Ronnie and Bryce blowing me down the hill,” he said. “I don’t want to take away from my results because I was skiing really well, but each time I kicked out of the starting gate the wind picked up… Regardless of whether or not they gave me a tail wind, they made me mentally stronger.” Duffy was moved up to the National C Team this past May based on his international rankings. “I had a lot of confidence after Nationals and I capitalized on the opportunities that I had knowing that the guys were right there with me.” Drew Duffy is aiming for his first World Cup race start this season.
Photo courtesy USSA
COMPETITION
COACH BY PEGGY SHINN
Norwich’s Hannah Kearney went to iSport to build back strength after she tore her ACL.
TRAIN LIKE A PRO The reason World Cup skiers, Olympic athletes and NFL stars head to Killington’s iSport each year? To learn the moves that can prevent injuries.
Photo couresty Hannah Kearney
F
ifteen stomach crunches.That seemed easy enough. Except, I had just spent an hour doing medicine ball rollups, sideways pulls and a half dozen other challenge stations on a circuit designed to whip the middle-aged into shape. Intermixed were weighted lunges and squats named after former Eastern Bloc countries, fast-footed drills through an agility ladder, lateral jumps over mini-hurdles, and one-footed balance drills on a BOSU ball (short for “both sides utilized”). It wasn’t just the intensity that was hard, it was the way we performed each drill. Better to do one perfect lunge—shin forward, heel down, knee stable, thigh parallel to the floor—than 10 wobbly, off-kilter ones. Pain aside, I was happy to be here in Killington at iSport, the sports medicine branch of the Vermont Orthopaedic Clinic, for part of a five-week pre-season advanced ski training class. None of us in the class had been injured—at least not recently. My goal was not only to get stronger so I could perform better on the slopes, but also to prevent future injury. The movements we were doing—and don’t call them exercises—are the same ones that iSport’s founder Bill Knowles and his protégé Tyler White have developed for a who’s who of Olympic gold medalists, and NFL, NBA and NHL stars. They include Vermonters Hannah Teter (Olympic gold and silver in snowboarding), Hannah Kearney (Olympic gold and bronze in moguls), and Lea Davison (world championship bronze in mountain biking). Signed posters of these athletes—and others—dot the hallway at iSport. After an ACL tear, Kearney worked with Knowles on combined rehabilitative and preventative workouts. “As I was rebuilding the strength I’d lost from surgery, I was actually becoming a more agile, coordinated and educated athlete,” she recalls. As for the stars from more mainstream sports, White won’t
divulge names. But he did chuckle as he remembered the NBA player who arrived in Killington in the dark and feared he would be eaten by a bear. Bill Knowles, the former head trainer and performance director at Burke Mountain Academy, founded iSport ten years ago. He had become so effective at helping ski racers recondition after knee injuries that skiers around the world flocked to him. At iSport, he aimed to offer the same reconditioning and performance training to athletes across the board. Knowles recently moved to the Philadelphia area to work with Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Sam Bradford and others. But he handed the reins to his protégé, White, to carry on. As White says, “You don’t have to be a big name to train here. I just like seeing people get better.” iSport’s movements are designed to make people stronger and fitter by focusing on quality over quantity. In other words, it’s not what you do (how fast you move or how much weight you lift), it’s how you do it. As an example, White describes what happened when he first met Knowles in 2008. The elder trainer gave a talk at Castleton State College, where White was a senior. Knowles asked for a volunteer to demonstrate how to properly step up on a box. Simple enough, thought White. So he raised his hand. Except instead of just stepping up on the box as if climbing the stairs, Knowles showed White, in infinitesimal movement by infinitesimal movement, how to properly strengthen the glutes, quads and hamstrings by the simple motion of stepping up. “It was: ‘Drive your heel into the ground! Get your quad, hamstring and glutes firing together. Don’t step up yet, keep pressuring down, then slowly shift your weight over into the step. Drive down into the step, control yourself up, control yourself down, step off,’” explained White. No knee caving inward, no body leaning forward, no cheating by using the calf muscle.
vtskiandride.com Fall 2015 39
COACH
6
STEPS TO TRAIN LIKE A PRO
The beauty of the iSport training program is that once you learn to do the movements correctly, you can do many of them in a home gym with some simple resistance bands. Here are five movements that will strengthen the muscles you use skiing or riding. Doing these for five weeks pre-season will not only make you ski better (and reduce that early-season burn), but will also help prevent injuries. 1) Bent Knee Side Step with a Mini Band Skiers and other athletes use this movement to strengthen their hips (gluteals) and quadriceps. To do this correctly, you should push down through your feet with each step. This will fire the quads, glutes and hamstrings and increase stability. Keep your toes pointed forward. Use arm action, as if you are walking sideways, to coordinate the move. Do two side steps to the right, then two to the left and repeat three times. Do 1-2 sets. 2) Single Leg, Multi-Touch We often have one leg or side that’s weaker and when you ski or ride, you can favor that side. A better approach is to strengthen your legs individually. This movement will help you develop balance and strengthen each of your legs. The key is to stand on one leg, with your other stretched back behind you, and then si-
40 Fall 2015 vtskiandride.com
large boat at anchor. To keep it moving continually along its entire length takes muscles that you didn’t even know you had — and lungfuls of air. “The NFL guys like it,” said White with a smile. But women with feeble arms? Not so much. Everyone works out with the same equipment though, doing the same movements, whether you are a high school soccer player recovering from shin splints, a World Cup alpine skier trying to step on the podium again after a torn Achilles tendon, an NHL Stanley Cup player with a trick shoulder, or a middleaged mom hoping to keep up with her ski-racing daughter on the slopes. As for those 15 crunches, I did five easily. Until White reminded me to keep my chin pointed toward the ceiling and elbows out. My abs were soon marinating in lactic acid. And don’t ask me to haul on that heavy rope.
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multaneously flex at the ankle, knee and hip as you lower your body and touch the floor with your hand. Use your quads, hamstrings, and glutes throughout the movement. One rep involves dipping three times and touching the floor in three places: on the left side, in front and then the right side. Do 4 reps for each leg, 2-4 sets. 3) Bulgarian Split Squat This movement can also help overcome any favored side and can be used to strengthen the quadriceps, hamstrings and gluteals. Squat on one leg, with the other leg resting on a bench. Performing the exercise on a single leg increases stability by firing your quads, hamstrings and glutes. Do 6-12 reps for each leg and 2-4 sets. 4) Side Lunge This movement is used to strengthen the glutes, hamstrings and the quadriceps. It also trains your body to handle lateral movements, like the quick turns you might make in trees. Step directly to the side, step on your mid-foot, then quickly
transfer weight to your heel as you lunge. Do 8-12 reps each leg, 2-4 sets. 5) Resistance Cord Side Rotations This movement uses a ski specific position to develop strength in the legs, abdomen, back and shoulders while connecting the lower and upper halves of the body. Stand sideways to the cord. Take a “ski stance.” Push into the ground with your feet, anchoring your legs as you pull the cord across your body. Return to the start position with control. Do 5-12 reps per side, and 2-4 sets. 6) Side Plank This movement strengthens your abdominals and gluteals, while also strengthening the muscles in your shoulders. Rest your body weight on your elbow and the side of your foot. Keep your side up and your body in a straight line. Hold for 20-90 seconds each side. Do 2-4 sets. A private iSport session costs $125, with discounts for multiple sessions. Contact Tyler White at twhite@rrmc.org.
Photos by Peggy Shinn
“If you let bad technique go, it’s going to become worse technique,” he added. Bad technique, or simply doing whatever it takes to accomplish an exercise, means weaknesses get weaker, strengths get stronger, and the imbalance can lead to injury down the road. With the focus on balanced movements, the iSport facility above the Killington Medical Clinic is not filled with weight machines, treadmills, or lab equipment. Instead, it’s one big room that looks, at first glance, like an indoor playground. The walls are lined with racks of brightly colored balls—fit balls, weighted medicine balls, and blue BOSU balls—as well as boxes of colorful stretchy bands, tall orange “slalom” poles, blue and green balancing poles, racks with webbing and jump ropes draped over them, and the Pacer, a blue cube that’s made of foam for jumping (but with no rebound). Fun, right? Then there’s the big blue rope, thick enough and long enough to hold a
RETRO VT BY GREG MORRILL
VERMONT’S
FASHION ICONS
When it comes to ski fashion, Vermonters such as Ann Cooke C.B. Vaughn and Jake Burton Carpenter have become legendary trendsetters.
VT style setters, from 1940s fashionista Ann Cooke to Darn Tough ‘s 2015 “Rasta” socks.
Photos courtesy of Vermont Ski Museum and Darn Tough
A
fter World War II, there were fewer than 50,000 skiers in the United States. By the end of the 1960s, that number had grown to more than 4 million. Many factors influenced that growth: better skis, safer bindings, improved ski lifts, a baby boom and a thriving economy, for example. But what do Warren Miller or ski historian Seth Masia say made the biggest difference? They have both gone on the record with the answer: stretch pants. Simply put: stretch pants made skiing sexy. In 1951, Maria Bogner began experimenting with the new stretch material trying to produce pants that fit properly. A year later, the Bogner catalog included the new stretch pants modeled by such ski personalities as Stein Eriksen. By 1955, the pants were available in 42 colors and a wide range of sizes. Sandra Heath of Stowe was a model for Bogner during the 1950s and ’60s and travelled around the world appearing in fashion shows and ski movies. She went on to collect the best of that period’s skiwear and later produced fashion shows called “Vintage Visions.” Sandra Heath’s collection forms the nucleus for the current “Slope Style: Fashion on Snow” exhibit, showing at the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum in Stowe through October. The exhibit highlights the role Vermont and Vermonters have played in ski and snowboard fashions from 1930 to the present. One of the first skiwear manufacturers in the United States was B.F. Moore & Co. in Newport, Vt. Founded in 1830, the company built a reputation for producing durable work and outdoor clothing. It started the Slalom Ski Wear brand in 1931, providing function and fashion at a moderate price. In 1972, Bogner chose Newport to start its United States subsidiary, Bogner of America, probably because of B.F. Moore’s
skilled workforce there. The facility closed in 2005, but Bogner of America is still headquartered in Vermont. “Slope Style” also tells the story of Ann Cooke, “Nose Dive Annie.” Born Ann Bonfoey in 1910, Ann did not have a typical childhood for women of the era. Her father was a pilot and made sure Ann learned how to fly by age 12. Ann was athletically talented, excelling at any sport she tried. Her tennis ability got her all the way to Wimbledon. In 1928, she married James Cooke and by the mid-1930s they had moved to Burlington, Vermont. Ann quickly got hooked on skiing before there were lifts and when you had to earn your turns. During the winter she would make daily trips to Stowe where she would skin up and ski down. She had a particular fascination with the Nose Dive trail. Her rapid ascents and descents drew the attention of the regulars on the mountain. It was none other than Stowe’s Roland Palmedo who gave Ann Cooke the nickname “Nose Dive Annie.” Palmedo went on to found the Mount Mansfield Lift Co., which would build the first chairlift on Mount Mansfield. The first official rider on the original single chair in December 1940 was Ann Cooke. By the time World War II started, Ann was a divorced, single mother. She had been designing and making her own ski clothes so she began to make skiwear for sale. Harper’s Bazaar magazine featured her designs in a cover story and suddenly Ann Cooke Ski Clothes
vtskiandride.com Fall 2015 41
Speed skier C.B. Vaughn (above) went on to create his eponymous skiwear line. Sandra Heath models Bogner’s first stretch pants (right top), Jake Carpenter, circa 1983, dressed to kill in early Burton wear. Today, Ibex (below) continues Vermont’s knitting heritage.
of Stowe was a success. Ann could not keep up with the demand on her own so she negotiated with New York retail giant Lord & Taylor to take over production and distribution of her designs. Ann also helped support herself and her family during the war by using her flying skills to train war pilots. In 1947, Ann married Vernon Taylor, Jr. and gave up her ski clothing business to be a wife and mother. She would stay involved in fashion, though, modelling for some of the world’s most famous designers. In 1967, Harper’s Bazaar selected her as one of the “One Hundred Great Beauties of the World.” Not all Vermonters saw skiwear in the high fashion sense of Bogner and Ann Cooke. Enter Charles Bird Vaughan, better known as C. B. Vaughan. Vaughan grew up in Manchester, Vt., where his parents ran an inn. He loved to ski and he loved to ski fast. After racing for Vermont Academy, C.B. earned a scholarship to St. Lawrence University where he would become captain of the ski team and a member of the United States Ski Team.While skiing collegiately, C.B. would meet another college ski racer who liked to go fast, Dick Dorworth. Together they trained for the 1963 world speed skiing competition held in Portillo, Chile. Both men would set a new record of 106.5 miles-per-hour. By 1969, C.B.’s racing career was on the wane, but he wanted to stay in the ski business. He saw an opportunity in skiwear. In his own words: “Skiing was very chi-chi, and chic was not appealing to me. I was interested in bringing hard-core, traditional, classic, functional skiwear into the marketplace. I couldn’t accept that just because I was a kid from Vermont, I couldn’t do it.’’ Vaughan’s first product was the “Super Pant,” which was an insulated warm-up that zipped on over stretch pants. Racers loved them and the general skier population followed suit. Vaughan and his then-wife Roxanne designed the pants and drove around Vermont selling them out of their car. Later, came an entire line, including his classic high-collared jackets. Initially Vaughan had other companies make the clothes, but when they began to steal his ideas, Vaughan decided to manufacture the clothing himself. The first CB Sports plant was located in an old mill in Bennington and at its peak CB Sports had four plants in Vermont and New York and employed about 500 people. In 1982, People magazine wrote: “The CB logo has become the lift-line equivalent of the Lacoste alligator.” Manchester became a hotbed for skiwear entrepreneurs and provided a wonderful convergence of creativitiy. In 1979, Manchester Center’s Tom and Anne Smith founded Overdrive Sportswear Ltd. In 1980, local Poppy Gall started a knit sweater and hat company called Mountain Ladies and Ewe, which popularized ear flaps on knit hats.Gall would later go on to co-found the Isis brand of women’s skiwear that combined serious mountaineering function with flattering fit. She now designs the Darn Tough line for Cabot Hosiery, the Northfield company that
42 Fall 2015 vtskiandride.com
makes socks so tough they come with a guarantee. Jake Burton Carpenter, also originally of Manchester, was a driving force behind the new sport of snowboarding. Snowboarding came with its own sense of fashion so Jake looked to the locals to provide the first snowboarding wear under the Burton name. CB Sports provided the jackets, Overdrive made the first Burton pants, and Poppy Gall provided hats. Today, with a retail outlet at its headquarters in Burlington, Burton has gone on to be a major player in sportswear. According to Snowsports Industries of America data, Burton was third in dollar sales of skiwear behind Spyder and North Face in 2014. Thanks to the heritage, dozens of other national skiwear brands now call Vermont home, including Ibex, maker of wool outdoor apparel, Turtle Fur, Skida hats, and many more. These are some of the stories captured in “Slope Style: Fashion on Snow,” at the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum in Stowe. Plan a visit during foliage season to help get stoked for winter. Retro VT columnist Greg Morrill is the author of Retro-Ski, A Nostalgic Look Back at Skiing and writes for The Stowe Reporter. Follow his blog at retro-skiing.com
Clockwise from top left, photos couresty of C.B. Vaughn, Sandra Heath. Burton, Ibex
RETRO VT
THE GREEN MOUNTAIN CALENDAR SEPTEMBER
9/12-13 Grand Point North, Burlington Vermont rock star Grace Potter headlines a two-day festival on the Burlington Waterfront with The Flaming Lips and Mike Gordon. www.grandpointnorth.com 9/17-20 Tunbridge World’s Fair, Tunbridge Named a “Top Ten Time-Honored Event” by the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, the Tunbridge World’s Fair is four days of agriculture events, live entertainment, arts and crafts, food and more. www.tunbridgeworldsfair.com 9/18-20 Vermont Wine & Harvest Festival, Mount Snow Mount Snow hosts vintners, specialty food producers, chefs, painters, cheese makers, potters, jewelers, photographers and farmers. www.mountsnow.com 9/19-20 Triple Crown Enduro, Q Burke The second of a three-stop series, with riders competing on Burke’s downhill mountain bike trails for more than $30,000 in cash. www.skiburke.com 9/19 Mountain Work Day, Mad River Glen Help maintain some of MRG’s forest and glades lines. The group meets at 9 a.m. in the base area, rain or shine. www.madriverglen.com 9/19 Spartan Race, Killington An unforgiving obstacle race up and down the sides of Killington Mountai with rope climbs, pits of fire and plenty of mud. www.killington.com 9/25-26 SIPtemberfest, Mad River Glen Only 800 tickets will be available to this small festival, featuring 24 craft breweries. Chairlift rides are available all weekend. www.siptemberfest.com 9/25-27 ITVFest, Mount Snow ITVFest showcases the world’s best independently-produced television shows, web series, multimedia content and short films. www.itvfest.com 9/26 Peru Fair, Peru The Peru Fair features a pig roast, music and family entertainment, Vermont crafts, antiques, art exhibits, artisan demos, clowns, magicians and more. www.perufair.org 9/24-27 Oktoberfest Vermont, Burlington Burlington hosts its first annual Oktoberfest with 37 brewers from around New England as well as food, music and games. www.oktoberfestvermont.com
OCTOBER
10/2 Killington Brewfest, Killington The resort’s annual food and beer festival features more than 100 regional craft brews. www.killington.com
10/2-4 19th Annual Stowe Oktoberfest, Stowe The town of Stowe and the resort host a weekend Oktoberfest with parade, beer tent, German cuisine and live music, including yodeling. www.stoweoktoberfest.com 10/3 6th Annual Bean and Brew Festival, Jay Peak Jay’s annual Bean & Brew Festival features locally roasted coffees coupled with New England beers, live music and lawn games. www.jaypeakresort.com 10/3 Stark Mountain Hill Climb Race, Waitsfield Run any route you choose to the summit of Stark Mountain at 3,644 feet. Proceeds support the Stark Mountain Foundation. www.madriverglen.com 10/4 Allen Clark Memorial Hill Climb Bike Race, Waitsfield Riders start at the intersection of Vermont Route 17 and 100 in Waitsfield and finish at the summit of the Appalachian Gap—a distance of 6.2 miles with a vertical gain of 1,600 feet. www.madriverglen.com 10/9-11 Killington Oktoberfest, Killington Over Columbus Day weekend, Killington hosts its first Oktoberfest, complete with keg bowling, a bratwurst-eating contest, beer, live music and the World Championship Stein Hoisting contest. www.killington.com 10/10-12 North Face Race to the Summit and Celebration, Stratton Stratton Resort moves into fall over Columbus Day weekend with the Annual Craft Brew Festival, Chili Festival and the North Face Race to the Summit. www.stratton.com 10/10-12 Community Weekend, Sugarbush Sugarbush hosts a fall festival with pumpkin carving, lift rides, hikes, fall-inspired dining and live music. www.sugarbush.com 10/10 Fall Into Winter, Okemo This family-friendly foliage festival features live music, hayrides, pumpkin painting, a pie-eating contest and lots of apple cider. www.okemo.com 10/10-11 Harpoon Oktoberfest, Windsor The Harpoon brewery hosts an Oktoberfest with lots of beer, oompah music, chicken dancing, keg bowling, fall foliage and the Harpoon Oktoberfest race. www.harpoonbrewery.com 10/10-11 18th Annual Oktoberfest, Mount Snow The 18th annual Oktoberfest has plenty of oompah music, 25 German and domestic brews and schnitzel plus games and activities for the kids. www.mountsnow.com. 10/10-11 42nd Annual Harvest Arts & Crafts Show, Mount Snow Get a jump on holiday shopping at Mount Snow where over 50 vendors gather, including local artisans, specialty food makers and more. www.mountsnow.com
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10/11 45th Annual GMAA Green Mountain Marathon, Grand Isle This half or full marathon is run on rolling terrain along the west shore of South Hero and Grand Isle. www.gmaa.net
IT’S SKI SWAP SEASON A perennial fall tradition, Vermont’s ski and skate swaps are a thrifty way to get yourself or the family fully outfitted and help out your local ski club, PTA or ski academy (which usually take a percentage of the sale). Mark you calendars and be sure to arrive early.
10/11 Burketoberfest, Q Burke Q Burke celebrates fall with hayrides, pumpkin painting and games, plus local craft vendors. www.skiburke.com 10/17 ARToberFest, Waterbury Downtown Waterbury pairs creative talent with the area’s craft brewers and night-life. This event features a town-wide fine art exhibit, live music and local brews. www.acrossroads.org/artoberfest
Montpelier Recreation Department Ski and Skate Sale Equipment drop-off: No straight skis or clothing of any kind will be accepted. Oct. 22 from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Montpelier High School Gymnasium; Oct. 23, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sale hours: Oct. 25, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Montpelier High School Gymnasium
10/23-11/1 Vermont International Film Festival, Burlington This annual film festival is held on Burlington’s historic waterfront. www.vtiff.org
Waitsfield PTA Ski & Skate Sale Equipment drop-off: No helmets or straight skis accepted. Nov. 13, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Waitsfield Elementary School. Sale hours: Oct. 14-15, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
10/23-25 Essex Craft Show, Essex Junction The Essex Craft Show features hundreds of exhibitors showing arts and crafts from across the region as well as Canada. www.vtcrafts.com
Colchester Ski, Board and Skate Sale Equipment drop-off: Oct. 2, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Colchester High School Sale hours:, Oct. 3 from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
10/25 CircumBurke MTB Challenge and Trail Run, Victory Kingdom Trails, Conservation Collaborative and the Burke Area Chamber of Commerce present a mountain bike and cross-country running race on a 25-mile loop through the backwoods of Victory. www.circumburke.com
Okemo Mountain School Ski and Snowboard Swap Equipment drop-off: Nov. 14, 15 and 18, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Sitting Bull Bar. Sale hours: Nov. 20, 4 to 7 p.m.; Nov. 21, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
10/31 The Kingdom Challenge Half Marathon & 5K, Lyndonville Runners in the half marathon start in Lyndonville and follow a course through the rolling hills and covered bridges of northeastern Vermont before finishing in St. Johnsbury. www.thekingdomchallenge.com
Pico Ski Club Annual Ski & Snowboard Sale and Swap Equipment drop-off: At the Pico Retail Shop on Sept. 26 from 3 to 5 p.m.; Sept. 27 from 10 a.m. to noon; and Sept. 30 from 4 to 6 p.m. At the Pico Base Lodge on Oct. 1 from 4 to 6 p.m., Oct. 2 from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sale hours: Oct. 2 from 5 to 9 p.m.; Oct. 3 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Oct. 4 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Killington Ski Club Monster Ski and Bike Sale Equipment drop-off: Oct. 3-8 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m; Oct. 9 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Oct. 10 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Killington Ramshead Base Lodge. Sale hours: Oct. 9 from 5 to 9 p.m.; Oct. 10 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Oct. 11, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Note: Prices are negotiable all day Sunday. New this year, street and mountain bikes are welcome. Unsold items must be picked up Oct. 11-17. Cambridge Rotary Club Ski Swap Equipment drop-off: Nov. 20 at the Cambridge Elementary School, 6 to 8 p.m. Sale hours: Nov. 21 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Nov. 22, 10 a.m. to noon.
September in Chester
October in Mount Holly
November in Ludlow Trot It Off 5K & Tot’s Trot
December in Weston
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Black River Good Neighbors
19 – 20
10 – 11
7
STICK SEASON SOCIAL
5
Check out our CALENDAR OF EVENTS at www.YourPlaceInVermont.com 44 Fall 2015 vtskiandride.com
THE NEW RELEASES Nothing gets us revved for winter like the deluge of ski porn that saturates the web and packs movie theaters this time of year. Here’s a lineup of what to see, when and where. Paradise Waits, Nov. 6-7 The folks at Jackson Hole-based Teton Gravity Research have been busy this year with their latest film, “Paradise Waits.” In the face of a curious winter for western skiers, many pros had to wait patiently or go the distance to find the goods. The result is “Paradise Waits,” which highlights their struggles and ultimately their successes. Nov. 6 at the Smugglers’ Notch Distillery, Cambridge, Vt.; Nov. 7 at Higher Ground, Burlington, Vt. www.tetongravity.com Fade to Winter, Nov. 11 Matchstick Productions presents “Fade to Winter,” a tribute to the expression “a bad day of skiing is better than a good day at work.” Shot on site in Alaska, Iceland, British Columbia, Japan, Colorado, Italy and New England, this film captures the spirit of nine skiers who go to great lengths for the sport they love. Starring Markus Eder, Bobby Brown, Michelle Parker, Mark Abma, Tanner Rainville, Aaron Blunck, James Heim, Sean Jordan, PK Hunder and more. Nov. 11 at Higher Ground in Burlington, Vt. at 7 p.m.
Stoke your “I-want-winter” fires with scenes from “Fade to Winter” (above) and webisodes from Vermont’s own Meathead Films’ “Working for the Weekend,” below.
Chasing Shadows, Nov. 28, Dec. 4, 26, 27 With free tickets, raffles and refreshments, it’s always a party when Warren Miller films come to town. This year’s “Chasing Shadows” is another big-mountain feature with top athletes Caroline Gleich, Ingrid Backstrom, Jonny Moseley, JT Holmes, Øystein Aasheim and more. Killington: Nov. 28 at the Snowshed Conference Center,. at 7 p.m.. Burlington: Dec. 4 at the Flynn at 6:30 and 9:30 p.m. Stowe: Dec. 26 at the Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, Stowe, Vt. at 7 p.m. and Dec. 27 at the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum,. at 7 p.m. Okemo: Dec. 27 at the Cornerstone Room at 6 and 8:30 p.m.
The
Red Clover Inn & RESTAURANT
“A feast for the senses in an idyllic setting” - Boston Globe
Meathead Films, online Vermont’s own, Meathead Films had a busy season, releasing eight installments in three different web video series. This winter, expect new web installments in “Spectral,” filmed at Stowe, Jay Peak and Mad River Glen with hardcore east skiers Noah Ranallo and Dylan Dipentima. “Working for the Weekend’s” Ben Leoni chases backcountry lines in the Chic Chocs of Quebec and New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Park rats, look for plenty of urban hits in the “Neo” series. See the latest at skitheeast.com as well as at vermontskiandride.com
Restaurant open for dinner Thursday through Monday 5:30 to 9 p.m.
Photo courtessy Meathead Films
Stylish, secluded lodging. Exquisite Vermont food. Just minutes from Killington & Pico.
7 Woodward Road, Mendon, Vermont 1/4 mile off Route 4 between Killington & Rutland 802.775.2290 • 800.752.0571 • www.redcloverinn.com
vtskiandride.com Fall 2015 45
DRINK
VERMONT
VERMONT BEER, WINE, CIDER + SPIRITS
The Green Mountain State is home to some of the world’s best breweries, wineries, cideries and distilleries. Many of them use the finest Vermont products, including local apples, grapes and pure Vermont maple syrup to create their unique libations. For more information to each location check out www.vtskiandride.com.
610 US Route 7, Middlebury, VT 802-989-7414 www.dropinbrewing.com Steve Parkes and Christine McKeever, owners of Drop-In Brewing and the American Brewers Guild, pride themselves on educating brewers and creating worldly beers with Vermont character. In a small but fun atmosphere, tastingroom customers can try our 7 beers on tap and take home any of three different-sized growlers.
Sample estate-grown wines from our sustainable winery, just outside the capital city of Montpelier.
WhistlePig showcases the tremendous flavor potential of rye while maintaining a smooth and balanced profile, identifying it with the most acclaimed whiskeys in the world.
46 Log Yard Drive, Hardwick, VT (802) 472-8000 www.caledoniaspirits.com Caledonia Spirits is a craft distillery in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Raw honey distinguishes our Barr Hill vodka, Barr Hill gin, and Tom Cat barrel-aged gin by imparting a pure and soft botanical essence into each bottle. All of our spirits reflect our deep connection to the land and Vermont’s agricultural heritage.
Open daily 12-5 for free tours and tastings at the distillery.
3597 VT-74, Shoreham, VT 802-897-2777 www.champlainorchards.com 4373 VT Route 12 Berlin, VT 802-233-1151 freshtracksfarm.com
52 Seymour Street Middlebury, VT 802-897-7700 whistlepigwhiskey.com
We offer guided tastings of our locally-made hard cider including our Original Hard Cider, Mac & Maple, Limited Edition Ginger Spice as well as our Pruner’s Pride and Honeycrisp Ice Cider. All our ciders are made on site with our ecologically grown apples. 100% of our electricity is generated from our solar orchards. 2015 Winner of Vermont Cider Classic.
Open daily 9-5. July-Nov. Please call ahead.
Warren, VT 802-272-8436 www.lawsonsfinest.com Lawson’s Finest is a small artisanal brewery located in Warren, VT, producing an array of hop-forward ales, specialty maple beers, and unique creations of the highest quality and freshness. Find our beer at lawsonsfinest.com.
5 Bartlett Bay Rd South Burlington, VT 802-658-BREW MagicHat.Net Where ancient alchemy meets modern-day science to create the best tasting beer on the planet. Come watch our spores dance and play! Visit the Artifactory for FREE samples, FREE tours and the most unusual shopping experience! sponsored content
We are cider makers who love to take fresh local apples and ferment them into delicious, refreshing, dynamic, clean and fulfilling cider! We use 100% locally sourced apples and cider for 100% of our products, 100% of the time. Never made from concentrate, ever! Our goal is bold, yet simple: Make cider for the people, by the people. Visit us on Pine Street in Burlington for tastings and a great meal.
716 Pine Street, Burlington, VT 802-497-0054 www.zerogravitybeer.com Zero Gravity Craft Brewery recently opened a 30-barrel brew house, full canning line, tasting room, retail shop and a sun-drenched beer garden on Pine Street in Burlington, in addition to the original location in American Flatbread Burlington Hearth. Beers brewed for food are our main focus: German and Czech-style lagers and a variety of Belgian styles are usually well represented. Our TLA IPA is a crowd favorite as is our medieval style Gruit ale, released twice a year on the summer and winter solstices.
353 Coburn Hill Road Newport, VT 802-334-7096 kingdombrewingvt.com This working farm is the northernmost brewery in Vermont. It has a greenhouse for food production, a Black Angus beef herd for spent grain and trub recycling, a geothermal cooling system and wood-fired hot water... we are Vermont Green.
East Fairfield, VT 802-782-5999 www.elmbrookfarm.com Premium Sipping Vodka and Barrel Aged Maple Spirits made from 100% pure Vermont maple. Our products are entirely fermented, distilled and bottled by hand on our Vermont farm!
RAIL DOG
3 Artisans Way, Windsor, VT 802-674-4220 www.silodistillery.com SILO Distillery, located in Windsor, Vermont, is a sustainable craft distillery that distills all of their small batch spirits completely in-house from local grains and ingredients. They offer tours, free tastings, a full bar for craft cocktails, retail and free local music 3 times a month. www.silodistillery.com
150 Main Street, Newport, VT 802-334-1808 www.edenicecider.com Founded in 2007 on an abandoned farm in the Northeast Kingdom, Eden produces high quality ice ciders, aperitif ciders and naturally sparkling hard ciders from heirloom and true cider variety apples grown at our own and 5 other local orchards. Slow Food Snail of Approval, Good Food Award Gold Seal, Great Lakes International Cider Competition Best in Show 2015.
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622 Keyser Hill, St. Johnsbury, VT 802-745-9486 www.duncsmill.com At Dunc’s Mill, we know that true craft spirits take time, care and effort. That’s why we try to do everything the right way. We have one goal: to create from scratch the highest quality spirits that can be produced. We do every step of the process by hand, and it’s all done in house. Find our rums at over 50 locations around Vermont, or call and arrange a time to come visit.
632 Laporte Road, Route 100 Morrisville, VT 802-888-9400 www.rockartbrewery.com Enjoy samples of our beers during your visit and have a growler filled to take home to enjoy later. We have the best selection of our bottled beers. You’ll also find great Rock Art swag, Vermont foods and wonderful items from local artisans.
VERMONT BEER, WINE, CIDER + SPIRITS
316 Pine Street, Suite 114 Burlington, VT 802-497-1987 www.citizencider.com
The Chairlift Q+A BY LISA LYNN
GRACE POTTER
A former ski racer turned rock star, Mad RiverValley girl Grace Potter has hit the big time with a Grammy nomination and a new debut solo album.
The single chair at Mad River, of course! But you’d have to be shouting up the questions to me! Ok, I’ll shout one up: What was it like growing up in the Mad River Valley?
My parents were ski bums, with my dad making signs for ski resorts around the country and my mom, an artist. I was really absorbed in the ski culture and I was competitive, so I grabbed as much as I could out of skiing. When I was in grade school, I’d get out on half days on Fridays to ski. Later I went to the Green Mountain Valley School and got into ski racing with some pretty amazing athletes like Olympic racer Doug Lewis. I learned so much from them and I have awesome memories of skiing at Sugarbush and Mad River Glen. Do you still ski race?
No, I just telemark. I haven’t had much time to ski in the last few years but I think it will come back when I have kids. The last time I skied Mad River was with my sister Charlotte and we had a blast. I hear you are also a mad sledder.
Oh yeah! I am a mad, mad sledder! Ask Alex Crothers (of Higher Ground) about a night that he and Jess (Crothers’ wife) and Matt (Burr, Potter’s husband) and I went down one of the steepest runs at Mad River. We were going like 40 mph and I’m the queen of bailing out—there was almost no Grace Potter at the end of that! When I was growing up in the Valley everyone was inventing things and testing different gear out. Dave Sellers (the architect) gave us one of the early Mad River Rocket sleds he invented. I still have a 1978 Rocket original with a rainbow strap and foam kneepads. What’s your favorite song on your new album Midnight?
The song “Low” is an astounding representation of what is going on in my brain on an emotional level. I wrote it after getting a tour of these underground tunnels in Las Vegas where artists, poets and homeless people live and work. But the song is really more metaphorical: I tend to almost drown people I care about with love and I won’t let them go through a hard time alone.
48 Fall 2015 vtskiandride.com
Last night, you were on Conan O’Brien. You’ve opened for President Obama. Your Kenny Chesney duet, “You and Tequila,” was up for a Grammy. What’s the highlight of your career, so far?
It was definitely singing ‘Gimme Shelter’ on stage with the Rolling Stones this year—there’s no way I’m going to beat that. There was such a synergy that night. It felt like all the pieces were coming together at once, right down to the fact that I was wearing a silver dress and Mick was wearing a silver jacket—we hadn’t planned that. This Vegas mafioso fashion designer had made me that dress—the same one who gave me a tour of the underground tunnels. It was a really cosmic way to see all my passions and parts of my life come together, kind of like in a movie. Do you and your husband (drummer Matt Burr) still consider Vermont home?
We are Vermonters through and through! Yup, I still live in the compound we call Potter Ville where I grew up. I’ve turned my dad’s old sign-making studio into our house, recording studio and my own yoga retreat. You love good food, you’re friends with chefs such as Mario Batali. So when you are in the Valley, where do you hang out and where do you like to eat?
I love the Big Picture Café & Theater (in Waitsfield.) My first high school job was in the movie theater and I used to make the popcorn there. Later I was a bus girl at American Flatbread and that’s my other home away from home.There are so many great places in this valley. I love, love Mad Taco and Georgia Von Trapp is doing it right. But the closest I get to the food and the ski culture of the 1970s that my parents always talk about, is going to Chez Henri. Henri is such an amazing part of Sugarbush. I love hanging out there with him. He really has his claws in skiing. You started Grand Point North festival in Burlington (held Sept. 12-13 this year). What’s your vision for making it grow?
My vision is NOT to grow it. It’s like Vermont: we want it to be intimate. I love exploring the power of Vermont, both artistic and entrepreneurial.We all like living against the odds here. Yes, it’s a tough place to live, but we get our stack of wood and store it and heat with it. There’s a pioneering spirit here. For more on Grace, the Potter family and photos of PotterVille, visit vtskiandride.com.
Photo courtesy Grace Potter
We call this column ‘The Chairlift Interview” since it’s a quick way to meet a Vermonter. So if we were on a chairlift now, which one would it be?
Come visit Vermont’s 3rd oldest ski area and learn why the Snow Bowl is beloved to all who know it!
$35
Weekday ticket (Season passes discounted through November)
www.middleburysnowbowl.com
$100
Lease packages for ages 10 and under. See more rates online.
500+
acres of trails, glades & woods with a border-to-border all-access terrain policy. New this year is a designated uphill route!
F
amily-friendly atmosphere includes FREE access to our Sunkid Wonder Carpet, a cozy lodge with wireless internet and great food. On-site ski shop open 7 days a week starting Nov. 2 with lease packages, rentals, retail and full tuning. Middlebury Snow School has over 40 instructors who offer all levels of coaching in skiing, snowboarding and telemarking. Ask about the Middlebury Ski Club activities for kids, they’re phenomenal!
140
Days of nordic skiing with the help of our state-of-the-art snow making system in each of the past two years.
Ski Middlebury Terrific skiing • Unbeatable value • Authentic Vermont
Middlebury was ranked among the Best 12 towns in the nation to live in by Outside Magazine in 2015!
R
ikert Nordic Center is located on VT Route 125 just down the road from the Snow Bowl. The 5km snowmaking system allows for a jump on early season skiing on a certified FIS trail. Season passes and multi-day passes available. On-site rental shop with xc skis, fat bikes, snow shoes, sit skis and more! Open 7 days a week from Nov.-March. Great rates, terrific value, tons of fun!
www.rikertnordic.com
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