Vermont Ski + Ride Magazine Season Preview/FALL 2020

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Vermont’s Mountain Sports and Life

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7 Ways Winter Will Change

The New Way to Train for the Season 8 General Stores Not to Miss

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vtskiandride.com Summer 2019 00

CONTENTS / 05.01 =

FEATURES THE ONCE AND FUTURE KINGDOM p. 30

With new bike trails, an elegant new inn and few crowds, now’s the time to head to Kingdom Trails and Burke.

THE (BITTER) SWEET SEASON p. 38

Photographer Jeb Wallace-Brodeur savored every snowfall last season. Here’s the proof.

NET-ZERO = NET GAIN p. 44

Two Sugarbush skiers built a stunning new home that generates more energy than it uses. .

THE BACKCOUNTRY TRAILBLAZERS p. 50

David Goodman mines the rich legacy of trails the Civilian Conservation Corps left behind.

FIRST TRACKS

COLUMNS

NEWS | 7 WAYS WINTER WILL BE DIFFERENT

Here’s how Vermont’s ski areas will operate this winter.

p. 5

Here’s our strategy for getting turns this winter.

ARTS | MAPPING MOUNTAINS... AND THE MOON,

The most precise, detailed topo maps are now wall art.

APRES | 8 GENERAL STORES NOT TO MISS

BASE LODGE | THE WEIRD, WEIRD SEASON AHEAD,

p. 8 p. 17

COACH | HOW TO GET AIR AWARE,

p. 57

GEAR | GEAR THAT’S DOING GOOD

p. 60

What a stunt man and a freeski coach can teach you about getting high. p. 21

With amazing meals to go, penny candy, essential goods, and all the town gossip, these stores are one-stop shops worth the trip.

These Vermont brands gave back during Covid-19.

LOCAL HERO | THE GROOVIEST GROOMER,

Their season skiing and riding the Northeast started in October 2018. Iit still hasn’t ended.

p. 27

Brian Hughes never saw snow before he was 28. Now he’s doing this? ,

CHAIRLIFT Q/A | TWO ENDLESS WINTERS,

p. 64

COVER: Jeb Walllace-Brodeur shoots Brooks Curran kicking off the season on Dec. 7, 2019 at Mad River Glen. THIS PAGE: Sugarbush’s Lincoln Peak gets its snow on. Photo by Brooks Curran

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THE WEIRD WINTER AHEAD “It’s going to be a weird, weird winter.” That thought kept going through my head as one by one ski areas announced their operating plans. Goodbye long lodge lunches, talking to strangers on the chairlift, apres-ski beers at the crowded bars. Hello reservation systems, socially-distanced lift lines, mask-wearing and booting up in your car. But one thing hasn’t changed. There will be skiing and riding. There will be snow. There will be smiles, as Sugarbush’s digital ad campaign promises—hopefully broad, powder-eating grins.

Make no mistake, you may have to work harder for those. Last season Vail Resorts announced its new $599 Northeast Value Pass. City-dwellers who might have previously hopped a plane from JFK or Logan toVail’s Eagle Airport jumped on it. So much so that Vail Resorts sold more than 850,000 Epic Passes—an 18 percent increase over last year. Other ski areas, including independents such as Magic and Bolton Vallley, also saw a surge in season pass sales as skiers realized that day tickets would be the first to get cut off if capacity limits are met.

On weekends and holidays, capacity will be an issue. Perhaps midweek, too.

Vermont has also seen an influx of new residents in its ski towns. The town of Winhall, near Stratton and Bromley, recently saw 54 new students in its school, a 25 percent increase The NewYork Times reported. Near Mount Snow, the Dover school system saw 32 new kids. Of 300 families who have condos at Bromley, 100 never left last March.

It might be easy to raise an eyebrow at out-of-state plates and wonder how many visitors have quarantined. But when the one major Covid-19 outbreak of the summer hit a ski town (14 cases were reported after a private party at a Killington hotel), locals were as much to blame. “Don’t be the reason we end our season,” is a slogan that we all should take seriously, locals as well as visitors.

So how do you navigate this new world? I’ll tell you my plan. This will be the season to ski midweek and to seek out those smaller mountains: places where the lift lines are rarely long, passholders are usually locals and the powder is often plentiful—places like Burke and Bolton, Middlebury College Snow Bowl and Magic, Mad River and Mt. Ellen, Suicide Six and Pico. — Lisa Lynn, Editor.

CONTRIBUTORS Our new backcountry columnist, David Goodman, writes about the legacy the Civilian Conservation Corps left for skiers. Goodman just released the newest edition of Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast. The author of seven books, he hosts the podcast, The Vermont Conversation.

Summer intern Sophie Hiland had a good time profiling “The Grooviest Groomer,” Killington’s Brian Hughes, and snacking her way through some of the 8 general stores everyone in Vermont should visit. A budding editor, Sophie is now in her junior year at Middlebury College.

A true Vermonter—and wicked good skier, mountain biker and peak bagger—Jeb WallaceBrodeur is best known for his stunning photos.

In this issue he shares some of his favorite action shots from “The (Bitter) Sweet Season” of 2019/20.

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EDITORIAL Publisher, Angelo Lynn angelo@vtskiandride.com Editor/Co-Publisher, Lisa Lynn editor@vtskiandride.com Creative Director, David Pollard Editorial Intern, Sophie Hiland Contributors: Brooks Curran, David Goodman, Ali Kaukas, Bud Keene, Brian Mohr, Lindsay Selin, Doug Stewart, Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

Visit our website for the portfolio of this home and more!

ADVERTISING SALES & DISTRIBUTION For general advertising and media kits: ads@vtskiandride.com | 802-388-4944 Greg Meulemans greg@vtskiandride.com Dave Honeywell dave_golfhouse@madriver.com Wilkie Bushby wilkie@vtskiandride.com Circulation & Distribution Manager: Lisa Razo subscribe@vtskiandride.com HEADQUARTERS VT SKI+RIDE is published four times a year by Addison Press Inc., 58 Maple Street, Middlebury, VT 05753 VT SKI+RIDE print subscriptions are available for $25 (U.S.) or $35 (Canada) per year. Digital subcriptions are free.

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FIRSTTRACKS 7WAYS THISWINTER WILL BE DIFFERENT

Covid-19 has changed how ski areas will operate this winter. Here’s what you need to know before you go. By Stuart Winchester

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1

STATE REGULATIONS ARE CHANGING All through Covid-19,Vermont has maintained one of the lowest rates of infections and fewest deaths of any state in the nation. As of press-time in September, Vermont was reporting under 1800 cases since the beginning of the pandemic and fewer than 60 deaths.

Dr. Anthony Fauci praised the Green Mountain state at a Sept. 15, Zoom press conference with Gov. Phil Scott, saying “Notwithstanding that you’re a small state, [Vermont] should be the model of how you get to such a low test positivity that you can actually start opening up the economy in a safe and prudent way.”

Though masks are still mandatory in public (including on the mountain and in ski lift lines) per a Governor’s executive order, Vermont has been opening up. As of mid-September, hotels and other

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lodging were able to take guests at 100-percent capacity. Restaurants were at 50 percent capacity and bar seating (with 6-foot distancing) was recently allowed.

Vermont has also been mapping where visitors can arrive from.

Visitors from counties with low Covid-19 counts (fewer than 400 active cases) are no longer required to quarantine or restrict travel and that now includes a potential 7.4 million people. Those coming from higher case counties were still being asked to either quarantine for 14 days before arriving or take a test and quarantine for 7 days following. And anyone staying at hotels or short-term rental properties is required to sign a Certificate of Compliance.

“We’re hoping that by ski season that will change, and things will relax even more,” said John Hammond, the new general manager

Photo by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

ver the past few months, ski areas have broken their operations into a zillion Lego blocks and re-assembled them into something that looks nothing like what’s pictured in the instruction manual. The one given? This season will look dramatically different from the lift-served ski world we walked away from in March. The experience at every resort will vary, but skiers can expect some version of these seven things when they click in for the 202021 ski season.The post-Covid ski world is evolving as fast as a Nor’easter over New England.

Check with your destination before heading for the slopes, as their protocols may change from day to day.

Think how good those first turns are gonna feel. Mark Angelillo cuts up the corduroy at Sugarbush’s Mt. Elllen.

ESTIMATED OPENING DATES Ascutney, Brownsville — N/A Bolton Valley Resort, Bolton — Nov. 30 Bromley, Peru — N/A Burke Mountain Resort, East Burke — N/A Cochran’s Ski Area — N/A Jay Peak Resort, Jay —Nov. 22 Killington, Killington — Nov. 14 Mad River Glen, Waitsfield — Dec. 12 Magic Mountain, Londonderry — Dec. 5 Middlebury College Snow Bowl — N/A Mount Snow, Wilmington — Nov. 14 Northeast Slopes, East Corinth — N/A Okemo, Ludlow — Nov. 21 Pico, Mendon — Dec. 19 Smuggler’s Notch, Jeffersonville — Nov 27 Stratton Mountain, Stratton – Nov. 15 Stowe Mountain Resort, Stowe — Nov. 20 Suicide Six, Woodstock —N/A Sugarbush Resort, Warren—Nov. 21 (Dec. 18 for Mt. Ellen)

at Sugarbush during an online forum in September put on by the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum (and sponsored by Sisler Builders and VT Ski + Ride).

But for ski areas, it is not easy to monitor if visitors comply. “Just because you see out-of-state plates, that doesn’t mean that’s not a second homeowner who’s been here all summer,” noted Hammond.

Bill Cairns, president of Bromley concurred: “We have about 300 on-mountain condos and last spring when Covid-19 hit, about 100 families never left.”

Still, resorts are taking compliance seriously. “We had a couple of instances where guests this past summer confessed that they were ‘just signing this’ [meaning the certificate of compliance] and hadn’t really quarantined,” said Bill Stritzler, the owner of Smuggler’s

Notch Resort at that same forum. “In that instance, the staff called a supervisor and the guests may not have been allowed to stay.”

“While we don’t have a real way of enforcing this, we would hope that folks would be mindful and follow the slogan the National Ski and Snowboard Association has put out: “Don’t be the reason we end our season,” said Parker Riehle, the former head of Ski Vermont who moderated the forum.

2

TICKETS MAY BE LIMITED, RESERVATIONS MAY BE REQUIRED For decades, skiing at some large Northeast ski areas – particularly on weekends – has resembled riding the New York City subway or Boston T: jam as many people in as you can, long

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after the point where it stops being fun.

That’s going to change. With state-mandated social distancing regulations limiting indoor capacity at everything from equipment rental sheds to cafeterias, ski areas are crafting an experience that more closely resembles the orderly, reservations-required seating of Amtrak’s New York-to-Boston Acela Express train than the jumbled disorder of the subway.

In many cases, that’s going to mean reservations will be required to ski. In August, southern Vermont’s Magic Mountain, which has long capped sales of day tickets, became the first ski area in the region to announce a reservation system—one which will allow a season passholder to book days prior to the general public.

Vail Resorts, owner of the ultra-popular Epic Pass followed later that month, confirming that it would require reservations for skiers – including passholders – at Mount Snow, Okemo, Stowe and its 31 other North American resorts. From Nov 6 through Nov 7, Epic passholders only will be able to reserve 7 “Priority” days for the season. After that, they can reserve an additional 7 days for a rotating total of 14 days. “You can add days as you use them up,” noted CEO Rob Katz in an online Q&A, “and you can book any number of week-of reservations as long as there’s capacity.” On top of that, only Epic Passes holders will be able to access its mountains prior to Dec. 8. “Most of the days, though, our capacity is at a level where we would not have to limit access,” noted Katz.

He also acknowledged that Vail may consider removing the reservation system during the season.

While the requirement extends to all of Vail Resorts’ ski areas, including its three Vermont resorts and four in New Hampshire, it is not a one-size-fits-all system: the company will use a formula that considers acreage, lift capacity, historical visitation, and other factors to determine each mountain’s capacity and how many, if any, day tickets will be sold.

“It’s not like we picked a percentage of lift capacity and said that’s what it is,” said Vail Resorts Eastern Region Communications Manager Jamie Storrs. Each ski area will be able to ramp capacity up and down as they see fit, he added. The one sure way of guaranteeing a spot for you and your friends? Anyone in a private lesson won’t need a reservation.

And they will get to cut lines.

Killington won’t require reservations for skiing and riding but will for parking, including for season passholders, and it will limit day tickets and won’t be hosting tour groups, as it has in the past, on weekends.

The online parking reservation system was still being worked out at press time. The advantage, however, may be that the resort will be able to gauge when people leave and open up more spots if, say, the slopes empty out in the afternoon.

At the same time, Killington announced opening day would be Nov. 14 and early skinning would not be allowed—a policy they plan to strictly enforce. For the die-hards who have welcomed what is often an October opening, this may come as a blow. The rationale: the stairway used to access the North Ridge trails that are usually the first to open is just too narrow to allow for social distancing.

The good news: Killington plans to turn some of the firepower it has used in the past for getting Superstar ready for the World Cup to getting top-to-bottom skiing off multiple lifts. “We’re confident that starting our season with more acreage and lifts open will help guests spread out and maintain an appropriate distance while also providing a higher quality on-snow experience from day one of the season,” wrote president Mike Solimano in an open-letter to the Killington community.

Most of the other Vermont ski areas, including Alterra-owned resorts Sugarbush and Stratton are not requiring passholder reservations (as of press time) but they are requiring day ticket holders to buy ahead of time and for specific days and, as Sugarbush’s Hammond noted: “We will be limiting lift ticket sales.” Bulk packages of use-any-time day tickets, such as Mad River Six-pack bubble chairs like the Blue Bird Express at Mount Snow may be the biggest challenge to fill Glen’s Mad Cards, Sugarbush’s Four-Pack and during Covid-19, unless you are riding with your own party of six.

Stratton’s Flex Card are not happening this year, but the four-day Ikon Session pass will be honored.

Mad River Glen has different operating models depending on what level of threat Covid-19 presents, ranging from Level 1 (the worst) to Level 5 (the level Vermont is currently at.) “At Level 3-5 shareholders can buy up to a certain number of tickets every day at 15% off for anyone,” noted general manager Matt Lillard in a September Facebook broadcast. “But if we get to Level 1 or 2, the ski area will limit day tickets and limit how many tickets shareholders can buy.”

And most resorts will be asking that you buy lift tickets ahead of time, online. “We’re doing everything we can to avoid points of contact,” noted Bolton Valley Resort president

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THE 20/21 CRYSTAL BALL SEASON FORECASTS What will be the warmest, coldest, snowiest, rainiest days of the coming season?

We asked three local weather experts to take out their crystal balls.

SCOTT BRAATEN

MALLLORY BROOKE

JOSH FOX

“I’ve been skiing since I was 3 and am fascinated by snow,” says Braaten. A former weather reporter for HearstArgyle TV stations in the Northeast, Braaten is a snow reporter for Stowe Mountain Resort and provides updates on weather and conditions in the northern Greens on his Facebook page, Braatencast.

A former TV broadcast meteorologist with a meteorology degree from Penn State, Brooke founded Nor’easter Weather Consulting in 2017 and does forecasting for 20 ski resorts from Maine to Pennsylvania to Michigan.

She lives in Norway, Maine.

A Mad River Glen shareholder for 15 years, Fox also has a meteorology degree from Penn State and hosts The Single Chair Weather Blog. “The best thing I can say for myself is that I’ve been doing this for a while now—16 years. All that experience hasn’t stopped me from being wrong, but you still learn a few things along the way.”

1. BIGGEST SNOWSTORM OF THE 20/21 SEASON?

January 1, with a widespread 2 to 3 feet to show us that 2021 will be better than 2020.

I’m feeling like we’ll have a whopper in February of this year. Let’s say 22 inches on February 10.

I like the idea of a late start to winter this year and a big Feb. I’ll go with February 16.

2. BEST POWDER WEEKEND? IF YOU ARE HEADING TO VERMONT?

Last weekend in March when late season storms clobber the northern mountains, we have the deepest snowpack of the season, and everyone from the big cities has already moved on from winter sports.

March has increasingly become the best month to be out. Plan for March 20 and 21. Season cold is lasting longer, and typically the thaws are out of the way by March.

February 20 to 21.

3. FIRST DAY THE SNOWSTAKE AT MT. MANSFIELD MEASURES ABOUT 50 INCHES?

January 1st after the big snowstorm.

First day at 50 inches might be December 29.

January 20.

4. COLDEST DAY OF THE SEASON?

President’s Day, with -30F at the summits along with 60mph NW winds.

A cold Valentine’s Day probably is in store for us, with -15 to -10 degree temperatures.

February 7. High of 3 degrees.

5. WARMEST DAY OF THE SEASON?

Third weekend in April with 80 degrees bringing a beach party to the snow.

Warmest day probably comes with a thaw. Mid 50’s with some rain most likely, on January 26.

December 5.

6. FIRST BIG THAW?

Right before MLK weekend of course, when the January thaw interrupts the season.

Last week of January for a thaw— probably only one this year.

December 1 .

7. THIS SEASON COULD SET A RECORD FOR…

Number of faceshots.

I don’t think we’ll see many extremes this winter. So the record will probably be the most snowmaking hours used in November/ December by resorts to open as much terrain as possible early in the season.

Rain on Christmas would be so 2020.

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opposite ends of a six-person lift or 8-person gondola.

Enclosed lifts present a special safety challenge, as evidence strengthens that Covid-19 spreads more easily indoors. What this means for bubble lifts such as the popular six-person Blue Bird Express on Mount Snow and Sunburst Express at Okemo is unclear, though Vail did confirm that the lifts will run. And while both mountains have redundant lifts running to their summits should the bubbles become unavailable, there is no such safeguard built around the main gondola at Stowe. The mountain has run the lift this summer, modifying its queue management, loading, and disinfection processes.

Jay Peak, which usually gets 50 percent of its business from Canada, is not mandating any spacing on most of its lifts but may do so on its enclosed tram. And nearly all ski areas say they will not force any skier or rider to get on a chair or lift with someone they don’t know.

Lindsay Deslauriers. The exceptions? At both Jay Peak and Burke, you can still walk up and buy a day ticket.

Will the reservation system work? “We had the opportunity to test a reservation system this summer at our many swimming pools,” said Smuggler’s Notch Resort owner Bill Stritzler. “But what we found is that many guests would make reservations and then be no-shows and then other guests would walk by and wonder why the pool was empty.”

Smuggs ended up modifying the policy to allow folks in if a reservation was missed by 15 minutes. As of press time, the resort had not laid out specific plans for winter lift access.

And other resorts are modifying their schedules. Suicide Six joins Magic Mountain, Pico and Northeast Slopes in offering a limited ski week, opening just Wednesday through Sunday. Suicide Six is also offering $99 season passes to Vermont and New Hampshire gradeschool students.

Photos coutesy Bromley Mountain Resort

3

4

YOUR CAR IS YOUR BASE LODGE Lodges have long been the all-purpose boot-up-use-thebathrooms-eat-nap-warm-up-après beating heart of the Northeast ski resort. In the Covid era, they’ve also become the most likely ski area vector for the disease’s spread, and ski areas are encouraging people to limit their trips indoors to essentials, such as bathroom pit stops.

Killington is explicitly banning boot bags from its lodges. In a Sept.

10 note Mike Solimano wrote “plan to operate out of your car like it was a base lodge.” And Stratton is forgoing its boot and bag check.

Bolton Valley Resort will be asking people to spend no more than 15 minutes at a time in the base lodge and to make reservations for lunch.

“We’re also looking at more outside seating,” said Bolton president, LindsayDeslauriers. “This is the season to buy an extra warm puffy.”

When it comes to food, nearly every ski area is pivoting to “graband-go” packaged options such as sandwiches and cookies.

Sugarbush’s John Hammond noted that since they will be limiting day tickets, the parking areas will be less crowded, and they would consider moving the food truck down closer to the parking lot.

Tailgating may be a season-long phenomenon. “Any limitations on

READY TO PLAY MUSICAL CHAIRLIFTS? High-capacity lifts have proliferated across the Northeast in recent years, with new, faster-than-ever six-packs and gondolas shuttling ever-more skiers per hour up the mountains. These big lifts suddenly seem like liabilities as ski areas seek to create as much space as possible between strangers.

In some cases, ski areas have exacting criteria defining who is allowed to ride lifts together. Killington, for example, will restrict lift capacity to 50 percent, except for parties that are skiing together. Vail Resorts will only allow unrelated singles on opposite ends of a fourperson lift or gondola and will allow unrelated singles or doubles on At Bromley, kids lessons (above) and the famous chicken-wing eating contest (right) are two of the casualties of Covid-19.

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SKI SCHOOL GOES ON; DAYCARE MAY PAUSE Recognizing their importance both as revenue drivers and organizing foundations of family ski life, ski areas are going to great lengths to keep ski schools and race programs intact.

Vail Resorts’ ski areas, Bromley and several others will not run daycare programs at all, except for their employees.

Killington is shuttering its daycare altogether and suspending its Learn to Ski & Ride programs and its Ministars and youth group lessons.

Sugarbush will be continuing to take its month-to-month regular daycare clients but not new kids.

At Smuggs, parents will be required to be part of any younger kids’

155 Carroll Road

At Stratton, the base village may serve as a base camp for many new Vermonters.

lessons so that they can pick them up from the snow, as needed, and for older kids, parents need to be within 10 minutes of the lesson.

As Bromley’s Bill Cairns said: “We have to make sure skiing is as fun as it ever was. At the same time, we need to be careful about mixing kids and people from various counties in one place.” .

Waitsfield, VT

Photo courtesy Stratton Resort/H. Schriebl.

the Chevrolet Chalets?” Riehle asked his panelists at the ski museum’s forum. “If we’re telling people to use their car as a base lodge, as long as they don’t burn down the nice car next to them, I don’t think we can say anything,” responded Bromley’s Bill Cairns.

Capacity within lodges will in most cases be extremely limited.

All 13 of Vail’s mountains across Pennsylvania, New York, and New England will have hosts manning the entrances of all of its lodges to limit capacity.

“We’re encouraging people to take lunch early or late this year,” said Storrs. “Showing up at 12:30 on a Saturday, there’s probably not going to be a table for you.”

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YOUR LIFTIE MAY BE A LOCAL U.S. ski resorts have traditionally relied on thousands of southern hemisphere college students to help with winter operation, thanks to the J-1 work-travel visa. After President Trump suspended the J-1 program through the end of the year, resorts had to tap different labor pools to fill critical jobs.

“We had over 100 J1s last year,” noted Sugarbush’s Hammond. “But with college students taking gap years or doing remote learning, we’ve been able to fill many of the spots.”

Workers who rely on employee housing may not find the traditional communal experience of shared meals and movie nights. Vail will continue offering employee housing at Okemo and Stowe, but expects to have to modify capacity to meet local regulations. On the plus side, employee Epic Passes will be exempt from the reservation requirement.

All ski area employees will be required to wear masks and go through Covid screening each day before they report for work.

7

YOUR PASS MAY BE REFUNDABLE For decades, ski season passes have been firm sorry-we-don’tcare-that-a-sinkhole-swallowed-your-property-and-a-hawk-ateyour-cat-there’s-no-refunds-allowed deals. Scattered ski areas or ski companies, including Vail and Alterra, would add an optional insurance upsell.

Covid shattered that model when it froze the ski industry in place in mid-March, yanking at least two months of skiing from a rabid Northeast skier base. For those who had purchased them, the add-on insurance policies proved to be useless.

When Alterra – which owns Vermont’s Stratton and Sugarbush resorts—reworked its Ikon Pass offering on April 14, doubling its renewal discount and extending its early-bird deadline, it held firm to its stance that, “all Ikon Pass … purchases paid-in-full are nonrefundable.” The internet went ballistic. So rabid was the blowback that Alterra recanted just three days later, giving Ikon Pass holders until Dec. 10 to defer their 20/21 pass to the following season. They later added protection against in-season shutdowns. Other Northeast resorts followed, including Vail Resorts and Killington.

Approximately 60 ski areas in New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania now offer some form of season pass protection. Vail even eliminated the upcharge for its insurance, adding it to every Epic Pass automatically and expanding it to include “stay-at-home orders from county, state, country,” going well beyond the narrow Covid scope that many resorts ended up settling on.

Let’s hope you never have to use that insurance. n Stuart Winchester is the editor of The Storm Skiing Journal podcast and enewsletter. Additional reporting by Lisa Lynn.

SKI. RIDE. REPEAT. in the Last Little Corner of Vermont

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Arts/Crafts

MAPPING THE MOUNTAINS …

AND THE MOON Two backcountry skiers took a passion for maps to a whole new level. By Lisa Lynn

M

atthew Parilla is a little obsessed with how you visualize data. Last spring, he started mapping Covid-19 cases across the country. “At the time, I didn’t see anyone else doing it and I needed to do it just to get my head around what was happening around my parents’ house, my sister’s house and here in Vermont.”

For years, Parilla, an avid backcountry skier, has also been charting the snowpack atop Mt. Mansfield. Recently, he and his business partner Brian Holdefehr started creating detailed topographic maps of the Green Mountains and elsewhere showing snowpack, forest canopies and a level of detail that no existing maps show.

While Parilla’s Ramble Maps, as he calls them, are not intended for navigational purposes, they are the types of

things that skiers and riders will pore over on their walls.

“For years I told my wife she couldn’t put any art on this one wall in my house because I wanted to put a map of Mt. Mansfield there.”

Now, Parilla has that map and is offering others as wall art—framed or mounted on aluminum, wood or face mounted on acrylic. Cost ranges from $79 for a loose print to $1299 for a 24 inch x 48 inch face mounted acrylic map – the kind that shows the greatest detail.

Originally from New Jersey, Parilla came to Vermont 10 years ago as a Ph.D candidate in civil/environmental engineering at the University of Vermont. He changed course though and began working as a web developer and doing data visualization for Vermont Public Radio.

Matthew Parilla (left) and Ramble Maps partner Brian Holdefehr started by making maps of the Green Mountains.

Now they are onto new ranges... and new planets.

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As a hobby, Parilla has been mapping the snow depth at the Mount Mansfield stake every year.

“One of my first projects was to map what was going on around the state after Tropical Storm Irene.” While doing that, he learned about the Vermont Center for Geographic Information (VCGI).

“VCGI has this really high-resolution elevation data that comes from LIDAR sensors. Normally, the standard elevation you see on a contour map is 10 or 20 feet, Vermont has two-foot elevation data, so the

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

resolution is nine times better than you see on most maps. They also take aerial imagery of the terrain at different times of the year of the tree canopy so you can actually identify what’s coniferous forest or hardwoods and visualize what it would look like in March,” he says.

Using that information and a variety of software programs, Parilla creates maps so detailed you can identify a birch tree or a pine in a beaver meadow, he says.

So far, they have made maps of 16 areas in the Green Mountains as well as mapping parts of Washington and Oregon. “I’d done some ski touring in the Northwest and found that they have really good data on the Cascades so that was the next place we mapped.”

Parilla, who lives in Richmond, is on his way to mapping all 50 states, famous peaks such as Denali, river basins such as the Colorado and making the maps in a digital format to work on cell phones. What’s next after that? “Well, I just had a guy approach me about mapping the ocean floor,” says Parilla.

The sky is the limit… or not. You can already order Ramble Maps of the moon and Mars. n

JOIN US THIS SEASON!

Middlebury’s Snow Bowl

middleburysnowbowl.com Because of the pandemic, our facilities will be open this season only to Vermont residents and individuals who meet the state of Vermont COVID-19 restrictions on cross-state travel.

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MIDDLEBURY’S

Fall Magic

10 Reasons to kickstart your season with holiday shopping and a taste of all fall and early winter offers in the heart of Vermont.

M

iddlebury is that quintessential Vermont town that awes you whether you’re here for a few days or a lifetime. The trout-laden Otter Creek runs through the heart of the downtown, tumbling over a beautiful 12-foot waterfall; a white-steepled church sits at the top of Main Street and a newly expanded Town Green is the site for music festivals, parades, and community gatherings throughout the year, surrounded by dozens of locally owned businesses and shops bursting with crafts, galleries and shopping.

Home to world-renowned Middlebury College, the town is accessible to nearly limitless recreational opportunities. The world-class Rikert Nordic Center and Middlebury College Snow Bowl are 15 minutes away on scenic Route 125 (one of only two designated Scenic Roads in the state) and are set amidst some of Vermont’s most pristine forests. Visit Robert Frost’s cabin and walk the one-mile universally accessible Frost Interpretive Trail.

Explore the vast network of hiking and mountain biking trails on the 19mile Trail Around Middlebury as well as the 16,000-acre Moosalamoo National Recreation Area and dozens of mountain biking trails within the town’s parks. The Green and Adirondack Mountains serve as inspirational backdrops for fishing and boating on nearby lakes and streams, and as well as hiking, mountain and road biking, snowshoeing and backcountry skiing to name a few of the many outdoor activities area residents love to pursue.

Just want to kick back and enjoy great food and beverage? Middlebury has both casual and fine dining, as well as several tasting rooms where you can sample many of the fine beers, spirits and ciders that are locally produced.

Come for a visit, or love it like the locals and make it your home.

LEARN MORE AT:

ExperienceMiddlebury.com

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

JOIN US THIS SEASON! Middlebury’s Rikert Nordic Center

www.rikertnordic.com

Because of the pandemic, our facilities will be open this season only to Vermont residents and individuals who meet the state of Vermont COVID-19 restrictions on cross-state travel.

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Après

8 GENERAL STORES NOT TO MISS

On the way to or from the slopes, these historic general stores are a taste of true Vermont. And many now offer house-made gourmet meals to go.

By Sophie Hiland

Photos courtesy JJ Hapgood

T

J.J. Hapgood’s specialty?

A buttermilk fried chicken sandwich, made with local chicken and served with sriracha aioli.

his past year, as Covid-19 closed Vermont’s bars and restaurants, libraries, churches and gyms, general stores (deemed essential during the Covid-19 pandemic) stayed open. With locals stopping in to buy eggs, butter and milk, as well as newspapers and basic household goods, Vermont’s small-town general stores stepped back into the starring role they have played for centuries: supplying towns with moments of social interaction in a time of isolation and distance.

As Bill McKibben, Ripton resident, environmentalist and Middlebury College Scholar in Residence, wrote in a 2018 article for The New York Times, “If you don’t have a store, you can’t really have a town.”

While many general stores have been forced to shutter due to the rise of bigger grocery chains and gas stations, these classic general stores in or near ski areas hold the character and spirit of Vermont. And many have turned their delis into gourmet catering shops, with breakfast, lunch or even full dinner meals to go.

Whether you ski or ride, stop at these eight classic Vermont general stores and take part in the fabric of small-town life.

JJ HAPGOOD GENERAL STORE & EATERY, PERU As soon as you walk into the J.J. Hapgood General Store & Eatery, you feel like you’re at home. Just minutes from the slopes of Bromley, the place is a balance between a tribute to the store’s long history and an updated rendition of what a “general store” might look like on a Hollywood set. Coffee and kombucha are both prominently displayed.

In 2013 Juliette Britton, a Peru native, along with her husband Tim purchased the store which first opened in 1927 but had been closed for a handful of years. While the couple had hoped to restore the original building, the Vermont Department of Historic Preservation determined it was not salvageable. Local contractors used materials from the original store, such as wooden beams, shelves and cases, to reconstruct the building.

By the end of 2013, the store was open for business and it has since welcomed skiers and riders from Bromley, Stratton and Magic as well as visitors (including former Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney, who is an occasional customer).

The store’s logo, in fact, was designed by artist David Larkham (a friend of Britton’s), who has done album covers, concert graphics and posters for Paul McCartney, Elton John, Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and many more.

People stop in to grab a (socially distanced) drink at the new bar, or, when weather permits, to sit down for a meal outside at one of the many tables spaced six feet apart. Head to the indoor or outdoor bar for a cocktail made by KJ Heingartner from Silo Distillery. If you’re short on time, pop in for a fresh-pressed juice to go or the famous buttermilk fried chicken sandwich.

There’s not much to the town of Peru but this general store serves as a gathering place to listen to live music performed by local bands such as The Butties Beatles Cover Band or to sample whatever the house chef is cooking up as the daily special. The menu includes everything from pizza cooked on a woodfired stove to farm fresh salads to vegetable ragout, all of which can be taken home.

While the pandemic has impacted the ability of the store to welcome diners and shoppers at full volume, the store has adapted and implemented a handful of public health precautions and it is constantly working to serve visitors in a way that ensures the safety and health of all parties.

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store added a ski shop on the second floor that sold everything needed for a successful day on the slopes. Five decades later, the store downsized their ski shop operations as more specialized retailers started popping up.

Today, Gillingham’s continues to serve as the center of life in Woodstock and you’ll find visitors and locals alike stopping in to pick up a pair of mittens or hand warmers before heading to Suicide Six in the morning. In the afternoon, an influx of shoppers flows into the store as they pick up a beer from a Vermont brewery, some cheese from around the state or maple products to sweeten the day.

An enduring classic, F.H. Gillingham’s opened in 1886 as a general store and began selling skis, too, after the first rope tow went in at nearby Suicide Six in the 1920s. It no longer carries skis but you can find pretty much everything else there.

Bottom right: the Ripton General Store is a must-stop on the way to Rikert Nordic Center or the Middlebury College Snow Bowl.

Courtesy photos

F.H. GILLINGHAM AND SONS GENERAL STORE, WOODSTOCK Gillingham’s is perhaps one of the most established general stores in the state, counting President Coolidge and Franklin Swift among its famously loyal shoppers. The store was started in 1886 by Franklin Gillingham, who was the great grandfather of current owners, Jireh and Frank Billings, who are descendants of Gillingham as well as Franklin Billings.

“It’s a fun history to live,” Jireh says, talking about the inspiration he continues to draw from his great grandfather, Frank Henry Gillingham.

Even in the 1800s, F.H. Gillingham, a skilled entrepreneur, took advantage of the proximity to White River Junction to corner the market, telling customers he could keep his prices low if they bought groceries from him in larger quantities, which his workers would happily deliver to their homes.

The Gillingham’s history is very much entwined with Vermont skiing culture. As the sport grew in popularity in the 1920s and the first iteration of the rope tow was introduced at Suicide Six, Frank Henry Gillingham decided that his store, which previously just sold groceries and hardware needed to become one of the first ski dealers inVermont.Within a matter of months, the

ORIGINAL GENERAL STORE, PITTSFIELD Pittsfield may be home to just over 400 people, but the town relies heavily on the Original General Store for an ATM, a variety of locallysourced food and a community hub.

In 2002, New Yorker Joe De Sena traded life on Wall Street for life in Pittsfield where he bought Riverside Farm, an organic farm and Amee Farm, a bed and breakfast. Shortly after moving to Vermont, he and his now-wife Courtney heard that there were plans to turn the then-100-year-old general store into apartments.

The De Senas stepped in to ensure the historic store didn’t disappear.

Then they recruited chef Kevin Lasko from New York’s tony Two Park Ave. restaurant and his partner Katie Stiles to develop the menus and run catering from there. The couple still offer special dinners in The Backroom behind the store and you can thank them for the melt-in-your mouth Slow Roasted Pulled Pork or such seasonal Saturday Night Supper specialties (for takeout) as Corn and Ricotta Raviolis or Blueberry Plum Upside Down Cake. The store also carries local meats and other specialties and has long wooden tables where you can hunker down.

As the store took off, De Sena got hooked on endurance events, ultramarathons and adventure races and he started Spartan Races in 2010. They have since grown into a multi-million-dollar operation with more than 270 events in more than 40 countries.

While you won’t find De Sena behind the counter at The Original Store, it’s likely that you’ll run into a buffed Spartan participant (De Sena’s fans are known to travel far and wide with the hopes of interacting with the best-selling author and host of the podcast “Spartan Up!”). It’s also a perfect place to grab a Vermonter Smoothie after biking the Green Mountain Trails or skiing or riding at Killington.

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WARREN STORE, WARREN Located just across from The Pitcher Inn in the tiny hamlet of Warren, the Warren Store inhabits an 1839 building that was previously home to an inn, a library, a post office and a hardware store. Today, the store continues to be a gathering place for Sugarbush and Mad River Glen skiers, artists and noted Valley architects such as David Sellers (who helped rebuild the Pitcher Inn ), and an assortment of the Mad River Valley’s eclectic locals.

If you’re in the mood to do some fun shopping, the upstairs, which used to host community dances, is now home to an adorable collection of toys, books and clothes for children as well as jewelry, cards, and men’s and women’s clothing. You’ll find clothing and accessories by brands like Woolrich, Toad & Co., Smartwool, Kuhl and Pistil. Additionally, the upstairs has housewares and gifts made by Vermont companies like

Pretty much everything The Warren Store offers —from food to crafts—was made or grown locally.

Green Village Soap and greeting cards by local artists.

Upstairs you’ll also find two cash registers, the sign above one reads “long-winded conversation register;” the sign above the other register reads “express register—10 words or less.”

Before you head to Sugarbush or Mad River Glen for a day on the slopes, grab the store’s breakfast sandwich which is to-die-for and made with local cheese and eggs and is served on a freshly baked English muffin.

Deli specials are updated daily online.

If you’re more of a traditionalist, order the famous “Number Six”—roast turkey, red onion, lettuce and the house-made cranberry sauce on bread that’s made daily in the bakery.

If you forgot to plan dinner, you’re in luck because Chef Colleen Mahoney and the rest of the kitchen have fresh, grab-and-go dinners ready for you, chicken noodle soup, shepherd’s pie and meat or veggie lasagna.

The Store’s bakery uses King Arthur Flour and Cabot Creamery butter to make éclairs, brownies, cookies, cakes, muffins and breads.

Plus, the bakery makes an incredible yule log that’s a perfect holiday dessert.

DAN & WHIT’S GENERAL STORE, NORWICH Just 25 minutes from the Dartmouth Skiway and over the river from Hanover, N.H., Dan & Whit’s is a classic general store and a community hub, where you can often find musicians performing in front of the store.

The store plays a huge role in the community and has operated with the belief that “Main Street matters,” since it first opened for business in the 1930s as Merrill’s.

Stop by to pick up salads made with

Photos by Lisa Lunn

RIPTON COUNTRY STORE, RIPTON This country store, famous for the ice machine which reads “IEC,” looks and feels exactly like what you’d expect a general store in a tiny mountain town to look like. Set in the heart of Ripton—a town with an inn, school, town hall and just 600 residents—it’s just 10 minutes west down Route 125 from the Middlebury College Snow Bowl and the Rikert Nordic Center. The community of Ripton is so small and houses are so remote that mail doesn’t get delivered here. Instead, locals head to the store to pick up their packages, letters and bills. Here you might see a grizzled, flannel-clad local fingering the dials of the vintage mailbox he’s held for 50 years. You might also find a posse of Spandex-wearing Nordic ski racers buying energy bars, a Long Trail thru-hiker reprovisioning a giant backpack or spy part-time Ripton residents and actors Maggie Gyllenhaal and her brother Jake picking up The NewYork Times.

Open from 7 am to 7 pm year-round, the Ripton Country Store is still the place where parents taking their kids up to the Snow Bowl’s Magic Carpet stop to pick up candy, milk or local eggs.

Cyclists also stop here to catch a breath on the long ride up winding Route 125 or to take a picture sitting on the bench next to the ice machine. “IEC” was printed on it due to an honest mistake made by an ice company employee years ago—and it has been intentionally replicated on replacement machines ever since.

When the store’s previous owners, Dick and Sue Collitt (who bought the store in 1976), put it on the market in 2018, Ripton resident, renowned environmentalist author and Middlebury College Scholar-in-Residence, Bill McKibben wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times— a sort of personal ad on behalf of the store, which he calls “the heart and soul of our community.” McKibben pointed out that while the idea of owning a picturesque general store might be enticing, any prospective owner must be ready to work hard day after day.

Fortunately, Eva Hoffmann and her husband Gary Wisell bought the store in late 2018. The couple relocated from Norfolk, Virginia.

They’ve kept the vibe, and, like their predecessor, they make sure to ask you how your day has been as you come in and wish you well as you head out.

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Courtesy photo

produce from local farms, a maple creemee or some Vermont-made organic hand sanitizer. The store’s deli serves burgers and sandwiches and in a nearby refrigerator case you’ll find lunch favorites like single servings of chicken salad and other house-made salads with local ingredients.

Recently, the store hosted public-health-code-compliant haircuts out front and sold tie-dyed Black Lives Matter shirts and donated a portion of sales to support local efforts for the organization by the same name. Additionally, the store has “round up at the register” days to support local non-profits.

SHAW’S GENERAL STORE, STOWE For the past 125 years, Shaw’s General Store has stayed in the family—a family that counts several generations of NCAA,World Cup and Olympic ski racers, including Tiger Shaw, the current president of U.S. Skiing.

Once home to Stowe’s first ski shop, Shaw’s shifted gears in 1936 after the first chair lift went in on Mt. Mansfield and ski shops proliferated up and down Stowe’s Mountain Road.

Today you’ll find the store at its busiest after the lifts close as skiers and riders head to Main Street to pick up Stowe postcards or T-shirts, localcrafted soaps, hiking shoes and classic apparel.

Stowe’s full-time population is 5,000 and two-thirds of the residents are second homeowners, relatively large by Vermont standards. While Shaw’s doesn’t sell foodstuffs or most essential goods, it does have everything from warm winter boots, flannel and fleece to toys for kids and maple syrup. And the store has remained a cornerstone of Stowe village.

Alex Stevens, whose great grandfather started the store, and who is one of a handful of fifth-generation descendants helping to run Shaw’s, points out that the classically picturesque look and feel of the store serves as a huge attraction to visitors.

Five generations of the famous Shaw ski racing family have owned and operated this Main Street staple in Stowe. It’s still the place to get outfitted with après-ski apparel.

CRAFTSBURY GENERAL STORE, CRAFTSBURY Located in the center of Craftsbury not far from the Nordic trails of Crafstbury Outdoor Center, the Craftsbury General Store has everything you need, and then some. The store was founded in 1855 and has been continuously running since then. And it still houses the post office.

Kit Basom and Emily Maclure bought the store in 2012 and have been partners in operation since then and are looking forward to welcoming Jana Smart, who is the store’s chef, as a partner in the coming year.

The store’s website now offers an online shopping option that allows you to fill up your “basket” from the comfort of your couch before you hit the trails so you can stop and grab your groceries, deli or dinner order without entering the store.

Another big upgrade made by the pair is the revamp of the deli to include dishes that range from healthy to hearty—such as kale and quinoa salads made with local greens and vegetables or a grilled cheese on fresh-baked Elmore Mountain Bread.

Stop by in the morning to pick up a fresh baked scone or muffin, flavors vary depending on the day, or a breakfast sandwich on an English muffin that will fuel any adventure the day has in store for you.

The store is famous for their special cookie, which is a combination of brown butter, Belgian chocolate, pecans and sea salt.

“It’s so popular that we’ve stopped baking any other kind of cookie,” Maclure says with a laugh. On Saturdays you’ll also find maple glazed sticky buns topped with pecans, a perfect weekend treat.

On Wednesday nights the store offers “Globe Trotting Dinners,” which sometimes include Korean bibimbap, Thai salad or Moroccan tagine.

You’ll find locally made gifts for everyone in your life such as jewelry made by Jennifer Kahn and pottery made by Sarah Russell.

Eds. note: With Covid-19 store hours, offerings and policies may change. Please check their websites for the most up-to-date information. n

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Local Heros

If you’ve ever seen one of his social media videos, you’ll know why Brian Hughes is fast becoming a trusted source for snow conditions and a purveyor of stoke.

By Sophie Hiland NAME: Brian Hughes AGE: 53 OCCUPATION: Supervisor, snowmaking and grooming at Killington FROM: San Diego, Ca..

LIVES IN: Killington PRIMARY SPORT: Snowboarding

Photo by Sam Syrop/Killington

G

ood morning groovy people. Good morning, Sugar Poppppp,” Brian Hughes says into his camera phone, making a popping sound as he says, “Pop.” It’s before dawn on a February morning and Hughes pans his phone camera from the thermometer outside his snowcat back to a Killington ski run. The headlights of the grooming machine light up flakes tumbling from a dark indigo sky. Vivaldi is playing in the background over the soft hum of the engine.

After the pan from one side of the cab to the other, Brian flips the camera around and reveals himself. He is wearing a blue and purple tie-dyed t-shirt, a grey knit cap sits on top of his thick dreadlocks and his salt and pepper beard frames his contented smile.

“So, Saturday. My thermometer’s reading 18 degrees so it’s not bitterly, bitterly cold. It’s not like it’s gonna be in the negatives here but still dress for them. Frostbite is an ever, ever looming presence. Surface conditions are going to be mint. Gonna be really, really good, really edge-able. And we’re getting snow. It’s like a winter wonderland out there. So, come on out and ski.”

Hughes details what conditions will be like. Then he ends the short clip as he usually does: “Don’t litter. Don’t ever let anybody harsh your stoke. Come on out, have a great day so that others may ski. Peace.”

Later, the Killington groomer and snowmaker shares his unscripted, unsolicited weather and condition updates as he does almost every day to Facebook and Instagram.

Over the past two years Brian has become something of a social media star and a trusted source for unfiltered

reporting on conditions at the East’s largest ski area.

It’s an unlikely role for someone who never saw snow until he was 28 years old.

Hughes grew up in San Diego. He graduated from San Diego State University and began working for the Defense Logistics Agency as a mid-level employee organizing the distribution of groceries to military bases. Then, in the early 1990s his job was eliminated due to cuts in military spending.

Unsure of what was next, Hughes decided to let fate chart his course. “I took out a map of the United States and I closed my eyes and decided I was gonna go wherever my finger lands and BOOM, it’s right on Vermont,” he says. “So, I packed up two suitcases and grabbed all the money I had and hopped on a Greyhound bus.”

Three days later, the bus dropped him off in Rutland.

Upon arriving in the Green Mountain state, Hughes headed to Killington. “I needed a job and they said ‘Well, we got snowmaking,’” he explains. “I had no idea what snowmaking was. I thought in my head snowmaking was where they got like a big woodchipper and they stuck ice blocks in it. No, I found out that snowmaking is an actual science and they’ve gotten really good at it.”

Hughes took the job. “The fall of ’95 I saw snow fall out of the sky for the first time, I lost my mind. I was picking it up and eating it and playing in it.” Hughes had cut snowflakes out of construction paper as a kid and had seen the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra in the distance when he drove north toward Los Angeles. “But I never

At age 28, Brian Hughes was living in San Diego and had never seen snow. Now, he’s a snowmaker and groomer whose unfiltered morning condition reports are earning him a social media fan base.

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thought that you could see individual snowflakes without a microscope,” Brian explains.

Since that first season, he worked his way up the ladder from a novice snowmaker and groomer to his current role as a supervisor, overseeing a team of other snowmakers and groomers and helping figure out how to open new runs and make them skiable.

He’s still hands-on though and heads into “the office” at about midnight and works until 7:30 or 8:00 am. What’s Brian’s trick for working nights? “I guess I have to summon my inner vampire,” he says with a big laugh.

Killington’s snowmaking and grooming operation is one of the most impressive in the world with an arsenal of more than 1,700 snow making guns, 500 of which are low-energy.

The biggest challenge presented by snowmaking?

Brian explains that the line between making wet and dry snow is “very, very fine.” It’s a science, but a little like making wine, making good snow is an art and one that takes experience.

“When you’re firing up the guns, you can actually see the type of snow that you’re going to make,” Brian explains. “If the snow coming out of the gun piles up on my jacket, doesn’t matter what happens, we’re good and it’s gonna be good, it’s gonna pile up, and it’s gonna be dry enough that you can probably ski it without grooming it.”

When it comes to grooming, it’s all about persistence.

“One night you’re in there and everything’s perfect and the next night, it’s not. You just sit down, take a deep breath and think ‘I can get this done’ And then, you do.

But sometimes it’s really, really windy and you see your hard work just vanish.” When this happens, Brian says, “You try again and do it over again until you can get a

“I thought ‘Let’s give them an honest snow report,’” Brian says. So he did—and does nearly every day by video, from his snowcat.

Photo by Chandler Burgess/Killington; courtesy Brian Hughes

Driving a snowcat in blizzard conditions means staying up all night until the job is done.

good skiable surface.”

All of his work, both grooming and snowmaking, is done with the goal of creating a good, strong, skiable surface so that the beginner and the intermediate can have a good day. “It’s especially important that those less skilled at skiing are able to have fun on the slopes because if they don’t have a good day, they probably won’t be coming back to Killington,” he says.

Brian’s first time on skis was in December of 1995.

He began by falling off the lift and took off down the mountain before he knew the basics of how to shift his weight or use his edges. “I spent the day picking a spot about 50 feet away, heading for it and then purposefully crashing,” Brian remembers with a giggle. “And then I see these little kids on these things called snowboards. I was like ‘You know what, I could do that.’ And then I got my first snowboard and the rest is history.”

Growing up in San Diego, Brian spent a lot of time surfing and skateboarding, so snowboarding was in many ways a natural progression. “I fell in love with snow that year” Brian says. He also fell in love with Vermont. “There’s no way I’m ever gonna leave this state,” he says.

In southern California, Brian had become accustomed to polluted air and rows of trees strategically planted by landscapers. “And then I come here and it’s like, wow, this is actually what blue sky and fresh air actually look and

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CENTRAL VERMONT’S PREMIERE SKI SHOP. RUN BY SKIERS, FOR SKIERS. smell like. Now, you can’t take me away from this place.”

Brian’s passion for the natural beauty of the mountains has become the driving force behind his morning video posts. One of the messages he most consistently shares is the importance of taking care of the earth.

“There’s generations upon generations of trash under the lifts. Some people feel they have the right to throw their trash everywhere—I can’t imagine what their houses look like. I preach till I’m blue in the face, ‘pick up your trash, always.’” In several videos he says, “Don’t litter, give a hoot, don’t pollute,” which he follows by making the sound an owl makes.

One day in the winter of 2019 Brian started filming himself with his phone when he was up on the mountain grooming. Later, he thought Why don’t I take a video of myself talking about my day and the conditions on the mountains to show Sugar Pop? In the video, he shares the beautiful scenery surrounding him, what the weather will be and talks about what’s been on his mind.

Brian realized that the information he was sharing might be helpful for people to know before a day on the mountain. “I thought, so let’s give them an honest ski report. And the first night I did, it was like 15 below zero. I knew that people were going to be coming up anyway, so I tell these people about how cold it is. And not to dissuade them from skiing, because you can have a good time skiing as long as you are equipped and prepared for it. I told them ‘Hey, it is currently 15 below so I suggest that you groovy people dress for it and get your edges ready and if you do that and you do this, you will have a good day’.”

Brian has since posted more than 100 videos, some with as many as 600 likes and over 50 comments. He has almost 2,000 followers on Instagram who tune in to daily video updates. He explains that he sees his job “as a way to serve the people I love who are doing the sport I love and to share about what I do, and love.”

As one of a minority of Black people on an otherwise white mountain, in an otherwise white state, Brian also feels pressure to perform. “I can’t really screw up or do anything like that because I will be figured out.

If you see a Black guy working who messes up, you know it was me because I’m the one of a handful of Black guys working here.”

For Brian, though, race usually doesn’t figure into his daily life.

“I look at everybody as if we’re all equal.” Nonetheless, Brian says “I would really love to see more brothers and sisters on the mountain.”

“If I can make the ski mountain a more inviting place, where there is no litter to be found, I can die a happy man,” Brian says with a sigh.

“I think if more people skied and rode, the world would be a way happier and less stressed out place. I mean how could you not be happy when you’re skiing or riding? So, I just wanted to bring that across on video and try to touch people. I really don’t know what I’m doing, I’m winging it every single day.”

While Brian may be modest about the impact his daily videos have on so many, scrolling through the comments on any one of his videos makes it clear that he has a pretty sizeable fan club. “Thank you Brian! I look forward to these messages every day,” one Facebook comment reads.Another says: “When does the Brian Hughes classical mix tape come out? Love the vibes!”

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vtskiandride.com Fall 2020 29

The Once and Future

This summer Kingdom Trails added more than 13 miles of singletrack to its 100-plus mile network of trails.

Photo by Brooks Curran

Burke has seen its ups and downs. But this year, with no crowds, a swank new hotel, new mountain

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Kingdom bike trails and the ski mountain operating pretty much as normal, this tiny town is poised to rule.

By Lisa Lynn

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The Mansion

Burklyn Hall is an outsized symbol of what once was and could still be.

At one time, it was the manor house presiding over Burke Mountain, Mountain View Farm and the 8,000 acres that Elmer Darling carved out of the wilderness in this remote northeast corner of Vermont.

Darling was born and raised in the shadow of Burke Mountain.

He went to MIT to study architecture and then, in 1872, to New York City, where he helped his uncle run the Fifth Avenue Hotel. It was, at the time, one of the most lavish hotels in the country: the place where guests such as the Prince of Wales stayed.

Darling made his fortune in New York, then came home and in 1904 began constructing an opulent Palladian mansion on the ridgeline that straddles the towns of Burke and Lyndonville.

Burklyn Hall was built with 12 miles (300,000 board feet) of timber harvested from Darling’s land. Marble was imported from Africa and Italy for the fireplace mantel facings. The balusters on the threestory main staircase were all hand-turned. Ornate moldings and hand-

Photto top by Brooks Curran

t’s late on a cool fall afternoon as the fading sun casts a golden glow across the Northeast Kingdom. The light is different here, bathing vast farm fields, red barns and rolling hills in burnt amber and setting fire to the cinnamon maples on Burke Mountain.

On singletrack trails that crisscross the crest of Darling Hill, small pods of locals weave their mountain bikes through the open fields, waving to each other and talking quietly as they head home, tired from after-work rides.

Gone are summer’s throngs of down-country adrenaline junkies who have made Kingdom Trails one of the most popular mountain bike destinations in the country, drawing 160,000 rider visits in 2019.

Gone are the caravans of Canadians who have made up 30 to 50 percent of the mountain bike traffic. The border is still closed.

Gone are the crowds of muddy, happy, slightly drunk riders into their third brew at Mike’s Tiki Bar, the outdoor patio that spills across a parking lot in the center of the one-gas-station village of East Burke.

Of the town’s handful of restaurants, only one is open on this Wednesday night. At The Orange Rind, small groups huddle around outdoor tables and firepits as the smoky scent of fall fills the air.

Soon, the snowguns will be blowing on the Burke Mountain trails.

The ski racers will be back at Burke Mountain Academy, ricochetting between slalom gates – the next Mikaela Shiffrins. Snowboarders will be blasting through the woods, arcing powder turns off East Bowl.

Fatbikers and Nordic ski racers will be gliding across the snow-packed, groomed Kingdom Trails.

But for now, for this hour of day, for this time of year, for this strange time of Covid-19, for this interlude in a remote ski/bike town’s evolving history, everything seems to have paused.

Except for this: as the sky darkens over Darling Hill the lights twinkle on, one by one at Burklyn Hall, the ornate mansion that sat empty for many years.

Top, photographer and a former Burke Mountain Academy ski racer Brooks Curran takes a break on a cool fall day on Darling Hill. Atop the hill, the mansion Elmer Darling built in 1904 has been revived as the elegant Inn at Burklyn with 14 stunning rooms (below and right).

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Photo botttom by Angelo Lynn, inset courtesy Inn at Burklyn

The Inn at Burklyn Hall opened its 14 rooms to guests in August, with Sharon and Bob acting as innkeepers and Marci serving up mouth-watering breakfasts, such as homemade blackberry muffins and a tomato-spinach frittata. On that fall day, they were also interviewing chefs, in the hopes of offering dinners to guests as well.

The Trails

“The Crones have done a beautiful job on the Inn,” says Lilias Ide, who grew up in the Kingdom and is the communications director for Kingdom Trails. “But what’s great is that they also helped build some important trails.”

Thanks to the generosity of more than 90 private landowners, Kingdom Trails has expanded over the past three decades to encompass more than 100 miles of trails. Classics such as the flowy, bankedturn Kitchel spiral down from Darling Hill toward town and new networks now connect the Kingdom Trails to Burke Mountain’s network.

Credit Here

painted frescoes decorated the ceilings and walls. The manor was state of the art for its time with central vacuuming and both gas and electric lighting. Darling, who never married, died in 1931. Burklyn went through several owners and its glory faded.

“Burklyn Hall now stands as a mute witness, representative of a way of life now fast-disappearing from American society, its basic concept undermined, its prospective future questionable,” wrote architectural historian Alfred Dewey Hogdon in 1970. In the five decades since, the Hall saw more owners, and more ups and downs.

But three years ago, two mountain bikers, Bob and Sharon Ross, snapped a photo of Burklyn Hall and sent it to their cousins in San Diego, Jim and Marci Crone. “We loved riding Kingdom Trails and knew Marci wanted to come back east,” says Sharon. “I think we sent the photo as a joke while at a Kid Rock concert.”

Except that Jim Crone took them seriously: he and his wife Marci bought Burklyn and two years ago and set about bringing it back to life as an inn and installed Sharon and Bob as the innkeepers.

“At each juncture, we asked, ‘What would Elmer have done?’” says Jim as he walks across the gleaming wood floors and through rooms lit by sparkling chandeliers, t-shirt loose and hitching up his jeans as he goes. Crone, a Vietnam vet who worked his way up from builder and contractor to commercial real estate developer, fingers the railings on the staircase. “There were three different types of balusters, so to replace them I had to have a router made and hand-turned them myself,” he says.

While Jim went about rebuilding the house, Marci worked with a designer to reinterpret the opulence of the time for a contemporary esthetic. “We figured Elmer would have nothing but the best, so we spent the money where we needed to,” she said. Schumacher fabrics with matching wallpaper are used throughout. On this day, a cascade of orange and white pumpkins tumbles artfully down the entry steps. A wedding photo shoot is going on in the formal gardens.

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The Mountain

As Kingdom Trails built out its cross-country network, Burke Mountain Resort focused on downhill, lift-served riding with bike trails ranging from a beginner pump track and easy Roly Grail to

The rolling farmland of East Burke is criss-crossed by trails with drop-dead views that extend all the way to Willoughby Gap. Top, after riding, a group of Burlington mountain bikers settles in around the firepit at The Orange Rind.

Opposite page, left to right: Banking a turn on Kitchel, the formal dining room at the Inn at Burklyn and a local’s favorite, The Burke Publick House.

Phooto bottom by Brooks Curran, top by Angelo Lynn

As the trail system grew, throngs of mountain bikers came from around the country. In 2019, the New England Mountain Bike Festival drew close to 4,500 riders to a town that, as of the 2010 census, counted a population of just under 1,800. One March, more than 400 riders showed up with fatbikes to attend Winterfest.

As Kingdom Trails grew, so did the traffic and the locals began to grumble. Accounts differ as to what prompted this (the common response: an altercation between mountain bikers and a couple of horseback riders – who happened to own the land) but in early 2020 three

landowners pulled key parcels from the Darling Hill network, tearing the heart out of the interconnected trail system.

One of the first things that Sharon and Bob Ross did as Burklyn innkeepers was to work with Kingdom Trails to build out new trails on the inn’s 86-acre property, helping to fill in for some of the connecting trails that had been lost. “We wanted to get folks off the road and help find a way to ride from here to the trails at Mountain View Inn,” Sharon explained. A sweet new singletrack, Burklyn, now weaves across the open meadows and woods of the property with broad views. “It’s a perfect, family-friendly beginner trail,” says Sharon.

Even before the landowner revolt, Kingdom Trails had already started to address its growth as ridership increased by 132% between 2013 and 2018.

In 2019, the organization won a grant to work with the SE Group to do a network capacity and visioning study. The study, which has been rolling out this past summer, recommended adding parking capacity and a new welcome center, creating new trail hubs to disperse riders and providing better connecting trails to downtown. “The good news is that the study found the trails themselves are not over capacity, we just need to do a better job of dispersing crowds,” says Ide. In response, Kingdom Trails built out more than 13.5 miles of new trails this past summer. “It’s the most we’ve ever done in a year,” says Ide.

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While East Burke is busy in the summer, come fall and winter it’s a quiet base camp, perfect for exploring the Northeast Kingdom, on skis or boards, fatbiking or ice climbing.

PLAY Kingdom Trails has more than 100 miles of trails that are open for mountain biking, hiking, and horseback riding for much of the summer/fall and 15 miles of groomed winter trails for Nordic skiing and skating as well as 20 miles of groomed fatbike trails. A day pass is $15 for adults.

Burke Mountain Resorts’ bike park closes in mid-October but its lifts usually open in early December. Day tickets are $75 for adults and $54 for kids under 18 and seniors over 65 (Vermonters pay just $60/$51) and advance purchase discounts often apply. Burke also offers a “Judge” season pass with combined access to Jay Peak for $1019 or $629 for those 29 and under.

Some of the most scenic ice climbing in the East is on the icy crags of Mount Pisgah as it rises dramatically over Lake Willoughby. Kingdom Adventures Mountain Guides offers rock and ice climbing instruction (one day intro courses start at $150 per person) as well as courses in avalanche safety and wilderness first aid.

EAT, DRINK, SHOP With Covid-19, East Burke’s limited restaurant scene shrank even more with the temporary closure of the Wildflower Inn and its acclaimed Junipers restaurant this fall. At Burke Mountain Resort, The View Pub and the Tamarack Pub will be operating.

In town, The Orange Rind has good pub fare. The Foggy Goggle Osteria creates specials such as wild mushroom and leek soup and baked salmon with pesto. Lilias Ide raves about its Mexican Mondays.

Burke Publick House and Mike’s Tiki Bar and food truck (seasonal) are in the heart of the village but the Publick House is temporarily closed this fall. In town, start the day with a pastry from Auntie Dee Dee’s bakery or an espresso at Café Lotti. Just out of town, Miss Lyndonville Diner has classic pancakes stuffed with blueberries and other specialties.

For biking or skiing gear, rentals and equipment Village Sports Shop and East Burke Sports can get you outfitted. Both shops have bike rentals as well as alpine, Nordic, backcountry and AT ski and board rentals.

Photo middle by Brooks Curran , left and right by Angelo Lynn

STAY The Inn at Burklyn, the new crown jewel of the Kingdom, opened its 14 rooms in August. Rooms start at $300, full breakfast and afternoon cheese platter included. The Inn is also planning special all-inclusive weekends this fall. Just down Darling Hill Road, and also set right on Kingdom Trails, The Inn at Mountain View Farm is on the National Historic Register and has 14 rooms starting at $215 a night, with the Farmhouse also available for family rentals. The Burke Mountain Resort Hotel & Conference Center is right on the ski area’s downhill slopes with 116 suites that range from studios to three-bedrooms. Studio suites start at $79 a night and the hotel has packages that include lift tickets and meals or Kingdom Trails day passes. On Oct. 17, the resort featured a concert with noted Vermont blues rocker Kat Wright playing outside on the patio. Right in town and just a quarter mile from the slopes, The Village Inn of East Burke has seven rooms, starting at $110 a night, and two apartments.

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Pro mountain bike racers and Burke residents Ella Skawold and Alex McAndrew bank on winter berms at Kingdom Trails. Bottom: Burke Mountain Academy has trained 36 Olympians, including Mikaela Shiffrin.

And This Winter?

Ashley Davenport Sargent, a former World Cup speed skier, also coaches at Burke Mountain Academy. Sargent, and her brother, extreme skiing pioneer Chris Davenport, grew up ski racing in New Hampshire. After her ski racing career ended, Ashley settled in Stowe, near Morrisville, where her husband Nick’s family is from.

“We started coming up to Burke with the kids regularly in 2013

Photos by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

the expert dual-slalom tracks and runs with built-in wooden banked turns and jumps. With limited hotels in town, the Burke Mountain Resort hotel and base lodge, set midway up the mountain at the base of the ski trails, became base camp for mountain bikers—and even busier in summer than in winter.

In 2016, the Burke Mountain Hotel and Conference Center had opened with 116 rooms at the base of the 3,267-foot Burke Mountain, giving ski-on access to the 6 lifts and the 270 acres of trails. It was a tasteful and much-needed addition to a town that had few properties with more than 20 rooms. Built by developer Ariel Quiros and Bill Stenger, the former owners of both Jay Peak and Burke, the hotel was

funded by foreign investment through the EB-5 program.

And, as the SEC and courts have determined, fraudulently funded.

Quiros was convicted of channeling the EB-5 funds into such things as a luxury apartment in Manhattan. Indicted on fraud, he plead guilty on Aug. 14, 2020 and could face 8 years in jail; Stenger is awaiting trial. Both resorts are still in receivership.

Yet even in the early limbo of receivership, not knowing who the next owner would be, Burke Mountain seemed ready to move ahead, installing new snowmaking in 2017, widening trails and replacing an old Poma on the race training hill with a T-bar.

That Poma was what carried many U.S. Ski Teamers up the hill each day. “Just having your skis on snow for the uphill as well as the downhill helps give you a feel for the snow —you can’t underestimate the value of a surface lift,” said Tiger Shaw, the president of U.S. Ski and Snowboard. The T-bar would accomplish the same goal.

Helping fund the new lift was Burke Mountain Academy. The ski academy, now in its 50th year, might be best known as the place that launched Mikaela Shiffrin into a World Cup career at age 15. It has also turned out 36 Olympians, including six who competed at PyeongChang in 2018.

In December 2016, Burke Mountain Academy opened the $2.8 million, 15,000-square foot Ronnie Berlack Training Center, named for the Burke student and U.S. Ski Teamer who was killed in an avalanche while freeskiing in the Alps. The center was quickly designated a U.S. Ski Team High Performance Center, with the goal of not only serving Ski Team members but, as US Ski and Snowboarding’s Shaw said at the time, “bringing U.S. Ski Team knowledge and programming to the region, with the goal of building the best athletic development pipeline in the world.”

In 2017, Willy Booker, the former head of Marker/Dalbello/Volkl returned to Burke Mountain Academy, where he had graduated in 1996, to lead the school. Last year, he recruited two Olympians, gold medalist and World Cup GS champion Diann Roffe ’85 and Felix McGrath who finished third in the overall World Cup standings in 1988.

And in 2020 Burke Mountain Academy was named best alpine club in 2020 by U.S. Ski and Snowboarding.

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“Burke is one of the rare places where you can pull up to the mountain on a Saturday at 9 a.m., find a parking space, and still get fresh tracks,” says former World Cup racer and coach Ashley Davenport Sargent. Below, the slopeside Burke

Photos by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

Mountain Hotel and Conference Center.

and it was just so different from the other big ski areas—just so laid back,” she says. In 2015, when Nick left his job at Burton to become the president of Ski Industries of America, the family moved to Burke and enrolled the kids at Burke Mountain Academy.

“I just love it up here,” Ashley says. “I mean where else can you roll up to the mountain at 9 a.m. on a powder day and still

have fresh turns? It’s pretty much the ideal place for young families —you can set the kids loose, everyone knows everyone, the base lodge is right there. And there’s just no stress or drama here—no traffic getting to the mountain, no worrying about where you are going to park, no fighting for your line on the hill. And the skiing is plenty challenging. ” Kevin Mack, Burke’s general manager concurs. “On any given powder day, the level of skiing here is so high people disperse into the woods quickly and there’s rarely a wait at the lift.”

This season, that may be all the more true. “We’ll still be taking all the safety precautions, but otherwise we will be operating pretty much as normal,” says Mack. No reservations will be needed. No limitations on season pass or ticket sales.

“No one will be forced to ride a lift with someone they don’t want to, but we also don’t expect lines to be that much different from normal,” he says. The aptly named View Pub (with views to Willoughby Gap) and Tamarack Pub will have spaced seating and grab-and-go options.

And this season, with the likelihood of the Canadian border remaining closed, Burke may be even quieter.

With just 32 cases of Covid-19 reported in all of Caledonia county, this corner of Vermont may also be one of the safest places to visit in the country. n

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( B E ITT

H T

ER)

Casner, dropping into Quacky at Mad River Glen on Dec. 21.

After losing much of the early-season snow that made for the earliest season-opening ever at MRG, a couple of small storms rolled through and reopened a bunch of terrain.

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Credit Here

Photographer Jeb Wallace-Brodeur captures his son, Aidan

If last season taught us one thing, it was to savor every turn.

Photographer JEB WALLLACEBRODEUR did and here’s the evidence.

SWE E T SEA SON

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T

he stoke was high on December 7 as Mad River Glen had its earliest opening in its 70year history. Storm after storm had been punching the Green Mountains. As early as Nov. 10, forecasters were calling for 6 to 10 inches in the northern Greens. By Thanksgiving, slopes were looking more like they do at Christmas and on Dec. 7 when photographer Jeb Wallace-Brodeur captured Brooks Curran kicking off the lift-served season at Mad River Glen (see the cover of this magazine), there was deep powder and wide smiles.

It looked as if MRG might see a repeat of its recordbreaking 136-day season of 2018/19, the longest in the co-op owned ski area’s 70 year history. Bitter cold hit in mid-December. The usual thaw/rain cycle held off...until rain crushed the early snowpack leaving “pond ice” conditions in some spots.

By early February, though, snowdepth at the stake on Mt. Mansfield (a measurement of snowpack at elevation) had crept over 50 inches—the threshold many experienced skiers wait for before venturing into the backcountry.

Jeb made it a point to savor every storm. Based in Calais, he grew up in Montpelier, went to Middlebury College and has been a staff photographer for newspapers The Times Argus and SevenDays “seemingly forever,” he says. His work has also appeared in national magazines such as Powder, Mens Journal, EatingWell and Audubon.

In December, Jeb captured his son Aidan, (a downhill mountain biker who’s raced at the World Cup level) blasting the windswept at MRG. A month later, Jeb caught up with another World Cup mountain bike racer, Alex McAndrew, on his home turf at Burke Mountain.

By mid-February though reports were coming in from Europe on the spread of Covid-19. On March 4, the Icelandic government warned the Austrian ski town of Ischgl that a group had contracted the coronavirus there.

Here in Vermont, skiing was still going strong. Few cases had been reported here though in Colorado it was starting to spread.

Then, on March 15 the governor of Colorado announced ski areas there were to close. By March 16, every ski area in Vermont had shut down as well.

It took a while for what happened to sink in.

“On March 24 I did a socially-distanced hike up Stowe with Tucker Beatty for what would be the last turns of the season,” Jeb recalls. “As you can see,” says Jeb, “there was plenty of winter left when things came to a screeching halt.”

— Lisa Lynn

Ethan Holcomb leaping on Gazelle at Mad River Glen on Dec. 31, 2019.

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“My first day of lift-served skiing last year was Nov. 17, at Killington” writes photographer Jeb Wallace-Brodeur. In addition to the massive snowpack the resort laid down on Superstar for the 2019 Women’s World Cup, Killington had opened many of its trails and its new tunnels well before Thanksgiving.

Above, on Nov. 17, a snowboarder enters the new Killington tunnel where Great Northern passes beneath Bunny Buster. Mid-January found Jeb heading north to Burke Mountain Resort. “On January 21, two days after the last storm, snowboarder Alex McAndrew showed me some hidden lines between trails at Burke Mountain where fresh snow could still be found,” says Jeb.

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On Jan. 8 Jeb shot this photo (above) of Marc Angelillo surfing some fresh on Paradise, at Sugarbush. “A series of storms had laid down some heavy snow by then,” writes Jeb. Two months later, the snowpack was so deep University of Vemont student Brianna Caitlin found herself getting pitted as she skied off Stowe’s The Nose (below) and Forrest Conrad, of Burlington, found plenty of soft landings off Mt. Mansfield’s rocky profile.

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Photo by Lindsay Selin/Red House; at right, by Lisa Lynn

Dream Home

Caption goes here Caption goes here Caption goes here Caption goes here Caption goes here Caption goes here

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A view of the master bedroom, main floor and loft area (at left) show how much could be fit into this 2,200 sq. ft house. Add in the

NET 0 = NET GAIN

600-sq.ft . heated garage and garage apartment and it can sleep 10.

At right, Red House Builders’ Chris Quinn and Jeremy Gantz at the

spalted maple door they custom-made for this home designed by Waitsfield’s Maclay Architects.

Clean, simple and energy efficient, this new net-zero home in Warren is everything a couple of Sugarbush skiers ever dreamed of.

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he drives north started in college. “Whenever I could, I’d head up to ski Sugarbush with my roommate, Ben Rosenberg,” Jon Slater remembers. That was some 30 years ago,when they were at Harvard. They both went on to medical school. “Then Ben started his orthopedic practice in Middlebury and bought a condo at South Village near Sugarbush, so we had a place to stay up here,” Jon remembers, “and we kept coming up to visit.”

Jon and his wife Lori began driving up from their home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., on weekends. “We soon had four kids. We’d throw them in the back of our SUV with one juice box each and packed dinners. We would tie the VCR to the center console and tell them we weren’t going to stop until we got to Waitsfield,” Lori remembers. “Each time we crossed the Vermont border, I would just go ...’aahhh’ and relax,” says Jon.

of stuff or that needed a lot of cleaning,” says Lori. They wanted room for the kids and their friends, but not too much room. “We love them but don’t want them moving back in,” Lori says with a laugh. Hence, open closets and bunk beds in one bedroom, a second small bedroom with a queen-sized bed, a bed in the loft and an apartment/office over the garage.

They wanted a heated garage that could take all of their skis and Jon’s bikes. They wanted a hot tub and deck looking out at the mountain. And they wanted it all to be environmentally conscious.

In 2008 Lori and a friend founded In2Green, a company that weaves recycled and organic cotton yarn into throws, scarves, apparel and more. Having a home that would be “net-zero” – meaning it would generate more power than it used, was important to her and to Jon, a noted child psychiatrist affiliated with Columbia University.

The black-and-white palette Lori and Jon Slater chose ties their house together. Above, the spiral stairs “a sobriety test,” as Jon calls them, leads to a loft bedroom and office space.

“Pretty soon, Ben said, ‘You’re at my condo more than I am, why don’t you just buy it?’” Jon recalls.

The Slaters did, but they dreamed of building a house of their own.

In 2003, they found a parcel of land across the valley, in Warren. They bought the six acres and thought that one day they would build. “We figured we would wait until the kids got out of college,” Jon said. “For years, Lori would fill these notebooks with clippings and notes about what that house would look like.”

They finally began building in 2019. The home Red House Building completed for them on time this past winter is the polar opposite of where they had been living.

“We have this huge old house in Hastings-on-Hudson with crown moldings and all these cute little rooms. We wanted this to be a very simple, clean ski house – something where we didn’t accumulate a lot

As it happened, the lot they bought in Warren was one of several owned by architect Bill Maclay, a thought leader in sustainable design.

“I bought farmland way back when with the idea of subdividing and having a few farmhouses there and some shared open space,” said Maclay, who lives near them. Maclay is the author of one of the definitive books on net-zero building “The New Net-Zero.”

In fall of 2018, the Slaters shared their vision with Maclay and his co-worker Chris Cook: a simple, clean, open house that would have killer views of the slopes. And one that wouldn’t cost a fortune.

“Yes, building a net-zero house costs more up front,” Maclay admits. “But over the life of, say, a 30-year mortgage you are going to save upwards of $60,000 in energy bills.”

To get the view of the slopes of Sugarbush the Slaters wanted, the hillside home would have to face north and west. “That gave us a few

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Photo right by Lindsay Selin; Left by Lisa Lynn

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challenges in figuring out big windows and how to site solar panels on the roof so they would be most effective,” says Chris Cook of Maclay Architecture who helped design the house. “They also wanted cathedral ceilings and an open living area and that meant we had to put the bedrooms in the ‘basement’ or on the lowest level.”

With the house built into the side of a hill, that allowed for a walkout patio for the master bedroom and windows in each of the lowerlevel bedrooms. On the south side, large windows pour light down the stairway that leads down to the sleeping quarters.

Huge windows give an open feel to the the walk-out, lower-level master bedroom (top left). There, and in the bunkroom, Lori’s In2Green throws cover the custom beds. In the guest rooms, open shelving provides some storage, “but not enough so people move in,” says Lori. Below, floors and the island are white oak. The dining table was

Photos by Lindaay Selin and (top left) Jeremy Gantz

made for the Slaters by Jeff Resnick, a ski buddy who lives in Telluride.

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Photo by Lindsay Selin/Red House

“The loft area was going to sort of be my office and ‘man cave’,” says Jon. It also serves as an overflow fifth bedroom—three are on the ground floor and one over the garage.

Red House began constriuction in May 2019, using double stud wall construction and triple-paned Loewen windows to achieve a “high performance” home rating: a rating with th highest criteria for insulation and materials for windows and walls. The roof has an R-value (a measure of insluation) of 60, walls are 40 and the walls below grade are 20. Solar panels on the roof then provide nearly all the energy the house needs and heat pumps both warm the house in winter and cool it in the summer months.

“This house was so tight that the winter when we were finishing it all we needed was a tiny space heater to heat the whole space,” Red House’s Chris Quinn recalls. “The energy bill in the summer and fall has been $15 or $20—and that’s with the hot tub,” says Jon. A Stuv cube wood stove sits at one end of the big open living room—“and that thing blasts heat!,” says Jon. To avoid using any fossil fuels, at Maclay’s suggestion the Slaters installed a Bertazzoni induction range. “I often get pushback from clients who are used to cooking with gas, but if you look at the top chefs in Europe now, they are all using induction cooking—it’s healthier, too,” Maclay says.

“A friend suggested we go with all white appliances, and at first I

wasn’t so sure about that, but I am so glad I did,” notes Lori.

The couple worked closely with Red House along the way. As Jon says, “During the process there were a lot of key moments where we made some decisions that really added to the house,” says Jon. “At one point, Chris said ‘Let’s pause because I want to be sure you get exactly what you really want,” Lori said. “That made a huge difference.We got exactly what we wanted thanks to Chris— and they finished on time so we could move in for the winter.”

Quinn suggested making the structural steel trusses a visible design element and had them crafted by Middlebury’s Nop Metalworks. He also found the narrow spiral staircase that, placed in the entryway, allowed them to add a loft with a bed and desk above the kitchen area.

And the spalted maple front door was from timber he sourced lcally.

“We debated about whether to do a living space above the garage, too,” Jon remembers. “It was going cost more but in the end, having a studio space up there worked out perfectly because our oldest daughter moved in there during Covid-19 and I’ve been able to work from there too now.”

The Slaters moved into the house in January 2020 and, with exceptions a few trips back to New York, haven’t really left.

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Emily Johnson skis a line down to Stowe’s Ranch Camp that was originally cut in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC men lived at the camp all summer, cutting some of the area’s first traills.

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Photo by Brain Mohr/EmberPhoto

WE CAN THANK THE EARLY BACK

COUNTRY TRAIL BLAZERS FOR LINES WE SKI TODAY

In the 1930s, armies of men with the Civilian Conservation Corps carved paths through the woods of New England. BY DAVID GOODMAN

vtskiandride.com Fall 2020 51

Charlie Lord, in the black sweater, with his CCC crew cutting the Bruce Trail on Mt. Mansfield in the winter of 1933/34. The Bruce Trail was the first ski trail cut on Mt. Mansfield.

I

clutched the tattered decades-old topographic map in my mittens, valiantly trying to keep it from being shredded by the wind. I looked at the old map, looked at the mountain, and looked at the map again. As the gusts threatened to knock us to our knees, my skiing partner’s faith began to wane: “Are you sure there’s a trail up here?” he demanded.

Of course I wasn’t sure. Once again, legend and hearsay were my guide, this time leading me to the top of Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire. I was on a search for one of New England’s ghost trails, the fabled runs cut by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Depression-era jobs program, that were beloved by skiers of an earlier generation. Many of these trails were abandoned when lifts were built on the “other side of the mountain” in the 1940s. But a number of trails survived, thanks to the determined efforts of local skiers who wanted to preserve their favorite stashes.

On this day in the late 1980s, I was looking for Cannon’s forgotten Tucker Brook Trail, which was cut on the northwest side of Cannon in the early 1930s but was abandoned after the tramway was built on the northeast slopes in 1938. The start of the trail was cleverly camouflaged by a row of closely spaced spruce trees. My ski partner Dave

and I finally discovered it thanks to some tell-tale tracks that led into an impenetrable thicket. We leaned into the wall of spruce trees and, like ghosts walking through walls, burst through to another world: just beyond the trees lay a beautiful 10-foot-wide swathe with a foot of powder. We swooped down, our skis snapping back and forth through the trail’s signature 13 Turns that start the run.

Tucker Brook, like all CCC trails, has a distinctive personality. The run leaps down the mountain like a joyful but unruly child. The trail has a quirky sense of humor, flipping to the right just as I recover my balance from a challenging set of turns, then rolling into a gravitydefying hard left turn that falls away to the right.

I have been on a mission to ferret out these historic down-mountain trails since the 1980s, when I began researching and writing Classic Backcountry Skiing, the first guidebook to backcountry skiing in the Northeast. As I went in search of new trails to ski, I discovered the old trails—and found that these forgotten runs were remarkable powder preserves and fabulous to ski. These trails were also a window into a short-lived era in the 1930s when backcountry ski trails brought people together in vibrant communities.

Over the last few winters, I have been criss-crossing the region re-

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searching a new guidebook, Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast, out this winter from AMC Books. I’m happy to report that the old CCC trails shine brighter than ever. But they are joined by a new generation of community-supported ski trails and glade zones that are popping up in mountains throughout the Northeast. I’ll say more about this modern ski movement in future columns.

For now, let me tell you a story. It’s about the quest for the best skiing in the Northeast. It begins in the aftermath of the Great Depression when a ragtag group of CCC men showed up in New England with axes and saws and began cutting their way toward the summits.

Photo courtesy of Brian Lindner

HOW THE DEPRESSION LAUNCHED SKIING

They were the unlikeliest ski pioneers. They didn’t ski, most were impoverished city kids, and many had never seen a mountain before. Yet some of America’s most renowned ski trails and ski areas are the legacy of the young men who formed the Civilian Conservation Corps.

The CCC was born of twin crises. The first was the Great Depression: by the early 1930s, about one-fourth of people under 25 were unemployed. Some two million people were drifting as hobos or vagrants, including 250,000 young people who had been dubbed the “teenage tramps of America.”

The U.S. was also in the grips of an environmental crisis of unprecedented proportions. Where forests had once covered 800 million acres of the country, widespread plundering left only 100 million acres of virgin timber by 1933. Destruction of the forests gave rise to soil erosion: by 1934, precious topsoil covering one sixth of the continent had washed away or been carried off by wind. So massive were the dust storms blowing across the Great Plains that snow in Vermont was tinged brown with dust in the spring of 1934.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt swept into office promising to rescue both of these wasting resources. Within a month of his March 1933 inauguration, FDR signed emergency legislation creating the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC was charged with hiring unemployed men to do conservation work. Recruits were drawn primarily from families on the relief rolls, and each man earned $30 per month for his work, of which about $25 went to his dependents.

The CCC was in existence from 1933 to 1942. Some 2.5 million men passed through “Roosevelt’s Forest Army,” making it the largest peacetime government labor force in American history. The “CCC boys” improved millions of acres of forest and park land, built roads, constructed irrigation systems throughout the West, fought forest fires and provided disaster assistance. Their most visible and enduring legacy is the parks they built. In the South, 13 states had no state parks and half had no parks at all in 1933; within six years, the CCC had built parks in 10 of those states. The CCC ultimately developed hundreds of national, state, county and municipal parks around the country.

So how did a federal jobs program end up cutting ski trails? The explanation lies with the fact that the CCC contingents in each state

Top, the Teardrop Trail off the back of Mt. Mansfield was one of the first of the old CCC trails author David Goodman discovered, many years ago. At right, the CCC completed the Taft Trail on New Hampshire’s Cannon Mountain in the early 1930s.

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THERE WEREN’T TOO MANY PEOPLE WHO KNEW MUCH ABOUT SKIING.

”

fell under the authority of the state forester. Among the state foresters were a handful of ski enthusiasts. When thousands of able bodied axe-wielding men were put at their disposal, these foresters had just the job for them.

The best known of the skiing foresters was Perry Merrill, state forester of Vermont. Merrill had attended forestry school in Stockholm, Sweden in the Twenties. It was while a student there that he glimpsed the legendary Scandinavian passion for skiing. Merrill left Sweden with a vision: perhaps Americans would pursue skiing with equal zeal if they were provided with the proper trails. Maybe skiing could help uplift the poor, rural state of Vermont, his home.

When Merrill was put in charge of the Vermont contingent of the CCC, he asked Charlie Lord, then an unemployed state highway engineer, to lead a CCC crew in cutting ski trails on Mt. Mansfield, the state’s highest mountain located in Stowe.

“There weren’t too many people who knew much about skiing, and I knew hardly anything, but I did ski,” Lord told me in one of several interviews that we did in the 1990s (he died in 1997 at the age of 95). Lord complied by leading a crew of 25 CCC men in July 1933 and cutting the Bruce Trail two miles up the southeast side of

Photos courtesy David Goodman

“

A powder day on Cannon’s Taft Trail, circa 1935. The CCC cut trails around New England and built warming huts such as Bryant Camp, still in use now at Bolton Valley.

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Photo by Brian Mohr/EmberPhoto

Not long after the CCC built trails, backyard lifts started to appear like the remnants of this one that Mad River Valley local Ian Forgays discoverd on Mt. Cardigan, N.H.

Mt. Mansfield to the Toll Road. The trail was an instant hit. Skiers came from hundreds of miles away to ski the Bruce, and in February 1934 it was the site of the first downhill ski race on Mt. Mansfield.

Burlington golf champion Jack Allen won the race in nearly 11 minutes; Lord came in second.

Encouraged by their success, Lord and the Vermont CCC men cut a half-dozen more trails on Mansfield, which formed the nucleus of the Stowe ski resort that began in 1936. In his seven years with the CCC, Lord also consulted on mountain design for numerous other Vermont ski areas, including Mad River Glen, Okemo, Burke Mountain, Killington, Middlebury College SnowBowl and Mount Ascutney. Perry Merrill, who died in 1993, wrote proudly, “The CCC made Vermont the Ski Capital of the East.”

New England was the greatest beneficiary of the CCC’s ski trail blazing. The New Hampshire CCC contingent was one of the most prolific, contributing ski trails on Mts. Washington and Cardigan, and on Cannon, Wildcat, Bald, Piper and Belknap Mountains. The Maine CCC cut ski trails on at least four mountains, and the CCC groups in Massachusetts and Connecticut also blazed trails for skiers.

The CCC cut a smattering of ski trails in the western U.S., but skiing in the west did not take hold in earnest until after World War II. The most notable western ski trails cut by the CCC were the first runs at Sun Valley.

My first taste of Charlie Lord’s talents came when I went skied the Teardrop Trail, which runs down the west side of Mt. Mansfield to

Underhill. It was designed by Lord and cut by the CCC in 1937 but was abandoned when the Stowe ski area was built on the east side of the mountain. The Bruce Trail, which runs from behind the Stone Hut (another CCC creation) down to the Stowe Mountain Resort CrossCountry Center, remains a backcountry jewel.

The Teardrop and Bruce offer exactly what Lord and his friends dreamed of when they cut the trails eight decades ago. They both cling closely to the undulating contours of the mountain, turning where the mountain turns. Variety is the hallmark of these trails, and they still hold my interest and challenge me even after scores of descents.

Lord’s magic formula is revealing in its simplicity. “When we put in trails, we just put them where we liked to ski, and where we could ski,” mused the ski trail architect as we sat in his living room 30 years ago, his cat on his lap and Mt. Mansfield beaming outside. “We had to avoid ledges and brooks, and we had to thread the trail down the mountain as near as we could to a good fall line without undue obstacles.” He observed with a grin, “We generally found enough obstacles without putting them in.”

Recently, I stood at Cannon’s ski area boundary sign and peered down the passageway on the other side. It was winter 2020, more than 30 years since I first hunted around and found the Tucker Brook Trail.

The obvious entrance made clear that this trail no longer secret. “After you,” offered my partner, Patrick Kane, lifting up the rope.

I slid through, once again feeling the rush of time travel as I entered another world. n

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Marriott Hotel of the Year 2017 Marriott Opening Hotel of the Year 2016

SOCIAL DISTANCING SINCE 1949 56 Fall 2020 vtskiandride.com

COACH

By Lisa Lynn

HOW TO GET AIR AWARE Here’s what a fomer American Ninja Warrior contestant, a top snowboard coach and a Hollywood stuntman can teach you about getting air. And what time on a trampoline can do for your ski season.

Taking a break from his career as a Hollywood stunt man, Justice Hedenberg (above) is back home in Vermont coaching skiers and riders to be “air aware” at Elevate Movement Collective in

Photo courtesy Justice Hedenberg

Stowe.

H

ow’s it going girls? Let’s do ALL the aerials, so many aerials,” Justice Hedenburg shouts to two young clients, Isabelle and Maddie Lacy, at a late afternoon session at Elevate Movement Collective’s outdoor trampolines in Stowe. The girls start by just jumping up and down on the giant trampolines sunk into the ground and surrounded by foam mats. Hedenberg and his Elevate partner, Noah Labow, coach them through flips. Then the girls strap snowboards on and practice grabs.

In one corner, monkey rings, ladders and ramps are set up, part of a parkours routine. Indoors at their Stowe facility there’s another similar set-up.

Labow, along with partners George Coultas and Justice Hedenberg, opened Elevate Movement Collective in Stowe in the summer of 2019. Labow, a former freeskiing coach at the University of Vermont, has competed in proam big air ski contests and appeared on Season 5 of Ameri-

can Ninja Warriors. Coultas has been the head snowboard coach at Green Mountain Academy and also coached at the Green Mountain Training Center in Williston. Hedenburg is a Hollywood stuntman with credits on shows such as Homeland, Daredevil and Tell Me a Story. The trio also recently brought on McKinley Pierce, a former ski coach who earned the nickname “Mighty Mouse” during her multiple appearances on American Ninja Warrior.

“When it comes to skiing and snowboarding the best thing you can do when you are not on the slopes is to use the trampoline—it’s a safe, controlled environment and teaches you to land anything, no matter if you are doing athletic tricks or just being prepared to take a fall without hurting yourself,” says Labow.

The coaches work with students on what Hedenberg calls the “six pillars of athletic fitness:” Agility, balance, flexibility, coordination, endurance and strength.

“Our whole premise is if you practice those skills – and we

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GEAR

By Lisa Lynn

GEAR THAT’ S DOING GOOD In the months since the pandemic hit, these Vermont brands have pitched in where they can.

VERMONT GLOVE When the pandemic hit last spring, Jon Schaefer, the owner and general manager of Berkshire East and Catamount ski areas in western Massachusetts teamed up with Stowe-based software developer Inntopia to launch Goggles for Docs. Their efforts went viral and more than 50,000 goggles have since been donated to hospitals in neary every state, as well as to health care facilities in Canada, France, Mexico and beyond. These Vermont companies have also been doing their part. Want to show your support? Check out their latest gear.

Last spring, Vermont Glove paused manufacturing of its doublestitched goatskin Vermont Gloves, $100 – work gloves so strong they have historically been used by linemen. A family-run business based in Randolph, Vermont Glove instead ordered reams of cotton and worked with a network of home sewers to make cotton masks. They even shared their patterns in a DIY video and payed home sewers $1 for every mask.

Now, the Randolph-based company is back to making their sturdy but incredibly soft goatskin gloves – a must for wood stacking or trail building. vermontglove.com

A SPIRITED RESPONSE

SKIDA Burlington-based accessories company Skida turned their expertise in making hats and neckwarmers to making face masks. On top of that, the company offered health care workers 25 percent off on their products. Skida Face Masks ($22) are as fashionable as their neckwarmers and headwear with patterns that range from a soft teal Moon Flower to a pattern of Puppies in Space that will definitely bring a smile to anyone you meet. Skida.com

When Vermont’s bars and restaurants shut down due to Covid-19, its burgeoning beer industry was left holding… the kegs. Farrell Distributing, the region’s largest liquor distributor had 5,500 kegs (or 70,000 gallons) of draft beer that it couldn’t sell before it expired. So it did what distillers around the state started to do: it made hand sanitizer. Farrell transferred the kegs to Citizen Cider in Burlington then drove the cidery’s tanker (now full of beer) to Aqua Vitea Kombucha in Middlebury where their centrifuge spun out the alcohol from the beer. They then took the alcohol to Caledonia Spirits (maker of Barr Hill gin, vodka and spirits) in Montpelier, which was already making hand sanitizer. The result: a Spirited Response hand sanitizer—made from some of Vermont’s finest brews. farrelldistributing.com/whats-happening/ blog/news/a-spirited-response-2

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DODGE BOOTS Dave Dodge was one of the first to make custom ski boots out of carbon fiber and Dodge Ski Boots ($995) are known for their light weight and thermoformed construction, as well as their remote app-enabled fitting program and custom-fit promise. When the pandemic hit, the Essex Junction-based company used their thermoform expertise to help Beta Technologies develop and deploy an automatic bag ventilation machine (ABVM). Now, the company is back to making light, warm and stiff skiboots. dodgeboots.com

DARN TOUGH Stylish, lightweight and backed by Darn Tough’s lifetime guarantee, the Darn Tough Vermont Foodbank Farmer’s Market Crew Sock, $22, is one we’d buy anytime for fall hiking, biking or running. But there’s an added reason to buy it now: in response to the pandemic, Darn Tough has been donating 100 percent of the sales of this sock to the Vermont Foodbank. That’s in addition to the 10,000 pairs of socks that the company donated to health care workers around Vermont. darntough.com

BURTON & POW During Jake Carpenter Burton’s life, the family behind Burton got to know hospitals all too well. Last spring, Donna Carpenter, the president of Burton had their prototype facility develop 500 face shields and their binding manufacturer deliver 500,000 KN 95 face masks which they donated to those hospitals and others. The Burlington-based company recently converted to B Corporation (meaning it balances social and environmental benefits with business profit) but it has long been known for its political activism and environmental mission. In September, Burton also announced it will be closing its U.S. offices and retail stores on election day (Nov. 3) and is partnering with the ACLU and other organizations to help get out the vote and encourage voter education.

Another good cause Burton’s working on: a collab with Protect our Winters to both educate voters around environmental issues and to combat climate change. This fall, Burton launched a Protect Our Winters hoodie ($79.95) short sleeve shirt ($54.95) and beanie $26.95—all good ways to support a good cause. burton.com

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DRINK VT

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

VERMONT BEER, WINE, CIDER + SPIRITS

133 North Main St, St. Albans, VT 802528-5988 | 14thstarbrewing.com 14th Star Brewing Co. is veteran-owned Vermont craft brewery on a mission to brew world-class beer while enriching the communities we serve. Using the freshest local ingredients, we impart military precision and creativity into every batch of 14th Star beer.

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

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

Cider for the people, made by the people.

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

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

3597 VT-74, Shoreham, VT 802-897-2777 | champlainorchards.com Visit us at our Shoreham Farm Market or find us at your favorite craft retailer to try our award winning, orchard-made ciders. All our ciders are made onsite with our ecologically grown apples and our orchard is solar powered.

FIND MAPS AND MORE AT

vtskiandride.com/drink-vermont

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

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

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

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

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

Taste and enjoy our award-winning wines as we welcome you and share our adventure growing gra es and making wine in VT’s northern climate. Located in charming helburne ust south of urlington.

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

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

ur beer line u re resents a traditional take on classic European brewing with a healthy dose of the Vermont ho culture. Whether your reference is a brown or ale ale elles ager or our famous dletyme ouble IPA, we have a beer you’ll love! And it’s brewed right here at our pub and restaurant.

Visit our family owned award winning brewery timber frame ta room and retail store located in the ictures ue ad River Valley. We roduce an array of ho forward ales s ecialty ma le beers and uni ue brews of the highest uality and freshness and offer light fare. en daily.

69 Pitman Rd. Barre, VT 802-424-4864 | oldroutetwo.com ld Route Two irits sets out to make all our s irits from scratch doing everything the hard way under one roof. ach one of our s irits is carefully crafted to ensure you can en oy it neat while also making some of the most delicious cocktails you’ve ever tasted.

Learn about the local ingredients in our Joe’s Pond Gin and the uncommon woods that sha e our uni ue aging rogram for our Barrelhead rums.

1333 Luce Hill Rd., Stowe, VT 802-253-0900 | vontrappbrewing.com Von Trapp Brewing is dedicated to brewing the highest uality ustrian inspired lagers with a Vermont twist. erience a little of ustria a lot of Vermont,” in every glass.

Come visit our bierhall and restaurant at the brewery!

17 Town Farm Lane, Stowe 802-253-2065 | stowecider.com resh ressed hard cider crafted in Vermont. iders range from su er dry and reservative free to others containing local fruits ho s and uni ue barrel aged offerings. Visit our tasting room at 1 Town arm ane across from the Rusty ail in towe.

1321 Exchange St, Middlebury, VT 802385-3656 | woodchuck.com As America’s original hard cider, we have always done things our own way forging a tradition of uality and craftsmanshi with every cider batch we craft. t Woodchuck our cider makers meticulously oversee the details of every cider before any bottle or keg leaves our cidery. t’s this attention and assion for cider that ensures we always deliver a premium hard cider that is true to our roots. Enjoy the brand that started the American cider revolution.

VERMONT BEER, WINE, CIDER + SPIRITS

Drop-In Brewing is Middlebury’s small, independent, locally-owned brewery, and is home to The American Brewers Guild Brewing School. Our tap room is open Tues.

- Sat. noon to 5 p.m. serving beer to go. ou can find our beer on draft in restaurants and bars across Vermont, and our cans in retailers that carry craft beers. or more information check out www.dro inbrewing. com, or call us at (802) 989-7414.

The Chairlift Q+A

TWO ENDLESS WINTERS When two arborists fromWoodstock set out to get their first turns of the season in October, 2018, they had no idea that it would be a “season” that’s still going strong, 24 months later.

Howdid this streak of riding every month in Northeast start?

I’m a super nerd and I write down all my ski days—always have. I have books and books of notes. I dug those up recently. On October 13, 2018 we had a dusting of snow and Justin and I headed up to Killington. There was plenty of snow to get some turns in.

How many days did you put in that season?

I typically get in over 100 human-powered days skinning on my Weston splitboard—but I also ride lifts. I live just two miles from Suicide Six and have a pass there. I go there after work or over to Pico. These days, I almost prefer skinning to taking a lift and it’s great that there are so many cool places I can do it within a short drive of my house here. I love the quiet, the fact that you are getting exercise and that there’s usually no one else there. Plus, you see some incredible things when you are on your own.

64 Fall 2020 vtskiandride.com

How did you keep your streak going that first summer?

We had a 10-inch dump in Killington in May so that was easy and the lifts there stayed open through June 1. Then I headed to Tuckerman Ravine (photo below) and found some deep pockets of snow all way into August. Then, in September 2019, I drove 12 hours to the Chic Chocs in Quebec just to make a few turns, then came back the next day.

And this past year, what did you do when Covid-19 hit?

The Governor’s order was not to venture 10 miles from your house.

I’m lucky that I have Suicide Six just two miles away and it’s a great mountain. I rode there in May and June, skinning up since the lifts were closed, and then went to Tuckerman Ravine in July and August. I love seeing the high alpine terrain there and looking at the cool mosses and vegetation. I also got some turns in at Killington in July.

I couldn’t believe how much snow was still there.

Why just ski the Northeast?

I’m from he East Coast and I just love Vermont. I’ve been here nearly 5 years now and actually have never ridden out West. I thought about going down to Big Snow in New Jersey to do my September turns but that sort of defeats the idea of what I do.

I like the exploring and finding the little pockets of snow that are tucked into the mountains.

I’ll put it this way: we ski all the snoow that nature provides.

What counts as a “ski day”?

I used to say three runs off a lift was a ski day. Now I say three turns on any type of natural, frozen surface counts. It’s really just about getting out there. n

Photo by Justin Quinn

O

n September 19, as record cold set the mercury plunging down into the 20s in parts of Vermont, Per DeVore and his friend Justin Quinn hiked up Killington early in the morning. There, they found enough frost-covered “fast grass” on Rime, to make some turns. “It was all I needed to keep my streak going,” says DeVore. A trained arborist, DeVore is the grounds manager at the Woodstock Inn & Resort (owner of Suicide Six).

He has snowboarded every month in the Northeast for the past 24 and Quinn (an arborist at Marsh Billings Rockefeller National Park) has skied those same months. This October, they plan to continue their streak into the 2021 season.

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sugarbush.com

be here

If you ski or ride to get away from it all then you need to be here. Sugarbush is a treasure waiting to be discovered, hidden away in Vermont’s iconic Mad River Valley. Our legendary terrain and rich history beckons. Come for the adventure and camaraderie and leave the crowds behind.

For the00 best deals on discounted tickets, lodging and more, visit sugarbush.com.

September 2015 vtskiandride.com

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