Ski Vermont 2011 Magazine

FIND YOUR HAPPY PLACE. . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 A FARMERS’ MARKET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 WINTER WONDERLAND. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 ALSO: SNOW ‘EM THE LOVE STRANGE FUN SNOW AND INK + MORE

PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID BURLINGTON, VT PERMIT NO. 19

“ I REALIZED

cold is just a state of mind.”

Available at the best mountains, resorts, and igloos. Stop in to see us at our Waterbury, VT, Visitor Center & Café.

A REvELAtIon In EvERy cup™ www.GreenMountainCoffee.com 4

skivermont.com

2011 ISSUE PUBLISHER SKI VERMONT Sky Foulkes, Chair Parker Riehle, President Kathy Murphy, Director of Marketing

2 FIRST TRACKS

DITOR E Kathy Murphy

6 SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

PRINTER Lane Press COVER PHOTO Justin Cash CONTACT INFO Ski Vermont P.O. Box 368 Montpelier, VT 05601 T: 802.223.2439 F: 802.229.6917 www.SkiVermont.com —Ski Vermont —Ski_Vermont

A Vermont winter inspires questionable behavior. Story by Ben Hewitt

Meet five artisans of liquid libations who lead Vermont’s craft beer movement. Story by Neil Ryan

10 SNOW AND INK

Vermont skiers and riders wear their heart—and other art—on their sleeves. Story by Luke Q. Stafford

16 THE NURTURING LAND

These Olympians have one thing in common—their Green Mountain roots. Story by Peter Oliver

20 CO-OP VERMONT On the cover: Kirk Kardashian, farming the fields of Vermont powder.

36 STRANGE FUN

Vermonters unite to support worthy causes and each other. Story by Robert McGarvey

26 FIND YOUR HAPPY PLACE Grab your gear and find joy on the slopes of Vermont. Story by Lauren Ober

40 SNOW ‘EM THE LOVE

Delivering the white stuff is a labor of love for these Vermonters. Story by Kirk Kardashian

43 FEEL GOOD FOOD

Vermont’s local fare pleases the palate and sustains a way of life. Story by Ben Hewitt

46 A FARMERS’ MARKET

Artisan cheese-makers preserve Vermont’s landscape and small dairy farms. Story by Mike Hannigan

52 WINTER WONDERLAND

Terrain parks, and snow coasters, and snowcats! Oh, my! Story by Iseult Devlin

60 ALPINE AND NORDIC SKIING FACTS AND STATS

Get the details on Vermont’s diverse array of skiing and riding destinations.

SkiVermont.com

Courtesy of Justin Cash

DESIGN Methodikal, Inc.

Discover what it means to be a Vermonter and live la vida local.

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Courtesy of Justin Cash

LIVING LA VIDA LOCAL

Vermonters love winter. It’s not hard to understand why—the season lasts a long time here, and the thought of being cooped up inside for months on end as the snow piles up outside in the brisk, fresh Green Mountain air would be anathema to the Vermont way of life, not to mention a waste of a perfectly amazing season. So we bundle up and head outside. We grab our skis and snowboards (and other strange implements, as Ben Hewitt explains on page 36), and we go out together, to play in the snow with our family and friends, and explore the wonders of Vermont. That spirit of fellowship and cooperation, of bonding together and sharing our passions, permeates the Vermont experience—most surely in winter, but all year long as well. We’re all connected, and we can’t wait to share the true experiences of life in Vermont with our guests and friends. That genuine warmth and real openness is evidenced in the faces of the ski school instructors as they teach people how to ski or ride for the first time. It’s engrained in the state’s cooperative ventures, from the cheeses of Cabot to the snows of Magic Mountain and Mad River Glen. It’s why people gather together in ice fishing huts, why they rise before the crack of dawn to make snow at our alpine resorts, and why they unite to protect the farming way of life, and along with it, the very landscape that defines this place we call home.

Feeling this spirit of connection is what it means to be a local-to be a Vermonter.

It’s also the definition of our mission at Ski Vermont—to bring our state’s alpine and Nordic resorts together and to tell their unique stories of the Classic Vermont Winter Experience. Because although you may live “from away,” it doesn’t take you long to start feeling like a local, and to call those village church steeples, farmers’ markets and mountain trails your own. When you love winter as much as we do, you can’t help wanting to share it. To get giddy about a big storm rolling in, the slopes laden with a foot of fresh powder. To smile as a snowball zings past your ear. To relish the warmth of a steaming bowl of soup, with ingredients grown by the farmer just over the hill. And the more you explore Vermont in winter, in all its many facets, the more you’ll love the season yourself. This issue of Ski Vermont Magazine is devoted to “living local,” and to celebrating winter, our season of unity. In Vermont, we come together not to endure winter, but rather to cherish it; a hearty, healthy way of life surrounded by family and friends. We hope you’ll share it with us—this winter and for a lifetime. — Kathy Murphy

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2010–2011 SKI VERMONT CALENDAR OF EVENTS DECEMBER

JANUARY

16TH ANNUAL BREWFEST Smugglers’ Notch Resort

NIGHT RIDERS SERIES Bolton Valley Resort

WINTER DEW TOUR Killington Resort

December 4, 2010

Wednesday nights in January, February and March

January 19–23, 2011

RAILS 2 RICHES Killington Resort

VERMONT SKI MUSEUM ANTIQUE CLASSIC Trapp Family Lodge and Resort

SIXTH ANNUAL PAINTBALL BIATHLON Mountain Top Inn and Resort

December 11, 2010

January 9, 2011

January 22–23, 2011

STOWE MOUNTAINFEST Stowe Mountain Resort

FIRE AND ICE FESTIVAL Stowe Mountain Resort

December 11–12, 2010

January 22–23, 2011

FAMILY NEW YEAR’S EVE Okemo Mountain Resort

TUBBS ROMP TO STOMP OUT BREAST CANCER SNOWSHOE Stratton Mountain Resort

December 31, 2010

January 29, 2011 MOUNTAIN FIRE AND LIGHTS NIGHTS Stratton Mountain Resort

December 31, 2010 MOUNTAIN DEW VERTICAL CHALLENGE Bolton Valley Resort

January 17, 2011

“OUR FANS BLOW.” “Snow, of course, and tons of it. In fact, Mount Snow boasts over 250 energy efficient fan guns. It’s the most in North America.” — Dave Boliver, aka Bugz, Snowmaker

800.245.snow | mountsnow.com 4

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FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRIL

12TH ANNUAL CASINO NIGHT Smugglers’ Notch Resort

THE US OPEN SNOWBOARDING CHAMPIONSHIPS Stratton Mountain Resort

22ND ANNUAL POND SKIMMING CELEBRATION Burke Mountain Resort

March 7–13, 2011

April 2, 2011

February 5, 2011 LIGHT THE NIGHT RAIL JAM Okemo Mountain Resort

February 26, 2011

NINTH ANNUAL MOUNTAIN MARDI GRAS Jay Peak Resort

March 7–13, 2011 TD BANK BILL KOCH FESTIVAL Middlebury College Snow Bowl

February 26–27, 2011

SNOE.DOWN Killington Resort

March 25–27, 2011 POND SKIMMING Bolton Valley Resort

March 26, 2011 REGGAEFEST WEEKEND Mount Snow Resort

March 26–27, 2011

OKEMO SLUSH CUP & SPLASH FOR CASH Okemo Mountain Resort

April 2, 2011 WINTER BREWERS FESTIVAL Mount Snow Resort

April 9, 2011

For more information on these events and to find out what else is going on, head to SkiVermont.com

“DUMP YOUR KIDS AT A DIFFERENT PARK.” “I’m certain they’ll beg you to bring them to Carinthia next time. It’s the #1 park in the East for a reason. Just ask the Revolution Tour, Kelly Clark and my mom. Yeah, she shreds too.” — Ken Gaitor, Carinthia Parks Manager

cARIntHIAPARKs.com SkiVermont.com

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Sma l

l is Be aut ifu l by Neil

n Rya

The Best Beers You’ve Never Tried, and Where to Find Them Twelve years ago, Dave Broderick—owner of two well-known bars in New York City—was making frequent forays to Vermont in search of little-known beers and farmstead cheeses. His explorations of obscure breweries and small farms kindled a love for Vermont that was reflected on tap in his New York bars. Now a resident of Barnard, Vt., Broderick finds himself immersed in an eclectic community of brewers and pub owners offering a vision for craft beer that echoes the nature of this state—small by design and utterly focused on quality and innovation. “Right now we’re in a golden age for beer in Vermont,” says Broderick from his 1790s home, once an early American tavern on the Royalton Turnpike in Barnard. An enthusiast and increasingly an expert on Vermont’s vibrant and hyper-local beer scene, Broderick has a barn filled with casks of aging beer, cider, and mead from around the state. Like many of Vermont’s small-scale farmers, the Green Mountain State’s brewing community is on the leading edge of a movement that values quality and sense of place as important benchmarks for success. These artisans of liquid libations envision a small brewpub or brewery in every community in the state, and there are more of them all the time. Here’s Broderick’s list of just a few of the new places and people that you must check out if you’re into beer. For a more comprehensive listing, visit the Vermont Brewers Association Web site (brewersvt.com).

LAWSON’S FINEST LIQUIDS WARREN, VT

Sean Lawson is the director of Mad River Glen’s Environmental Program, and he also happens to brew beers that are recognized as some of the best in the world. A hobby home brewer since his college days at the University of Vermont, Lawson is now one of the country’s smallest commercial brewers. He brews one barrel at a time. “I’m interested in variety. In a given year, I’ll release 20 different beers.” Lawson’s beers sell out quickly whether on tap or bottled. At the Warren Store, a sign limits customers to a single case of 22-ounce Lawson’s Finest bottles in a given day. Find it on tap at Mad River Glen or at American Flatbread in Waitsfield.

THE ALCHEMIST WATERBURY, VT

Head north on Route 100 and stop into a Waterbury hot spot, the Alchemist Pub and Brewery. Just a short drive from Stowe, Bolton, and the Mad River Valley, the Alchemist caters to localvores and beer aficionados alike, serving affordable local pub fare and a variety of highly sophisticated ales from its sevenbarrel brewery. Brewer John Kimmich is often named one of Vermont’s best, and the pub is hopping nightly with both an après-ski crowd and an after-work crowd. Try the Holy Cow IPA.

TRAPP FAMILY LODGE BREWERY STOWE, VT

Stowe’s historic Nordic ski resort Trapp Family Lodge is the home of brand-new Trapp Lager. Inspired by the great local brews of Germany and the Austrian alps, brewmaster Allen Van Anda and the Trapp family are bringing Old World flavors 6

SkiVermont.com

Courtesy of Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

to Vermont. “They’re brewing exceptional lagers, which is very hard to do,” notes Dave Broderick. Trapp Family Lodge Brewery is just beginning to bottle and ship kegs throughout the state. Look for the goat’s horn tap handle.

HILL FARMSTEAD BREWERY GREENSBORO BEND, VT

Almost equidistant from Stowe, Jay Peak, Smugglers’ Notch, and Burke is the Hill Farmstead Brewery in Greensboro Bend. Shaun Smith is a young brewer whose family ties in Greensboro stretch back to the 1780s. “All my beers are named after ancestors that worked this land. I’m keeping their memories alive. The barn burned down in 1978, the year before I was born. I might have been born into dairy farming. Instead I’m revitalizing this farmstead the best way I know how.” Smith encourages folks to visit his farm to taste the beer on tap. His farmstead is a busy place, with guests dropping by to sample and purchase beer, and other brewers making the pilgrimage to collaborate with Smith.

fine r. Enjoying Mmmmm...bee s at t a e localvore brews and b ury. r e t ist in Wa The Alchem

LONG TRAIL

BREWMASTER SERIES DOUBLE IPA Long Trail Brewery’s slogan is “A Taste of Vermont,” and the Brewmaster Series of limited-release styles is brewed in small batches and easily identified by the 22 oz. bottle’s vintage label, reflecting the gourmet nature of this line of specially crafted beers. But we all know that you cannot judge a brew alone on the label, even if its address is Bridgewater Corners, Vt. A hophead’s delight, Long Trail’s Double IPA offers true reward for those seeking intensely sensual, full hop flavor. Pale amber-orange in color, this brew has a tantalizing nose that encapsulates hints of juicy citrus with the earthy, piney and resiny hop undertone. In search of inspiration within, the recipe is sourced from one of Long Trail’s own

CONTACTS:

home brewers and is available on tap or

LAWSON’S FINEST LIQUIDS LAWSONSFINEST.COM

in bottles at selected locations, including

THE ALCHEMIST PUB AND BREWERY ALCHEMISTBEER.COM

Long Trail’s Visitor Center and Pub at the corner of Vermont Route 4 and Route 100A.

TRAPP FAMILY LODGE BREWERY TRAPPFAMILY.COM/AMENITIES/DINING/BREWERY HILL FARMSTEAD BREWERY HILLFARMSTEAD.COM

SkiVermont.com

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SKI VERMONT FIFTH GRADE PASSPORT GET YOUR FREE TICKETS TO SLIDE, RIDE AND GLIDE Count to 94. It’s easy, right? Especially if you’re a fifth grader. Well that’s the total number of days you’ll enjoy for FREE* at Vermont’s 19 alpine resorts and 31 Nordic ski areas with the Fifth Grade Passport this winter. When it comes to developing skiers and riders, Vermont resorts have nurtured many an Olympic athlete to reach their full potential. Along the way, Vermont Olympians like Hannah Teter, Ross Powers and Kelly Clark have learned that skiing and snowboarding, first and foremost, is about having fun – and sharing great times with family and friends in the Green Mountains. It’s also about giving back to the community, as each of these athletes does personally. So this year, Ski Vermont will donate $5 of every Fifth Grade Passport’s $15 processing fee to Keep Local Farms, an education and contribution program that connects consumers with local dairy farmers and encourages the purchase of healthy, local foods to sustain the working landscape for future generations. To find out more on Vermont’s Fifth Grade Passport program and to receive an application, visit skivermont.com. * To receive a FREE 5th Grade Passport, please submit a completed application, including proof of fifth grade status and a $15.00 processing fee. Passport holders must be accompanied by an adult purchase of a full-price, full day lift ticket. Passports are valid December 1, 2010 - May 1, 2011, excluding blackout dates.

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Sweet.

Home of the world’s greatest groomers. 1-800-stratton

stratton.com/vermont

Stratton’s Vermont, Close to You Yet a World Apart.

SNOW

& INK

By Luke Q. Stafford

Parents fear them; teenagers dream about them. Rock stars wear them as their uniform; Samoans wear them as trophies. You probably know a 20-something with one on her lower back. And Popeye, that lovable cartoon sailor, wouldn’t be Popeye without them inked on his freakishly humongous forearms.

They are tattoos. They’ve been around for millennia, undergoing all sorts of cultural transformations. But one thing hasn’t changed: Once they’re on your skin, they ain’t leaving. SHOW US YOUR INK As an experiment, we posted a call to the skiing and snowboarding masses on RideVermont.com and the Ride Vermont Facebook page. “Show us your ink,” it read. “If you have a ski or snowboard homage tattooed on your body, we want to see it.” We wanted to find out, are people so in love with winter they’d permanently ink it on their skin? Is snowboarding a big enough passion to justify 12 hours of painful needle pricking? Would a grown man ever get a huge blue snowflake foreverdrawn on his inner biceps? Yup. Over a dozen snow lovers responded. Snowflakes, mountain scenes, snowboarding goblins, even the Burton logo... they all live in unfading ink on the skin of Vermont skiers and riders.

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A BRIEF HISTORY The origin of the tattoo is debatable (even Wikipedia can’t nail this one down). What’s known is that the Polynesians perfected the art thousands of years ago—ancient tribal leaders sometimes received intricate full-body tattoos, enduring extreme pain and risk of death to prove their virility. It’s also known that during China’s Han Dynasty 2,000 years ago, criminals received indelible markings. And permanent skin markings have been discovered on the hands of Egyptian concubines entombed 4,000 years ago. The famous “Iceman” mummy, discovered in 1991 in the Italian/Austrian Alps, is the oldest known tattooed human. Because none of Iceman’s 50 tattoos were of the barbed-wire armband variety, scientists were able to determine that he lived before 1992 and never visited the New Jersey shoreline. Carbon dating later revealed that he was mummified around 3200 B.C. THE INK SAYS IT ALL The snowflake was a common theme among the tats submitted on RideVermont.com. Men and women both seemed to be inherently attracted to the “no two flakes are alike” law, leaving room for artistic freedom. Overall, snowflakes on female backs were the most common tattoo and location. “I just love the look of a snowflake, always so unique and beautiful,” said Holly Gehman, a 28-year-old from Pennsylvania who skis at Smugglers’ Notch every February with her family. Her light blue flake sits between her shoulder blades, a souvenir from the year she and her husband lived in Jeffersonville, Vt., as newlyweds. Gaetano Putignano, a 39-year-old builder and native Vermonter, has an ever-evolving “sleeve” tattoo on his left arm. What started out as a tree branching out over his shoulder turned into a maze of swirling designs. Anchoring the artwork is one of snowboarding’s most recognizable images: the Burton Snowboards logo. Putignano, who estimated he rode over 100 days last season, plans to add more snowboard-related artwork in the future. In the ultimate tribute to his home mountain, he is “thinking about throwing the Okemo clock tower on there next.” Jonathan Hartley is a 26-year-old from Philadelphia who stopped at a tattoo parlor on his way home from work one day to get stark, snow-capped mountains banded around his lower leg. His justification for the permanent mountain scene? “I’ve been skiing for a very long time, and it’s something that occupies my mind year-round.” Hartley said the pain of the

vibrating needle pricking the thin skin on his shin bone was a little unnerving. “Luckily the artist was a pretty big dude, so he could pin my leg down.” Hartley’s Japanese-inspired, angular peaks were borrowed from pro skier Eric Pollard’s art installation at a ski shop. In the end, it was 29-year-old New Yorker Jeffrey Wolfson who submitted the most impressive ink. Like Putignano, he opted for a sleeve tattoo. It begins with a snowflake on his shoulder, melding into a serene mountaintop scene with rolling clouds and distant peaks. Move down and you’ll see the profile of a rail-sliding snowboarder. And then, BAM! a bright green, up-to-no-good goblin snowboarder overtakes Wolfson’s biceps. “Snowboarders sometimes get a bad rap as troublemakers on the hill, so I thought [the goblin] was a perfect fit,” said Wolfson, who broke up the tattooing process into three, four-hour sessions. For the record, Wolfson thinks Mike Tyson’s face tattoo is “absolutely ridiculous.” However you feel about tattoos, you have to admire these folks. Their passion for winter in Vermont is worn proudly. The pain of the ordeal is a small price to pay for their art that outlasts life. The permanence is embraced. As Hartley puts it, “I love skiing. That isn’t going to change. Ever.”

JEFF WOLFSON

TIFFANY BARKER

Wolfson’s tattoo took 12 hours to complete. Wolfson had the artist integrate a shoutout to his “Amp” crew of friends who snowboard around the Northeast together (see the base of the goblin’s snowboard).

Barker’s ongoing snowflakes are a dedication to her lifestyle. As a ski patroller and passionate winter outdoorswoman, she characterizes the flakes as a constant reminder of her way of life.

Tattoo by Rob Green of Whatever Tattoo, New York, NY

Tattoo by Chris Bijolle of Tribal Eye Tattoo, St. Albans, VT

29, WOODMERE, NY

26, JEFFERSONVILLE, VT

`

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|

JONATHAN HARTLEY

GAETANO WADE PUTIGNANO MINER 39, ROCKINGHAM, VT

24, ATTLEBORO, MA

As a fan of pro skier Eric Pollard’s art design for LINE Skis, Hartley took these mountain images from one of Pollard’s art shows. A frequenter of the Carinthia parks at Mount Snow, Hartley has been skiing for 16 years.

Putignano got his first tattoo, a wizard on his right arm, when he was 18. He recently added the Burton logo and accompanying design to his “sleeve” and plans to add more snowboard-related art in the future.

Tattoo by Luke White of Poison Apple, Philadelphia, PA

Tattoo by Alexander Lawrence of Mountainside Tattoo, Bellows Falls, VT

Miner, a loyal Vermont rider and Mount Snow frequenter, got this ink on his right forearm so that “when I stick out my hand for a handshake, people instantly know that I love snowboarding.” The permanence of the ink is just fine with Miner. “I will always love snowboarding and it will always love me back.”

26, PHILADELPHIA, PA

Tattoo by Skin Creations, Franklin, NJ

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“Every sport has its Mecca; the stadiums, race tracks or ball parks against which everything else is judged... Photo credit: Mike Riddell

Skiing has them too... There’s an agelessness to the place. Mad River Glen is an institution...” Powder Magazine

www.madriverglen.com

Courtesy of Chris Nelson

FIRST TRACKS

SHARING THE LOVE LEARN TO SKI AND SNOWBOARD MONTH Remember when you learned how to ride a bike? That nervous exhilaration as your dad let go of the seat. That feeling of control and balance as the wind whipped past your head. That sensation of confidence and freedom once you finally realized you could really do it all by yourself—no more training wheels for me, thank you very much. Want to feel like that kid again? We’ve got just the thing for you. January is Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month, and more than a dozen Vermont alpine and Nordic resorts are teaming up to share their passion for winter sports with you. Each of them is offering “learn-to” beginner packages that will jump-start a lifelong love of winter and the joys of sliding on snow. Whether you’re a kid or just a kid at heart, Vermont’s ski school pros will guide your first-time experience from arrival to après so you’re safe and confident at every turn. You’ll find all the facts on our money-saving Learn to Ski and Snowboard programs at www.skivermont.com. There’s even a pre-arrival checklist with tips on what to wear and what

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to bring so you’ll be all set to enjoy your first time—and a lifetime—on the snow. FREE “FIRST TIMER” PACKAGE: JANUARY 3–9, 2011 Selected Vermont alpine and Nordic resorts are enticing never-ever skiers and snowboarders to the slopes with a weeklong offer that includes a beginner lift ticket or trail pass, a beginner lesson and rental equipment FREE. Available to adults or children over 8 years of age, this first-timer package gets you cruising the slopes and trails in no time. For more specifics, or to register, visit www.skivermont.com. BUILDING BLOCKS: NORDIC SKIING AND SNOWSHOEING Looking for a gateway activity to ease your way into winter sports? Give snowshoeing or cross-country skiing a try. The solitude and serenity of Vermont’s winter woods are just waiting to be explored. You can sample these healthy alternatives at Winter Trails, a FREE, nationwide event held at dozens of Vermont Nordic resorts on Saturday, January 8, 2011. Embrace snow sports in Vermont this January and make winter your season of discovery and adventure. — Kathy Murphy

photo credit: D. DAHER - ©EIDER

THOMAS DIET CHAMONIX (FRANCE) 14TH FEBRUARY 2010 5 : 37 PM

More info: Eider USA / (303) 527-1460

G

Courtesy of Chris Nelson

THE NURTURIN LAND

When it comes to developing elite winter athletes, no state does it better than Vermont. BY PETER OLIVER So you want to be a ski or snowboard star? Here’s the best head start: Either be a Vermonter or become one. Virtually since the inception of competitive skiing, Vermont has been an incubator of top winter sports athletes. Think back to the days of Andrea Mead Lawrence, perhaps America’s first great Winter Olympics star, who won two gold medals in ski racing at the 1952 Games. A star was born. Born, that is, in Rutland, and grew up skiing at Pico Peak. The Lawrence legacy marches on into the present. There are currently as many Vermonters on the U.S. ski and snowboard teams as there are Californians. Yet the entire population of Vermont could fit into the city of San Francisco, with plenty of vacant homes to spare. What explains this disproportionate representation? Clearly, Vermont has the mountains and the snow, but that is just a start. Winter sports are also deeply embedded in the culture of the state. For many who grow up in Vermont, skiing or snowboarding is a rite of seasonal passage. And no state has a more complete infrastructure for developing elite winter athletes—the latticework of coaching, special winter sports academies, competitive opportunities, ski area programs, and families with a strong affinity for winter sports that is a structural support for the state’s soul. Vermont and Vermonters can look to a natural set of steppingstones leading from the prepubescent years as a bunnyslope pipsqueak to the Olympic limelight. An athlete like Chelsea Marshall, a native of Pittsfield who grew up skiing at Killington, tells it like it is. For Marshall, as for so many other Vermonters, skiing life began as a family affair. Marshall is currently a member of the U.S. Ski Team and competed in last winter’s Olympics at Whistler, but her start in skiing began innocently enough, as a typical Vermont kid with no hint of

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Olympic grandeur, “chasing my two older brothers around the mountain playing tag-along.” That was the first stepping-stone—just having fun, falling in love with the sport. What followed was success in junior competitions, at Killington and elsewhere in the state. Then came the next big step: she followed her brother, Cody, north to Waitsfield to attend the Green Mountain Valley School (GMVS) and hone her ample racing skills. GMVS is a so-called ski academy—Burke Mountain Academy, Stratton Mountain School, Mount Snow Academy, Mount Mansfield Winter Academy, Okemo Mountain School and Killington Mountain School being other prominent academies in the state—a concept that essentially was a Vermont invention. In addition to providing up-and-coming athletes with the kind of coaching and support system necessary to maximize competitive success, the schools stress academics, and many graduates end up at Ivy League or equally prestigious colleges. That is what attracts many of the most promising young racers from around the country, not just Vermonters. There are other such academies in other states, but no state does the ski academy thing better than Vermont. For many athletes, the destination after academy life is the national team, as was the case for Marshall. And, of course, that sort of trajectory is nothing new or unusual for Vermont athletes, as evidenced by the 17 other Vermonters currently on the U.S. ski and snowboard teams. And a generation or so before Marshall, Doug Lewis followed a similar path to the elite level of the sport. Lewis grew up in Middlebury skiing in the kids’ program at the Middlebury College Snow Bowl. Like Marshall, Lewis spent those early years just goofing off—among other things, he and his young cohorts would sneak over and launch, on alpine skis, off the ski jumps that were at the Snow Bowl

at that time. Lesson learned early: Skiing, first and foremost, is about having fun, and maybe getting into a little trouble. Lewis, too, would go on to GMVS, where he could thank his coaches for the kind of smart planning that enables a promising young athlete to achieve his full potential. He was infuriated when his coaches would hold him out of big races, but they knew what they were doing. “It made me crazy that I wasn’t going,” he says. “But those guys had a plan.” A few years later, the plan paid off big time, with Lewis standing on the podium at ski racing’s world championships, a bronze medal hanging from his neck. Another Vermonter who ended up with a medal around her neck—in this case, Olympic gold—is Kelly Clark. She took her first snowboarding lessons in the after-school program in Dover, in the first year that snowboarding was offered, then moved on to nearby Mount Snow to train. “Mount Snow was then and still is one of the leaders in terrain parks on the East Coast,” says Clark, so she had the facilities she needed to become the best in the world. Vermont skiing and snowboarding history is filled with stories like Marshall’s, Lewis’, and Clark’s. Take a guy like Ross Powers of Londonderry, who was given the freedom at Bromley to switch to snowboarding when it was still a fledgling activity, often regarded by ski areas as a lesser sport. He rode that early support all the way to an Olympic gold medal in the half-pipe. Or consider the story of Liz Stephen of East Montpelier, who attended Burke Mountain Academy (the oldest in the United States) with hopes of becoming an alpine ski racing star. Her coaches were astute enough to see that her real talents lay elsewhere, and she was encouraged at Burke to switch to crosscountry racing. The result: She became a member of the 2010 Olympic cross-country team. Good support and coaching can be as much a matter of vision and imagination as of running athletes through the requisite training programs. For so many Vermont athletes, a connection to their origins ends up being permanent. It is impressive to see how many elite athletes can’t let go of Vermont, physically and psychically. Powers, for one, is now raising a family in Londonderry, while helping young Vermonters become the next generation of elite athletes. These days, Marshall spends most of her winters traveling around the world, racing for the U.S. Ski Team. Still, she says, “I love Vermont when I come home from traveling. I’d like to have a few more solid years of racing, then settle down in Vermont with a family.” Contrary to the old small-town myth that has young people trying to escape their hometown as soon as possible, Vermont athletes are proving that you can go home again. “Vermont will always be home to me,” says Clark.

FIRST TRACKS

INSIDER GEAR GUIDE: GRAB AND GO TOASTER FARE: You can’t plug it in, but you’ll feel so warm in Kombi’s merino wool layering system that it’s almost like curling up inside a toaster. Travel light and stay warm with Kombi’s Rover collection of performance base layers, ideal for stop-andgo activities in cold weather conditions. www.kombisports.com for men’s and women’s styles and colors. A GAL PAL FOR THE BEAST: Every bit as tough as the terrain of Vermont’s biggest resort, the Lady Killington Jacket has almost as many features as the Beast of the East has trails. Light, supple and extremely versatile, this double-layered Thinsulate jacket has a sweeter side that caresses you in freeridin’ and freestylin’ fashion. Available in plain and printed versions. www.lafumausa.com HERO WORSHIP: Looking for a superhero to save your turns? Rossignol’s Avenger 82 Carbon features all-new AutoTurn Technology that lets you carve at an accelerated pace, making skiing fun, easy and secure. Put the power, energy and edge grip underfoot when and where you need it most—and have a nice day! www.rossignol.com

SCIENCE MEETS SILENCE: Fischer’s Silent Spider delivers versatility and control for the recreational skier. The unique Mountain Edge Technology provides the perfect combination of grip and glide, whether you’re making your own trail or exploring Vermont’s vast network of Nordic centers. Lightweight, the skis’ shorter lengths will have you gliding effortlessly across the snow. www.fischerskis.com

Lewis concurs: “My last stop will be on Vermont soil. Vermont is my life’s blood.” Get training tips and Olympic updates from Team Vermont on SkiVermont.com SkiVermont.com

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You don’t have to leave winter in Vermont behind when you head home. Before your memory melts away, scoop up the latest and greatest Ski Vermont poster to adorn your wall. Grab the one that speaks best to your day on snow, or make the entire collection yours. We’ve got you covered at SkiVermont.com, where you’ll find pricing details and how to place your order.

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Maybe they should change the Vermont state motto, Freedom and Unity, to A State of Cooperation—although perhaps the two phrases mean the same thing in the end. But to unravel the truth, you will have to travel Vermont and discover what makes this state both vibrant and unique.

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Courtesy of Mad River Glen

MAD R IVER B OA R GL EN D OF T RU S MO U T EE S NTAI N TO P QUO RU M .

And a place where the freedom to be a Vermonter often grows out of a different kind of unity: the cooperative difference. Meet Beth Kennett, a dairy farmer in Rochester, Vt. She, her husband, and their two adult sons now have 100 cows, which makes Liberty Hill Farm a tick smaller than the average Vermont dairy farm (126 cows). Farms in the Midwest and California may have many thousands of cows, but that scale doesn’t suit Vermont’s rolling landscape marked by tiny valleys. In Vermont, small is a necessity for many farmers, but they find ways to make it work. Cooperatives, for starters. Kennett has personally been dairy farming for 35 years, her family’s roots in the business go back to 1641, and one key to her success is that her milk is sold to Cabot Creamery, one of Vermont’s largest cooperatives, with some 1,200 farmerowners. At Cabot, that milk becomes award-winning cheese, and this means that members like Kennett get good value for their milk while also getting the assured customer that any farm co-op offers its members. That is crucial. Producers of perishable goods need reliable markets, and for most Vermont dairy farmers a cooperative is the solution. And a big coop like Cabot has marketplace clout—it stands up against the big retailers and fights for a fair shake for its members. That’s another key cooperative function: Co-ops help level playing fields, with the power of the group helping even small producers and customers get the opportunity to succeed. Cooperatives put the needs of members first. By definition, they also are nonprofit groups (typically, if there are profits, they are returned to members as dividends). Vermont is jammed with

cooperatives—there are around 250 of them across the state in areas as varied as dairy farming; telephone, electric and financial services; and even a bustling ski resort. Which brings us back to Kennett. Besides her Cabot membership, cooperatives ripple throughout her life. She insures her property and vehicles through a cooperative. She shops for groceries at two food co-ops. Her financial affairs are conducted through a credit union, a kind of cooperative. Throughout her life, cooperatives are there with the help she needs. And that makes her a typical Vermonter. One tally of Vermonters and their cooperatives found that 300,000 belong to some kind of cooperative—that’s roughly one in every two residents, given the state’s population of 622,000. This same research found Vermonters depicting cooperatives as more trustworthy; 93 percent of respondents said that. Another reality: Cooperatives are inherently local. “It’s small companies helping small companies,” says Leon Berthiaume, general manager of the St. Albans Cooperative Creamery, Vermont’s other big dairy co-op, with around 450 farmer-owners. “We help each other; that’s the cooperative model,” adds Berthiaume, who explains that St. Albans was there at the beginning of Ben & Jerry’s and “we’ve kept serving them as they have grown.” Ben & Jerry’s is the exception. Most Vermont businesses start small and stay small, which is another reason the state is fertile turf for cooperatives. Cooperatives are integral to Vermont, in ways few other states can claim. “Vermonters are very willing to help each other—that’s something you learn quickly here,” says Christine Moriarty, a financial planner in Bristol. SkiVermont.com

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This just may be the best of times for Vermont’s cooperatives. “When the economy struggles, people decide they want to work together, and that brings them to cooperatives,” says Paul Hazen, CEO of the National Cooperative Business Association, a trade association based in Washington, D.C. But cooperatives have an appeal that goes beyond whatever the current state of the economy may be. “The most exciting thing about being in a cooperative in an era of corporate greed is that we are the epitome of democracy,” says Roberta MacDonald, an executive with Cabot Creamery, with administrative headquarters outside Montpelier and a large cheese-making plant in Cabot, Vt. “Everything we do is transparent, it’s all open to member and public view, and we believe this is the better business model.” What may be even more amazing is how many areas of Vermont life are directly touched by cooperatives—starting with the dairy industry. But read on for looks at cooperatives involved in operating ski resorts, delivering electric power and

financial services, even providing rural broadband Internet access.

UP ON THE MOUNTAIN “We are a cooperative with a straightforward mission,” says Jamey Wimble, president of Mad River Glen, a ski mountain near Waitsfield that is a few miles from Sugarbush. “We are here to preserve and protect this mountain, to keep it the way it is. We are committed to old-style skiing: long, narrow, winding trails.” Different mountains for different folks. At Mad River, over the past 15 years, 1,950 members have joined in paying $2,000 apiece for shares in the cooperative. “Quite a few small, private ski mountains have financial difficulties these days. We don’t,” says Wimble, who believes the cooperative structure makes all the difference. Shareholders, in addition to buying their shares, also commit to spending $200 per year on the mountain. “Our future is very strong,” says Wimble. “We are optimistic.” Membership is split between 60 percent

out-of-staters, 40 percent Vermonters, and mountain patronage is further split, with 40 percent of the business coming from shareholders and 60 percent from visitors. That percentage of non-shareholders, suggests Wimble, is good for the mountain because some may decide to become shareholders. Furthermore, he likes a diverse skier population. “For a small ski mountain to succeed, you need a large core group of regulars. Our shareholders give us that. But we also want new people to come and experience skiing as it was,” says Wimble. Meantime, over at Magic Mountain in Londonderry (about 25 minutes from Manchester, Vt.), President Jim Sullivan likes the Mad River story so much that he’s trying to emulate it. It’s been tougher going—Magic Mountain has sold 180 memberships, at $3,000 apiece, but the memberships don’t vest until a minimum of 300 have been sold. The terrain is much the same as Mad River’s: “This is a throwback mountain,” says Sullivan. “This is classic Vermont skiing, riding trails through the woods.” Whether Magic Mountain could make it as a traditional for-profit venture, with shareholders to appease in good times and bad, is unclear. But Sullivan is betting that there are enough fans of old-style Vermont skiing for the mountain to thrive in a member-owner format. “That’s what this is about: enjoying skiing as it has been. It’s what many skiers still want.” The take-away from these stories: Even in recreation that is central to Vermont, cooperatives can play an important role. It may make little sense to conceive of a 21st-century ski resort as a cooperative—but when it comes to saving very special mountains, this just may be the best way to proceed.

SPEED THRILLS The essence of many successful cooperatives has been providing a service that for-profit vendors have eschewed as not viable. One example is the Ripton Broadband Cooperative (RBC), nestled in rural central 22

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Vermont. Approximately 200 households constitute Ripton, and they were on the distant shoulders of the information superhighway, accessing the net at 56k dial-up modem speeds until 2007, when the home-brewed, tiny cooperative first fired up.

says Bernstein. “What we are doing in our cooperative is important—it shows what can be done to create clean power, and we have a membership that supports doing it.”

About 50 residents have become shareholding members (involving payment of $200); another 25 buy service without membership. Note that commercial providers did not see a viable market in Ripton, but the cooperative—by running lean—manages to deliver reliable Internet service. This cooperative is especially important, and not just to those who live in Ripton, because it highlights what cooperatives do best: Deliver services that people need but cannot get from a for-profit vendor. That’s when a nonprofit, memberowned solution is ideal, and so cooperatives proliferate across Vermont, a state remote enough to have been ignored by many of the nation’s largest corporations.

POWER UP In Vermont, for many residents, cooperatives even turn on the lights. “We serve the most rural area in the United States and we bring them clean power, almost entirely free of fossil fuels,” says Barry Bernstein, president of the Washington Electric Cooperative (WEC) board of directors. “We operate 1,300 miles of distribution lines, averaging eight members per mile.”

Courtesy of Hunger Mountain Co-op

“We deliver T1 speeds—around 1.5 megabytes, 25 times faster than dial-up,” says Jeremy Grip, a local networking expert who has worked with RBC. “It took us four years to get this up.”

PE T E FR O M R B U R K E THE H UN G MO U ER NTAI N CO IN M -OP ONT P EL I E R.

EAT UP The math boggles the brain. About 6,000 members belong to the Hunger Mountain Co-op in Montpelier—and the town itself has just 9,000 residents. Hunger Mountain Co-op General Manager Kari Bradley notes that the surrounding area has a population of perhaps 55,000 and that explains the Hunger Mountain membership, but, yes, this is a wildly popular store. So popular that it is strongly considering expanding by opening a second store in nearby Waterbury. Go back 40 years when most Vermont grocery co-ops were getting their start and the motivation was plain: There was a loud cry for natural and organic groceries that traditional grocers weren’t hearing. Co-ops filled the gap, and still today, most put a heavy emphasis on sourcing organic and fair-trade foodstuffs.

Cooperatives are integral to Vermont, in ways few other states can claim. Formed in 1939, WEC now serves around 10,500 households and businesses, says Bernstein, who adds that WEC was formed to bring power to customers who were lighting their homes at night with kerosene lamps. WEC also takes a different path in creating its power. It does not draw a single kilowatt from nuclear power and it does not depend on natural gas to fire its generators. Instead, 75 percent of its power comes from capturing methane gases that naturally form in the Coventry landfill, Vermont’s biggest dump. Many landfills flare their methane—burn it off—but WEC has built innovative collection systems that let the co-op harvest the methane and turn it into electricity. “Our members tell us they are very proud of our fuel mix,”

They also emphasize local sources. “About 30 percent of our sales come from Vermont goods,” says Bradley. From cheeses to beer, Vermont is producing extremely high-quality goods, and local co-ops are providing ready marketplaces for Vermont producers who want to connect with local buyers. Perhaps this is now where Vermont’s grocery cooperatives— there are 15 scattered around the state—exert the greatest influence. Vermonters want to buy local, creating jobs and keeping wealth in the community.

VERMONT MATH When Vermonters bank, they usually do not—not technically. That is because a primary financial institution in the state is the credit union, which, unlike big banks, is locally focused. SkiVermont.com

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Courtesy of Cabot Creamery Cooperative

a bite of Vermont cheese tastes like Vermont, and what could be tastier?

OM FARMER S FR MERY EA CR T THE CABO VE HAVE TI RA PE O CO GREAT A NOSE FOR CHEESE.

In Vermont, 29 credit unions vie for members who, in the manner of cooperatives, become owners. Profits are returned to them. Boards of directors serve for the sake of serving—they are not compensated. That makes for an appealing structure, and, by the count of Joe Bergeron, president of the Association of Vermont Credit Unions, some 291,000 Vermonters belong to the state’s credit unions. Most households in the state, in other words, have a credit union relationship. “People are flocking to credit unions for their safety and also because of how they are run,” says Bergeron. “Credit unions fundamentally are very local— that’s appealing—and the members own them, which is comforting. “The motivation at a credit union is very different from a bank’s,” he adds. “A credit union exists to benefit its members. A bank exists to benefit its shareholders.”

SAY CHEESE Pride. That is the sentiment consistently expressed by the farmer-owners of the Cabot Creamery cooperative. Cabot cheese is “award winning, very high quality. There’s a lot to be proud about,” says John Malcolm, a state legislator from Pawlet (ranking head of the House agriculture committee) and himself a retired dairy farmer, who logged 31 years as a cooperative member-owner with Yankee Milk, then Agri-Mark and Cabot. Consider Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, which you might call the rock star 24

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of Vermont’s cheese business because this premium cheese (generally priced upward of $20/pound at leading purveyors such as Murray’s Cheese in Greenwich Village) is a world beater. Officially. It was judged “Best of Show” at the 23rd Annual Conference and Competition of the American Cheese Society (ACS) in 2006. Cabot set out to create its Clothbound Cheddar for a simple reason—it genuinely believed Vermont milk was just better than other milks. The soil, the water, the grass, a cow’s life in Vermont. That, thought Cabot, was a recipe for success. And it was. But, importantly, Cabot Clothbound is helping create a broader state industry of premium, artisan cheese, much of which centers on Jasper Hill Farm and its cheese cellaring operation in Greensboro. Cabot partnered with Jasper Hill to create the Clothbound, and now other Vermont dairy operations are turning to Jasper Hill to help create more outstanding cheeses. Not technically or legally a cooperative, Jasper Hill’s cellars—22,000 square feet encompassing seven underground vaults—are run in “a cooperative spirit of partnership with farmers,” says representative Zoe Brickley. She says the purpose of the Cellars, which presently work with six dairy farmers developing cheeses in many varieties, is “to develop an identity for Vermont cheese. We believe the culture of a cheese is rooted in its place of origin.” In other words,

The economics of the Cellars, a lean, family-run operation, allow much of the revenue to be returned to the dairy farmers, and that’s a prime point: helping dairy farmers rationalize the economics of staying in business. “If we get $10 per pound when we sell to a distributor, at least $5 will go to the farmer,” says Brickley. That’s vital. Fluid milk prices have been battered in recent years, which has prompted some small farmers to leave the business. But converting milk into cheese adds value to milk, typically meaning more money can go into the farmer’s pocket. “The Vermont landscape is ideal for supporting 50-cow farms,” says Brickley. “We want to make a 50-cow farm financially viable by bringing value-add to the farmers.”

A STATE OF COOPERATION In Vermont, “We know we are in it together, and cooperatives suit us,” says John Malcolm. When he retired in 2006, he wound up selling his cows out of state because the dairy industry in Vermont was shrinking. Some of his cows went to New York state, others to North Carolina. The sad possibility is that Vermont’s landscape—defined by its dairy farms and mountains—will look very different soon. Malcolm believes it wouldn’t look like Vermont without the dairy farms. Neither would the economy. “Every nine cows create one job,” says Leon Berthiaume of the St. Albans Cooperative Creamery. Malcolm is able to stay upbeat, however, because he believes that cooperatives, in forms evolving to suit contemporary times, are helping lead the way to a new prosperity in Vermont. “The irony about Vermont,” Malcolm concludes, “is that from a distance, it seems as though we live in isolation, but the reality is that we are probably more interconnected because we have to be. We need each other. That’s why cooperatives thrive here.”

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YOUR FIND La

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On the East Coast, Vermont’s ski resorts are second to none. With 19 alpine areas to choose from, there’s always some powder to explore in this state. I should know. During the 2009-10 ski season, in an epic project called the 20 20 Challenge, I skied or rode every one of Vermont’s alpine resorts. That was 20 resorts in the 20 or so weeks of a Green Mountain winter. I invented this little challenge for myself because, well, why not? The season is long and cold, and I can’t just sit around for five months watching episodes of Glee and 30 Rock on Hulu. What better way to stave off the winter blahs than by visiting every shimmering jewel in Vermont’s tourism tiara? The 20/20 Challenge went a little something like this: Once a week, I would throw my board, boots, goggles and helmet (safety first) in my sweet Pontiac Vibe and hit a new resort. Then I’d write about each place I went. I went as far as Mount Snow in the south and Jay Peak in the north. In order to check a resort off my list, I had to do at least five runs. Here’s what I learned during the project: there’s something for everyone at Vermont ski resorts. You want 300 inches of snowfall a year? We’ve got that. How about prolevel terrain parks? We’ve got those, too. You say you want 26

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terrifyingly tight trees and hair-raising fall lines? Check and check. Untracked backcountry? We have it in spades. You don’t have to be a paid journalist to do your own 20/20 Challenge. If you have the time, money and inclination, the bragging rights can be yours. In fact, things are a tad easier this year because we’re listing only 19 ski areas (one formerly open to the public now requires membership). Here’s some help getting you started. Resorts are listed in alphabetical order below. ASCUTNEY MOUNTAIN RESORT Fun fact number one: Charles Bronson, star of Death Wish I–V, is buried near the resort. Fun fact number two: You have to be nearly as tough as Charles Bronson in order to deal with what Ascutney throws at you. The resort is a locals’ mountain in name only. Sure, you might see your friends and neighbors there, but they’ll be shredding down some surprisingly technical trails. And you’ll be lucky to keep up. Ascutney, located on the northwest face of the 3,143-foot peak, boasts some gnarly terrain. It’s jam-packed with rocky granite drops shoehorned between stands of evergreens. Its 1,800 feet of vertical are nothing to sneeze at—you’ll be working every foot of that—and its 56 trails give skiers and riders enough variety to keep them entertained. What it lacks in ambiance (the resort wouldn’t necessarily win “Best Après”), it makes up for in difficulty. While the resort might have some programs for beginners, this is by no means a beginners’ mountain.

Courtesy of Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

THERE’S SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE AT VERMONT SKI RESORTS.

BOLTON VALLEY RESORT If you are not a squealing teen, you should probably avoid Bolton Valley on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. That’s when Bolton becomes the contemporary equivalent of a roller-skating rink in the ’80s, minus the feathered hair and off-the-shoulder sweatshirts. If you are over 18, you might as well be invisible to the hordes of kids who rule the resort on these evenings. The reason for this is the fact that Bolton Valley is the only resort in the state to offer night skiing and riding, and many schools and nonprofits take advantage of this. Let the teens ski and ride under cover of darkness—maybe then they won’t bother the rest of us. But because they frequent the mountain at night, the kids see a totally separate resort. The mountain looks entirely different in the dark, and the trails seem to take on new personae. Not only is Bolton Valley the only place in Vermont where you can ski or ride under lights, but it’s also the only ski resort where you’ll find a wind turbine at the top of a run. In 2009, the resort became the second ski area in the nation to install a wind turbine. The 121-foot-tall apparatus can produce an eighth of the resort’s energy needs, which is good because something needs to power all those night lights. BROMLEY Bromley Mountain’s sobriquet—the Sun Mountain—is more than just a marketing tool. Improbably, the sun shines at the midsized resort nearly every day due in part to the fact that it’s the only ski area in Vermont that faces entirely south. If you

want to work on your goggle tan, which Bromley employees wear like a badge, this is the place to do it. Who knows why the sun actually appears to favor Bromley? Don’t question it. Just enjoy it. One of the best places to do that is at the top of Bromley Mountain. Unlike many resorts, whose lifts stop just short of a peak’s true summit, Bromley has a main quad that takes passengers right to the top. On a clear day, skiers and riders have an impressive 360-degree view. If you squint, you can see the white-capped spike of Mount Washington in the distance. The 3,263-foot open summit is exposed and windswept, and if you’re not careful, you might have trouble standing upright. That’s fine, because you don’t need to stay at the top for too long, unless you’re trying to get a deep bronze or stockpiling a few months’ worth of vitamin D. Going down is even more fun than hanging out at the top. And the best part is that by the time you’ve wended your way through one of Bromley’s many glades, the sun’s still going to be there when you pop out. BURKE MOUNTAIN Just about every ski area in Vermont wants to be considered a “locals’ mountain.” Most are not. Burke Mountain actually is. It’s so local that the regulars who frequent its 250 acres most likely will not point you anywhere near the prime stashes. Much of the mountain’s terrain is dedicated to tree skiing and riding, but don’t expect to get a guided tour. SkiVermont.com

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To get to this hidden powder (which is plentiful enough for everyone to get some), ride to the top of one of the resort’s four lifts, which is a treat in and of itself. From the top of the 3,267foot summit, you can see straight through Willoughby Gap, with Mount Hor rising on one side of the glassy lake below and Mount Pisgah on the other. It’s a beautiful sight, but if you stop to admire the view for too long, the locals will know that you’re not one of them. And if they know that, they’ll never let you follow them into the woods. COCHRAN’S SKI AREA When Outside magazine asked ski racer and Olympic gold medalist Ted Ligety to name his favorite ski resorts, all but one of his answers were unsurprising. He ticked off marquee resorts Park City in Utah, Paganella in Italy, Val d’Isère in France and St. Anton in Austria. Then he name-checked tiny Cochran’s Ski Area in Richmond, saying, “They have to have the [highest] U.S.-Ski-Team-member-to-vertical-foot ratio of any ski area.” That declaration may come as a surprise to diehard skiers outside Vermont. But here in the Green Mountains, Ligety’s preference for Cochran’s is perfectly understandable to the countless people who have learned to ski “the Cochran’s way” since the area opened in 1961. One of those skiers is Jimmy Cochran, who recently competed for an Olympic medal in Vancouver. As a ski destination, Cochran’s certainly can’t claim the challenging vertical or the higher-altitude snowfall of Vermont’s larger resorts. Heck, it only has five runs, a T-bar and two rope tows. But what it lacks in height and breadth, it makes up for in spunk and a sense of family that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the state. JAY PEAK RESORT Owing to its obscenely high snowfall totals and extreme northern latitude, Jay is like the Mount Hood of the East—it could probably stay open all summer if people still wanted to ski. And people who go to Jay do want to ski all year round. That’s because Jay’s patrons are tough. This is not a resort for sissies. It is steep, cold and icy, and just about everyone there is speaking French. But hit Jay on a powder day, when its famous glades are soft and ripe for ripping, and it’s like you died and went to heaven. The abundance of tree skiing isn’t the only thing Jay is known for. The 60-person aerial tramway to the top of the 3,858-foot peak is the only such system in Vermont. It is reminiscent of a giant lunchbox suspended on steel cables. The view from the tram on a clear day is inspiring. As you motor up the mountain, skis and snowboards clattering inside the metal box, you can see white threads of snow on neighboring Burke Mountain, as well as the three peaks of Smugglers’ Notch. Below you, little dots of skiers and riders pick their way down the resort’s 78 trails and 2,153 feet of vertical. On those days, the tram can’t get to the top fast enough. 28

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KILLINGTON Killington isn’t called the Beast for nothing. First of all, Killington Peak stands at 4,235 feet—just slightly lower than the state’s tallest summit, Mount Mansfield. Second, the resort is the largest on the East Coast. With 141 trails accessed by 22 lifts spread out over six peaks, Killington clearly qualifies as a monster. With numbers like that, Killington might as well be out West. But for all its peaks and trails, supersized Killington is still essentially an East Coast mountain. With the second-highest vertical drop in the East, at 3,050 feet, Killington exemplifies the Northeast’s scraggy terrain. And speaking of superlatives, Killington also claims the steepest and longest mogul run in the Northeast—the double-black-diamond Outer Limits, just below the Bear Mountain Quad. Killington is like a Vermont ski resort on steroids. It’s on a different plane from its country cousins. If all that seems like a bit much, take comfort—Killington’s smaller sister resort, Pico Mountain, is just around the corner. MAD RIVER GLEN Mad River Glen is not exactly a place for people who hung up their skis in the ’90s and haven’t gone back. Nor is it a place for folks who learned to ski on a hillock of ice in Western Pennsylvania. Mad River is serious terrain, with jagged rocks, frozen waterfalls and bumps the size of Sherman tanks. Casual skiers looking to amble down lazy cruisers should steer clear. Not only is Mad River’s terrain somewhat panic-inducing for nervous skiers, but it’s off-limits to snowboarders. Year after year, the members (Mad River is run cooperatively) vote to keep snowboards off Stark Mountain. Alta and Deer Valley in Utah are the only other holdouts in the war against the formerly upstart sport. The resort has other unique features. Mad River is famous for its single chairlift, one of only two left in the country. (The other serves tiny Mount Eyak Ski Area in Cordova, Alaska.) There is something thrilling about riding the single chair to the summit. It allows a few minutes of quiet reflection and a chance to admire Mad River’s rugged terrain before having to face it head-on. MAGIC MOUNTAIN Could you get to Magic Mountain without a GPS? If you aren’t sure where Magic Mountain is, you’re excused. Most people aren’t. And if you happen to come across the rare person who does know where tiny Magic is—squarely in between its much larger cousins, Stratton and Bromley—chances are they’ll rave about how it’s an amazing place to go when it snows. And it is. Unlike its mega-resort neighbors, Magic doesn’t have a high-speed quad or trails as wide as boulevards. The lifts are slow—the Red chairlift was a 13-minute ride from bottom to top—and the resort’s 40 trails are narrow and twisty. What Magic does offer is variety and sheer enjoyment.

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If you’re old enough to remember what skiing was like in Vermont before corporate ownership and condo developments, then you can get a feel for what Magic’s all about. It’s unapologetically old-school Northeast terrain. And that’s a good thing. MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE SNOW BOWL Few are the colleges that can boast they own a ski area. In fact, only five can—Dartmouth, Middlebury and three colleges in Michigan and California whose ski areas’ combined vertical drop totals 1,400 feet. So Middlebury students should count themselves lucky that not only do they have access to a ski area, but it’s actually worth visiting. If you’re not a member of the Middlebury College mafia or an Addison County resident, chances are you’ve never skied or ridden at the Snow Bowl. First, you have to get used to the Snow Bowl’s quaint size. The trails don’t go on for an eternity. On the other hand, you don’t run the risk of colliding with a denim-wearing Joey from New Jersey who is skiing in a tuck. And that’s the way the regulars like it. As long as most people head for bigger mountains, you won’t have to wait in line at one of the Bowl’s three lifts.

reviews from shredders of all disciplines. Carinthia boasts 125 freestyle features in eight parks. The names of the parks read like an American Gladiators roster: Titanium, Nitro, Inferno. Carinthia literally has something for everyone, assuming that everyone doesn’t include infants or arthritic grannies. In addition to its many custom-made rails and boxes, the terrain park features natural obstacles—rainbow trees, wall rides and rock jibs—as well as recycled pieces such as propane tanks and giant tires.

All the parks at Carinthia are categorized by size. The Grommet park is about a 3T—toddler sized—and perfect for adults who want to feel young again (and perhaps old at the same time). This park is a basic practice area with some rails, boxes and small jumps, where the consequences of screwing up are low. That’s important, especially if you have a family to support or expensive dental work. NORTHEAST SLOPES Unless your friends live in the shires of West Topsham, Orange or Goshen,

Colchester, Vermont • www.smcvt.edu

That is, unless you’re a ski racer, which many of the people skiing at the Snow Bowl are. In that case, on race day, you might find yourself waiting in line at the Worth Mountain Chair—the new $1.7 million triple chairlift that replaced the 40-year-old double lift in the fall of 2009. The Snow Bowl is ski racing, whether it’s itty-bitty J6s or elite college athletes. So if you like to wear Lycra skinsuits, you’ll fit right in. MOUNT SNOW Mount Snow is a resort that knows its audience. Or at least part of it—young freestyle skiers and snowboarders who don’t want to feel ghettoized in some dinky terrain park next to some ramshackle old lodge. They want their own mountain, and in 2008, they got it. That’s when Mount Snow opened its dedicated terrain slope, Carinthia, to rave 30

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From seminars to research with your professors to exploring the top of Mount Mansfield, Saint Michael’s provides a hands-on, personalized education that includes our Wilderness Program and Smuggs Ski Pass.

there’s a good chance they’ll look at you funny if you say you’ve been to Northeast Slopes. Sure, people have heard of Killington and Sugarbush and even tiny Bromley. But no one has ever heard of East Corinth’s little roadside ski area.

system. So the ski area is completely weather dependent. Last winter, Northeast Slopes (which really is just one slope with a sprinkling of trails) was open on just 15 days. Normally, the area would have at least double that. But that was okay. The patrons of Northeast Slopes are devoted to the ski area, and when it comes to fund-raising, the nonprofit does pretty well. It recently raised $190,000 to buy a new T-bar. Maybe one of these days, it’ll install a chairlift. But really, who needs one?

Northeast Slopes is a nonprofit ski hill with three surface lifts, one of which is run by an old Ford truck. It has been open every winter since 1936. What it does not boast is a snowmaking WI_TurnCentury_AD3_4.5x7.125.eps

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OKEMO MOUNTAIN RESORT Like so many other ski resorts in Vermont, Okemo began as a little community ski hill. But unlike so many of those tiny enterprises that ended up buried in the Green Mountains, Okemo persisted. Through fires, floods and financial troubles, the Ludlow resort persevered; today it is viewed as one of the most family-friendly resorts on the East Coast. So if you don’t mind pint-sized groms in flashy neon togs showing you up on the slopes, Okemo’s definitely worth the trip. With 119 runs, more than 600 acres of skiable terrain and the largest vertical drop in southern Vermont, at 2,200 feet, Okemo does its big sister in the West (Crested Butte, operated by the same company) proud. And with at least one high-speed detachable quad at each of Okemo’s four main areas, you never have to wait around. If solitude is your thing, you’ll find it in spades at Jackson Gore, the resort’s newest development. There you can separate yourself from the hubbub of the main mountain and feel like you’re at a totally different resort. However, if you like being in the middle of the action, there’s no better place to be than one of the resort’s six terrain parks. Thanks to a surfeit of snowboard pros in the area, Okemo’s parks, including a 500-foot-long, 17-foot-high superpipe, are full of stoke. Probably enough stoke to keep you going all season long. PICO MOUNTAIN Despite being the smaller sister to the behemoth Killington, Pico is not suffering from an inferiority complex. It’s actually quite happy with itself. And why wouldn’t it be? This classic Vermont resort has produced a number of Olympians, including the late Andrea Mead Lawrence, who won two gold medals at the 1952 Oslo Winter Games. Handy that her family owned the resort during her youth—her mother, Janet Mead, ran Pico by herself during World War II. That certainly made getting to the mountain for training a little easier. Not to be overshadowed, Suzy Chaffee, SkiVermont.com

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Courtesy of Justin Cash

there’s always some powder to explore in this state.

whose skintight silver racing suit catapulted her to fame during the 1968 Grenoble Olympics, also called Pico home. But Pico isn’t some quaint antique that focuses on its ski racing of the past. Miraculously, Pico has managed to keep its smallresort allure while implementing large-resort features like high-speed lifts and an updated lodge. Technologically, it’s a long way from the days of a car-powered rope tow, but it’s still just as charming. SMUGGLERS’ NOTCH RESORT Smugglers’ Notch is one of those places where you’re bound to make new friends. This may be due to its double chairlifts—when you get on the chair together at the bottom of the mountain, you can’t help but be friends by the time you arrive at the top. It may also have something to do with the fact that Smuggs is decidedly family-friendly and ego-free. It’s easy to make friends when you’re not engaging in one-upmanship. This is a resort where an outsized ego is not necessary, or welcome. With some of the most challenging terrain in the Northeast, Smuggs ensures that conceit stays in the car.

families go to Stowe, and beginners take lessons at Spruce Peak. But when you size up the rugged terrain of the resort, strategically positioned on Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak, you can see it was shaped with a serious snow-sports enthusiast in mind. One of Stowe’s hallmark features, besides chic salons and upscale boutiques, is its famous Front Four. These doubleblack-diamond trails—Starr, Goat, Liftline and National—are as steep as you’ll find anywhere east of the Mississippi. If you can ski Goat with its 36 degrees of pitch for more than 1,200 feet, you can ski just about anything. But if you’re not up for sheer drops down natural staircases, Stowe has plenty of other options to suit your skiing and riding needs, including Big Spruce, the quieter side of the newly developed Spruce Peak. And if you’re on the ball enough in the fall, you can enter the lottery for a stay at the Stone Hut, a Civilian Conservation Corps–built primitive dwelling at the top of Mount Mansfield. It’ll be a sharp contrast to the posh lodge down below.

Perhaps Smugglers’ Notch owes its come-as-you-are attitude to its dubious history as a route for bootleggers during the War of 1812, and again during the Prohibition era. Or perhaps it’s the 2,610-foot vertical drop and no-frills atmosphere that keep bluster in check and make this one of the friendliest resorts in Vermont.

STRATTON MOUNTAIN RESORT Stratton is like the Stowe of southern Vermont. Not in terms of terrain—Stowe is far more challenging than its less-steep cousin—but in overall vibe. As at Stowe, Stratton’s lodges are classy and its ski village is posh. Both resorts evoke an image of well-to-do-ness.

STOWE MOUNTAIN RESORT For all its glitz, glam and couture condos, Stowe is at its core a skier’s and rider’s mountain. It doesn’t pitch itself as a family resort or a beginner’s mountain because it is neither. Sure,

But what Stratton has over Stowe is the biggest snowboard competition this side of the Olympics. Since 1985, Stratton has played host to the Burton U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships, the final stop on the Burton Global Open Series

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tour. This isn’t some grommet rail jam; this is the big league— Shaun White, Louie Vito and hometown heroes Hannah Teter and Kelly Clark are typically among the event’s competitors. When you watch a half-pipe competition on television, it is impossible to get a sense of just how huge it is. The competition’s most recent pipe was 500 feet long with walls that soared 22 feet in the air. When riders hit full speed in the pipe, they reached dizzying heights, the equivalent of jumping from a three-story building. Of course, there are other skiing and riding opportunities at Stratton—92, to be exact—and those should certainly be taken advantage of. But there’s nothing quite like the spectacle of shred that is the U.S. Open. SUGARBUSH The lift ride to the top of 3,975-foot Lincoln Peak is an exercise in serenity. As you ascend, the clouds become thicker, shrouding the chair in front of you. Visibility is almost nil. The only noise comes from the whirring of the lift mechanisms. Atop Lincoln Peak, or Castlerock Peak next door with its double black diamonds flowing like streamers from the summit, one feels the relative solitude. The summit is practically deserted compared with other areas of the resort. This is due to the difficulty of the descent. Only intermediate groomers will get you to the bottom with minimal burn and lactic acid buildup. Otherwise, the main routes to the bottom are all steep runs at the black end of the trail identification spectrum.

If you really want to escape at the ’Bush, head over to Mount Ellen, the resort’s less populous, but no less challenging peak. Mount Ellen, rising above neighboring Lincoln Peak at 4,083 feet, is the third-tallest mountain in the state and has one of the largest continuous vertical drops in the state, at 2,600 feet. With 111 trails over six peaks and 500-plus acres, Sugarbush might have invented the phrase spoiled for choice. SUICIDE SIX Suicide Six is a menacingly monikered ski area just outside the tony hamlet of Woodstock. The resort got its name after its founder joked that it would be suicide to ski down hill number 6, a slope that would become part of the resort. But it’s doubtful the resort’s terrain will inspire any untimely deaths. Suicide Six, which is part of the Woodstock Inn & Resort, prides itself on its own collection of superlatives. The nation’s first rope tow was set up just over the ridge on Clinton Gilbert’s farm in 1934, and youth ski racing got its start on the mountain. Despite its size—with only 650 feet of vertical, Suicide Six is far from a quad burner—the resort is still a bastion of ski racing. The Face, Suicide Six’s main race run, is as speedy and wide as a California freeway. The Face doesn’t look steep when you’re sitting on the quaint wooden lift chairs, but it has some serious pitch to it. After whizzing down the trail, you can easily see how youth ski racing got its start here. Find out about all of our alpine & Nordic resorts, as well as special deals, at SkiVermont.com

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BY BE N

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HE WI TT

©iStockphoto.com/sdrury

STRANGE FUN

Courtesy of The State of Vermont / Photo by Steve Mease

Last March, I took my boys ice fishing. I would like to report that I did so willingly, buoyed by fatherly love and devotion and genuinely thrilled at the chance to spend the day huddled and shivering atop a frozen-over lake while my young sons hauled in perch, drank hot chocolate and said things like, “Gee, Dad, thanks so much for taking us ice fishing. And for everything else you do for us.” But then, that would be a lie. It wasn’t so bad, really: My boys caught (a) fish, no one fell through the ice, and the head cold I suffered shortly thereafter did not develop into pneumonia. Measured against these metrics, you could even say it was a rousing success. Did I mention it was raining? But through the magical prism of time, the whole episode makes me feel slightly nostalgic, even as it causes me to marvel at the unique Vermont species of human that, as winter progresses, seems willing and even eager to engage in increasingly suspect behavior. I mean, really, ice fishing? I totally get the other type of fishing (what to call it? Non-ice? Liquid? Sane?): A summer’s day, a nice breeze, a cool beverage, perhaps even a little nap while my bait goes ignored. Where, I ask you, does ice fit into that equation, other than as insurance against warm beer? Then, barely two weeks after I went shiver…er, ice fishing, I found myself plodding through the snow carrying two fivegallon buckets of maple sap. Now, you may not know this, so I’m going to tell you: A gallon of sap weighs about eight pounds. Ten of them weigh 10 times that, which is… well, my math ain’t so hot, so let’s just say a heck of a lot of pounds

to haul through two feet of snow. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup, which meant that to get a gallon of finished syrup, I’d need to haul another half-dozen buckets. And then stay up most of the night crouched over the evaporator, boiling down the sap while my wife and sons slumbered snugly under down comforters, no doubt dreaming of pancakes with fresh maple syrup, the meager return on my sleeplessness. A gallon of syrup sells for somewhere around $45. I’m not sure what a night of sleep is worth, but by about 3:00 a.m., $45 seemed like a screaming deal.

IT CAUSES ME TO MARVEL AT THE UNIQUE VERMONT SPECIES THAT, AS WINTER PROGRESSES, SEEMS WILLING AND EVEN EAGER TO ENGAGE IN INCREASINGLY SUSPECT BEHAVIOR. Still, when it comes to questionable behavior in winter, I’ve got nothing on the contestants in the Primitive Biathlon held annually in Jeffersonville, Vt., just down the road from Smugglers’ Notch. Now, if you read the word biathlon, and imagine a Lycra-clad Nordic skier whisking through the forest SkiVermont.com

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Follow your daydreams. Call 1-800-78-OKEMO or visit Okemo.com

Six More Ways to Make Your Mark on Winter

Courtesy of Bernhard Wunder

SKIJORING AND MUSHING Head to Peace Pups Dog Sledding in Elmore for some canine-powered winter fun. Never heard of skijoring? Picture yourself on cross-country skis, harnessed to a frisky pup. If that’s too scary, move right along to traditional dogsledding. (peacepupsdogsledding.com)

with a small-caliber rifle slung across his or her back, all grace and speed and athleticism, I apologize, because I’m about to forever tarnish this glorious image. Instead, at the Primitive Biathlon, competitors don the attire of yesteryear (read: animal skins), gather up traditional muzzle-loading rifles (optical sights not allowed; spectators encouraged to take cover), and strap into antique wood-framed snowshoes before stepping onto the two-mile course.

IT ALL SOUNDS A LITTLE

CRAZY, AND MAYBE, IN SOME WAYS, A LITTLE DESPERATE.

Ice fishing, hauling buckets of sap through snowdrifts, tromping through the woods in wool and leather whilst carrying antique weaponry: It all sounds a little crazy, and maybe, in some ways, a little desperate. And yet, it is a reminder of what I love about a good Vermont winter (besides the skiing and riding, of course). It is a reminder of the challenges winter presents, both physical and mental. And it is a reminder to embrace winter not in spite of the absurdity it inspires, but because of it. These illogical pursuits are the means by which we find our way through those cold months, by which we make our mark on the season. They are both character building and proof of character, and their ultimate value cannot be measured in the number of fish caught, gallons boiled, or targets hit. Which reminds me: Anyone got a muzzle-loader I can borrow?

SPIN YER PARTNER The Vermont Association of Western Style Square Dance Clubs is your source for all things square dance-y in the Green Mountain State. This group can tell you where the stomping is going down, or guide you to a lesson or workshop. (squaredancevt.org) SNOWKITING As ice fishing is to good old summer fishing, snowkiting is to windsurfing. On Lake Champlain, instructor Rachael Miller will help you figure out how to keep your cool as you carve fresh tracks at 30 mph across the snow-covered ice. Yee-haw! (stormboarding.com) CURLING If curling’s reputation as the Olympics’ sleepiest sport has kept you off the ice, redeem yourself at a Learn to Curl clinic at Burlington’s Cairns Arena. (greenmountaincurlingclub.org) Or head up to Jay Peak’s Ice Haus. (jaypeakresort.com) SLEDDING If you’re thinking cumbersome runner sled, think again: Modern sledding, featuring high-tech Vermont-made rides like the Mad River Rocket and Hammerhead Sleds, is a whole new ballgame. For sledding tips and secret stashes, check it out. (hammerheadsleds.com) GAMBLING ON ICE The Joe’s Pond Ice-Out Contest isn’t as much about winning (although this year’s winner got $5,000!), it’s about playing the game while shaking off the effects of a long, cold Vermont winter and muddy spring. The weather is always a favorite topic of conversation among Vermonters, and by late February or March people in the area of Joe’s Pond invariably expand it to “when do you think the ice will go out?” It’s a buck a guess to enter, and a sophisticated measuring device—an old electric alarm clock—is tethered to a cinder block that’s wired to a wooden pallet placed about 100 feet out on the ice just off the fishing access. When the ice is out of all the nooks and crannies and coves of the pond, the block sinks, the clock stops, and the “official” ice-out time is established. Whoever guesses closest to the date and time the clock stops is the winner. Got a dollar? (joespondvermont.com/iceout) SkiVermont.com

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For employees on the front lines of Vermont’s ski resorts, producing the best snow and terrain is a labor of love.

by Kirk Kardashian

It’s a typical winter day at any one of Vermont’s 19 ski resorts. You step out of the lodge, gaze up the mountain, feel the bite of cold on your cheek, and witness a world shaped just for you. On one part of the hill, snow guns are shrouded in a cloud of powder. Over there, the boxes and rails and jumps in the terrain park protrude from the ground like a jungle gym excavated from an ice age. Beneath your feet, acres of corduroy stretch up to the summit. You step into your skis or snowboard to get first tracks. This is going to be a good day. You are to be forgiven if no part of this routine includes a conscious thought about the brigades of men and women who make your skiing and riding experience what it is. But lest they be forgotten, here’s an introduction to a small selection of passionate ski resort workers. They live to supply the best snow conditions. How you choose to revel in that powder is up to you.

PUTTING THE “SNOW” IN MOUNT SNOW As the snowmaking manager at Mount Snow, Randy Barrows plays a crucial role in helping the mountain live up to its name. Whether in concert with Mother Nature, or despite her, he has been delivering the white stuff that visitors to Mount Snow have come to count on for 28 years.

Barrows, 49, wasn’t drawn to snowmaking because he loved to ski. His grandfather helped cut trails on Stratton Mountain, so he feels the ski industry is in his blood. But more than that, he got into this niche because his buddies knew about his work ethic. “They talked me into trying it out,” he says of friends who entered the field before him. “They were hard workers and knew I was too. I loved it from the beginning. The night thing, blowing snow, putting the product out. It gave me a lot of satisfaction.” As a rookie snowmaker, he’d arrive at the mountain for a 12-hour shift, punch in and get his marching orders for the day. “During the day, we’d make the snow a little drier,” he says. “At night, we’d ramp it up a little bit more because you have time for the air to cure it.” He follows the same protocol today, instructing his crew to lay down a wetter base overnight, when the bigger particles can pile up faster and then be groomed in the morning. Now that Barrows is the boss, he calls the shots, but still works 12 to 14 hours in a day. He spends his time planning with the mountain’s management team for what terrain will be opened or touched up, and then gets his gear on to join his crew on the slopes, setting up snow guns, repairing lines, checking compressors. Having “manager” in his job title doesn’t mean he sits behind a desk. “If you’re a manager out there being the quarterback, I honestly think your crew appreciates you a lot more, because you’re all dealing side by side with the day’s challenges and weather.”

Courtesy of Mount Snow

Barrows admits that there’s an element of stress to his job, but only because of his competitive nature. He’s not just making snow for the resort’s guests—he’s trying to be the best. “To me, I always have a goal to beat other mountains,” he says. “I try to get as many trails open as possible, and as quickly as possible, without compromising the quality of the snow. And, I don’t like that waiting thing.”

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DOING IT EFFICIENTLY

SHE’S A HIT

Snowmakers focus on making snow possible. George Lawrence of Efficiency Vermont focuses on how to make it most effectively. Lawrence is a planning and development manager at Efficiency Vermont, an organization that provides consulting on how to conserve electricity.

Allison Buttner had been teaching skiing for four years when she decided to spice things up. Some of her friends were working on the terrain park crew at Bolton Valley, so she applied to join them. After her first year, she became their boss. Now, at the age of 25, she’s the terrain park manager, overseeing all aspects of park setup, safety and events, and she even constructs and repairs the boxes and rails. Five days a week in the winter, Buttner is directing a crew of five men to make Bolton’s terrain park something special.

Everyone in Vermont who pays an electric bill pays an energy efficiency charge, which funds Efficiency Vermont. Large ski areas’ energy efficiency charge can total tens of thousands of dollars per year. That money is essentially returned to the ski resorts through two initiatives: Direct monetary incentives for purchasing more efficient equipment, and consultation for better operations. One way that Lawrence, a skier who frequents Middlebury Snow Bowl, works with ski resorts is in helping them better control their snowmaking pumps. “You don’t want to have more pumps working at any given time than you need,” he explains. So he might recommend, for example, the installation of variable-frequency drives that can speed up or slow down pumps to match demand at a given time. With regard to a mountain’s return on investment, energy consultants at Efficiency Vermont will measure or calculate how much electric energy a ski area is using, and then compare that to how much it will use after installing low-energy guns or more efficient motors. The energy savings are then translated into dollars, enabling ski areas to make informed decisions about improvements. Saving energy is great for the environment, but it also saves money— the electron that isn’t used doesn’t need to be generated, in theory. “The more efficient ski areas can be, in terms of their energy use,” Lawrence says, the more it “helps to keep the price of the lift tickets affordable.” That’s something we can all rally behind.

“I always liked the park and to watch people ride,” she says. “I love to make the features really nice, so people can enjoy them as much as possible. That makes me really happy.” Having a 20-something in charge of the terrain park makes perfect sense, since skiers and riders who frequent the park are usually the same age or younger. Buttner keeps up to speed on the latest trends in terrain parks and hits by watching videos online of “kids doing whatever on skis,” she says. “I also listen to my guys on the crew and what they want to see happen.” To keep the buzz going, Buttner set up a Facebook page and a blog for the terrain park, which she uses to communicate with guests and mountain partners, such as Burton and Ride Vermont. Most of all, she loves to hear younger skiers and riders regaling their friends with stories about particular features she designed or helped build. “They’re just totally stoked on it, and it’s so much fun to watch riders show their style in the terrain we’ve created,” she says.

MECHANICALLY INCLINED If you think getting to the lifts at 7:45 is something to brag about, just remember John Burkett, a groomer mechanic at Okemo, who’s been there for two hours already. His day starts at 3:00 a.m., he’s out of his house in Barnard by 4:30 and he opens up the vehicle maintenance shop by 5:30.

Burkett, 56, has been at Okemo since 1998. Before that, he worked at Killington. He was trained as a diesel mechanic on tractor trailers in California. Today, he’s part of a five-man crew in charge of keeping Okemo’s fleet of eight groomers—each of which weighs 19,000 pounds—functioning properly. That’s harder than you might expect. “In theory, you shouldn’t have to fix the groomers often,” he explains. “But it’s Okemo, so it’s different. We’re always pushing to get the most out of our machines so we can have the best snow quality. Sometimes we ask too much of them.” What’s there to break on a $300,000 machine? Lots. Frames, blades, hydrostatic pumps, light bulbs. According to Burkett, Okemo’s groomers get more abuse than machines at other mountains. Why? “Because we’re better than the other mountains,” he asserts. “We make it happen.” The shop is busiest in the early season, when groomers are moving huge amounts of human-made snow, hitting ledge on the trails, and just working all out to get the terrain opened. If it’s a good snow year, the mechanics get a break—natural snow seems to be easier on the groomers than blown snow. But if the weather is bad, Burkett knows to expect a hectic season. “We’re trying to make the product the best for the public,” he says. “And they demand a lot of corduroy, a lot of trails. So to get them in good shape, a lot of stuff breaks.” Burkett works upward of 60 hours per week during the winter, and doesn’t plan to slow down anytime soon. “I love it,” he declares. “When I’m not home, I’d rather be here.”

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FEEL GOOD FOOD BY BEN HEWITT

At the Waitsfield farmers’ market, in the early hours of a hazy Vermont summer’s day, Gerry Nooney and I are shopping. It is only 9:00 a.m., but already the sun is high and the air is hot, and despite the fact that the mountains of Sugarbush and Mad River Glen tower above us, winter seems a vague promise, like a debt to be repaid at some distant point in time. SkiVermont.com

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Courtesy of Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

But even with sweat beading on his expansive brow, even with plans for an afternoon bike ride, Nooney, the executive chef at Sugarbush’s vaunted Timbers Restaurant and the 2010 Vermont Chef of the Year, knows that winter will soon arrive. And with winter, his restaurant will fill with hungry skiers and riders whose appetites have been stoked by the day’s play. His guests will demand good food, of course, and Nooney will be only too happy to comply. But increasingly, the guests will expect something more of the master chef: They’ll ask that he utilize ingredients produced in the region by local farmers. In fact, those farmers are now scrambling to fill a surge in demand for food grown locally and with respect for the environment and community. So Nooney comes to the market, both to shop (he has to eat, after all, and on this very afternoon, he’ll be serving a wedding party) and to visit with his vendors. “The most important part of all this is creating relationships,” he tells me, as we wait in line at the stand of Waitsfield vegetable farmer David Hartshorn. Nooney is clutching a bunch of carrots and eyeballing the blueberries with a look that borders on lust. “I need to make that connection with the people producing the food. I need to be able to say to David, ‘You know, Dave, what I really need from you is this.…’ ” For Nooney, who in his 50 years has never had a paying job that didn’t include cooking, developing and nurturing these connections has been both the greatest challenge and greatest reward in his quest to source more ingredients from his friends and neighbors in the Mad River Valley. “I’ll be honest with you, some farmers are freakin’ weirdos. They tend to be individualists and antisocial. Of course, they probably think the same about me.”

Courtesy of Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

Weird or not, Nooney and his local farmers are educating each other: Nooney is learning what’s possible in Vermont’s short growing season, and the farmers are learning how best to meet the demands of a master chef and his customers, whose expectations have been set by a globalized food system that ships food literally around the world. “You can’t get away from 40 years of agribusiness in one year,” says Nooney, as we stroll through the market, past tables laden with vegetables and cheese, fresh-baked bread and coolers of meat. “People have been taught that food should be cheap, that they should have strawberries in January. Somehow we have to unlearn these expectations.” That unlearning, in part, is the job of Meghan Sheradin, the executive director of the Vermont Fresh Network, an organization that both facilitates communication between farmers and chefs, and certifies that member restaurants are indeed purchasing directly from local food producers. “The industrial food system really doesn’t reflect or respect region or season. And ski resort chefs are doubly challenged, because the bulk of their customers are visiting during the winter.” Still, says Sheradin, “People’s expectations are changing. They are beginning to understand that there’s not always going to be strip steak with fresh greens on the menu.”

Courtesy of Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

Despite the challenge of seasonality, Sheradin thinks Vermont resort and ski town chefs have an ace in their apron pocket: the connection to landscape every skier and rider feels on the mountain. “People come to the Vermont mountains to immerse themselves in a very regional experience, and ski resorts help them make that connection. It is totally logical to carry that through to food.”

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Some resorts aren’t merely serving local food; they’re actually growing it, and in the process educating area children about the source of their nourishment. At Jay Peak, an innovative summer camp operated in conjunction with the Green Mountain Farm-to-School program brings kids to the resort for a week of SkiVermont.com

gardening, cooking and even some mountain resort play time. “Every parent knows how difficult it can be to get kids to eat fresh food, especially if it’s not something they’re accustomed to,” says GMFTS Founder and Executive Director Katherine Sims. “But when they’re involved with actually growing and preparing the food, they’re much more likely to try it.” And, says Sims, if they eat it for a week at Jay Peak, they just might acquire a taste for it.

VERMONT RESORT AND SKI TOWN CHEFS HAVE AN ACE IN THEIR APRON POCKET. Which is exactly what Chris Lassy, the executive chef at Jay’s Tram Haus Lodge, is noticing with his older guests. “People are beginning to understand that there really is a difference between a tomato that’s been shipped 2,000 miles and a tomato that was picked five minutes ago,” says Lassy. To Lassy, a 28-year-old who regularly racks up 60 days of skiing on the mountain each winter, this awareness is key to broadening the acceptance of meals produced with local foods, which, he’s quick to admit, often carry a higher price tag. “Price is still a major issue for some people, but I think the mainstream consciousness is shifting, and people are realizing that just because a certain food has a low price tag doesn’t mean it’s ‘cheap.’ ” To help keep costs down while still meeting the restaurant’s bottom line, Lassy has learned to utilize ingredients that in the past might have gone to waste. “I’ll take all the vegetable trimmings and make soup stock. Or take the trim from a Wood Creek Farm tenderloin and make it into tartare. It’s not that difficult; you just have to think a little.” Jamie Nelson, chef at the Cottage at Stowe Mountain Resort, concurs. “The key is being flexible and creative,” says Nelson, whose idea of “creative” includes stalking the forests of Stowe in search of wild mushrooms and ginger. “I like to forage, and I’ve got all my secret spots.” It helps that Nelson, who is 36 and a seventh-generation Vermonter, grew up in nearby Waterbury Center, and knows the region like few others. For the ingredients he can’t find in the woods, Nelson stays in constant contact with local farmers and Black River Produce, a Springfield, Vt.-based distributor that specializes in local fruits and vegetables. Still, says Nelson, the closer to home, the better. “People just love to hear how their food came from a

farm that’s six miles down the road. You can just see their eyes light up. They love to hear stories about the farmers, and they really appreciate the quality.” Back at the Waitsfield farmers’ market, over by Hadley Gaylord’s stand, Gerry Nooney is explaining to one of Hadley’s customers how to think about cooking the sirloin steak that was raised barely a mile down Route 100. “Cook it slow,” he says, “so the fibers sort of melt together.” He laces the thick fingers of his hands together to illustrate his point. “Then you sear it at the end. It’s like backwards grilling!” Nooney’s enthusiasm for helping people connect to their food is palpable and contagious. And it has helped Vermont farmers well beyond the Mad River Valley. Indeed, two years ago, Nooney developed a signature chowder recipe that utilizes Vermont-produced potatoes and cream; Ski Vermont Farmhouse Chowder is now available at ski resorts throughout the state. “The biggest cafeterias in the state are ski area cafeterias, so the impact and potential is huge,” he says, beaming. “We can do things that benefit everyone from the farmers, to the resort owners, to the customers. This is a no-lose situation.” Of course, Gerry Nooney isn’t the only ski area chef utilizing local ingredients; from Jay Peak to Mount Snow, chefs both on and off the mountain are making connections with local producers and then turning those connections into meals for their customers. In the process, they are helping redefine the way we eat, making nourishing, local foods into a catalyst for vibrant localized economies that help sustain the Vermont landscape and its people. Still, for Gerry Nooney, the decision to incorporate local ingredients into his menu isn’t entirely altruistic. For one thing, he’s lived in the Mad River Valley for nearly half his life, and has no intention of leaving. By purchasing locally, he’s not just supporting local farmers: He’s supporting his neighbors. But there’s yet another factor that compels Chef Nooney to seek his ingredients in his backyard. “You know, angry chefs make angry food,” he tells me as we wander away from Hadley Gaylord’s stand. “Using good ingredients from my neighbors makes me happy. And I think happy food tastes better.”

BEN HEWITT IS THE AUTHOR OF THE TOWN THAT FOOD SAVED, THE STORY OF A RURAL WORKINGCLASS VERMONT COMMUNITY THAT IS ATTEMPTING TO BLUEPRINT AND IMPLEMENT A LOCALIZED FOOD SYSTEM.

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A FARMERS’ MARKET ke by Mi n ga i n Han

How Artisan Cheese is Saving t he Vermont Landscape

If you’ve been to Vermont, you’re probably pretty familiar with the tastes of the Green Mountains. The sweetness of maple, the hops of a finely crafted local brew, even the purity of a snowflake caught on your tongue. But there’s more to the taste of Vermont these days, a compelling flavor created by the land itself and the people who work it. It’s cheese— artisan cheese, to be specific. And it’s some of the best in the world. So why should you, the skiing and riding public, care? Because aside from being a great way to please your palate, artisan cheese is keeping alive an important way of life and protecting the very landscape that skiers and riders hold dear. 46

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Courtesy of Cellars at Jasper Hill / Photo by WB Studios

If you’ve been to a grocery store in the last two decades, it’s no surprise that Vermonters make cheese. “We’ve got some great, long-standing cheese-makers here,” says Rachel Schaal of the Vermont Cheese Council. “No matter where you go in this country, if you go to the grocery store, Cabot is cheese. They make a consistent, quality product that is ubiquitous.” But if you take a few steps over from the deli counter and find the high-end cheese section or visit your local cheesemonger, a whole new world opens up. The phrase “say cheese” is intended to get someone to smile for a photograph. But if you say “Vermont artisan cheese,” you’ll elicit an entirely different kind of smile, a knowing grin among folks who’ve had the pleasure of sampling some of the best cheese on this side of the Atlantic, and all of it from the green hills of Vermont. While it might be easy to dismiss artisan cheese as some elitist culinary endeavor, you’d be missing the point, and missing out on some tasty food. You’d also be missing the opportunity to support Vermont’s working landscape—those rolling hills and bucolic farms that blur past your car window on the way to the slopes, the weathered-yet-righteous barns, the farmer ambling along in front of you, his or her F-150 proudly sporting a rich patina of mud and hard work. It’s important to remember that these aren’t museum pieces; those farmers are working—the land is working. The fact that they have so much aesthetic appeal is merely a happy accident, with man and nature sharing equal credit for the alchemy.

THE NEW LANDSCAPE OF DAIRY Jon Wright, the cheese-maker at Taylor Farm in Londonderry (near Stratton, Magic and Bromley) has seen the changes firsthand. “When I was growing up here, there were 12 or 15 working dairy farms right in this community; there are only two of us left now. And I have always felt that the impact of the working landscape goes well beyond agriculture and really helps to subsidize the whole tourist economy, because a large part of what people think of when they think of Vermont is rolling pastures, rolling hills with cows on them, and red barns with white trim. This sort of bucolic image is very appealing, but in reality is becoming less and less a part of our landscape.” Fluid milk prices (the wholesale price at which farmers sell their milk) have fallen so low that it’s nearly impossible for dairy farmers to break even, much less turn a profit. As soon as they cease to be working farms, they’re in danger of being turned into strip malls, housing subdivisions or some other blight upon the land. If you’re a farmer with 30 or 40 head of cattle, you don’t have a lot of options. It’s not like you can just say to the fluid milk market, “I don’t like your price. I’m taking my milk somewhere else.” So those who want to keep farming and earn enough to make a living have to add value to their milk. And that’s where

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artisan cheese comes in. Sebastian von Trapp, who, along with his brother Dan, started Von Trapp Farmstead in Waitsfield—in the shadow of Mad River Glen and Sugarbush—has seen it all on his family’s farm. “There’s plenty of farms we see going out of business for the same reasons. The family sells off the farm and then develops [the land]. And my brother and I talked about doing something on the farm, figuring out how to create a business that would let us stay at the farm, keep the farm in business, and of course, that would keep our folks in business who’ve always run the dairy side of things. So we came up with an artisan cheesemaking business as a way to capture more value coming off the farm here. Take our fluid milk, turn it into a finished product, then sell it, and create a brand that we can market and distribute across the country, really. And in doing that, we’re able to say, ‘We need to charge this amount for our finished product,’ and then we can scale a business that will support myself, my brother, our families, and our folks.”

THE FUTURE OF CHEESE IS IN THE CELLAR One of the most compelling advancements in Vermont’s thriving artisan cheese industry isn’t happening on a farmer’s field—it’s happening beneath one. Below the rolling fields of Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro, two brothers, Andy and Mateo Kehler, are more than doing their part to keep Vermont’s working landscape alive. There, the Kehlers have built the Cellars at Jasper Hill, a cheese aging facility and incubator of sorts that’s dedicated to artisan cheese. The Cellars’ seven vaults hold some of the finest cheeses in America, all just sitting there getting moldy and tasty, biding their time until they are aged to perfection and ready to eat. Some of the vaults are dedicated solely to Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, the flagship artisan cheese made in partnership with Vermont’s pioneering dairy cooperative, which was instrumental in helping the Cellars get up and running. Other vaults contain cheeses from smaller farms around the area. On a special tour of the Cellars (they’re not open to the public— both to ensure the food safety of the product and, frankly, because the Kehler brothers are way too busy to play tour guide), you can see the cheese age as you walk through the stacks, the newer “green” cheeses fading to the more aged ones, their moldy and mottled rinds so essential to making the cheese within develop just the right flavor and texture. Zoe Brickley, a former cheesemonger from New York City who now works in sales and marketing for the Cellars, explains the philosophy. “I start by saying that we’re an aging facility. We’ve designed a space that can accommodate the inventory of small farms’ cheeses, with the purpose of freeing them up to really concentrate on the most important steps of the production process, which are animal and herd management and the cheese-making skills themselves. So we are able to

In many ways, Cabot’s success has opened the door for smaller cheese-makers to have a go at it. Unlike what happens in other industries, where you might see a Walmart forcing smaller retailers to close because they can’t compete on price, Cabot supports artisan cheese-makers. “The stronger Vermont gets in its cheese production, its specialty in cheese, the better it is for all of us,” explains Roberta MacDonald, senior vice president for marketing for the Cabot Creamery Cooperative. “We play the grandmother role, since we were the first co-op in the state to make a branded product.” “That’s really what has made it possible to get off the ground with this end vision,” concurs Brickley. “The end goal is lots of little individual producers coming together and aging here, but Cabot was definitely at the center of the beginning here. “They’re making it possible for us to finance the inventory of the smaller producers like the von Trapps,” she adds. “It’s really a mutually beneficial relationship. It’s kind of like, ‘Why would Cabot do that for us?’ What’s in it for them is that they’re getting their brand hopping over from the deli counter to the gourmet cheese counter. “We’re getting people from all over the country who know Cabot, really like Cabot products, and [then they] see the Cabot logo on our label and are willing to go out on a limb and try something new.”

THE TERROIR OF VERMONT When you think about skiing in Vermont, certain things come to mind: The way the land falls away on your favorite trail. The spacing of a strand of trees in a glade. The way snow is attracted to a certain bowl. The way the sunlight hits. The quintessential Vermont village scenes below. Sure, you can describe the parts, but other than the word “Vermont,” nothing sums up the whole. And really, that’s the point. While you can ski and ride elsewhere, no other state can duplicate Vermont. It’s got its own flavors and hues that are a product of nature and the people who shape and care for the environment.

But if you were a winemaker, you’d know exactly the word to describe it: terroir. “We have a real diversity of topography,” explains Jon Wright of Taylor Farm. “We have a really great selection of indigenous grasses which in turn make wonderful cheeses. The best cheeses are made from cows that are out on pastures, grazing on the land. You’ve probably heard this term terroir (pronounced “tearWAR”), which speaks of the flavors of the earth and the very local characteristics of cheeses and other food products based on where they’re made and what the cows are fed and how the cows are cared for. The very local, small-scale, regional aspect of these Vermont farms is what really goes back to our European traditions. “It’s a special combination of factors,” he continues. “If you look at a map of the Vermont Cheese Trail (which can be found at www.vtcheese.com/ cheesetrail.htm), you’ll see little clusters of cheese-makers in various regions, and they tend to pop up in these pockets where larger, conventional agriculture just no longer can compete, but [here] these smaller, hands-on producers can compete. Very often, it’s the little dairy farms that have gone out of business that have been revitalized by these new, up-and-coming cheese-makers. Courtesy of Cabot Creamery Cooperative

lower the barrier of entry for new cheese-makers into the artisan market and help them succeed,” she says. “We handle all the marketing, sales and distribution—and the aging, which is the time-consuming part of it.”

“I don’t know if I could put specific words to it, even. It’s about so many things. It’s about the microclimate that each of these farms is in. It’s about the soils that they’re on. It’s about the grasses that grow there. It’s about the different breeds of cows or sheep or goats that are raised. It’s how those animals are handled. I even think it’s the love that physically goes into the cheese-making itself.” “Vermont is a green place, and not just in color,” says the Cheese Council’s Rachel Schaal. “The environment is so integral to recreation, to history. People are more careful here. They realize how much they have to lose. Agriculture is really strong here. People who are farm people, who grew up around agriculture and have made the choice to continue down that path, it’s heart for them. It’s where their soul resides. It’s more than just making a living.”

FRIENDS OF THE FARMER One of the most compelling reasons one wants to live in or visit Vermont is the continuum of life that is so evident here.

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Summer becomes fall becomes winter, and so on. The ski resort’s customers support the restaurant, which supports the cheese cellar, which supports the farmer, which gives the ski resort its singular scenic views. This is the state that Jack built. All of which makes supporting farmers crucial to the survival of Vermont as people know it. Asked about the importance of the working landscape, Allison Hooper, co-founder of the Vermont Butter & Cheese Company, puts it bluntly. “It has a huge role, because once it’s gone, it’s just a race to the bottom. You’d have nothing unique that defines the place. I think when people come to ski here, yeah, they may go to a ski area, but I still think that the character of the place here in Vermont has a large influence on their choice of where they’re going to ski. I think it’s absolutely crucial,” she says. “There’s an authenticity here that you may not get in some of those places out West. [Vermont has] something very real.” “The quality of life that the animals live, the dedication and hard work of the cheese producers—it’s their life,” says Leslie Stewart, owner of Ludlow’s Wine & Cheese Depot. “They’re up at the crack of dawn working all day. When they’re not making cheese, they’re taking care of the animals, they’re trying to market and sell their cheese. I honestly don’t believe they make a lot of money doing it. It’s a labor of love, and it shows. It’s reflected in their product.”

“We get used to it living here,” says Warnstedt, “but if you don’t live in a place like this…I think maybe people don’t see it as much as they would like to, or only a small amount, or only a restaurant here and there. But when you come up to a place like Vermont, and you see people who are really giving it their all to showcase what’s going on up here, it just seems to connect people. I’m not sure how to put that into words, but there is some connection. You’re in Vermont to eat all of this good Vermont food, and the food producer’s just down the road not too far away. I think people make that connection, and most people seem to really like that.” Allison Hooper has seen the cheese evolution firsthand. “Now we have over 50 people making cheese in Vermont. I can remember saying, ‘Vermont will be the Napa Valley of cheese.’ And you’d hear people saying, ‘What on earth is she talking about? What a preposterous idea.’ It was really audacious at the time, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what have I just said?’”

Courtesy of Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery

But clearly Hooper was prescient in her concept, one that Warnstedt also sees. “Sort of the way that California or Oregon can discuss wine, Vermont would fall into that mold when discussing cheese,” says the Hen of the Wood chef. “It’s a worldclass product; it’s not just a small thing that we enjoy because it happens to be made in our backyard. It’s something that’s known nationally and internationally. Vermont’s become this really unique little region, to grab this sort of Old World thing and make it New World, and keep the landscape working.”

She’s right. When you start exploring and tasting different cheeses, the difference Courtesy of Cabot Creamery Cooperative of artisan cheese is unmistakable. The way a tiny piece of Willow Hill Blue Cheese explodes in your mouth, and how that contrasts with Maybe it’s something in our DNA. Maybe we’re just lucky to live the exquisite tastes of a Bayley Hazen Blue Cheese from Jasper in a place like Vermont that values great food and the hard work it Hill. The sharp flavors of a Cabot Clothbound Cheddar. The takes to create it. Either way, Sebastian von Trapp has seen it too. silky texture and buttery taste of an Oma from Von Trapp “Vermonters, in general, are more tuned in to good food, and want Farmstead. Once you taste them, you quickly realize how to know where it’s produced, and want to show the food producer much love, attention and hard work must go into making appreciation,” he says. “Which lets businesses like us, a smaller these special gems. cheese-making operation, have a go at it. There’s this support. You actually feel good about what you’re doing, working your butt off EAT GOOD CHEESE to make this product. And there’s this general good vibe coming If you’re driving up I-89 and find yourself hungry, try swinging from your community. I think that’s what separates Vermonters into Hen of the Wood in Waterbury, just off exit 10 and on the and [puts] them on the cutting edge.” way to Stowe, Sugarbush, Mad River Glen and Bolton Valley. Hen of the Wood features a rotating cheese list and some of the Whatever the reason, these people clearly love what they do. And best locally raised eats around. In fact, Chef Eric Warnstedt was they deserve your support. Jon Wright from Taylor Farm sums named one of the best new chefs in the country by Food & Wine up the sentiments of many: “I love working with the cows, I love magazine. If you’re lucky, maybe someone will have canceled a interacting with the guests that come to the farm. I can’t imagine reservation (but don’t count on it). anything I’d rather do.” He pauses. “Except maybe skiing.”

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Long lines, short rides, Mickey Mouse characters¯if you just can’t stand in one more line sweltering in the heat or waiting for a two-minute ride or a 30-second visit with another Disney character, you may want to opt for a “way cooler” experience in the pristine mountains of Vermont, where lines are short and winter adventure is boundless. Think Vermont is a world away from the Magic Kingdom? Think again! It may not have Mickey Mouse or the Big Thunder Mountain roller coaster, but it does have Mogul Mouse, snow coasters, terrain parks, heated pools, snowcat rides, and tubing. What’s more, Vermont gives you a vacation where you can customize the experience to fit your taste for thrills or your budget for frills. Whether your kids want to amp it up in the terrain park getting air or try snowmobiling after the sun goes down, there are plenty of options for a week of family fun. Vermont has a lot to offer when it comes to winter. From outdoor heated pools surrounded by glistening snow to dogsledding with Siberian huskies leading the way, there is something for everyone in the family whether they slide downhill or not. And it can 52

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Courtesy of Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

be an alpine ski or mountain experience with some authentic history to it too. “We have been creating more opportunities for people who are not skiers or riders,” says Bonnie MacPherson, director of public relations for Okemo Mountain Resort, which incorporates Paleolithic Indian artifact sites into its snowshoe hikes and hosts naturalists from the Vermont Institute of Natural Science to show kids owls, hawks, and eagles during Presidents’ Week. Just as at Disney and other all-inclusive resorts, one-stop shopping is an option in the mountains in Vermont. For instance, the Stowe Mountain Lodge, which opened in 2008, is all about service. The alpine concierge at Stowe will book dogsled rides or snowshoeing tours, procure performance tickets, and more. Every resort in Vermont offers the convenience of one call so you can arrange lodging, lessons, and equipment with one call. It’s that easy!

AMUSEMENT PARKS DEBUT IN VERMONT Thrilling rides aren’t just a phenomenon found at Universal Studios anymore. Roller coasters on snow are a brand-new development, and Okemo unveils its Mountain Coaster for Winter 2010–11. The alpine slide on rails goes from one meter to five meters off the ground. “It’s like flying through the woods,” says MacPherson. “Take that, Harry Potter!” she adds.

Courtesy of Okemo Mountain Resort

The Okemo Mountain Coaster starts with a five-minute, 1,600foot climb and is followed by a descent of 375 vertical feet along 3,100 feet of track that follows the contours of the mountain with added waves, camel backs, banking loops and a “twister” section, at speeds of up to 25 mph. At optimal efficiency, the Mountain Coaster will accommodate nearly 500 riders per hour and operate year-round in most weather conditions.

Other exciting downhill adventures await on the Airboards at Smugglers’ Notch. These inflatable rafts have a grooved bottom and operate like “Flexible Flyers”—riders shift their weight in order to turn. Airboarding is recommended for kids 10 and older (and parents) and is featured daily on the beginner hill. Snowcat rides are now available in the East thanks to 54

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Sugarbush’s Lincoln Limo, a 12-passenger luxury cabin snowcat, outfitted with a flat-screen TV and cushy seats. Go for a ride to access the top of Gadd Peak, where Allyn’s Lodge serves candlelit gourmet dinners. First-track tours on the snowcat go to the Slide Brook wilderness area, Heaven’s Gate, or North Lynx, depending on conditions and the judgment of the guide. These tours also include a stop at Timbers for a pastry breakfast. For kids of all ages, snow tubing has become more and more popular at resorts throughout Vermont. Tubing features organized sledding lanes, and riders use inflatable tubes with handles to whiz down. This season, Pico Mountain opens a new tubing hill right in front of its base lodge on Exhibition with its own rope tow and lights. “The Pico Base Lodge will be open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings for cocktails and dinner so parents can relax and enjoy watching their children on the tubes,” says Tom Horrocks, PR manager for Pico and Killington. Okemo has tubing in front of its newer Jackson Gore area, with an easy-to-ride Magic Carpet to get tubers up the hill. It is also lighted so families can go in the evenings for some après-ski fun and frolic. Magic Mountain has tubing too, and Stratton Mountain’s Sun Bowl area offers tubing after hours on weekends and holidays. Snowmobiling is another fun option and is available at Stratton on weekends and holiday weeks. Mini-snowmobile rides are offered for children 5 and older. These supervised rides allow children to drive the snowmobile alone around a loop at the base area. It’s sectioned off with cones, and for the youngest riders, an “escort” jogs alongside or will jump on the snowmobile if there are any problems. For adults and passengers, guided snowmobiling on the trails at Stratton is offered in the dark.

STAY WARM IN THE COLD We know it’s not exactly Florida, but pack the bathing suits anyway! There are water options at most resorts in Vermont, whether a heated pool swim or a hot tub soak after a day on the slopes. There is nothing quite like experiencing the outdoors in frosty weather from the vantage point of a heated pool. For the daring, getting out and rolling in the snow and jumping back in is a breathtaking event. Indoor pools, hot tubs, and theme pools have become more common at Vermont ski resorts. Okemo’s Spring House, built three years ago, has an L-shaped pool designed for recreational use and lap swimming. It features a “frog pond” where swimmers can climb up the back of a colorful frog and slide out its mouth. There are also splash features and mini-falls to swim in and out of. The Courtside Pool at Smugglers’ Notch is 30 feet by 60 feet, and there are designated times for lap swimming. The pool is located right in the resort village and is accessible by foot or via Smuggs’ on-demand shuttle. Each condo community

and events manager. “We took 100 acres of terrain from traditional ski trails and turned it into terrain parks.”

Courtesy of Dennis Curran

From its 18-foot-high Superpipe to Inferno, boasting the largest features and jumps in the park, Mount Snow strives to offer something for everyone. “We had the first terrain park back in 1990,” says Lewis, who also points out that Inferno is the only trail that has hosted slopestyle events for both the Winter X Games and the Dew Tour.

at the resort also has a heated outdoor pool. “Jumping into warm water when it’s freezing outside is neat,” says Karen Boushie, PR director. The new Stowe Mountain Lodge also has a good-sized heated outdoor pool with all sorts of outdoor hot tubs and fire pits. Mount Snow, Sugarbush and Killington boast large outdoor heated pools and hot tubs with views of the mountain. Most of the pools feature a passageway to swim from the indoors to the out. “You never have to get out of the pool,” says Jeff Wise, Stowe’s communications director.

IN VERMONT, KIDS LEARN TO SKI AND RIDE THE FUN WAY Lessons don’t really seem like “school” at Smugglers’ Notch, where the littlest athletes jump on a tractor to go to the learning hill. “It minimizes the hassle for the little ones who have to trek around in cumbersome gear,” Boushie says. When they get to the learning center, the kids can slide right off a little slide on the tractor. “It’s very festive. The tractor has Vermont scenes all along its sideboards,” Boushie says. If that’s not enough to thrill the little ones, Mogul Mouse and Billy Bob Bear will soon make kids forget about Mickey Mouse! The characters help with lessons and join in the Cookie Race at the end of ski weeks at Smugglers’. “It adds the carnival-like atmosphere for the 3- to 4-year-olds,” says Boushie, who explains that the race helps demonstrate to

parents how much the kids have learned in just a few days. Another fun character at Smuggs is the Friendly Pirate, a persona created by longtime employee Ron Carter, who entertains one day per week in the afternoons when the ski school kids come in off the slopes, and also at some family events. The Pirate is an enthusiastic guy who has lots of songs and jokes and gets the crowd going with his performances of original pirate and seafaring songs, sea shanties, and ballads (new CD coming soon!). Pico Planet Kids, new this season, is an on-snow play area designed to introduce kids to on-snow playing and sledding. The kids’ supervised activity area will have obstacle courses, igloo building, and other winter playtime fun. At Mount Snow, children have their own area to learn to ski or ride. Obstacle courses for beginners get kids turning as they maneuver over gentle bumps, go around curves, and slalom through gates. Stratton’s long Magic Carpet has a yellow cover, and students call it “the caterpillar.” Sometimes the ride up is almost as fun as the ride down.

TERRAIN PARKS ARE WINTER PLAYGROUNDS At Mount Snow, Carinthia offers anywhere between nine and 12 parks, depending on snow conditions. “We have the Northeast’s only all-parks mountain face,” says Vinnie Lewis, PR

But don’t worry, Carinthia’s jumps aren’t just for pros. For those just venturing out in terrain parks, the Grommet beginner terrain park is a perfect place to start. It has its own double chairlift, with 10 features varying from very gentle jumps to rails and boxes low to the ground. At Killington, the Stash is a natural terrain park with more than 80 features. It was created by Burton, which has four other Stash terrain parks in the world. Killington’s Stash is the only one in the East and has jibbable buildings, numerous wooded glades, log rides, and other creative elements. Ski down some stairs at the Sugar Shack or ride in the trees and check out the wall rides. The Stash uses portable objects to supplement the natural features and to keep things fresh.

OFF THE BEATEN TRACK In every corner of Vermont is a quaint town to explore. In central Vermont, Weston is a fun place to visit, located close to Okemo, Bromley, and Stratton. The Vermont Country Store is a great stop for meandering and shopping, with samples of Grafton and Cabot cheeses, hard-to-find items like real thistle brooms and Pears soap, silk long underwear, and good old-fashioned candy and toys to keep the kids happy. Across the street, the Weston Country Store dates back to 1891 and has an original pressed-tin ceiling and creaky floorboards. Nearby is the Weston Playhouse, a converted congregational church facing onto the town green that dates back to 1935 and has put on performances as SkiVermont.com

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The centuries-old tradition of making pure Vermont maple syrup can be found in many places, but is especially cool at the sugarhouse at the Trapp Family Lodge. Every March, when the days get longer and warmer, the tradition of maple sugaring begins. “We still ‘sugar’ the old-fashioned way, using buckets to collect sap. We boil the sap down to syrup in our sugarhouse in a very large wood-fired evaporator,” says Sam von Trapp of Trapp Family Lodge.

varied as A Raisin in the Sun, Death of a Salesman, and Stuart Little. It’s a great diversion from the slopes. Further north, the town of Waitsfield, near Sugarbush and Mad River Glen, has become a home for quilters, potters, and glassblowers. Nearby, the Warren Store, on historic Main Street in the village of Warren (accessed by a covered bridge) has great sandwiches, Vermont specialties, clothing, and one-of-a-kind items.

Staying at Trapp Family Lodge is a vacation in itself with its horse-drawn sleigh rides, sledding, and great Nordic adventure. If you can’t stay there, at least check out the great cross-country trail center (it was the first in the country), which has been expanded to include 60 kilometers of groomed trails and 100 kilometers of backcountry trails. There’s terrain suited to every level of Nordic skier, and for those who don’t ski, snowshoeing is a great option. It’s a thrill to make the three-mile trek to the Slayton Pasture Cabin (on either snowshoes or skis) and warm up with

homemade soup and hot chocolate in front of the cozy fireplace. At the new Spruce Peak Arts Center at Stowe, there promises to be a wide range of cultural programs, including music, dance, theater, visual arts, and film. “Most events will be geared to the entire family,” says Wise. The 420-seat Arts Center is located in the middle of Stowe Mountain Resort. And if you think the mountains aren’t enough for you, consider all the other fun stuff Vermont has to offer. There’s the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory, Icelandic horseback riding in the Mad River Valley, or Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory. In the end, though, it’s the natural adventure that kids will remember forever—whether it’s a luge or rollercoaster-like experience for the younger ones or a big-air park like Mount Snow’s Carinthia for older teens. Shorter lines, fresh air, and beautiful scenery can’t be beat. Visit our Deals page at SkiVermont.com for special family offers all season long!

“This is one of my favorite mountains.” –Stillman Rogers, Travel Writer, examiner.com

www.bromley.com Vermont’s Sun Mountain

Manchester, Vermont 802-824-5522 Conditions: 866-856-2201 SkiVermont.com

57

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1 Based on average fleet-wide seat pitch of U.S. airlines. 2 DIRECTV and XM Radio services are not available on flights outside the continental United States; however, where applicable, movies from JetBlue Features™ are offered complimentary on these routes. 3 Baggage weight and size limits apply.

jetblue.com

1-800-JETBLUE

FIRST TRACKS

14 9

JAY PEAK

C a na da

12

Maine

SMUGGLERS’ NOTCH

7

Vermont

BURKE 10

23

N e w Yo r k

STOWE

24 27

M a s s ac h us e t t s

BOLTON VALLEY

6 22

C o n n e c t i c ut R h o d e Is l a n d

4

COCHRAN’S

New Hampshire

13

15

MAD RIVER GLEN

P e n n s y lva n i a New Je r s e y

Atla ntic Oc e a n

SUGARBUSH 19 3

21

NORTHEAST SLOPES

Maryland D e l awa r e

MIDDLEBURY SNOW BOWL 2

HOW DO YOU GET HERE?

PICO KILLINGTON 17

16

SUICIDE SIX 30

BY CAR

ASCUTNEY 1 OKEMO

Vermont resorts are an easy, convenient drive from anywhere in the East. Interstates 89 and 91 and Vermont Route 100, the fabled skiers’ highway, provide excellent access to our mountains and villages.

18

BROMLEY 11

29

MAGIC 28

8

BY TRAIN

STRATTON 25

Two Amtrak routes operate between Washington, D.C., New York City and Vermont, providing daily passenger service to many of Vermont’s mountain communities. For information, log onto Amtrak.com or call the resort you plan to visit.

MOUNT SNOW 20

26

5

Blue dots correspond with Nordic ski areas listed below.

NORDIC SKI AREAS

BY BUS

Vermont Transit, part of the Greyhound system, connects Vermont communities with Boston, Montreal, New York and other regional and national destinations. Call 1.800.231.2222 for information.

1. Ascutney Mountain Nordic Center

17. Mountain Top Inn & Resort

2. Blueberry Hill

18. Okemo Valley Nordic Center

3. Blueberry Lake Cross Country

19. Ole’s Cross Country Center.

BY AIR

4. Bolton Valley Nordic Center

20.s Prospect Mountain

With excellent air service, Burlington International Airport is a convenient point of access to northern and central Vermont resorts. Major air carriers include Continental, Delta, JetBlue, United and US Airways. Visitors to central and southern resorts often fly to Albany; Boston; Hartford; Manchester N.H.; Newark, N.J.; and Rutland Vt. Gateway cities for international visitors include Boston, New York, Montreal, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Rental cars are available at all airports and many resorts offer ground transportation.

5. Brattleboro Outing Club

Cross-Country Ski Center

6. Catamount Family Center

21.sRikert Touring Center

7. Craftsbury Outdoor Center

22. Sleepy Hollow Inn Ski & Bike Center

8. Grafton Ponds Nordic Center

23. Smugglers’ Notch Nordic Center

9. Hazen’s Notch

24. Stowe/Mt. Mansfield XC Center

10. Highland Lodge & XC Ski Center

25. Stratton Mountain Nordic Center

11. Hildene Ski Touring Center

26. Timber Creek XC Ski Area

12. Jay Peak Ski Touring Center

27. Trapp Family Lodge XC Ski Center

13. Kingdom Trails

28. Viking Nordic Center

14. Memphremagog Ski Touring

29. Wild Wings Ski Touring Center

15. Morse Farm Ski Touring Center

30. Woodstock Inn & Resort Nordic Center

16. Mountain Meadows XC Ski Area

Catamount Trail

SkiVermont.com

59

ALPINE

BURKE MOUNTAIN

COCHRAN’S SKI AREA

JAY PEAK RESORT

KILLINGTON RESORT

East Burke, VT 05832 www.skiburke.com

Richmond, VT 05477 www.cochranskiarea.com

Jay, VT 05859 www.jaypeakresort.com

Killington, VT 05751 www.killington.com

General Info:............888-BURKEVT Snow Conditions:.......866-496-1699 Reservations:...........888-BURKEVT Fax:............................802-626-7310

General Info:.............802-434-2479 Snow Conditions:.......802-434-2479 Reservations:............................... — Fax:............................................... —

General Info:.............802-988-2611 Snow Conditions:.......802-988-9601 Reservations:............800-451-4449 Fax:............................802-988-4049

General Info:.............802-422-3333 Snow Conditions:.......802-422-3261 Reservations:......... 800-621-MTNS Fax:............................802-422-6113

Vertical:................................. 2,011’ Trails:.......................................... 45 Trail Acreage:........................... 250 Lifts:.............................................. 4

Vertical:.................................... 350’ Trails:............................................ 8 Trail Acreage:............................. 15 Lifts:.............................................. 3

Vertical:................................. 2,153’ Trails:.......................................... 76 Trail Acreage:........................... 385 Lifts:.............................................. 8

Vertical:................................. 3,050’ Trails:........................................ 141 Trail Acreage:........................... 752 Lifts:............................................ 22

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 200 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 80% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:..... 4 of 4

Snowmaking Acreage:................ — Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 66% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:..... 3 of 3

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 238 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 80% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:..... 8 of 8

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 543 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 70% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:.22 of 22

NORTHEAST SLOPES

OKEMO MOUNTAIN RESORT

PICO MOUNTAIN

SMUGGLERS’ NOTCH RESORT

Rt. 25, East Corinth, VT 05040 www.northeastslopes.org

Ludlow, VT 05149 www.okemo.com

Killington, VT 05751 www.picomountain.com

Smugglers’ Notch, VT 05464 www.smuggs.com

General Info:.............802-439-5789 Snow Conditions:.......802-439-5789 Reservations:............802-439-5789 Fax:............................802-228-4558

General Info:.............802-228-1600 Snow Conditions:.......802-228-5222 Reservations:.........800-78-OKEMO Fax:............................802-228-4558

General Info:.............802-422-3333 Snow Conditions:.......802-422-1200 Reservations:......... 800-621-MTNS Fax:............................802-422-6113

General Info:.............802-644-8851 Snow Conditions:.......802-644-1111 Reservations:............800-451-8752 Fax:............................802-644-1230

Vertical:.................................... 360’ Trails:.......................................... 12 Trail Acreage:............................. 35 Lifts:.............................................. 3

Vertical:................................. 2,200’ Trails:........................................ 119 Trail Acreage:........................... 632 Lifts:............................................ 19

Vertical:................................. 1,967’ Trails:.......................................... 50 Trail Acreage:........................... 252 Lifts:.............................................. 7

Vertical:................................. 2,610’ Trails:.......................................... 78 Trail Acreage:........................... 310 Lifts:.............................................. 8

Snowmaking Acreage:................ — Snowmaking Coverage:.............. — Lifts Serving Snowmaking:........... —

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 605 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 96% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:.19 of 19

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 171 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 75% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:..... 7 of 7

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 159 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 62% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:..... 8 of 8

60

SkiVermont.com

ALPINE

Vermont’s Sun Mountain

BOLTON VALLEY RESORT

BROMLEY MOUNTAIN RESORT

Brownsville, VT 05037 www.ascutney.com

Bolton Valley, VT 05477 www.boltonvalley.com

Manchester Ctr., VT 05255 www.bromley.com

General Info:.............802-484-7000 Snow Conditions:... 800-484-7000 x2 Reservations:............ 800-243-0011 Fax:............................802-484-3925

General Info:.............802-434-3444 Snow Conditions:.... 802-434-SNOW Reservations:........... 877-9BOLTON FAX:...........................802-434-6850

General Info:.............802-824-5522 Snow Conditions:.......866-856-2201 Reservations:............800-865-4786 Fax:............................802-824-3659

Vertical:................................. 1,800’ Trails:.......................................... 57 Trail Acreage:........................... 150 Lifts:.............................................. 6

Vertical:................................. 1,704’ Trails:.......................................... 71 Trail Acreage:........................... 165 Lifts:.............................................. 6

Vertical:................................. 1,334’ Trails:.......................................... 45 Trail Acreage:........................... 177 Lifts:............................................ 10

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 142 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 95% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:..... 6 of 6

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 100 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 60% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:..... 5 of 6

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 138 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 85% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:.10 of 10

MAD RIVER GLEN

MAGIC MOUNTAIN

MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE SNOW BOWL

MOUNT SNOW RESORT

Waitsfield, VT 05673 www.madriverglen.com

Londonderry, VT 05148 www.magicmtn.com

Middlebury, VT 05753 www.middleburysnowbowl.com

West Dover, VT 05356 www.mountsnow.com

General Info:.............802-496-3551 Snow Conditions:.......802-496-3551 Reservations:............................... — Fax:............................802-496-3562

General Info:.............802-824-5645 Snow Conditions:.......802-824-5645 Reservations:............802-824-5645 Fax:............................802-824-5199

General Info:.............802-388-4356 Snow Conditions:.......802-388-4356 Reservations:............................... — Fax:............................802-388-2871

General Info:.............802-464-3333 Snow Conditions:.......802-464-2151 Reservations:......... 800-245-SNOW Fax:............................802-464-4141

Vertical:................................. 2,037’ Trails:.......................................... 45 Trail Acreage:........................... 120 Lifts:.............................................. 5

Vertical:................................. 1,700’ Trails:.......................................... 40 Trail Acreage:........................... 135 Lifts:.............................................. 4

Vertical:................................. 1,050’ Trails:.......................................... 17 Trail Acreage:........................... 125 Lifts:.............................................. 3

Vertical:................................. 1,700’ Trails:.......................................... 80 Trail Acreage:........................... 588 Lifts:............................................ 20

Snowmaking Acreage:............... 20 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 15% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:..... 3 of 5

Snowmaking Acreage:............... 95 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 70% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:..... 4 of 4

Snowmaking Acreage:............... 52 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 45% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:..... 3 of 3

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 472 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 80% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:. 20 of 20

STOWE MOUNTAIN RESORT

STRATTON MOUNTAIN RESORT

SUGARBUSH RESORT

SUICIDE SIX SKI AREA/ WOODSTOCK INN

Stowe, VT 05672 www.stowe.com

Stratton Mountain, VT 05155 www.stratton.com

Warren, VT 05674 www.sugarbush.com

Woodstock, VT 05091 www.woodstockinn.com

General Info:.............802-253-3000 Snow Conditions:.......802-253-3600 Reservations:............800-253-4SKI Fax:............................802-253-3406

General Info:.............802-297-2200 Snow Conditions:.......802-297-4211 Reservations:......... 800-STRATTON Fax:............................802-297-4395

General Info:.............802-583-6300 Snow Conditions:.......802-583-7669 Reservations:..........800-53-SUGAR Fax:............................802-583-6390

General Info:.............802-457-6661 Snow Conditions:.......802-457-6666 Reservations:............866-448-7900 Fax:............................802-457-3830

Vertical:................................. 2,360’ Trails:........................................ 116 Trail Acreage:........................... 485 Lifts:............................................ 13

Vertical:................................. 2,003’ Trails:.......................................... 92 Trail Acreage:......................... 600+ Lifts:............................................ 13

Vertical:................................. 2,600’ Trails:........................................ 111 Trail Acreage:........................... 578 Lifts:............................................ 16

Vertical:.................................... 650’ Trails:.......................................... 23 Trail Acreage:........................... 100 Lifts:.............................................. 3

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 485 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 90% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:.11 of 13

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 570 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 95% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:.16 of 16

Snowmaking Acreage:............. 356 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 70% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:.15 of 16

Snowmaking Acreage:............... 50 Snowmaking Coverage:.......... 50% Lifts Serving Snowmaking:..... 3 of 3

Courtesy of Justin Cash

ASCUTNEY MOUNTAIN RESORT

SkiVermont.com

61

NORDIC Resort

Location

E-mail & Web Site

Phone

Toll-Free

Fax

Trails

Machine Tracked/ Skating Terrain

Instruction/ Rental

Ascutney Mountain Resort

Brownsville, VT 05037

info@ascutney.com www.ascutney.com

802-484-7711

800-243-0011

802-484-3117

30km

25km/15km

Y/Y

Blueberry Hill Ski Center

Goshen, VT 05733

info@blueberryhillinn.com www.blueberryhillinn.com

802-247-6735

800-448-0707

802-247-3983

75km

60km/40km

Y/Y

Blueberry Lake X-C

Warren, VT 05674

www.blueberrylakeskivt.com

802-496-6687

-

802-496-6687

30km

30km/30km

Y/Y

Bolton Valley Nordic Center

Bolton Valley, VT 05477

info@boltonvalley.com www.boltonvalley.com

802-434-3444 x1076

877-9BOLTON

802-434-6870

100km

30km/30km

Y/Y

Brattleboro Outing Club

Brattleboro, VT 05302

xc@brattleborooutingclub.com www.brattleborooutingclub.com

802-257-1208

-

802-257-3537

33km

25km/18km

Y/Y

Catamount Outdoor Family Center

Williston, VT 05495

landj@catamountoutdoor.com www.catamountoutdoor.com

802-879-6001

888-680-1011

802-879-6066

35km

20km/20km

Y/Y

Catamount Trail Association

Burlington, VT 05401

info@catamounttrail.org www.catamounttrail.org

802-864-5794

-

802-864-5710

300mi

-

Craftsbury Outdoor Center

Craftsbury Common, VT 05827

stay@craftsbury.com www.craftsbury.com

802-586-7767

-

802-586-7768

135km

85km/85km

Y/Y

Grafton Ponds Nordic Center

Grafton, VT 05146

info@graftonponds.com www.graftonponds.com

802-843-2400

800-843-1801

802-843-2245

60km

30km/30km

Y/Y

Hazen’s Notch Association

Montgomery Ctr., VT 05471

info@hazensnotch.org www.hazensnotch.org

802-326-4799

-

-

70km

40km/0km

Y/Y

Highland Lodge & XC Center

Greensboro, VT 05841

highland.lodge@verizon.net www.highlandlodge.com

802-533-2647

-

802-533-7494

52km

45km/45km

Y/Y

Hildene Ski Touring Center

Manchester, VT 05254

info@hildene.org www.hildene.org

802-382-1788

800-578-1788

802-362-1564

15km

12km/3km

Y/Y

Jay Peak Ski Touring Center

Jay, VT 05859

info@jaypeakresort.com www.jaypeakresort.com

802-988-2611

800-451-4449

802-988-4049

20km

20km/20km

Y/Y

Kingdom Trails

East Burke, VT 05871

info@kingdomtrails.org www.kingdomtrails.com

802-626-0737

-

802-626-7310

50km

50km/50km

N/N

Memphremagog Ski Touring

Derby, VT 05829

info@mstf.net www.mstf.net

-

-

-

30km

30km/30km

N/N

Morse Farm Ski Touring Center

Montpelier, VT 05602

ski@morsefarm.com www.skimorsefarm.com

802-223-0090

800-242-2740

802-223-7450

25km

20km/25km

Y*/Y

Mountain Meadow XC Ski Area

Killington, VT 05751

bcoutfitters@adelphia.net www.xcskiing.net

802-775-7077

800-221-0598

802-747-1929

57km

57km/57km

Y/Y

Mountain Top Nordic Ski & Snowshoe Ctr.

Chittenden, VT 05737

stay@mountaintopinn.com www.mountaintopinn.com

802-483-6089

-

802-483-6373

60km

40km/40km

Y/Y

Okemo Valley Nordic Center

Ludlow, VT 05149

info@okemo.com www.okemo.com

802-228-1600

800-78-OKEMO

802-228-7095

22km

22km/22km

Y/Y

Ole’s Cross Country Center

Warren, VT 05674

ski@olesxc.com www.olesxc.com

802-496-3430

877-863-3001

802-496-3089

50km

50km/45km

Y/Y

Prospect Mountain X-Country Ski Ctr.

Woodford, VT 05201

ski@prospectmountain.com www.prospectmountain.com

802-442-2575

-

-

45km

35km/30km

Y/Y

Rikert Touring Center

Middlebury, VT 05753

rubright@middlebury.edu http://go.middlebury.edu/rikert

802-443-2744

-

802-388-2871

42km

30km/15km

Y/Y

Sleepy Hollow Inn Ski & Bike Ctr.

Huntington, VT 05462

info@skisleepyhollow.com www.skisleepyhollow.com

802-434-2283

866-254-1524

802-434-2283

40km

30km/25km

Y/Y

Smugglers’ Notch Nordic Center

Smugglers’ Notch, VT 05464

smuggs@smuggs.com www.smuggs.com

802-644-8851

800-451-8752

802-644-2713

34km

34km/34km

Y/Y

Stowe/Mt. Mansfield XC Center

Stowe, VT 05672

info@stowe.com www.stowe.com

802-253-3688

800-253-4754

802-253-3406

75km

35km/35km

Y/Y

Stratton Mountain Nordic Center

Stratton Mountain, VT 05155

agriswold@intrawest.com www.stratton.com

802-297-2200

800-STRATTON

802-297-4117

30+km

10km/10km

Y/Y

Timber Creek XC Ski Area

West Dover, VT 05356

vtcxc@sover.net www.timbercreekxc.com

802-464-0999

-

802-464-8308

14km

14km/14km

Y/Y

Trapp Family Lodge XC Ski Ctr.

Stowe, VT 05672

www.trappfamily.com info@trappfamily.com

802-253-5755

800-826-7000

802-253-5757

100km

55km/55km

Y/Y

Viking Nordic Center

Londonderry, VT 05148

skiandstay@vikingnordic.com www.vikingnordic.com

802-824-3933

-

802-824-5602

35km

35km/30km

Y/Y

Wild Wings Ski Touring Ctr.

Peru, VT 05152

wwwxcski@sover.net www.wildwingsski.com

802-824-6793

-

802-824-4574

28km

28km/0km

Y/Y

Woodstock Inn & Resort Nordic Center

Woodstock, VT 05091

email@woodstockinn.com www.woodstockinn.com

802-457-6674

866-448-7900

802-457-6699

60km

50km/20km

Y/Y

62

SkiVermont.com

*Weekends by appointment

Courtesy of Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

AND LAST, BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST, A VERY SPECIAL THANK YOU TO ALL OF OUR SPONSORS.

64

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