DESTINATION:
VERMONT
Summer Activities at Two Vermont Ski Resorts
By James H. Hyde
Editor
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| The Alpine Slide at Bromley Mountain Copyright © Bromley
Mountain 2000-2008 . All Rights reserved. |
At first, the chairlift is a little scary. You look down at your feet, and...no skis. The presence of green and absence of white is completely incongruous, but within minutes you realize the sudden quietness, and you relax. It’s summer in Vermont, and you’re at a ski resort on one of a number of various rides it offers.
While major ski areas have generally done well at what they were designed to do, the pressure to keep cash flowing year-round has risen over the years as the cost of maintaining a resort has escalated dramatically. Plus, each and every season is a crapshoot. Mother Nature is hardly predictable or reliable, so as soon as the night temperatures dip below freezing, the snowmaking efforts begin, and the meter starts running.
Oddly, the biggest motivator of a ski trip isn’t the beckoning peaks or the itch to slap the boards on your feet. It’s how much snow skiers living outside of New England, or in the southern states in the region, has fallen around them. That’s the psychological motivator, according to a number of studies. If there is no snow in the Mid-Atlantic States, Vermont gets fewer skiers. If there’s at least a foot on the ground in say, Westchester County, NY, people head for the mountains in hordes.
| "If there’s
at least a foot of snow on the ground in say, Westchester County,
NY, people head for the mountains in hordes." |
But it doesn’t work that way in the summer. It’s the mix of pristine flora, fresh air, grazing deer and moose, and the ability to go emotionally limp, if only for a week or two, that brings people to the Green Mountain State. When they go home, they’re energized with batteries recharged.
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| The Gondola Ride at Stowe Mountain Resort Copyright © Stowe Mountain Resort 2000-2008 . All Rights reserved. |
For the ski resorts, the need to innovate and attract people to snowless trails is almost as important as having a great, snowy ski season.
The season just ended was a good one, the one before it, not so great. The final numbers for this season won’t be tallied until June 2008, but the estimate is that 4.1 million skiers visited Vermont ski areas during the 2007-2008 season, according to Montpelier’s Times Argus newspaper.
That’s up from the 3.8 million skiers the year before. The difference may not seem that striking. It’s only 300,000 skiers, after all, but the difference is in the dollars—lots of them.
The absence of those skiers represents $12 million in lost revenues based on an average $40 lift ticket per day—and that’s just for lift tickets. But, while the most recent season represents a sizeable increase in dollars, it’s not enough, so ski areas are doing all they can to get their share of summer tourist dollars.
| "Ski areas are doing all they can to get their share of summer tourist dollars." |
Despite all of the fall-foliage and skiers-schussing-through-virgin-powder marketing, summer actually brings more tourists to the state than does any other season.
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| The notorious swing at Bromley mountain swings riers at up to 40 mph. Bromley Mountain Copyright © Bromley Mountain 2000-2008 . All Rights reserved. |
Before all of the rides and attractions replaced snow on the grassy trails, riding a chairlift to a mountain’s peak was about the only thing to do at ski areas in the summer. The views alone are a special treat and well worth the cost of a lift ticket, even to a child.
Bromley Mountain, in Peru, VT, for instance, proudly announces at the top of the main chair lift, that one can see five states from the mountain’s peak (Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts, and, on a clear day, Maine). Of course, there’s no way to truly tell. Borders are invisible, but it certainly looks as if you can see the whole Northeast.
After you’d had enough of the views, you walked, ran or rode the chairlift back down the mountain.
But starting in the 1960s, ski areas began to come up with ideas to increase the pressure of the flow from the revenue tap. Their attraction of choice back then was the Alpine Slide, a twisting fiberglass track assembled on a trail that best suited it. Carts, little more than narrow Boogie Boards on wheels with a stick to control speed, whisked you down the mountain just about as fast as you wanted to go.
INNOVATION STILL EVOLVING
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| The Obstacle Course at Stowe Mountain Resort Copyright © Stowe Mountain Resort 2000-2008. All Rights reserved. |
Additions and innovations since then are still evolving, and some of new rides command some stiff pricing (see the tables below). A trip down the Alpine Slide back in the ‘70s nearly equaled the price of an all-day lift ticket during the winter. Emphasis on "one ride.” But so much fun is the slide that adulterating an old commercial tag line, "Bet ya’ can’t ride just once,” makes the case. They’re patently addictive.
For purposes of this article, I’m comparing two great mountains, Stowe Mountain Resort in the North and Bromley in the southern part of Vermont.
These were chosen for the number of rides, the costs and each mountain’s longevity. Stowe Mountain Resort was the first ski area built in the East and Bromley had a lock on southern Vermont. Its trails were sculpted into trails well before there was a Stratton or Magic Mountain.
| "Stowe Mountain Resort was the first ski area built in the East, and Bromley's trails were sculpted well before there was a Stratton or Magic Mountain." |
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| Miniature Golf at Bromley Mountain Bromley Mountain Copyright © Bromley Mountain 2000-2008 . All Rights reserved. |
But I also enjoyed skiing at Stowe Mountain Resort tremendously. It’s carved into the face of Mt. Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak. It actually offers two mountains, the main mountain and Spruce Peak, the latter a bit more tame than the first.
Both mountains provide great trails for skiers, experienced or not, and foothill towns. The Town of Stowe, a good distance from the mountain, is so Rockwellian, it’s a living painting of a quintessential New England town, the church on Main Street I’m told is the most photographed of all New England churches.
This isn’t an article that pushes one mountain above another. It’s about what rides are available and how much they cost. It’s up to you to decide where to go once you’ve read about each.
FOR A TEENAGER, LIVING WHERE WE DID WAS A BORE
Living where we did during the summers in South Londonderry, Vermont, was a teenager’s nightmare. No TV. |
