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    Skiing in the Mad River Valley
    Skiing in the Mad River Valley
    Skiing in the Mad River Valley
    Ebook213 pages42 minutes

    Skiing in the Mad River Valley

    By John Hilferty and Ellie Hilferty

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    In 1948, the first skiers to experience the steep and twisting downhill trails of Mad River Glen had to traverse muddy or frozen dirt roads to get to their destination. The warmth of a country inn was a comfort on those cold winter nights and continues as a hallmark of the Mad River Valley today. Even with the condo boom that developed after the opening of Sugarbush on Christmas Day in 1958, little has upset the ambience of the 20-mile-long valley. The valley developed a distinct personality, attracting ski bums who exchanged urban pressures for a laid-back lifestyle that continues today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateNov 1, 2010
    ISBN9781439638958
    Skiing in the Mad River Valley
    Author

    John Hilferty

    John and Ellie Hilferty, a freelance writer-photographer team, visited the area's ski resorts for nearly twenty years and have, since 1994, called the Mad River Valley home. Their travel essays and photographs appear in magazines and newspapers in the United States and abroad.

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      Book preview

      Skiing in the Mad River Valley - John Hilferty

      Reporter.

      INTRODUCTION

      Prior to the arrival of alpine skiing in Vermont in the 1930s and 1940s, prejudices about the little Green Mountain State bounced about the large urban areas elsewhere in the Northeast.

      One publication intoned that In small towns and on failing hill farms, life was particularly bleak. Two things have made living in Vermont bearable for much of the population: central heat, and television. Before central heat, winter was one long battle to stay warm. And before television, winter was long, dark, and very isolating.

      Those critics appear to have never sat by a glowing wood stove on a cold winter night nor stopped by woods on a snowy evening. They had somehow forgotten, or were never aware of, Vermont’s physiognomy: scenery and clean air that exalted one’s daytime spirits to giddy heights. The critics failed to see that beneath the flintiness and glum veneer of Yankee farmers was a kinship with a place unmatched in scenic grandeur anywhere else on earth.

      When the skiers came, there began a dependency and relationship that came to benefit both the visitors and the home folks. For the skiers, the mountains offered thrills, joy, and relief from stressful lifestyles in the cities. For the locals, it was an uplifting caused by something they had not seen much of before—money.

      Thus was born a tourist economy that superseded dairy farming, logging, and sugaring. The Vermont Tourism Board in Montpelier noticed the changes and, by the 1950s, produced a series of films and advertisements to boost the influx. In the Mad River Valley, though the focus now concentrated on skiing, it was through the lens of the valley’s rural charm: its inns, its country stores, and its generations-deep residents—who were not that unhappy after all. The latter opened their farmhouse doors, put in bunk beds, and cooked mighty breakfasts for the strangers.

      It was not all pretty snowflakes at first. In fact, Mad River Glen started in 1948 as a resort full of mud, with so very little snow to ski upon, any innovator other than Roland Palmedo might have quit and gone back to Wall Street.

      But Palmedo persisted, and soon Mad River’s oddball Single Chair lift began clicking to the top of Stark Mountain amid bounteous snowfalls, with blankets, and even raccoon coats, draped over the knees to fend off the sharp winds.

      Ten years later, Damon Gadd, who visited Mad River frequently, foresaw a different angle, and at his new place, Sugarbush, skiers stayed warm in an enclosed three-passenger gondola imported from Italy. But the contrivance was a magic carpet that swept up famous Broadway and Hollywood stars to the newly nicknamed Mascara Mountain to ride this novel wonder.

      The difference between Mad River Glen and Sugarbush was, from the beginning, glaring. Mad River stood delightfully still while Sugarbush expanded. In 1978, the new owner, Roy Cohen, bought Glen Ellen, which had opened in 1964 as the third alpine resort.

      But history has overlooked four tiny rope tow operations that lasted no more than one or a few years each. The first was the Warren Outing Club’s operation on the Austin farm in Warren prior to World War II. Another was the rope tow at Tucker Hill, which augmented a cross-country operation that involved several inns. The third was a peewee rope tow in 1963 at the Alpen Inn on Route 100. The next year, the developers, George and Ann Day, installed a new, 1,500-foot-long rope tow on the site of the present-day Shaw’s supermarket in Irasville. Powered by an old Buick engine, it sped uphill towards the Knoll Farm, but it lasted only a year.

      An example of how well old Vermont had come to mingle with the rich and famous outsiders was when the movie star Kim Novak spent weekends with George and Ann Day at their Knoll Farm on Bragg Hill Road. By 1960, the flow of glittering show business people was on.

      Then came college graduates, and many liked the trade-off in lifestyles so much that they decided to stay. No ski bum suffered a diminished social status in the Mad River Valley. High-paying jobs were exchanged for a quality of life with a nearly perfect place to raise families, trumping high-salaried careers in an office.

      The folksiness of Mad River Glen, in particular, appealed to both the new arrivals and local, longtime residents alike. Mad River became a mountain very personal to the people who skied there—except for the snowboarders, who are not allowed. Visit any snowboarding Web site and search for mention of Mad River Glen. Make sure the children are in bed. The epithets are toxic.

      The first two chapters of this book are snapshots of the growth of both resorts, offering glimpses of the mountains and the personnel who worked there, as well as the more loyal visitors who, in some cases, made the resorts a second home. Today great-grandparents show little ones where the best snow stashes are.

      The third chapter is fat with the sporting life of ski racing champions who were both native to the valley and from abroad. The Green Mountain Valley School was started, an academic school aimed at producing racers whose fame would rise far beyond the valley in World Cup and Olympic venues.

      The fourth chapter traces—in old photographs, maps, and menus—the growth of the hospitality side of the ski industry. By the 1960s, about 40 inns and restaurants were doing business. Many did not last but changed hands as the booms and busts of the nation’s economy dictated.

      The final chapter could easily have been the first, because it covers cross-country and telemark skiing, whose roots are in Norway many centuries ago. Cross-country trails run freely throughout the Mad River Valley; there are actually more trails than there are roads. Chief among them are those at Ole’s Cross Country Ski Center and Blueberry Lake, both commercial operations begun by men who are now in their 80s, Ole Molseson and Lenord Robinson. Ole spends most of his time in his native Norway, where his family’s fishing guide business goes back decades. Lenord is a deeply rooted dairy

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