Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
Thirty minutes east of Barre on Route 25 lies Northeast Slopes, a small ski area tucked within the hills of Corinth. Founded in 1936, it’s a quintessential example of grassroots Vermont ski culture. There are 12 runs and no chairlift.
At the base of the rope tow is a shack with an old pickup truck engine rigged to power the rope tow; an old boat throttle controls the speed. This place is a time capsule of the kind of ski area that was once widespread across Vermont.
Roughly two-thirds of Vermont towns had a ski area at some point. Now there are only 25. Ski areas today are bigger, and many of them are owned by large, out-of-state corporations. The industry attracted more than 4.1 million visitors last year, 80% of whom came from out of state. But what happened to the mom-and-pop rope-tows that once dominated Vermont’s hills?
While he was a student at Lyndon State College in the late ’90s, Jeremy Davis also wondered what had happened to all the old small ski areas that dotted the mountainsides. Where did they all go? And what were their stories?
There were no easy answers, no resource to consult, so Davis made his own resource. In 1998, he created the New England Lost Ski Areas Project to catalogue and make available an open resource to help preserve ski areas across New England.
“It was kind of built out of a desire to find all the answers to what happened to all these places,” Davis said. “Make it accessible to everyone, keep it free, keep it simple, but also a place for people to share what they knew.”
In Vermont, he documented 119 “lost” ski areas, most of which are small places like Northeast Slopes that are no longer in operation.
These ski areas represent a uniquely American type of nostalgia. People learned to ski at these places, and families like his own would pack up their cars for the weekend and head up to the hills for a vacation. The now-lost ski areas in Vermont weren’t just for Vermonters but thousands of families who’d drag their kids up for a weekend in the mountains.
“These smaller mountains provide a fantastic experience, and they just have such heart, and they’re so genuine that when you walk in there, you just feel like you’re being welcomed into a community,” said Brian Rivard, director of communications for the Vermont Ski Areas Association. “To go visit them is to fall in love with them.”
According to Davis, there is a cornucopia of reasons that contributed to the closure of these smaller areas. Everything from higher insurance rates and payroll costs to areas simply becoming obsolete. Vacation habits change, and many might prefer a chairlift to a rope tow. For small areas looking for an upgrade, chairlifts are just too expensive.
Like many other small ski areas, a hike in insurance prices hit Northeast Slopes. By 1962, the resort faced a choice: close down or move to an all-volunteer model. They chose the latter option, and it worked. Unlike all of the others that have had to shutter their doors, Northeast Slopes has been able to withstand the test of time.
“If we want to keep skiing, we’ve got to pay the insurance, and we can’t pay anybody else,” said Wade Pierson, the Northeast Slopes coordinator. “If everyone volunteers and pitches in, then we can stay open.”
And it has: this season marks 90 years of Northeast Slopes. This year, the ski area had a staff of 35 volunteers, more than enough to keep the rope tow spinning.
Lyndon Outing Club, a similarly-sized ski area in Lyndon, is likewise made up of dedicated volunteers. For Scott Desjardins, the club’s vice president, that’s one of the main reasons why it hasn’t been “lost” yet. The other is that the ski area operates as a town park.
“We’re able to get our insurance through the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, basically as a slightly more hazardous park,” Desjardins said.
In an industry now defined by its high price tag, Northeast Slopes and the Lyndon Outing Club have continued to make skiing accessible for seasoned ski bums and intro-level skiers alike. Their day passes run for $15, compared to somewhere like Stowe, where a lift ticket is often more than $200.
Since 1936, what has changed at Northeast Slopes? Really not much. It now has a T-Bar, named after Pierson’s father, John, and still hosts schoolkids from around the area as it’s done for decades.
As Peggy Pierson, the now-deceased matriarch of the family, told the Burlington Free Press in 1994: “We’ve stayed frozen in time.”