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After the Ascutney ski hotel in Vermont closed due to erratic snowfall and mismanagement, she threatened to take the closure of the city of West Windsor with her. The network has taken note of the situation.
By David Goodman
Jim Lyall skied temporarily at Mount Ascutney, watching the view impatiently. We were in the process of dividing a ski domain in southern Vermont, but the chairlifts are gone. At the top of the mountain, we came to an abandoned ski patrol. cabin and a ski lift station. A bloodless breeze hit the abandoned structures. It had a ghostly, post-apocalyptic feel.
Mr. Lyall instructed me to climb an old chairlift ramp. He swept the landscape with his ski pole and pointed to the snow-capped peaks of Okemo and Killington, ski resorts within a 30-mile radius. The White Mountains of New Hampshire were close enough to be hit.
“I stood here and watched as storms sold the snow in those skiing spaces and passed through Ascutney. We couldn’t win,” said Lyall, an off-piste ski enthusiast.
At its peak, the Ascutney ski hotel boasted 1,800 feet of vertical drop on more than 50 slopes and included a high-speed quad chairlift, 3 triple chairlifts, and a double chairlift. But when it closed in 2010 for lack of snow and poor control (killer twins of small ski hotels), it threatened to take with it the nearby network of West Windsor, Vermont, which has 1,099 inhabitants.
“Property prices have come down, condos on the mountain have noticed their price dropped by more than half and taxes have gone up,” recalls Glenn Seward, who worked at the hotel for 18 years, once as director of mountain operations. The city’s general store, the community’s gathering place, also went bankrupt and closed.
“We were desperate,” said Mr. Seward, who at the time was president of West Windsor Selectboard, the equivalent of a city hall in Vermont.
This desperation has led the network to associate its fortune with the mountain, fitting into the style of how a small ski hotel and its network can thrive in the era of climate change. In collaboration with the state of Vermont and the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, the city purchased the bankrupt ski domain in 2015. But by allowing a private company to manage the mountain, through outsourcing its operations, local citizens themselves would come up with a sustainable and voluntary course plan for the ski domain.
Seven years later, Mount Ascutney and West Windsor attract families and outdoor enthusiasts. Between 2010 and 2020, the city’s population increased by more than 20% and average single-family home development costs more than doubled to $329,750. Local produce has opened in the village of Brownsville, revitalizing the west Windsor community center. The village and mountain attract other people all year round, from runners and mountain bikers in the warm months to skiers in winter.
At the center of this renaissance is Ascutney Outdoors, a non-profit organization with more than a hundred volunteers that now organizes recreational activities on the mountain. Instead of high-speed quads and artificial snow, skiers take a tow cable or t-bar that accesses 435 vertical feet of skiing, which are located on 10 natural snow slopes that are prepared. There is also an elevator for snow tubes. A ticket costs $20 or $100 for a season pass. The ski lifts run on Saturdays and Sundays when there is enough snow, and around 40 volunteers are needed to take care of a busy weekend.
The mountain’s 1,300 most sensitive vertical feet, maintained through the Ascutney Trails Association, are reserved for cross-country skiers for loose skiing and skiing, though donations are appreciated. children to the mountain every afternoon. The mountain is also home to forty-five miles of mountain bike trails, hiking trails, and Mount Ascutney State Park. This is one of the most productive hang gliding sites in New England.
“When it snows, we ski, and when there’s no snow, we do anything else,” said Seward, who is now chief executive of Ascutney Outdoors. “It’s a pretty simple style to maintain. “
Mount Ascutney (elevation 3,144 feet), Vermont’s best-known volcano, has attracted skiers for decades. Skiing began in Ascutney in the winter of 1935-1936 on the 5,400-foot Mount Ascutney Trail opened through the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Windsor Outing Club. Early skiers climbed the mountain on their own, as did today’s Nordic traveling skiers. The Mount Ascutney ski domain opened in 1946 with tow cables. A forerunner of long-term struggles, the ski domain endured several complicated winters and went bankrupt 4 years later. Opened.
New owners came and went periodically and Ascutney became a hotel destination, attracting tourists and temporary homeowners from New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. In a 2005 New York Times article it was described as “less elegant than some of its competitors” with a fundamental pavilion that “small and utilitarian”. Local skiers continued to be its unwavering pillar.
Ascutney Resort has been tormented by years of erratic snow levels. In the 1980s, a new owner organization, Summit Ventures, invested $55 million in ski lifts, condominiums and synthetic snow. A hotel built at the foot of the mountain (now a Holiday Inn Club Vacations). In 1991, the ski domain forced its liquidation. The ski hotel last closed in 2010 and sold its ski lifts. It was a severe blow to the community.
“We’ve lost our ski hotel identity,” said Mr. Seward, who grew up in the network and married his wife, Shelley, on the mountain.
Jim Lyall added: “You saw everyone at school, the general store, the mail and the ski resort. We risk wasting all 4 and adapting just one bedroom community.
Climate renewal poses an existential risk to New England’s ski resorts, which now number 89 in six states. A 2019 study showed that in northeastern states outside of Vermont, at least a portion of ski resorts will close in the mid-2050s if greenhouse fuel is higher. emissions continue. A 2021 study published in the journal Climate showed that New England is warming particularly faster than the rest of the planet. From 1900 to 2020, winter temperatures in Vermont rose to 5. 26 degrees Fahrenheit.
“This means that more of our winter precipitation falls as snow rain, less precipitation accumulates on the ground, and there is more melting in winter,” said Elizabeth Burakowski, an assistant professor of studies at the Institute for the Study of the Earth and Oceans. and Space at the University of New Hampshire.
New England is plagued by ghosts of deserted ski areas: According to the New England Lost Ski Areas Project, more than six hundred ski spaces have been closed in the area.
Ski industry leaders warn that the survival of ski spaces depends on political action. “It is certainly imperative that business leaders in the ski industries come together to make a strong case for bipartisan climate action at the federal and state levels. “said Adrienne Saia Isaac, director of marketing and communications for the National Association of Ski Areas.
West Windsor made the decision to reinvent a long career that didn’t count on the vagaries of winter. In 2014, West Windsor Selectboard asked the Trust for Public Land to help acquire and conserve 469 acres of the former ski domain for use in cross-country skiing, mountain biking and other human-driven recreational activities. The ski domain would be added to the existing municipal forest and protected through a 1,581-acre conservation easement that would protect the land from development. In October 2014 a special town hall was held to ask the electorate of West Windsor to approve the $105,000 investment for the acquisition of $640,000 of the former ski domain, a portion of the value of the $905,000 allocation to return the land to recreational use. The acquisition was approved with a margin of 3 to one.
In 2015, an organization of city dwellers gathered at Jim Lyall’s home to launch Ascutney Outdoors. A new tow cable was installed the same year, followed by the lift tube in 2017 and a T-bar in 2020. The network raised the budget to build Ascutney Outdoor Center, a 3,000-square-foot base pavilion at the foot of the mountain.
Brownsville Butcher and Pantry is minutes from Ascutney Outdoors, and their destinations are tightly intertwined.
Peter Varkonyi and Lauren Stevens opened the store in November 2018 and, on a recent weekday, warmly welcomed a steady stream of consumers and regular customers. This is not your typical general store. It has a wall of Vermont craft beer and a butcher cutting a portion of the red meat hanging from a meat hook in front of refrigerators containing Vermont Wagyu beef, new goat and all the ingredients for sushi. At the nearby café, visitors can choose from homemade bagels and homemade hot pastrami, a vegetarian Reuben with smoked beets and 3 types of burgers.
In 2018, a network organization, Friends of the Brownsville General Store, bought the bank’s seized construction for $95,000 and invested $250,000 to renovate it. The organization then leased the construction to Mr. Varkonyi and Ms. Stevens for $1 a year, with an option the couple can purchase at any time by paying a fee. Chris Nesbitt, an organizer with Friends, suggested his neighbors “think of this as the common good. They invest in the network. “
Buying local produce “is the foundation of what we do each and every day,” said Stevens, proudly retailing $35,000 in organic purchases from Edgewater Farm in Plainfield, NH, and $30,000 in lamb, goat and red meat from Yates Farm, just down the street. Road. . In 2021, he said, “our small business donated $500,000 to local businesses. “In December, the couple bought the Friends store.
A longtime network resident and local elementary school teacher, Amanda Yates, sat down with her young son to enjoy a night of burgers at the general store. Yates pointed to the bustling café and shop. ” I credit the store and Ascutney Outdoors for bringing back into town,” he said. village again.
“They brought back this network center. “
David Goodman is the host of “Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast” (AMC Books) and host of “The Vermont Conversation,” a radio exhibition and public affairs podcast.
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