A Town In Vermont Saved A Mountain And A Mountain Saved The Town


Jim Lyall quickly climbed Mount Ascutney, eagerly pointing out the view. We were skinning a ski area in Southern Vermont, but the chairlifts are long gone. We arrived at an abandoned ski patrol post and cable car station at the top of the mountain. A cold breeze passed through the abandoned buildings. The ghost had a post-apocalyptic feel to it.

Mr. Lyall called me to an old chairlift ramp. He swept the ski pole across the panorama, marking the snow-capped peaks of Okemo and Killington, ski resorts located within a 30-mile radius. New Hampshire’s White Mountains were close enough to touch.

“Many times there were times when I would stand up here and watch the storms fall on those ski areas and pass Ascutney. We didn’t win,” said Mr. Lyall, an avid country skier.

In its heyday, the Ascutney ski resort boasted 1,800 vertical feet of skiing on more than 50 trails and included a high-speed quad chairlift, three triple chairlifts and a double chairlift. However, when it closed in 2010 due to insufficient snow and mismanagement (the twin killers of small ski resorts), nearby West Windsor, Vt. He threatened to take his community with him.

“Property values ​​fell, saw the value of mountain apartments drop by more than half, and taxes increased,” recalls Glenn Seward, who once worked at the facility for 18 years as director of mountain operations. The town’s grocery store, which was the meeting place of the community, also went bankrupt and closed.

“We were desperate,” said Mr Seward, president of West Windsor Selectboard, which was then the equivalent of a Vermont town’s city council.

This desperation has caused the community to tie its wealth to the mountain and become a model for how a small ski area and community can thrive in the age of climate change. Working with the state of Vermont and the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, the town purchased the failing ski area in 2015. But instead of letting a private company run the mountain and turn over operations, local residents would draw a map themselves. The sustainable, volunteer-led path for the ski area.

Seven years later, Mount Ascutney and West Windsor are magnets for families and outdoor enthusiasts alike. Between 2010 and 2020, the town’s population grew by over 20 percent, and median single-family home selling prices more than doubled to $329,750. A bustling new general store offering local produce has opened in the village of Brownsville, which revitalizes the center of the West Windsor community. The town and mountain attract people year-round, from endurance runners and mountain bikers in the warmer months to skiers in the winter.

At the center of this revival outdooris a non-profit organization with over 100 volunteers currently engaged in mountain recreation. Skiers receive a high-speed quad and a T-bar instead of a snowplow that accesses 435 vertical feet of ski area located on 10 well-maintained natural snow trails. There is also an elevator for snow tubing. A lift ticket costs $20 or $100 for a season pass. The lifts operate on Saturdays and Sundays when there is sufficient snow, and around 40 volunteers are required to staff on a busy weekend.

Maintained by the Ascutney Trails Association, the top 1,300 vertical feet of the mountain are reserved for alpine skiers to skin and descend for free – but donations are appreciated. Thursday night ski races are held under lights, and an after-school program brings the kids to the mountain each afternoon. The mountain is also famous for 45 miles mountain bike trails, lots of hiking trailss and Mt. Ascutney State Park. It is one of the best sailing wing sites in New England.

“We ski when it snows, we do other things when it isn’t,” said Mr Seward, managing director of Ascutney Outdoors. “It is a fairly easy model to maintain.”

Mount Ascutney (elevation 3,144 feet), Vermont’s most famous volcano, has attracted skiers for decades. Skiing started in Ascutney in the winter of 1935-36 On the 5,400-foot-long Ascutney Mountain Trail opened by the Civil Conservation Corps and Windsor Travel Club. The first skiers, like today’s alpine skiers, swam the mountain under their own power. The Mount Ascutney ski area was opened with ropes in 1946. As a harbinger of upcoming struggles, the ski area had several bad winters and went bankrupt four years after opening.

New owners have come and gone periodically, and Ascutney has been remodeled as a destination resort that attracts tourists and second home owners from New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. It was described in one 2005 New York Times article as “less trendy than some of its competitors” with a “small and utilitarian” base lodge. Local skiers remained a loyal mainstay.

Ascutney Resort has been ravaged by years of uneven snow levels. In the 1980s, Summit Ventures, a new ownership group, poured $55 million into elevators, condominiums, and snowmaking. A hotel was built at the foot of the mountain (now a Holiday Inn Club Vacations). In 1991 the ski area was forced into liquidation. The ski resort closed for the last time in 2010 and sold its cable cars. It was a huge blow to the congregation.

“We lost our identity as a ski town,” said Mr. Seward, who grew up in the community and married his wife Shelley on the mountain.

Jim Lyall added: “You’ve seen everyone at school, at the grocery store, at the post office, and at the ski area. We were in danger of losing all four and becoming just one bedroom ensemble.”

Climate change poses an existential threat to New England ski areas, now number 89 in six states. A 2019 study It showed that in the northeastern states as well as Vermont, at least half of the ski resorts will close by the mid-2050s if high greenhouse gas emissions continue. A study published in the journal Climate in 2021 It showed that New England was warming significantly faster than the rest of the planet. From 1900 to 2020, winter temperatures in Vermont rose 5.26 degrees Fahrenheit.

“This means that more of our winter precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, less accumulates on the ground, and has more midwinter melt,” said Elizabeth Burakowski, a research associate at the Oceans Research Institute. , and Space at the University of New Hampshire.

New England is haunted by the ghosts of abandoned ski areas: New England Lost Ski Areas ProjectMore than 600 ski areas have been closed in the region.

Ski industry leaders warn that the survival of ski resorts depends on political action. “It is absolutely critical that business leaders in the outdoor and ski industries come together to strongly advocate for bipartisan climate action at the federal and state levels,” said Adrienne Saia Isaac, marketing and communications director for the National Ski Areas Association.

West Windsor was determined to re-imagine a future free of the whims of winter. In 2014, West Windsor Selectboard asked Trust for Public Land to help purchase and preserve 469 acres of the former ski area’s land for use for alpine skiing, mountain biking, and other human-powered recreation. The ski area will be added to the existing town forest and protected by a 1,581-acre conservation easement protecting the land from development. A special town meeting was held In October 2014, West Windsor asked voters to approve the town’s $105,000 spending on the $640,000 purchase of the former ski area, which is part of the $905,000 project price to return the land to recreational use. The purchase was approved by a margin of three to one.

In 2015, a group of townspeople gathered at Jim Lyall’s home to start Ascutney Outdoors. A new rope puller was installed the same year, followed by a pipe lift in 2017 and a T-bar in 2020. The community has raised funds to build the Ascutney Outdoor Center, a 3,000-square-foot base lodge. Mountain.

Brownsville Butcher and Pantry They are minutes from Ascutney Outdoors, and their fates are firmly tied.

Peter Varkonyi and Lauren Stevens opened the store in November 2018 and cheerfully welcomed a steady stream of customers and patrons on a weekday. This is not your typical general store. It has a wall of Vermont craft beer, and a butcher carves a side of pork that hangs on a meat hook in front of the refrigerator crates containing Vermont Wagyu beef, fresh goat, and all the items made for sushi. At the nearby cafe, customers can choose from homemade bagels and homemade hot bacon to vegetarian smoked beet Reuben and a three-course burger.

In 2018, a community group called the Friends of Brownsville General Store bought the foreclosed building from the bank for $95,000 and invested $250,000 in renovating it. The group then leased the building to Mr Varkonyi and Ms Stevens for $1 a year, with the couple’s option to purchase it at any time for cost. Friends group promoter Chris Nesbitt urged his neighbors to “think of it as the common good”. You are investing in society.”

Buying local produce is “the foundation of what we do every day,” he said. Borderwater Farm $30,000 for lamb, goat and pork in Plainfield, NH and from Yates Farm just down the road. In 2021, “our small business has invested $500,000 in local businesses,” he said. In December, the couple bought the store from Friends.

Amanda Yates, a lifelong resident of the community and a teacher at the local elementary school, was enjoying burger night at the grocery store with her young son. Ms. Yates pointed to the crowded cafe and store. “I trust the store and Ascutney Outdoors to bring the town back,” he said. “They brought places in town where you could meet up, eat well, see people again.

“They really brought back that community center.”


David Goodman”Best Mountain Skiing in the Northeast(AMC Books) and host of “The Vermont Conversation,” a public relations radio show and podcast.



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