http://www.vpr.net//audio/programs/56/2013/03/Molnar-0312.mp3
I love skiing in Vermont, and not just because I live here and can get to some mountains in well under an hour. And it's certainly not the snow that makes Vermont skiing so special. The snow is, sad to say, almost always superior in Colorado or Utah.
It's not the price of lift tickets either, although a midweek season pass is reasonable compared to the hundred-dollar day passes at posh Western resorts.
Nope. What I find so wonderful at our ski areas are the lodges. Whether it's a concrete bunker reminiscent of Soviet architecture, a ramshackle spread with stained carpeting, or an architectural wonder is irrelevant. What matters is the fact that these lodges exist at all.
In much of the West, lodges as we know them have been replaced by swanky restaurants and bars, flanked by very cool boutiques. And you can't very well put on your boots and park your bag with the extra glove liners and your lunch in an elegant restaurant.
You may, after a very long search, uncover some basement room lined with lockers. But most often, you end up using your car as the dressing room.You open the doors and twisting and heaving, get your ski boots on. By the time you put on all your other gear, your fingers are stiff while the rest of you is overheated. You shuffle to the ticket kiosk wondering if you have enough energy left to ski.
Here, all the preparation takes place in a warm lodge, where you can also leave your bag. Then, if it happens to be an especially blustery day, you can stop at the lodge to warm up before going out again.
At lunchtime at Killington or Pico, which are our usual haunts, we stop at any of the six lodges, pull out our sandwiches and enjoy a free lunch. We could buy lunch, or even be served lunch, but only if we choose to.
At most Western ski areas, the only choice is among the attractive, expensive restaurants, where pulling out a sandwich would draw stares and worse. I shudder to think what it would have cost to feed our three kids at these places - especially when they were teenagers!
And let's say you're wearing too much or too little. You can trudge back to the car. Or you can resign yourself to being cold or to sweating into your wicking shirt, which efficiently moves the moisture out into your fleece sweater.
Now, I do appreciate the higher mountains, dramatic beauty, elegant amenities and fabulous powder of Western ski resorts. I understand the economics at work here. But I have to admit that I prefer the ski areas of Vermont and the rest of New England : resorts that may offer just a bit less elegance but are generous with their free, warm, practical spaces where we can sit, eat and talk between runs down the mountain.
