Pride and preservation
Mad River Glen maintains hold on tradition, even as it renovates its famous single-chair lift

Michelle Bookless | multimedia editor
mbookless2@smcvt.edu

For ski resorts today, high speed chair-lifts, gondolas, mountain-side cabins, and wide, groomed trails are the norm. Mad River Glen, however, is not the norm, and it’s not a resort.

Currently, Mad River Glen ski area in Waitsfield, Vt. is one of only two remaining ski areas in the U.S. that owns and operates a single-chair lift; Mount Eyak ski area in Alaska owns the other.

Mad River Glen is known for its steadfast hold on tradition and old-style skiing values. Photo courtesy of Eric Friedman

Eric Friedman, marketing director for Mad River and a skiing enthusiast, says the lift was built by the American Steel and Wire Company in 1946 and 1947. Now, 60 years later, the lift, fondly referred to as Old Faithful, is getting a renovation.

A newer “Old Faithful”

The $1.54 million renovation of the single-chair lift will begin on the day after the mountain closes in April, and will be finished by October, Friedman says. As for the decision to renovate it now instead of later, Friedman says it had to be done as soon as possible.

“The tower bases were starting to go and show their age,” he says. “It’s cost prohibitive to maintain the single right now.”

Still, in an age when ski resorts are putting in faster, bigger lifts to carry as many skiers up the mountain as possible, Mad River has decided to keep the single, which only carries 480 skiers up per hour, Friedman says.

“In this day and age most ski areas are trying really hard to get as many people up the mountain as they can and not worrying too much about what the crowds are like on the trails,” he says. “We take a different look at it.”

Friedman says that the decision to keep the lift was not only due to Mad River’s steadfast hold on tradition, but pragmatism as well.

“If we put in a double chair nobody would have donated a dime to do it,” he says, adding that a double-chair lift costs almost $300,000 less than the renovations to the single.

The reason most people go to Mad River is to experience the old skiing values the mountain and its shareholders wholeheartedly embrace and protect, Friedman says.

Michael Hayes, a St. Michael’s College junior and president of the Ski and Snowboard club says he likes the atmosphere the area offers.

“I think Mad River is a really different and unique place because it has stuck to its grassroots and kept the main mountain accessed by a single-chair,” he says.

Still, he says that although he enjoys less traffic on the trails, it is at the expense of waiting in larger than normal lift lines.

Heather Atwell, director of programs and public affairs for the Vermont Ski Areas Association and a former ski instructor says she believes the decision to keep the single was important for Mad River.

“I think it definitely fits with everything that, as an organization, they represent,” she says. “Owners want to preserve the way skiing was in the past and they’ve done a tremendous job of doing that.”

Sophomore and avid skier Scott Hinman agrees.

“I like the single-chair because it adds to the atmosphere of an original East Coast slope,” he says.

When hamburgers were cooked to order

Although the single-chair lift is being renovated it will not be replaced with a double. Photo courtesy of Eric Friedman

Indeed, the Mad River shareholders have decided that maintaining tradition is the most important aspect of the mountain's atmosphere. From the landscape to the base lodge, Friedman says the mountain hasn’t changed much since it opened on Dec. 11, 1948.

He says that “simple things, like walking into the base lodge and getting a hamburger that was actually cooked to order, not sitting on a slide, which is unusual in a ski resort today,” are what sets Mad River apart from other, more modern resorts.

In addition, the average department head has worked at the mountain for 17 years and many employees have been working there for close to 40 years, Friedman says.

Still, he says one of the best aspects of the mountain is the terrain it offers.

“You take away everything from this place—You strip away the lifts, you strip away the people, you strip away everything else, and what you’re left with is arguably the best expert ski terrain in New England, bar none,” he says. “That’s what people come here for.”

Friedman says that due to little snowmaking and grooming, the ski area caters to a different crowd than the normal ski resort today.

“We aren’t trying to be everything to everybody,” he says. “We’re not going after the Okemo crowd that wants wall-to-wall, 100 percent snowmaking coverage.”

Hinman says sometimes this lack of snowmaking can be a detriment to the mountain. The lack of snowmaking and increasingly poorer winters mean fewer good days for skiing, he says.

In addition to the different terrain, Mad River is one of only four remaining ski areas in the United States that does not allow snowboarders, including Alta and Deer Valley in Utah and Taos in New Mexico. Friedman says although Mad River was the second area in the state to allow snowboarding, after Stratton Mountain Ski Resort, a confrontation between the owner at the time, Betsy Pratt, and a group of local snowboarders led to the ban in 1991.

Friedman says snowboarders have had a chance to change the ban and have decided not to.

“This place was going out of business, in 1995, this place was a very dubious thing whether it was ever going to re-open and snowboarders had every opportunity to buy shares in this co-op and the chose not to,” he says. “I don’t feel too bad for them because they didn’t come through for us when we needed it.”

Hayes says although he realizes the mountain’s wishes to maintain an old-school skiing atmosphere, he doesn’t fully support the ban.

“I feel like they [snowboarders] should be able to come,” he says, “but it is hard because you’re trying to attract a certain crowd.”

Friedman says the ban on snowboarding has been questioned because of the amount of revenue it could generate, but says the shareholders have agreed that their mission is about protection and preservation, not financial profit.

“Isn’t it nice in this day and age, when everything is for sale, that we don’t do that for that reason?” he says.

Friedman says he believes Mad River has the best expert ski terrain in New England. Photo courtesy of Eric Friedman

Don’t call us a resort

Friedman says this is one of the reasons he and the shareholders maintain that Mad River should be called a ski area, not a ski resort.

“We think about ourselves as a ski area,” he says. “A ski area sells skiing, resorts sell other things.”

Also, Friedman says he believes that the ski industry today has increasingly become reliant on real estate and has taken its focus off the condition of the experience on the mountain.

Still, Atwell says that the changes made at ski resorts have been, in part, due to an increasingly aggressive market.

“It’s definitely a competitive market, being in the ski industry,” she says. “I think it’s wonderful that an area like Mad River Glen can thrive with their decision to stick to things that are a little bit more old-fashion but, overall in this industry, many resorts have had to adapt and change and progress.”

With Old Faithful's renovation the mountain seems ready to update while still keeping an icon of the old-style skiing days.

Atwell says she is happy with the Mad River shareholders' decision and continuing hold on tradition.

“I think they really value what skiing has always been about, which is being in the outdoors and skiing in natural snow and not really changing the landscape for their benefit,” she says. “They take what nature gives them and they ski it.”