Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
clear sky
weather
OMAN
25°C / 25°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

A Town That Saved a Mountain, and a Mountain That Saved a Town

1904907
1904907
minus
plus

Jim Lyall briskly skied up Mount Ascutney, eagerly pointing out the view. We were skinning up a ski area in southern Vermont, but the chairlifts are long gone. At the top of the mountain we arrived at an abandoned ski patrol cabin and lift station. A cold breeze whipped through the deserted structures. It had a ghostly, post-apocalyptic feel.


Lyall beckoned me up an old chairlift ramp. He swept his ski pole across the panorama and pointed to the snow-covered summits of Okemo and Killington, ski resorts that lie within a 30-mile radius. The White Mountains of New Hampshire felt close enough to touch.


“There would be many times that I would stand up here and watch storms dump snow on those ski areas and just bypass Ascutney. We couldn’t win,” said Lyall, an avid backcountry 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. But when it closed in 2010 because of scant snow and mismanagement (twin killers of small ski resorts), it threatened to take with it the nearby community of West Windsor, Vermont, population 1,099.


“Property values plummeted, condos on the mountain saw their value decrease by more than half, and taxes went up,” recalled Glenn Seward, who worked at the resort for 18 years, once as the director of mountain operations. The town’s general store, the gathering place of the community, also went broke and closed.


“We were desperate,” said Seward, who at the time was chair of the West Windsor Selectboard, a Vermont town’s equivalent of a city council.


That desperation led the community to hitch its fortune to the mountain, becoming a model for how a small ski area and its community can thrive in the era of climate change. Working with the state of Vermont as well as the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, the town bought the failed ski area in 2015. But instead of allowing a private company to run the mountain, contracting out its operations, the local residents themselves would chart a sustainable, volunteer-driven path for the ski area.


Seven years later, Mount Ascutney and West Windsor are magnets for families and outdoor enthusiasts. Between 2010 and 2020, the town’s population jumped more than 20%, and median single-family home sale prices more than doubled, to $329,750. A bustling new general store featuring local products has opened in the village of Brownsville, reinvigorating the centre of the West Windsor community. The town and mountain draw people year-round, from endurance runners and mountain bikers in the warm months to skiers in winter.


At the heart of this revival is Ascutney Outdoors, a nonprofit with more than 100 volunteers that now runs recreation on the mountain. Instead of high-speed quads and snow-making, skiers take a rope tow or T-bar that accesses 435-vertical feet of skiing, found on 10 natural-snow trails that are groomed. There is also a lift for snow tubing. A lift ticket costs $20, or $100 for a season pass. The lifts run on Saturday and Sunday when there is enough snow, and it takes about 40 volunteers to staff a busy weekend.


The upper 1,300 vertical feet of the mountain, maintained by Ascutney Trails Association, is reserved for backcountry skiers to ski up and ski down for free — although donations are appreciated. Thursday night ski races take place under lights, and an after-school programme brings children to the mountain every afternoon. The mountain is also home to 45 miles of renowned mountain bike trails, numerous hiking trails and Mount Ascutney State Park. It is one of the top hang-gliding sites in New England.


“When there’s snow, we ski, and when there’s not, we do other things,” said Seward, who is now executive director of Ascutney Outdoors. “That’s a pretty easy model to sustain.”


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon