Great weather closes out ski season

Your scribe had hammered his way back from New Mexico in four days. The journey was more than 2,100 miles and charging stops were numerous. He had employed several different strategies. In the west, where charging stations were 60 or 70 miles apart, he figured out that he could drive at 75 mph, the speed limit, and then take very short stops at charge points — getting 75 miles of charge in as little as 18 minutes.

As he moved further east, he could sit in the right lane of the interstates at a more modest pace, charge less frequently but for longer periods of time. In the end, averaging 530 miles a day, he made it home in time to be at the mountain for celebration of the 2022-23 season. Still bothered by assorted lower leg woes, one final trip down Panic Alley, Sunrise and Standard provided a fitting end to a difficult season.

So, what kind of year was it here at Stowe, Vail? Well, the answer kind of depends on who and when you asked. As the Scribe meandered from party to party on Sunday afternoon, asking that question the responses varied a great deal. By the way, it was fun to see that with the paid parking at an end, all the lots at Mansfield base and Midway were jam-packed with vehicles of every description.

On this sunny day, with a fair amount of snow still on the slopes, most of those asked to talk about their winter were positive. Lots of good turns were had over the last six or seven weeks and it is no secret that skiers and riders tend to have short memories. So, Mother Nature, what have you done for us lately?

Back in early January, the snowpack, as measured at the WCAX snow stake alongside the upper Toll Road, was sitting at about 16 inches, leaving Stowe’s skiers and riders a rather narrow trail menu from which to choose their descents. Over the next month things slowly improved but from mid-February on it all changed for the better. Steady snowfall deepened the snowpack and, finally, every route on the mountain was open.

The culmination of this was a big storm that hit in the second week of March that pushed the reading up to almost 90 inches at the stake. A rather astounding turn of events for a season that had seemed pretty blah for the first three months. Given all the reports coming back of mega snow depths at most of the western mountains, this proved to be a source of great pleasure for Stowe’s loyal diehards.

It was not all roses back here, however. There remains a simmering and occasionally boiling cauldron of discontent about the situation at Stowe Mountain Resort. Whether justified or not, the term Vail has become rather unpopular with Stowe’s locals. Nostalgia for the so-called good old days has increasingly been a conversational topic here on the hill and down in the surrounding communities within an easy drive from the parking lots.

The paid parking was not popular, to put it mildly. Some would say that it was successful on some level as the traffic jams that plagued the resort last year were less frequent. However, as your scribe experienced during that big storm in mid-March when he was unable to get up Harlow Hill thanks to three separate cars being off the road and bottling up the traffic flow, traffic issues have not disappeared.

Skeptics observed that when there is a big storm on the weekend, traffic remains a major issue. The flip side is that if Vail-Stowe says that making money from paid parking is not the goal, why are Stowe’s paying customers being asked to ride a shuttle bus from the Toll House or the touring center on Fridays when it is raining, and the Mansfield lot is at best a quarter-full?

Another point of conflict remains the resort’s uphill policy. Virtually every ski resort in the industry — at least those not part of Vail’s empire have found a way to allow uphill traffic during operating hours. Most create a marked lane to allow access to the top. Many use a system where uphill skiers sign-in and are either asked to sign a waiver, including an agreement to use the appropriate uphill lane or even pay a modest fee.

One of the things your scribe has noticed is that most of the uphill skiers climbing the hill in the dark of winter are ticketholders. As Chris Looney pointed out in his analysis of the lease arrangement between Stowe-Vail and the state, this is state land. Seems like there ought to be a better formula in place for ensuring access to those willing to take the hard way to the top.

The two topics just mentioned are areas where patrons are somewhat unhappy with the resort’s operators. However, it seems also to your scribe, who has now been sliding down this hill for some 72 years, that many long-time patrons simply don’t feel connected to the resort in the way that had been the case for decades. There has always been varying amounts of dissatisfaction with the ways of the Mountain Company, such is the nature of so-called “town-gown” relationships — a term borrowed from the world of small towns with colleges.

At the same time, those same muttering patrons always seemed to feel that in the end, it was their mountain. It seems to your scribe that more and more of the skiers and riders simply don’t feel as connected to what has traditionally been their home hill.

If you don’t agree with the Scribe’s assertion, ask yourself about long-time ski buddies that either aren’t here on the hill as frequently as in the past or have opted into buying a season pass at a different spot — Jay Peak, Bolton, Sugarbush and Smugglers’ Notch have all seen some migration of past Stowe skiers and riders. The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence, but your scribe has seen more than a few friends browsing in new pastures.

What will next year bring? Climate change skeptics point to the huge amount of snowfall in the West as a reassuring note that winter isn’t going away anytime soon. On the other hand, data seems to indicate that the northeastern part of the country is warming faster than any other section.

If you were a mountain operations snowmaker at Stowe this past winter, you got quite a few days off from the beginning of November into the middle of January. Maybe this is a sign of a continuing shrinking of the winter season or maybe it is an aberration. Whatever the answer might be, the prospects going into the 2023-24 season are far from clear. For the moment, reflection on the last two months in Stowe leads to the conclusion that, all-in-all, it was an OK year — one that certainly finished on a much higher note than the one sounded back in the early days of the season.

Kim Brown, a ski bum by winter and a hacker by summer, lives in Waterbury Center.