Northern exposure

I love Jay Peak's unique mix of Old School crustiness and epic powder dumps. The new amenities, such as the ritzy Tram Haus Lodge, aren't bad either! This profile was done for the New England Ski Journal.

Jay Peak rules to roost

We might as well start with the cold, ’cause there’s really no getting around it. If you’re going to travel all the way to Jay Peak, hard by the Canadian border off Route 100, you better be ready for the those arctic temperatures that roll across the Great Lakes and down from Quebec. And while we’re at it, we should mention the wind that brings those frigid blasts across the border. But, as any self-made businessperson knows, great sacrifices often lead to great rewards. Jay Peak in upstate Vermont certainly requires the former but offers plenty of the latter. And that’s all because of one simple entity … the Jay Cloud.

Considered by some to be the stuff of legend, the Jay Cloud is actually a meteorological phenomenon that, while not specific to Jay per se, still manages to produce more snow here than anyplace else in the Green Mountain State. The technical term for the cloud is an orthographic uplift, which means those westerly winds, carrying precipitation from the Great Lakes, run smack into Jay, rise and then stall, typically producing snow. Lots of snow.

In short, Jay, thanks to prevailing weather patterns, is New England skiing’s version of the old real estate mantra: Location, location, location. When every place else has nothing, Jay’s got something. And when other areas get a dusting, Jay gets dumped on. The result is an outrageous annual snowfall that routinely threatens the 400-inch plateau (and was close to 200 inches by mid-February this season).

“The snow is the attraction,” says Scott Bumpus, a longtime Jay fan from Boston’s North Shore, with the conviction of a true disciple. “It’s as simple as that. They get snow when no one else does. Not Quebec, not Mont St. Anne.

“I probably got 40 days of powder last year,” he says. “It’s totally addicting. I can’t even ride groomers anymore because of Jay. If it’s not powder like Jay, it’s not worth it.”

Bumpus is not alone in his high praise of Jay Peak. The resort attracts a loyal following of skiers and riders from both sides of the border. The fact that it’s not the easiest drive (especially if the Jay Cloud is working its magic) is further testament to Jay’s appeal. Bring a few extra layers — including sock liners, glove liners, and balaclava — and leave the wimpy attitude at home. If you make the effort, Jay will repay you, in spades. This is not ski country for the timid or frail. It’s ski country, period. It’s what you make of it, and if you bring the right gear and the right mindset, you should have a blast.

The resort, with a top elevation of 3,968 feet and 2,153 feet of vertical, now boasts roughly 50 miles of skiable terrain — 78 trails, glades and chutes, plus four terrain parks — over two peaks (some 15-20 more trails and glades are currently under consideration to the west). There are eight lifts, ranging from Vermont’s only aerial tramway and the Jet triple on Stateside to a moving carpet and a good, old-fashioned T-bar, which combined can carry more than 12,000 skiers up the hill each hour. The variety of terrain is mighty impressive, with runs that can satisfy the hard-core skiers and riders as well as novices. Taken all together, the trail breakdown is 20 percent novice, 40 percent intermediate and 40 percent advanced, in addition to Jay’s four terrain parks. If you hear someone mention that Jay has something for everyone, take that comment to the bank.

The Jay snow crew does an admirable job keeping much of that natural snow on the trails, but invariably a good portion of Mother Nature’s bounty collects in the trees, due to the aforementioned winds. That’s when Jay’s glades shine. The chutes and glades off Jay’s summit are some of the best anywhere on the East Coast. Ripping first tracks on the Face Chutes or Tuckerman’s Chute after a fresh snowfall is one of life’s great hair-raising pleasures. The same holds true for Beaver Pond Glade and Andre’s Paradise off Ullr’s Dream (which my wife and kids, who aren’t big tree-ski fans, can use to scoot around the glades and reconnect with me) by the West Basin, and Vertigo, Buckeroo Bonzai, Deliverance and Canyon Land as they angle toward the Bonaventure Chair.

“My first years at Jay, I spent many nights in my Volkswagen van in the parking lot,” says Bumpus. “When I’d wake up, there were two or three other VW vans, and usually fresh snow. And those first shots were just so deep and so fluffy. There’s nothing like it.”

On Stateside, I’m a sucker for the crisp turns to be had on The Jet, U.N., Haynes, Mont L’Entrepide, and Kitzbuehel, but I’ll wander off to the trees at Timbuktu, Kitz Woods and Hell’s Woods if I need a fiber fix. Tramside, the steeps on JFK, Green Beret and Upper River Quai are almost intoxicating first thing in the morning, while my girls (including a teenager and a 'tweener) are more likely to opt for intermediate trails such as Alligator Alley, Northway, and Upper Goat Run and Green Mountain Boys until their legs get acclimated. In reality, though, trying to rate the runs at Jay is something of a silly exercise — when the snow is flying here they’re all good. Period.

Concerned about traveling with the kids? Don’t be. First of all, if you’re staying on property, there are great deals and programs for the youngsters, such as kids 14 and under ski and stay for free (non-holidays only), kids under 6 eat free, and parents with children ages 2-7 have access to free day care (subject to availability). But, to be perfectly honest, you don’t want the youngsters in day care. Jay has a well-deserved reputation for nurturing the next generation of rambunctious little grommets, precisely because it’s not a mountain that pampers anyone. Dave Hoke, program supervisor for Jay’s Mountain Adventure Camp, epitomizes that attitude. “Jay Peak is a family ski hill,” he says. “Everything is small and personal while the mountain itself skis huge.”

“Modern world kids are treated like drones — told how to think and when to think,” says Hoke, “Snow sports are nothing really fantastic. They’re about learning how to function on a different planet, a new relationship with gravity. Everything you’re doing intuitively is backwards. Kids need the opportunity to figure this out on their own. Under the right circumstances, any kid can get it.”

To make sure everyone, including every child, has that opportunity to “get it,” Jay offers a dizzying menu of lessons and clinics for skiers and boarders of all ages (starting as early as 3 years old), and every ability level, from two-hour sessions to five-day packages. As befits Jay’s diverse terrain, the resort also offers specialty sessions, such as glade, powder, backcountry and women’s clinics. The resort even has set aside 80 acres — called The Zone — that is earmarked for beginners, serviced by four dedicated lifts.

Of course, once you learn a few new tricks, you’ll want to try them out. The trails and glades that criss-cross the resort between the two peaks are a veritable cornucopia of conditions spread judiciously over 385 acres. The traditional long run-outs to the lodge — Harmony Lane and Interstate — not only are perfect for first-timers, but a great cool-down for more advanced skiers and riders who have fried their thighs on Jay’s upper reaches. If you’re feeling daring, and capable, the backwoods await. Jay takes a remarkably refreshing approach toward skiing on the 100-plus acres of off-piste terrain. Simply, they don’t condone it, and they don’t prohibit it. The decision is up to you.

However, there are a few caveats that you should know if you head to the backcountry. Keep an eye out for hazards; helmets are strongly recommended. Travel in groups of three, so if someone gets hurt, he or she won’t be left alone while someone else gets help. Remember, though, you and your compadres are on your own. Jay’s ski patrol members sweep on-property glades at 3 p.m., but they don’t sweep backcountry.

Still, Jay today is shedding some of its reputation as a rough-and-tumble Old School mountain (for example, Verizon customers will love the reception they get on their cell phones, thanks to a Verizon antenna at the summit, allowing them to keep in touch with friends and family members around the hill). Granted, the peaks and trails are as burly as ever, as is the delightfully dumpy old main lodge and the welcoming, hands-on approach of resort president Bill Stenger. But Jay also is getting up to speed with the demand for modern conveniences, providing all the essentials that a ski family is looking for in a full-service resort. “The important distinction,” says Jay fan and writer Jocko Weyland, “is that those essentials haven’t become overbearing and overly grandiose distractions.”

Weyland might want to rethink that statement after he gets a good look at Jay’s new state-of-the-art Tram Haus Lodge, which just opened earlier this year. The lodge, with 57 suites, a new restaurant, coffee shop and a bar featuring views of the mountain, is the first of several upcoming facelifts at the resort. But even this beautiful new structure takes a back seat to the skiing and riding at Jay Peak. And that’s how it should be.

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Skiing back through the years

Skiing has such a rich history here in Northeast, and few places capture the lore as well as the New England Lost Ski Area Project, the brainchild of Massachusetts native Jeremy Davis. Just perusing the site, uncovering details of areas I'd been to, or heard about, of live nearby, such as Hamilton Ski Tow, pictured at right (I have no idea who that handsome character is), tugs at my nostalgic heart. This feature was written for the New England Ski Journal.

Lost but Not Forgotten

There’s a distinct paradox at the intersection of Jeremy Davis’ vocation and his cherished pastime. At his “real” job, as a meteorologist for Weather Routing Incorporated in upstate New York, Davis forecasts the future, guiding tankers and cargo ships over the Seven Seas. But in his free time, Davis delves into the past, embracing his avocation — the New England Lost Ski Area Project (NELSAP).

“I’ve always been fascinated by the way things change over time, how things evolve, through history,” says Davis from his home in Wilton, N.Y., outside Saratoga.

Davis, a 32-year-old Massachusetts native who graduated from Lyndon State College in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, admits he’s stuck in a time warp. He launched the NELSAP website (nelsap.org) as a hobby during his junior year in 1998. The idea sprung from a childhood curiosity with defunct ski areas, such as Mount Whittier in New Hampshire or Mount Agamenticus in southern Maine, that his family discovered during summer travels. He started with six and expected to find another 100 or so. At the most, 200. Instead, he uncovered more than 400 in the first few years. What he also learned was that he wasn’t alone in his love of ski lore. The site unleashed a tidal wave of nostalgia among thousands of skiers, young and old alike, and particularly Baby Boomers now taking the time to look in their personal rear view mirror at the winters of their youth.

“People like that lost Americana stuff, like lost diners, lost railroads and lost amusement parks,” says Davis. “This idea fits into that. It’s all fun, all positive memories. We’re representing the good times from the past for a lot of people.”

Narrowly defined, Davis’ site now catalogues more than 600 “lost” ski areas, ranging from tiny backyard slopes to larger resorts. Many were cozy areas with a few lifts, typically rope tows, J-bars and T-bars, maybe a lodge, and about a half-dozen trails. Close to Boston, for example, there’s Boston Hills on Route 114 in North Andover (where you can still barely make out the ragged silhouettes of the trails). Or, in my backyard on Boston’s North Shore, there once was Hamilton Hills. (“I remember the rope tow there,” a friend who grew up here told me. “It used to rip your mittens right off your hands.”)

But relegating NELSAP to narrow definitions is a disservice to Davis’ work. In reality, the NELSAP site is a vibrant, teeming community, a living history of a sport that, to many, is synonymous with New England winters. A decade after its launch, the site still averages 900 visitors a day, and the NELSAP discussion board rivals any on the web unrelated to the Las Vegas line. That’s because, with each ski area, the site captures a place and time capable of setting off a torrent of tales. Those memories are all the more prized because most of these areas no longer exist. NELSAP mends a frayed connection strained by the passing of decades — a cyber world where temperamental lifts run from sunrise to sunset and the snow flies forever.

Glenn Parkinson, president of the New England Ski Museum in North Conway, N.H., understands the deep vein that Davis is mining. Parkinson coined the phrase “lost ski areas” in “First Tracks,” his book on Maine ski history. He added a final chapter on lost ski areas as an afterthought and was stunned by the response.

“It really struck a chord and made ski history local and made it personal,” he says. “Jeremy’s taken it one step further by putting it on the Internet.

“What Jeremy has done with NELSAP is tapped into people who are in their teens, 20s and 30s, as well as their 50s and 60s. It brings people in to see their own personal history, and that sparks an interest in the broader context of ski history.”

Across the six-state region, particularly Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, today’s mega-resorts conjure images of graceful turns on groomed slopes. It’s easy to forget that alpine skiing as we know it, either as a sport or a livelihood, didn’t exist a century ago. But in those hundred short years, the sport has undergone an incredible transformation. Skiing captivated us. With the advent of rope tows and chairlifts, ski areas began popping up like drive-in theaters. Soon, ski trains started hauling well-heeled adventure-seekers from the urban centers of Boston and New York to northern outposts including Stowe, Vermont and North Conway, N.H.

Local areas — true mom and pop operations — sprouted everywhere, creating new generations of skiers, and establishing a relatively inexpensive feeder system for the bigger resorts. I’m a product of those times, growing up in the 1960s just outside of New York City. My siblings and I admired legends including Jean-Claude Killy and Billy Kidd, and tried to imitate their exploits on any incline we could find. Often, those delusions of grandeur were played out on tiny, rough-cut hills near my grandparents’ home in Manchester, N.H.

Most, sadly, have vanished. The 1970s were especially harsh on smaller slopes, when a confluence of high gas prices, a spike in insurance premiums and several severe snow droughts forced many to close. Often, a padlock was slapped on the lodge, and owners simply walked away. At others, equipment was auctioned off. All left behind spectral trails that grow more dim with each passing year.

Still, like any history, evidence of these “lost areas” remains. There are photographs and illustrated trail maps, brochures and patches, newspaper accounts and magazine articles. Much of the proof is as ephemeral, and elusive, as memories, oral tales passed down through generations, recollections of those who braved Old Man Winter, donning leather boots and strapping on spring-loaded bindings and wooden boards.

There also are tangible vestiges of these bygone slopes — base lodge foundations, warming huts, lift shacks and engines, tower stanchions, entire lifts. These remnants, distant cousins of the hand-built stone walls that lace old farms or fishing villages dating back to Revolutionary times, are cables connecting us to the past, a testament to skiing’s New England legacy.

“You can almost see all the people having fun, the way things used to be,” says Davis, acknowledging that the kinship that once defined the sport is fading. “It’s definitely a different experience now, and a lot of these areas are catering to the upper-class vacationer, rather than the neighborhood kid.”

Today, having recorded close to 600 lost areas in New England alone, and almost a hundred more elsewhere in the Northeast, Davis can barely keep pace with the free flow of photographs, memorabilia, written recollections and historical fact. Combined with technological advances, from satellite photography to digitized articles, Davis is awash in material for the site.

“People are giving me more information than ever,” says Davis, who admits that his responsibilities as a full-time forecaster and homeowner have cut into the time once devoted to the website. “The floodgates are open. But the great thing about e-mails is that they never go away. I have all that information, and it’s all great stuff.”

Davis also loves sleuthing lost areas year-round, on skis, on snowshoes or on foot, and often organizes NELSAP outings. What’s the attraction? “Why do you go to a ghost town?” Parkinson replies. “It’s the mystery.”

For Davis, seeing these slopes in person brings them to life, strengthening that bond. “When I visit these areas, I always try to find pictures from newspapers or magazines, to see what they were like 20, 30, 40 years ago,” he says. “Then, when I’m looking up at an overgrown slope, with its broken-down lifts, I try to mentally picture everything that was going on. You can just use your imagination, like a Polaroid camera, to erase the trees, and eventually see the place as it looked back then.”

However, there also is a sense of urgency about Davis’ efforts. Not only are the areas being lost to time’s inexorable march, but so are those who were so connected to the sport’s earlier days. “Time is running out to document a lot of the areas, particularly the more obscure ones,” he says. “They’re either being developed, or they’ve grown in so much that they’re totally indistinguishable.”

At the ripe old age of 32, Davis has a renewed perspective with the realization that several areas he skied at as a youngster, such as King Ridge in New Hampshire, have shut down. There also is the human component. Memories fade, and older skiers, get, well, older. Many are now gone, taking their memories and stories with them.

“We only have so many years before a lot of these older skiers unfortunately pass away,” says Davis. “We’re at an age when there are still people who remember skiing in the ’30s, but in another 10 years we’re not going to have that many people left.”

For those of us who remain, NELSAP offers a welcomed run down Memory Lane, long after our favorite childhood areas have faded from the landscape.

For more information on the New England Lost Ski Area Project, or to purchase Davis’s new book, “Lost Ski Areas of the White Mountains,” visit nelsap.org.

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