Where Town and Gown Still Meet

Author: Devin ZarkowskyStaff Writer

Listening to our southern New England neighbors plan ski trips to Vermont usually involves words like "Okemo," "Killington," "Stratton" and sometimes "Mad River Glen." Infrequently, if ever, does such a list include the Middlebury Snow Bowl.

"We're a feeder area, not a destination," said Snow Bowl Area Manager Peter Mackey. Unlike certain megaresorts that dominate the landscape, the Snow Bowl demures, secreting exquisitely manicured slopes some 15 miles to Middlebury's east, past Bread Loaf on 760 acres willed in the early 20th Century by regional figurehead and outdoorsman Joseph Battell.

Battell's extensive landholdings stemmed from an intense connection with turn-of-the-century Vermont's unadulterated wilderness. Local historians recount with some humor his unwillingness to allow automobiles to pass through the Middlebury mountain access route. As he controlled the road and the surrounding forest, only horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians received travelling permission.

"Knowing his love of Vermont mountains and his fellow humans," said Dr. Stewart Ross during the 1955 Winter Carnival Poma lift dedication ceremony, "I am sure, if he could see the pleasure and happiness this and future generations are going to enjoy, he would be most pleased."

Beginning 1916 as a new frontier for Middlebury College Outing Club members, skiing the mountains beyond East Middlebury proved far more engaging than fleeting runs down the College's Chapel Hill. The Outing Club, founded in 1916, fostered nascent interest in what was an imported activity known as "alpin skidåkning" in Swedish. A men's winter sports team appeared in winter 1932-1933, likely inspired by the 1932 Lake Placid Winter Olympics; individuals who had been competing in Winter Carnivals as early as 1921 were now formally supported. The College sponsored its own event, one year after establishing the team. Soon-to-be archrival Dartmouth roundly trounced Middlebury during the first Winter Carnival meet, 37 to 6.5.

The 1935 carnival included women. Female competitors from Mount Holyoke and Jackson Colleges skiied down Chipman Hill during the festivities. Skiing gradually acquired adherents among female students and was acknowledged as a minor sport in 1936. The first women's team formed in 1939.

Along with a 30-meter ski jump, the Chipman Hill development featured two trails, the Haedes Express and the Haedes Freight. The "Skiing in the East" pamphlet published in 1939 in efforts to catalog "the best trails and how to get there" rated both trails "intermediate"; their steepest grade was 22 degrees.

Recognizing increased interest, the College decided to facilitate constructing a training ground for the ski team. Additional efforts completely refurbished Chipman Hill's aging jumping facilities; this structure is still on display, but reachable only by intrepid bushwhacking along Chipman Hill's eastern side.

Hubbard recalled blazing trees for removal with Beach Blye in 1932 while following behind J. J. Fritz, the man he credited with broaching the Snow Bowl concept. "Fritz was a federal employee at White Mountain National Park in Gorham, NH," recounted Hubbard. "Middlebury encouraged him to come and manage the newly ceded Battell property. He was used to skiing Tuckerman's Ravine and suggested constructing the Snow Bowl." To do so required altering a clause in Battell's will.

In line with Battell's love for Vermont's wilds, he donated his land contingent upon the promise that it remain undeveloped; this was to be a pristine place that hikers, hunters and other outdoors people might enjoy. Fritz was convinced that skiing preserved the will's spirit and successfully pursued permission to break the will's condition in local court. Preceded by only Stowe and Suicide Six, the Middlebury Snow Bowl is Vermont's third-oldest establishment specifically devoted to alpine sports.

By 1939, sufficient trail clearing allowed the now annual Winter Carnival outdoor events to shift eleven miles southeast from Chipman Hill to the current Snow Bowl location near Bread Loaf. A log cabin built with trees removed from the mountain served lunches. Recuperating skiers might have peered out either cabin window to watch their fellows navigating three trails.

Nowadays skiers tend not to concern themselves with what was a major detail in 1939: how to scale the mountain. Until 1940, ascents were by foot only. Tired skiers, probably those found primarily recuperating in the long cabin, clamored for a mechanical solution and found it in 1940 with the first rope tow's completion; no longer would effortless schussing be interrupted with arduous laden hikes. Mr. Hubbard remembers a trustee's son "…unfortunately paralyzed by a congenital illness. He offered to run the engine connected to the rope tow and would step on the gas when someone wanted to come up the hill. On crowded days he ran it nearly non-stop."

Middlebury skiing rose to international prominence when women's team captain Becky Fraser became the first to compete in a Winter Olympiad, in 1948 at St. Moritz, Switzerland. Her success contributed to that of the team, as Middlebury won the National Championship held in Sun Valley, Idaho that same year. Numerous athletes in both the Alpine and Nordic disciplines followed Fraser's path to success on the United States National Ski Team.

Support mustered during Dr. Samuel Stratton's term as Middlebury College President is largely responsible for early Snow Bowl expansions. The New York Times reporter Frank Elkins quoted a Stratton surrounded by board-footed students on Jan. 26, 1946 lauding the ski-conscious campus. "Middlebury is very much interested in skiing, and the authorities are doing more and more each year in improving the facilities….Middlebury is a historic college, a small college and an outdoor college, and we're taking fullest advantage of our natural facilities."

Stratton, himself an avid skier, directed the Snow Bowl's most pronounced growth to date between 1946 and 1962. Akin to an extended property, the area sported a haphazard, sometimes unkempt exterior. Most noticeable was the C. V. Starr Shelter. The College began replacing the aging and inadequate cabin in 1956, but was unable to complete the new building until 1962 due to insufficient funds.

During the mid-1940's, sometime after fitting a similar emplacement to a Lake Placid Olympic slope, Godfrey Dewey himself designed a fifty meter jump that appeared on the Snow Bowl's northern face. Alongside a 15-meter practice frame, this facility distinguished Middlebury's as the collegiate level's finest. An unfortunate accident involving a Lake Placid jumper, who sued Middlebury College and won, resulted in all colleges and universities eliminating the event from official competitions. Skyrocketing liability insurance costs forced their dismantling in 1980.

An anonymous gift totaling $26,690 enabled the college to finally enclose the exposed fireplace with a structure that still serves as the Snow Bowl ticketing center, administrative offices and base lodge. Amenities listed in a 1956 press release comprise "heated toilets with running water and even electric hand driers and warmers for the comfort of the skiers using the area." Lift and tow rates were $3.50 for an all day pass, $2.50 for a half-day or thirty-five cents per ride.

The Snow Bowl solidified a relationship with local residents by sponsoring Addison County youth teams beginning in 1957. An existing organization, the Middlebury College Snow Bowl Club, administered Christmas vacation time trials in efforts to organize groups to compete in the newly-formed Mid-Vermont Junior Skiing Council, a body seeking to formalize high school youth races held at the Snow Bowl since 1951. Middlebury College alumus Joseph Jones, a Rutland resident and former U.S. Ski Team member, proved instrumental in creating the Council. Freque
nt 5 a.m. on-mountain training sessions instilled an overriding sense of community echoed by current and former team parents, especially when concerning welcomed carpooling opportunities.

"Poma" now evokes instant skier recognition, being the dominant lift manufacturer in the world. A fledgling company in 1954, few Poma products existed in North America. Middlebury College became the first United States Poma customer, uprooting the Worth Mountain rope tow to install a lift. Two others followed in 1963 and 1965, the Battell and Ski School Poma lifts, respectively.

Though supported largely by the College through its first years, the Middlebury Snow Bowl is now self-sufficient. Mackey notes that season ticket sales provide the economic base with single pass sales completing the budget's balance. The College did underwrite capital projects, like installing the chairlifts in 1969, 1985 and 1988 that currently service the area. President Armstrong authorized an interest-free $225,000 loan for the first, stipulating only that it be repaid in ten years.

Aside from the five trails added later in 1969, the Snow Bowl survives buyouts and mergers all too common in current Vermont skiing politics in a state similar to that realized after the sixties growth spurt; increasingly cut-throat economics virtually evaporated comparably-sized, town-oriented areas during the 1970s.

Mackey reflects on one particularly unfortunate winter. "The 1979-1980 year exemplified the need for snowmaking. We didn't open until February. We had guys hired here that we needed to keep busy, so we decided to cut a new trail. We also did some logging for the College, thinning out a pine plantation near the Bread Loaf campus. Ironically enough, that same year an Army unit had scheduled winter maneuvers for the area. Their idea was to ski backcountry and do snowshoeing while using the Snow Bowl as a base. Well, that never happened and they actually ended up helping our guys stack wood." Despite a precipitously few thirty-five open days, sturdy relations with the College and community assured staff jobs.

Former area manager and the first paid ski patrolman Howard Kelton described the Snow Bowl as Addison County's best babysitter. "It's truly a family ski area: when you drop your kids off, you know they will be taken care of. If they need money or a ride home, someone will donate or offer."

"Unlike Europe, the skiing is unpretentious," commented Professor Bettina Matthias. "The family-oriented, fifties-style atmosphere is much more pleasant; there are also no out of control 'Pistensäue'," which translates to "trail pigs".

"Winter Carnival GS [Giant Slalom] races are the best," intones an ebullient Jeff Byers, professor of organic chemistry at Middlebury College. "I love watching the racers catch air at the top of the course. The Allen trail is second to none in the East when it gets all moguly towards the end of the season. To boot, the lodge offers the cheapest food of any ski area in New England."

Often, residents characterize Middlebury College as "the town's college," though recent history has skewed said distinction. Truly, however, does this pastoral diversion humbly maintain its title, "the town's mountain." Mackey succinctly encapsulates the intrinsic union between community and College, "We don't want resort crowds. We are here to serve skiers in the immediate area and we do that well."

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