“While I would never, ever, under any conceivable circumstances want to be forced to pick a single resort to settle down with and ski exclusively, I can tell you that if I had to pick one, it would have to have all the things that Sugarbush in Warren, Vermont has going for it.”

I wrote that sentence recently while my sweetheart, Marilyn, and I were comfortably settled in a very nice room slopeside in the Claybrook Hotel, having just enjoyed a sunny day on slopes with plenty of well-groomed snow, and a soak in the outdoor hottub afterward. I’ve skied Sugarbush a number of times over the past decades, and I keep going back, simply because it offers so many things that are important to me in choosing where I want to ski.

On my list of must-haves in favorite ski resort #1 is probably  vertical. Sugarbush has it. While I dearly love some smaller hills, there’s something about a big mountain with a lot of vertical drop that’s just plain exciting–inspiring, even. And two mountains with lots of vertical are even better! Sugarbush has 2,400 vertical feet on Lincoln Peak, and 2,600 on Mount Ellen. The runs on both mountains are long–long enough that most people have to stop for a break part way down.

#2 is variety. Sugarbush with its two separate areas that you can ski on a single ticket is double the fun! Added together, Lincoln Peak and Mount Ellen, Sugarbush offer 508 acres, 111 trails, 16 lifts, 2 terrain parks, and 18  glades. Plus there’s about 2000 acres of wooded backcountry in the Slidebrook zone between the two “resorts” that’s open to exploration. Some of the trails at Sugarbush are classics. If you like lift-serviced steep and gnarly, you’ll love Castlerock. More than one pair of skis has been sacrificed on the altar of Castlrock’s natural snow trails. If you like twisting, old-fashioned New England ski trails with double fall lines, the grin-factor on Jester (on Lincoln Peak) is incredibly high. Jester had to be the inspiration for the rollercoaster—or maybe it was vice-versa. You could spend a week at Sugarbush and probably not ski the same trail twice. Add in the glades and Slidebrook and you could likely make it a season. That’s variety!

#3  is lifts. Give me an extensive lift system that gets you away from the base lodge in a hurry, then doesn’t require you to return there until you are ready for lunch. At Sugarbush you can get up on the mountain and yo-yo off Lincoln, Lynx, and Castlerock Peaks or the summit or a side ridge of Mount Ellen to your heart’s content. In my experience, even on the busiest of days you can always find a lift with a short line. Speaking of lifts, if you happen to just like riding on chairlifts, the Slidebrook Express, which whisks you from Lincoln Peak to Mount Ellen is worth the ride just for the views. It goes uphill and down and there’s nothing else quite like it in New England – or anywhere else I know of.

#4 is good snowmaking and grooming. Unlike some of their competitors, Sugarbush doesn’t brag about the power of their snowmaking and grooming very much. They just quietly deliver good conditions day after day through a long season.

#5 is no crowds. No matter which direction you are arriving from, you have to deliberately drive past other great ski hills to get to Sugarbush; it’s just far enough away from major cities to not get really crowded—ever.

#6 Few cross-trails. This is just a personal preference, but I don’t like other skiers and riders flying at me from the side. And I positively hate getting into a good rhythm on a steeper trail and suddenly having to stop and pick my way through a line of  newbies wending their way across the slopes on a cat track that winds back and forth across the mountain. While Sugarbush has some great green-circle trails, they don’t generally intersect the steeper stuff. Except for a few major trail junctions, on most runs at Sugarbush you don’t have to keep alert for other people popping into “your” trail. The trails are long and often winding, usually with consistent pitch. This is a fun place.

#7 is restaurant and Lodging options. A couple of years ago, Sugarbush opened Claybrook, an upscale slopeside hotel with a fine-dining restaurant called Timbers. Add that to the quaint Sugarbush Inn, slopeside condos and a host of local inns and restaurants and you have all the choices you need from upscale to budget-friendly.

#8 is real ski town nearby. Warren and Waitsfield are about as real as it gets. Pure Vermont. You don’t feel like the ski hill is the only thing that exists here. Having a couple of real towns nearby means there are real Vermonters, not just tourists, around to meet in stores, restaurants, gas stations an, of course on the lifts and in the pub afterwards.

#9 is great attitude. Sugarbush is one of those mountains where people seem to relax, leave their “real” lives behind and just have fun. People smile in the base lodge and in lift lines and most will chat on the lifts. That’s in pretty sharp contrast to some areas where patrons wear their urban attitude like some sort of badge of honor.

See why Sugarbush is one of the places I try to ski every year?

I’ve been skiing Sugarbush a l-o-n-g time. Back in February of 1995, shortly after Sugarbush became part of the giant American Skiing Company, I took my ski crazy twin sons, Justin and Evan, then 11, to Sugarbush and made them write about it in my newspaper ski column  Here’s what they had to say:

Justin’s Turn
Last week, my dad, my brother and I skied for two days at Sugarbush in Warren, Vermont. We were afraid that it would be crowded during the vacation week, but a little fog and light rain kept the wimps inside, and we had plenty of trails to ourselves.

The skiing experience at Sugarbush in Vermont is sweet, in fact, probably some of the best in the East! The mountain is everything that a ski area should be with 111 trails interconnected over 6 peaks. In the past year, they spent $28 million dollars on increasing snowmaking by 300%, installing 7 new lifts (four high-speed detachable quads) and connecting what were two separate ski areas together. With all of these lifts, the crowds would be spread out on even the most crowded days: do not worry about lift lines when you ski Sugarbush!

For the people who are tired of skiing down a flat hill, Sugarbush has a lot to offer: it has many bumps, steeps, tree skiing, and terrain that winds through gladed forests. Dad said it captures some of the fun of skiing in the olden days.

Intermediates find heaven in Sugarbush, there are many beautiful trails that wind through the woods. Some of the best intermediate trails are Sleeper, Jester, Snowball, Birch Run, Murphy’s Glades, Downspout, and Waterfall. Experts find plenty of challenge here, with Sugarbush’s tree skiing, moguls and steeps. Some of the hardest and funnest trails are Paradise, Ripcord, Exterminator,  Upper F.I.S., and Stein’s Run, plus the whole Castlerock area. I kept hoping to see the Egans, but I had no luck.

Sugarbush is a great resort, one of the best that I have skied. I would recommend it to anybody, even never-evers!

Evan’s Turn
I’d have to say that of all the ski resorts I’ve been to, Sugarbush pulled away from the crowd. Sugarbush is owned by a massive new conglomerate which also owns Sunday River in Maine and Attitash in New Hampshire and now Sugarbush in Vermont.

For all you who haven’t been to Sugarbush since last year or before, you’re probably saying “Humph, I didn’t see anything special about that mountain.” But that was before they put in 28 million dollars in what they claim is the biggest expansion in North American history. They added seven new chair lifts so most of the mountain can be accessed by high speed detachable quads! Even the slower lifts are worth it because they access incredible terrain. Although 7 sounds like a whopping number of new chairlifts, it isn’t given the size of the resort.

The most fantastic of these chairs is the Slide Brook Express, world’s fastest, going about 17.6 MPH. It’s also the longest, following its straight path through the valley for 11,000 feet, and it does this in only 9 1/2 minutes. The crowning achievement is that it goes both ways so you can see the view in both direction. Even for those of you who don’t ski, it’s worth the admission just to ride this beauty. On the day when the Green Mountains were being drenched in fog and rain, it was still an incredible panorama. My Dad kept saying “Unbelievable” in a voice that was filled with awe, which got pretty annoying.

The trails at Sugarbush are awesome and are just like skiing should be. There are no bottlenecks at the bottom where you have to coast on flat trails. Most trails have the same rating all the way down, except double black diamonds which flatten out to normal black diamonds, as one would expect. Sugarbush doesn’t believe in cutting down every tree on a mountain, so the trails maintain a lot of their forest isolation and charm, which is a quality I like. To add to the fun, they thin the forests in between some trails, so you can ski almost anywhere. Also, the trails don’t inter-connect as much as they do on some mountains, so you don’t have to worry about skiing along a diamond trail and come up against a wall of wedgies.

There is a peak serviced by an outdated double chair called Castlerock, it has no snowmaking but you can get a real thrill skiing there because it’s all rocks, stumps, bumps and ice. Dad says it’s the way skiing used to be before they had snowmaking and high-speed quads. He wouldn’t let us ski Castlerock because he wouldn’t let us ski there alone, and he was afraid he’d tear up his best skis on the rocks.

We stayed in the Sugarbush Inn, which was real nice, and got to swim and use the Jacuzzi at the Sports Club at the base of the mountain  To finish this up, I’ll will say that Sugarbush is incredible, and as the brochures say: WOW! It’s the only way to describe the indescribable!

Of course the tenure of American Skiing Company at Sugarbush didn’t last forever . . .  In 2002, Win Smith came in and began to bring the resort around to full flower. Here’s what I had to say then:

Until last year, Sugarbush was owned by the American Skiing Company, which invested a huge amount of money into upgrading the resort’s snowmaking and lifts. Last year, Sugarbush was purchased by a private investment group, headed by a skiing fanatic named Win Smith. I got to ski with him recently as he showed off his resort and outlined some exciting plans for the future.

Smith is a semi-retired Wall Street refugee from New York, is clearly passionate his skiing, about the resort and its future. Skiing with him is a treat. He knows every twist, turn and bump on the mountain—and knows just when to pull back his speed for safety and when to let his skis run.

With Smith, I got what amounts to a hyper-speed tour of much of the mountain, and saw many features and potentials that I’d missed in previous visits. On the lift rides up he outlined planned improvements to snowmaking, lifts, and on-mountain lodging.

Sugarbush has a number of real plusses going for it. It’s a big resort with two entirely separate base areas at Sugarbush and Mount Ellen (which is still referred to as Sugarbush North by most folks). The two are connected by the Slide Brook Express, one of the great chairlift rides in all of New England; the view on a sunny day is simply spectacular.

This is classic New England ski terrain. You have your choice of everything from charming beginner/intermediate cruising runs with deep, impeccably groomed snow to incredibly step, tight, bumpy glades, chutes and natural snow trails that can challenge the best of the best.

The overall layout of Sugarbush gives you lots of long, consistent runs where you can get a feel for the trail and develop a rhythm without having your flow interrupted by trail junctions and cross-trails.  It wasn’t crowded on the day we were there, but the Sugarbush trail system is specifically designed to disperse skiers across the whole mountain. There are very few choke points. And, best of all, a group of mixed abilities can ski or snowboard together off the same lift—most lifts offer a variety of trail options from easy to difficult and everyone can easily meet at the bottom of the lift and share the ride up.

From a vantage point on the hill, Smith showed me where he hopes to consolidate the base area facilities for a more convenient layout and put a new hotel. He thinks will be the last major building expansion in the valley. The point is to bring into balance the number of beds available in the area with the amount of skiing offered at Sugarbush and nearby Mad River Glen, then stop. He’s hoping that, in 100 years, the valley will still look pretty much as it does today. Could happen.

We stayed at the Sugarbush Inn, convenient to the slopes, comfortable and affordable. Here’s a hint: tank up on their lavish breakfast buffet (included in the price of our room) and you won’t have to stop skiing for lunch . . .

By 2005, Smith’s dream was beginning to take shape. They’d gotten permission to “officially” open the Slidebrook area to backcountry skiing:

Sugarbush is a giant in New England skiing, loaded with history and offering more diverse skiing and riding terrain than any mountain I can think of.  They are planning a spectacular new base village and hotel which will, essentially, cap development at the area, leaving the still-rural feeling of the Mad River Valley intact.

One of the beauties of Sugarbush is that there are relatively few interconnecting trails and junctions, which helps keep it from ever feeling crowded. Also, almost every lift (except Castlerock) offers a variety of trail options, so people of differing abilities can ride the same lift and still enjoy terrain to their liking on the way down. Sugarbush is divided into two distinct areas, Lincoln Peak (which includes the fabled Castlerock Peak) and Mount Ellen. Each is a whole resort in itself (they used to be separate areas).

Marilyn spent the day exploring some of the winding intermediate trails on Lincoln Peak all covered with new natural snow. She loved it.

I abandoned both her and the trails in favor of the trees in “Slidebrook,” the undeveloped no-mans land between Mount Ellen and Lincoln Peak. Sugarbush offers guided tours of the Slidebrook area through their Guest Services for people who are new to skiing in the trees. Basically you leave the ski area behind at the top of the Lynx chair and emerge from the woods on the road below where the regular shuttle between the two peaks gets you back to the ski resort. In between, you’ve got a couple of guides with you to keep you out of trouble.

The snow in the trees was soft and deep—it was easy to stray from the prescribed lines and find untracked, and I had one of the best tree-skiing days of my life, even though a close encounter with a prickly spruce tree left  some of my blood on the snow and a scar hidden under the white of my beard. Red badge of courage!

I was back at Sugarbush in 2006 when weather once again presented a challenge and the mountain shown despite . . .

Sugarbush has gotten over a foot of snow in the last couple of nights, and conditions are gorgeous. We got up early and were waiting in line as they opened the Gatehouse Quad. Good thing, too. The winds are howling and, most of the lifts were on wind hold, meaning unusually long lift lines as the morning wore on. So we got in a few early runs on almost-empty trails, took a long lunch break back at the condo when everyone else showed up, then headed back out while everyone else was eating their lunch. Great  day.

By 2007, the Claybrook Hotel would change the Sugarbush experience for the better:

We  stayed slopeside at the magnificent new Claybrook hotel for the first time. Once again I was reminded that Sugarbush is really two separate ski resorts with entirely different personalities. Mount Ellen is the quiet side of Sugarbush, the shy sister with it’s own charms. Because we arrived on a Sunday, when the weather was good, we spent our day exploring all of Mount Ellen and never saw a lift line or a crowded slope.

Though the forecast had called for warming temperatures, Mount Ellen had frozen up overnight following a brief light rain on Saturday night. The groomed slopes were firm and fast—beautiful midwinter conditions, but not the spring snow we had hoped for.

Monday morning, winter still maintained its grasp. It being midweek, and therefore less busy, we skied the groomers on Lincoln Peak, the more famous, more glamorous side of Sugarbush. (And the side where they have the absolutely gorgeous new base lodge).We put on a lot of miles that morning, broke for lunch in our super-convenient unit at Claybrook, and Marilyn decided that the couch and hot tub were calling her name.

Too bad for her, because while we were eating lunch, the sun broke through the clouds just enough to soften some of the slopes. Sleeper in particular, turned into soft, luscious  Spring corn snow. For about two hours, everything was perfect: perfect snow, no lift lines, beautiful,  trails with no one else on them. But you had to be there for those two hours.

You get the picture. Sugarbush has a lot to offer. It’s an upscale resort if that’s what you want–but it doesn’t have to be. It’s ultra-modern and groomed to perfection–unless you decide you like the quite at Mount Ellen or the untouched splendor of Castlerock and Slidebrook. A lot of resorts claim to have something for almost everyone. Sugarbush really does.