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View ProfilesPublished January 31, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. | Updated February 2, 2024 at 10:30 a.m.
In a bustling hallway in Charlotte Central School on a recent weeknight, Michael Krasnow put a sixth grader into a clunky ski boot and tested his ski bindings to make sure they were set properly. Many ski shops set their bindings based solely on the skier's height and weight. But Krasnow, Charlotte's volunteer ski-and-ride coordinator and a trained ski mechanic, has every child click into their bindings and perform a swift, karate-like knee kick while he stands on the ski.
"I want to make sure it releases when it needs to," he explained, adjusting the binding with a screwdriver. "It's not brain surgery. I can tell just from the sound whether it's the right setting."
As Krasnow listened for the signature snap, more than a dozen kids and their parents waited for his attention. Some were swapping out borrowed gear from last winter; others were getting outfitted for the first time.
Many pawed through the jumble of secondhand skis, snowboards, boots, helmets and poles available to borrow. Those who couldn't find what they needed in the hall raided a cluttered equipment room, ripe with the locker-room funk of past winters' youthful exuberance and bunny hill flop sweat. For parents who still come up empty-handed, Krasnow keeps another stockpile of gear at his house, on nearby Mount Philo.
Krasnow, 71, is a serial community volunteer and a Charlotte institution of sorts. An elected justice of the peace for 27 years, he chairs the Board of Civil Authority, which hears tax abatement cases and helps the town clerk run elections. He serves on the boards of multiple local businesses and nonprofits.
And for 30 years, Krasnow has presided over this annual winter rite of putting Charlotte schoolchildren on skis and snowboards — the largest single-school ski-and-ride program in the state. His goal hasn't changed since he took over the fledgling program in the 1990s: to make the sport he loves accessible to everyone.
In an era when a family of four can easily drop $600 to $800 for a day on the slopes, Krasnow hopes to make Vermont's iconic winter pastime a little more affordable — and, in the process, to grow its future.
Like much about Charlotte's ski-and-ride program, equipment night was hectic and messy, but Krasnow handled it with his usual equanimity. By the end of the night, every kid went home with something they needed. Sure, it might have been a pair of rear-entry ski boots that were fashionable when Bill Clinton was president, or a snowboard sporting the logo of a rock group that flamed out years before the student was born. But every piece of gear got a strip of masking tape with the student's name scrawled in black Sharpie, and most of it got logged in Krasnow's spiral notebook — his free-form inventory system.
Once a week for five weeks starting in mid-February, Krasnow will bring nearly 150 K-8 students to Bolton Valley for three hours of night skiing, snowboarding and often unsupervised fun. Years ago, he said, he learned that the program's popularity has to do with a lot more than carving turns or mastering moguls.
"It's a social event for 90 percent of the kids. Nobody here's training for the Olympics," he said. "This is as much about the bus ride and being in the lodge as it is about being on the slopes."
It's also about giving kids a taste of freedom and autonomy in a (mostly) controlled environment. All but the youngest skiers and snowboarders must locate their snowboards, skis and poles in the pile coming off the delivery truck, get themselves and their gear to lessons and on lifts, and navigate the mountain. They'll eat dinner with friends on their own schedule and, with luck, make it to the buses in time for the 45-minute drive back to Charlotte.
"It's an independence issue," said Krasnow, who taught high school for 15 years in the 1970s and '80s. "That should be part of every kid's education — not always having an adult telling them what to do."
Credit for starting Bolton Valley's afterschool ski-and-ride program goes to Ralph DesLauriers, who founded the resort in 1966. Having noticed that most of the skiers on the mountain were from out of state, DesLauriers installed lights on the slopes in 1968, making afterschool skiing possible.
Bolton is still one of Vermont's few resorts offering night skiing, and its afterschool program is the state's largest. Keegan Bosworth, mountain programs manager, said more than 1,300 students from 36 schools and organizations will hit the slopes this year.
The resort provides financial incentives to schools and town recreation departments in the form of one scholarship (a free lift ticket, equipment and lessons) for every 15 paying students. Though some students buy season passes, the program has never been a big moneymaker.
"The focus is really on bringing kids up here who have never had the opportunity to get into the sport and have them fall in love with it," said Bosworth, 27, who participated when he was a student at Vergennes Union High School.
Vermont's winter Alpine sports industry has no statewide afterschool program, even though the practitioners of winter sports have been steadily aging for decades. In 2023, the median age of downhill skiers was 35, up from 24 in the 1960s, according to the National Ski Areas Association. Champions of such programs say that if kids learn to ski or snowboard when they're young, developing muscle memory, they're far more likely to continue when they're older.
Krasnow, who brings 20 to 25 newbies to the slopes each year, developed his own love of skiing at age 4. The youngest of five boys, he grew up in Malverne, N.Y., a small town on Long Island's south shore. For years his family took annual ski trips to Vermont, a rarity in the 1950s.
"It was so unusual then for someone from Long Island to be skiing that we were known as the 'Skiing Krasnows,'" he said.
For eight winters, the Krasnows vacationed at the now-defunct Buccaneer Motel and Ski Lodge in Stowe, which was owned and operated by Bill and Betty Kidd. Their son, Billy Kidd, the legendary Alpine skier and Olympic medalist, taught Krasnow how to play Ping-Pong.
Krasnow continued skiing through college before starting his teaching career in the Boston neighborhood of Mattapan. In those years, his school was 98 percent Black and 2 percent Latino. His first winter as a teacher, Krasnow took a group of sixth graders skiing, most of whom had never been out of Boston.
At his next job, teaching at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, Mass., Krasnow started a ski club with 15 participants.
"By the time I left in '89, we were taking a thousand kids a year skiing," he said. "It was the largest high school ski program in the country."
In 1989, Krasnow, his wife, Sumru Tekin, and their two young sons moved to Charlotte, where two of Krasnow's brothers owned property on Mount Philo. (Three Krasnow families still live there.) For 16 years, Krasnow ran Bazou and Bazou South, retail stores in Burlington and Charlotte, respectively. When his kids started at Charlotte Central School, he volunteered with the ski-and-ride program, which had just 22 participants. By the time he took it over the following year, Krasnow had grown it to 100.
"My whole concept, just like in Cambridge, was to expand the opportunity to everyone," he said.
Krasnow solicited donations of equipment, the cost of which is the biggest barrier to entry. When he learned that a vice president at Burton lived in Charlotte, he got the snowboard company to offer surplus gear. Most of his equipment is still donated.
Eight years into the program, at the request of parents with older children, Krasnow expanded ski-and-ride to include kindergartners through second graders. Last year, 22 of his participants were under the age of 8.
Since its inception, ski-and-ride has always been self-funded. Most families pay $149 per student, which covers lift tickets, transportation and equipment. Lessons cost a small additional fee, but families with season passes get a reduced rate. The worst snafu Krasnow typically encounters is when a middle schooler shows up with unusually big feet; this winter, he had three teens size 11 or larger.
After three decades with the program, Krasnow said he's seeking someone to replace him — though not because he's grown tired of the kids or the mayhem.
"I've planned to retire for the last three years [but] haven't been able to successfully do it," he said. "I'm 71. Can I do this when I'm 80? No."
Longtime Charlotte residents marvel at Krasnow's persistence in the time-intensive, unpaid position.
"The first time I volunteered and came up to the mountain with Michael ... it was just complete chaos," recalled Maura Wygmans, a member of the Charlotte Recreation Commission who's volunteered with ski-and-ride for the past decade. Wygmans and her husband, Justin, drive one of the trucks that haul students' equipment to and from the mountain.
"You throw 100 pairs of skis and poles in the back of a truck, and somehow they sort themselves out," she added. "I don't know how it works, but it works. And everyone ends up happy."
State Rep. Chea Waters Evans (D–Charlotte), who grew up in town, has three boys who've all done ski-and-ride. A serial volunteer herself, Evans cannot fathom how Krasnow has stuck it out for so long.
"Have you ever been on that bus and seen it in action?" she asked, half-jokingly. "Any other human being would have run away screaming."
As for Krasnow, he marvels at how things inexplicably work themselves out once he drops the kids at the lodge.
"It's 15 minutes of total chaos, and then the whole building is empty," he said. "Once I get the kids to the mountain, what happens is sort of magic."
The original print version of this article was headlined "Doing Good Turns | Michael Krasnow has spent decades giving kids skis, snowboards and a taste of independence
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