Last week, the highest peaks of the Green Mountains changed from brown to white as the season’s first snows dusted the region. It was a welcome sight for many, especially skiers and snowboarders. Buoyed by natural snow atop the man-made stuff, Killington opened on Friday, making it the first mountain resort in Vermont to welcome skiers and riders for the 2023-24 season.
Other resorts will open this month and next, many boasting improvements to their terrain, lifts and snowmaking: a new quad at Magic Mountain, a redesigned learning zone at Stratton, night skiing at the Middlebury Snowbowl. Visitors to Bolton Valley may notice cameras along the slopes. The property of Capture Video Technology, they are designed to help athletes train — or to make their own stoke videos. Those looking for inspiration for the latter would do well to check out the wealth of archival footage in the new Warren Miller film.
Still, the more things change at Vermont ski destinations, the more they stay the same. Nowhere is that more true than at Camel’s Hump Nordic Ski Area in Huntington, where cofounder Dave Brautigam has been maintaining trails and composing poetic condition reports for decades.
The old saying that getting there is half the fun doesn’t always hold up during winter in Vermont, when the state is looking for ways to curb road salt use. Perhaps snowmobilers have the right idea. They’re the only ones who can get to Kendyl’s Buns on the Run, a seasonal hot dog stand in Norton that’s not accessible by car. The rest of us can happily make do with Madbush Falls in Waitsfield, which will open early on winter weekends to fuel the Sugarbush crowd.
One Vermonter who craves slick conditions is Sara Roderick. The South Burlington skeleton racer aims to make the 2026 U.S. Olympic Team.
Platform tennis might not be an Olympic sport, but local enthusiasts swear by the game, which they can play outside on special courts all winter long. Presumably, the sock of choice among players is Darn Tough. The Waterbury company’s lifetime guarantee is unusual — and darn popular. Wear a pair under your boots when you check out seven winter events to stave off cabin fever.
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This article appears in The Winter Preview Issue 2023.
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