Snow sports: Mount Snow in Vermont thrives as 'a smoothly humming machine'

As the closest big mountain ski area to Worcester, Mount Snow has long attracted many Central Massachusetts skiers and snowboarders in addition to legions of visitors from Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.

The mainstay in Dover, Vermont, is well worth the just over two-hour drive if you're doing a day trip, or you can find plenty of varied skiing and riding for an extended stay.

With 600 acres of skiable terrain tying it (with Saddleback, Maine) for the eighth-largest ski area in the Northeast, Mount Snow also boasts 1,700 vertical feet and skis from a 3,600-foot summit.

It sits in a pretty productive snow pocket in the Deerfield Valley. And supplementing the natural stuff is one of the top snowmaking systems in the Northeast with an immense water supply, modern pumping system and snowmaking coverage on 83 percent of the terrain. With the addition of two new high-speed lifts last season, Mount Snow boasts six high-speed lifts, including a bubbled sixpack and 19 lifts overall.

Diverse terrain

But, to me, what distinguishes the mountain is its sheer breadth of terrain, probably the most diverse in southern Vermont.

Mount Snow sports the unique North Face, a steep and woods skiing sanctuary that opens early and closes late in the season and rarely sees a liftline of more than a few minutes. So while the ski area draws big crowds on weekends and holidays, it has the capacity to handle them. Moreover, places like the North Face and the serene, cruiser-friendly Sunbrook area — served by a new high-speed sixpack — are there to escape to when the queues stack up at the Main Face lifts. Then there's the vast, 100-acre Carinthia Parks terrain park complex, always one of the top parks on the East Coast. And then there's everything else, from the bumps of Beartrap to wide groomers like Ridge and Canyon from the top.

Beyond the skiing and riding facilities, Mount Snow offers a ton of fun spots for after-ski fun and just chilling. I'm counting no fewer than 13 on-resort bars and restaurants including the hopping Bullwheel at the summit.

Now in its fourth season under corporate owner Vail Resorts, Mount Snow is a smoothly humming machine.

New GM's outlook

Brian Suhadolc stepped into this well-choreographed operation at the start of last season.

I sat down with Suhadolc last weekend in his office overlooking the Canyon Express lift after a morning of skiing to talk about the state of things now that he's had a chance to see how the place runs and skis. As of this season, Suhadolc also oversees the operation of Vail's Attitash and Wildcat areas in New Hampshire, with their GMs reporting to him even though they run the day-to-day operations of the ski areas. As I understand it, the arrangement gives those two young GMs, Brandon Swartz at Attitash and J.D. Crichton at Wildcat, a mentor in Suhadolc, a veteran of three decades in top operations positions at really big resorts.

Mount Snow is Suhadolc's first GM position. He was well prepared, though, returning to his native East Coast (he grew up in Mahwah, New Jersey, skiing Stowe with his family) after a two-year stint as vice president of mountain operations at Vail Mountain, the chain's flagship in Colorado, and at Park City, Utah, where he spent 27 years rising through the ranks to director of mountain operations.

Suhadolc said that Mount Snow's data shows that the two new high-speed lifts that opened last season — the four-seat Sunbrook Express and the Sundance sixpack — already are producing the desired effect of shifting passenger loads from the signature Bluebird Express bubbled sixpack to formerly underutilized intermediate and beginner terrain on the Main Face and to Sunbrook.

However, it's a multiyear process to change regulars' on-mountain habits, he noted.

"They did what we hoped they would do. But it's a two or three-year learning curve for the people who come here," Suhadolc said, adding that now with snowmaking extended to trails like Hop and Shooting Star, even more terrain is accessible more often off the two new chairs.

Another development is that the tastefully renovated Sundance Lodge is seeing an uptick in use, moving people out of the main base lodge to some extent.

Upcoming plans

Looking to the future, Suhadolc is on record about making a new lift a priority for the North Face, long served by two slow old triples.

"When the time comes to do the North Face and put up a detachable quad or something over there, that’s going to have a huge impact on the guest experience," he said. "We're hoping that not too far down the road hopefully we can get the capital to replace a lift on the North Face. It's on our short list of lifts that we want to replace."

A lesser priority is renovating the quirky main base lodge, according to Suhadolc.

Compared to the ultra-modern Carinthia base lodge built by former owner Peak Resorts that flaunts roomy changing areas and bathrooms, two bars and restaurants and large picture windows, the old main lodge feels a bit cramped and dark, with longish distances to find a bathroom.

However, Suhadolc pointed out that it also boasts many amenities, including the new rooftop Station Taproom with live music, and it works. It also has a huge functioning fireplace, a rarity in big ski area base lodges these days.

"But it's a long-range goal for us to redo it," he said.

Meanwhile, Mount Snow provides a little over 200 beds for employee housing and is — in large part due to Vail's $20-an-hour minimum wage — staffed so well that the resort can provide free bag check and $2-a-day ski watch, for example, services that are pretty rare in the ski industry nowadays.

Resort traffic changes

A big change in traffic flow this season is that the resort reconfigured the congested drop-off area at the main entrance to an airport-style system in which vehicles can linger up to two or three minutes, rather than parking diagonally like in the old system, and the old U-turn has been eliminated for customers and southern Vermont public transit Moover shuttle buses.

And as for the resort's paid parking plan, in its second season, Suhadolc said it's gaining acceptance. He noted that if customers don't want to pay, parking is free in lot E, which is served by the Moover shuttle. You can also take the conveyor lift up next to the tubing area, and ski back down to parking on a groomed slope next to the tubing hill.

Paid parking — promoted by most ski areas that institute it as an environment-friendly change — has met a pretty unfavorable response from customers at most ski areas at first, and Mount Snow is not an exception. But people tend to get used to it, and it is having a positive effect at Mount Snow in unclogging the usually packed main entrance roads, according to Suhadolc.

"Change is hard," he said. "It's spreading people out. We feel like it's working."

Physical therapy works

Anyone who skis or rides regularly knows that snow sports come with risk of injury, whether it's to a knee, shoulder, wrist or back. It happens to most of us at some point.

Over the years I've been to physical therapy for any number of ski-related injuries and for a recent pre-ski season right-ankle rehab, I opted for Greendale Physical Therapy, a locally owned regional chain founded by owner Jon Dooley in 2002.

Earlier this week, I "graduated" from Greendale's Worcester location, where I worked with experienced PT pros Kim Barrow and Rachel Ferruci and their support staff for about two months.

The ankle felt hopeless when I started, but Barrow put me through a progressively more demanding series of strengthening and stretching routines that helped me regain strength, flexibility and stability to the point at which I can now ski and walk without pain or weakness. Unlike at some of the places I've gone for PT, Greendale gives you an hour and guides you through what amounts to a real workout, preceded by and followed by icing depending on where you are on the rehab continuum. They also do deep tissue work that you don't get elsewhere.

Plus Greendale has a fun, team-oriented vibe. I wish I could say I miss the place, but I'm sure I'll be back.

—Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at s_sutner@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Snow sports: Mount Snow in Vermont is worth it — for day trip or longer