Stowe opens for the season, sets new rules

Starting this season, in addition to banning uphill traffic while the chairlifts are running, Stowe is instituting a rotational schedule for its Mount Mansfield trails overnight, and all but banning nighttime access to Spruce Peak’s main trails.

The problem is that uphill trekkers interfere with snow-grooming operations.

“As soon as the lifts are closed, we’re on the hill,” Ed Walton, Stowe’s head groomer, said last week.

From roughly 4:30 each afternoon until nearly 9 the next morning, two shifts of groomers, snowmakers and other mountain operations crew members churn, rake, smooth out and re-apply snow to all the terrain that thousands of skiers and riders disrupted the previous day.

What does all that activity on the mountain mean, when skiers are looking for a moonlight adventure?

“That’s like oil and water mixing,” said Mike Colbourn, the resort’s vice president of sales, marketing and communications.

“Sometimes they’ll be right off your tiller. If something bad happens …” Walton said, trailing off. When asked if anyone has ever died during an overnight encounter with a groomer, Walton literally looked around, reached forward and knocked on his boss’s wooden desk. No, not yet.

“Going to work at night with the fear you could hurt or kill someone isn’t the greatest feeling,” Walton said.

When to skin

Uphill traffic — whether by skinning or hiking— is prohibited during the hours that lifts are operating, as early as 7:30 a.m. and as late as 4:30 p.m. That has been Stowe’s policy for the past several years.

The new policy will kick in once the ski resort actually gets enough snow to have top-to-bottom trail coverage and grooming.

Once the sun gets low and the groomers roll out, the new off-hours/uphill traffic rules will take effect on a rotational schedule that allows access to much of the terrain, just not all at the same time:

• From 5 p.m. to midnight, recreation is prohibited on the Mansfield/FourRunner Quad trails. That includes the famed Front Four — Starr, National, Liftline and Goat — as well as the Toll House area.

• From midnight to 7 a.m., recreation is prohibited on the Gondola trails. That includes Perry Merrill, Gondolier and all the side trails off those.

• The new rules completely get rid of nighttime skiing and riding on Spruce Peak’s Main Street.

Karen Wagner, Stowe Mountain Resort’s risk manager, said there’s just too much grooming going on from sundown to sunrise for the resort to take any chances.

Those three sections are the ones most directly addressed by the new uphill traffic guidelines, but Wagner points out you still have to be aware of what’s going on, because the mountain is a hive of activity overnight — snowmaking crews can pop up anywhere, in groomers and on snowmobiles, laying out hose and moving snow guns, fixing fences, blowing snow, piling snow, raking it, chopping it and turning it into corduroy.

“All the common-sense stuff is still important,” Wagner said.

That includes wearing reflective clothing and a headlamp, and always going with a buddy.

It means not hiding from a groomer if you do encounter one on your uphill adventures; on the contrary, wave and make yourself seen.

It means knowing your own skill level and being aware of changing terrain — sometimes a skier could be following what seems like a freshly groomed trail that instead leads to a mine field of rock-hard snow boulders a groomer has just churned up but hasn’t yet smoothed out.

And it means staying away from the groomers as they do their job.

Sometimes that isn’t easy, especially if you can’t see them.

Consider the “winch cat,” a special grooming tractor that, as its name suggests, hooks onto an anchor point and descends a pitch, trailing a long steel cable behind it.

The cable on the winch cat that grooms Liftline is about 3,000 feet long. So, at any point, a groomer could be somewhere down-trail with more than a half-mile of cable behind it.

Depending on the tension, the cable could be on the ground in some places, way up in the air in others. In some places it could be, say, neck-high.

Groomers have close-call stories of ascending in the winch-cat and seeing skiers’ fresh tracks going right over the slack cable.

The mountain operations crew members do what they can to draw attention to the groomers — a flashing red beacon, a large pile of snow before a big pitch, and a plain-English sign warning the winch cat is somewhere below.

Still, close calls abound, and Wagner said by the end of the season a lot of groomer operators are at wits end from all the near misses, whether real or just perceived.

“It’s a constant thought,” Walton said. “It gets to the point where you see your own headlights reflecting off the snow and you just assume it’s a headlamp.”

Compromise policy

Stowe Mountain Resort is part of the Mountain Collective, a group of 15 of the most illustrious U.S. and international ski resorts, and the only one east of the Mississippi River.

Colbourn said a benefit of belonging to that club is being able to talk with counterparts at other mountains to see how they handle uphill access.

“You almost get 15 different answers,” Colbourn said.

For instance, Aspen is a 24-hour mountain that allows uphillers nearly unfettered access, even during the day while lifts are operational. Just stay out of the groomers’ way.

On the other end of the spectrum, Whistler in British Columbia outlaws nearly all uphill traffic, despite being one of the largest spreads of mountain terrain in North America.

Stowe’s new policy places it somewhere in the middle of those major destinations — not as forbidding as someone, not as lax as others.

Compared to other local nearby ski resorts, Stowe is also somewhere in the middle. Smugglers’ Notch Ski Resort, for instance, allows only small windows in the dawn and dusk hours — between 6 and 8 a.m. and between 4:30 and 6 p.m. All other times are off-limits.

Sugarbush’s policy is similar to Stowe’s, with uphill traffic forbidden while the lifts are operating, but with a rotational schedule overnight.

As far as Mad River Glen, you can pretty much ski it when you can after the lifts shut down. Mad River’s policy does, however, prohibit uphillers from post-holing. That’s when hikers try to go through soft snow and punch holes in the terrain with their legs.

According to Scott Reeves, Stowe’s head of mountain operations, the state of Vermont may own Mount Mansfield, but since the resort holds the lease on its portion of the terrain, it is liable for what happens on it. As long as it doesn’t discriminate against certain groups of mountain enthusiasts, it can deny or allow access as it sees necessary.

“We are the caretakers,” he said. “And that includes the safety and well-being of our employees.”