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Mad River Glen
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It averages over 250 inches (640 cm) of snow a year and maintains a traditional form of New England skiing that emphasizes snow preservation on narrow trails instead of man-made snow on wide boulevards. Mad River Glen also does very little grooming and prefers to leave its trails with whatever naturally forms. It has one of only two single chairlifts left in the country and does not allow snowboarding. It is one of a very limited number of ski cooperatives. Individuals purchase publicly available shares and attend regular "Town Hall" meetings, voting on issues regarding the area and management of the cooperative.
Single Chair
Mad River Glen is one of two ski areas in the country to utilize a single chairlift. The other single chairlift is operated at Mt. Eyak which is located and owned by the City of Cordova, Alaska, and operated by the Sheridan Ski Club.
The original chair was manufactured by American Wire and Steel. In the summer of 2007, Doppelmayr CTEC was contracted to renovate the chairlift, while maintaining the classic New England feel. The tower foundations were new, along with close replicas of the chairs, grips, drive, and end terminals.[4] In addition, all the towers were taken to Maine for painting.[4]
The Single Chair is the fastest fixed-grip chairlift in the United States. Only detachable quads and other such chairlifts are faster. Depending on the volume of skiers, average lift rides from base to summit are 9.7 – 12 minutes in duration. The Single Chair has a midstation that skiers can either unload or upload at and is the only chairlift in Vermont where skiers do not need to return to the base of the chairlift to return to the summit.
Meteorology
Mad River Glen is situated favorably on the backbone of the Green Mountains. The elevation allows for cooler air and more precipitation than surrounding terrain. The highest ridge of the Green Mountains not only gets the same snow that blankets the rest of New England but also picks up significant "backlash" snow after the storms have passed. Strong northwest winds behind the storms pick up moisture from Lake Champlain and are forced rapidly upward on their perpendicular ride over the Greens. This "orographic enhancement" of snowfall is the primary reason that Mad River Glen and similar locations often average triple the snowfall of the rest of northern New England. The north and northeast facing slopes of the ski area then allow for maximum retention of the snow that does fall. By late winter or early spring, it is not uncommon for 40 inches of snow to lie on the mountains with no snow at all in nearby towns and villages.
Trails
Mad River Glen offers forty five trails with a wide variety of difficulty. They range from the flat, open greens of Birdland to the large number of steep, moguled trails that dominate much of the mountain. These are the trails that have given Mad River its reputation as the hardest ski area in the Northeast. They have been kept much as they were when they were first cut, often by the skiers themselves, decades ago, and many are gladed and have natural features lying just beneath the snow; rocks, logs, bushes, etc. Even among these black diamond trails there is tremendous variety; the ambiguous short but steep Waterfall is sometimes rated a black diamond and sometimes an intermediate blue square, and the infamous 38 degree pitch of Paradise is still only rated at a black diamond, when it would earn two or three of those diamonds at other ski areas.
Snowboarding
Mad River Glen is one of three ski areas in the U.S. that completely ban snowboarding, along with Utah's Deer Valley and Alta ski areas. This has caused significant discussion, especially among the snowboarding community. The Mad River Glen cooperative seeks to preserve the area as a "skier's mountain."
Mad River Glen was one of the first places in the U.S. to allow snowboarding during the 1986-87 season and lasted until the 1992-93 season. Unloading issues due to a flat run-off exiting the old single chair led the owner of the resort to limit them to the Sunnyside Double and the practice area chair. Due to heated debate over this issue, Betsy Pratt, Mad River Glen’s previous owner, decided to ban snowboards entirely. Since then, Mad River Glen has been subject to poaching.
Four years later the owner sold the mountain to the Mad River Glen Cooperative. During the 1999-2000 season the co-op sold the 1,667th share to pay off its mortgage. The mountain is now owned by the co-op, who addressed the snowboard ban with a vote. Over 75% voted to keep the ban, and it will take a 2/3 majority to overturn that, making it unlikely that the ban will be lifted soon.
Woods Skiing
Mad River Glen is also famous for its tree skiing. It is one of the few mountains that allows and even promotes off-trail skiing. Mad River's most difficult marked trail is a steep, rocky, thin, and usually icy path down from the top of the mountain called Paradise. To embark, skiers hike over and out of view of the chair lift. The entrance to the trail is not marked, although in 2004 it was added to the official trail map. The first pitch features mandatory air over a four foot (1.3 m) high frozen waterfall that spans the full width of the trail.
Telemark
While Mad River Glen does not allow snowboarding, it does have a larger than normal proportion of telemark skiers and regularly hosts the North American Telemark Organization's yearly festival weekend each March.
Vertical: 2000 ft
Top elevation: 3637 ft - (1108 m)
Base elevation: 1600 ft - (487 m)
Runs: 45
Lift system: 4 chairlifts
- 3 doubles
- 1 single
Terrain parks: None
Snowfall: 250 in. - (635 cm)
Snowmaking: 15%
Night skiing: no
Description from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
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