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Sugarbush

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Story by Justin and Evan Jones

Justin's Impressions

The skiing experience at Sugarbush in Vermont is sweet, in fact, probably some of the best in the East! The mountain is everything that a ski area should be, with 111 trails interconnected over six peaks. In the past couple of years, spent $28 million on increasing snowmaking by 300%, installing seven new lifts (four high-speed detachable quads), and connecting what were two separate ski areas together. With all these lifts, the crowds would be spread out on even the most crowded days: Do not worry about lift lines when you ski Sugarbush!

For the people who are tired of skiing down a flat hill, Sugarbush has a lot to offer. It has many bumps, steeps, tree skiing, and unique terrain that winds through gladed forests. Dad said it captures some of the fun of skiing in the old days.

For beginners, there is a unique lift for never-evers called the Magic Carpet. It pulls you up the hill like a conveyor belt. Intermediates find heaven in Sugarbush; there are many beautiful trails that wind through the woods. Some of the best intermediate trails are Sleeper, Snowball, Birch Run, Murphy's Glades, Downspout, and Waterfall. Experts find plenty of challenge here, with Sugarbush's tree skiing, moguls, and steeps. Some of the hardest and most fun trails are Paradise, Ripcord, Exterminator, Upper F.I.S., and Stein's Run, plus the whole Castlerock area.

Sugarbush is a great resort, one of the best I have skied. I would recommend it to anybody, even never-evers!

For all you who haven't been to Sugarbush since last year or before, you're probably saying, "Humph, I didn't see anything special about that mountain." But that was before it put $28 million into what it claims is the biggest expansion in North American history. It added seven new chairlifts so most of the mountain can be accessed by high speed detachable quads! Even the slower lifts are worth it because they access incredible terrain. Although seven sounds like a whopping number of new chairlifts, it isn't, given the size of the resort.

The most fantastic of these chairs is the Slide Brook Express, world's fastest, going about 17.6 miles per hour. It's also the longest, following its straight path through the valley for 11,000 feet, and it does this in only 9-1/2 minutes. The crowning achievement is that it goes both ways. Even for those of you who don't ski, it's worth the admission just to ride this beauty, for on a day when the Green Mountains were being drenched in fog and rain, it was still an incredible panorama. My dad kept saying, "Unbelievable" in a voice that was filled with awe, which got pretty annoying.

The trails at Sugarbush are awesome and are just as skiing should be. There are no bottlenecks at the bottom where you have to coast on flat trails. Most trails have the same rating all the way down, except double black diamonds, which flatten out to normal black diamonds, as one would expect. Leslie Otten doesn't believe in cutting down every tree on a mountain, so the trails maintain a lot of their forest isolation and charm, which is a quality I like. To add to the fun, Sugarbush thins the forests in between some trails, so you can ski almost anywhere. Also, the trails don't interconnect as much as they do on some mountains, so you don't have to worry about skiing along a diamond trail and coming up against a wall of wedgies.

There is a peak serviced by an outdated double chair called Castlerock. It has no snowmaking, but you can get a real thrill skiing there because it's all rocks, stumps, bumps, and ice. Dad says it's the way skiing used to be before they had snowmaking and high-speed quads. He wouldn't let us ski Castlerock because he wouldn't let us ski there alone, and he was afraid he'd tear up his best skis on the rocks.

We stayed in the Sugarbush Inn, which was really nice, and got to swim and use the Jacuzzi at the Sports Club at the base of the mountain. To finish this up, I'll will say that Sugarbush is incredible, and as the brochures say: WOW! It's the only way to describe the indescribable!

For more information, see the Sugarbush Web site at www.peaks.com, or call them at 800-53-SUGAR.

Justin and Evan Jones are identical twins. They are in 7th grade at South Meadow School in Peterborough, N.H., and have been skiing since they were kids.