The New York Times-20080125-Forgotten Trails And Frozen Lifts Of Winters Past

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Forgotten Trails And Frozen Lifts Of Winters Past

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STANDING in a small, abandoned clearing alongside lonely Route 8 in southern Vermont, it's hard to fathom that it was once a bustling ski area called Dutch Hill. On this site there were three lifts, two lodges, cafeterias and a ski shop -- an attraction with a loyal following that stormed up this isolated country lane to fill Dutch Hill's parking lots for 40 winters.

But if you climb the rise on the opposite side of the road, looking back at the hillside, you can just make out the snaking paths of former trails and lift towers. So there it is, like a ghost in the winter forest: Dutch Hill, once called Little Stowe, now closed for 23 years.

That makes Dutch Hill, in the town of Heartwellville, one of 113 documented lost ski areas in Vermont, and one of more than 1,000 nationwide.

Left behind in the hazy flurries of history, these lost ski areas are relics evocative of skiing's unadorned past, of woolen mittens and a cozy lodge redolent of hot chocolate. They are reminders, too, of the birth of skiing in America, of its halcyon days, of its former abundance. Like abandoned playgrounds or a forsaken baseball stadium, they are powerful places where nostalgia pools, where you can stand near an idle trail and almost hear the laughter of children.

The lost ski areas are closed, but they are alive in the hearts and minds of everyone who called those places home, said Jeremy Davis, who started the New England Lost Ski Area Project (www.nelsap.org) nine years ago. I can attest to that. Just read my e-mail for a week.

Within 10 miles of Dutch Hill, the chairs from what was a lift on Haystack Mountain in Wilmington are still and deserted, poking through weeds and drifting snow. At the top of the hill, wooden markers tacked to birch trees still point down vacant trails. An empty lodge waits in an adjacent field. Haystack, like many former ski areas, hopes to reopen but has not operated for three years. The story and the scene are similar a few miles away in Dummerston at the closed Maple Valley ski area -- an eerily desolate lodge, wide but unoccupied trails and motionless lifts.

And nearby, on Route 9 west of Brattleboro, there are the lost Alpine areas of Prospect Mountain in Woodford and Hogback Mountain in Marlboro.

It breaks my heart to see them all gone, said Jackie Dannenberg, whose family first went to Hogback in 1965 and returned nearly every winter weekend for 15 years from their home in Kingston, Mass. Hogback closed in 1986. I have so many warm memories of us all being there together. I asked my sister, Becky, why it matters so much that it's gone, and she said, 'Because those weekends at Hogback helped define us as a family.

Mr. Davis, a meteorologist and ski historian who lives near Glens Falls, N.Y., understands. He started his Web site when he was in college, rooting through old maps and making weekend excursions in the field. He figured he would identify maybe 100 old ski areas. His Web site posted his early research and offered a free exchange of information.

He was stunned by the response he received. People came out of the woodwork with old snapshots and long, emotional stories of closed areas, and at one point I thought, 'Wow, there might be 300 of these lost ski areas, Mr. Davis said. We got to 300, and just kept going.

HE has now identified nearly 600 lost ski areas in New England, plus another 64 in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Similar historical groups in the western United States have recognized at least another 400 closed areas -- 145 in Colorado alone.

People made deep, very personal connections to their ski areas, Mr. Davis said. It was who they were for dozens of winter weekends across several years. They don't want to let go.

Mrs. Dannenberg, for example, talked about how her mother had sold 12 place settings of Lenox china for $300 so her family of six could begin its skiing odyssey at Hogback, where season passes for their entire family cost $150.

Mom had decided skiing would be a good family activity, said Mrs. Dannenberg, who now lives outside Huntsville, Ala. We drove a little 45-by-8-foot house trailer up there and left it in a mobile-home park where we would stay on weekends. That was pretty tight quarters. But we loved it. I remember when Hogback closed, my mom was angry because she said she always wanted to ski there with her grandchildren.

Mrs. Dannenberg, now 49, later became a ski instructor and racing coach at Hogback. Her mother, Louise Staiger, died in 2005. I was going through some of my Mom's things after she passed, she said. I found a snowflake pin she always used to wear in the winter. I remembered the day she bought that in the Hogback gift shop.

If the lost ski areas seem like touchstones to a simpler time, it's because the ski industry of 40 or 50 years ago (if you could call it an industry) was simpler. The postwar skiing boom may have eventually created the flashy and massive ski resorts of today, but the seeds for that evolution were planted by the hundreds of modest ski areas that sprouted in small communities. Many were struggling mom-and-pop operations. Profits were meager, and each area relied on natural snow.

But most of these ski areas tended to find a way to remain open year after year, adding restaurants, rental and gift shops, instruction and racing programs. There was a passion for skiing that was really more a way of life. And celebrities skied. The actress Doris Day even came to Dutch Hill. So there was a hint of glamour. The completion of the Interstates had made more people mobile, and there were so many choices in the mountains.

You could ski a different ski area in Vermont every weekend, and never go to the same one twice all winter, said Bill Jenkins, who helped found the Birdseye Mountain ski area, also defunct, in Castleton, Vt., and who invented one of the early ski lifts used in North America. We would hop around on a tour. Lots of people did it, and the cost was minimal, maybe $4 for a full-day lift ticket. It was a great era.

BUT the 1970s were hard times for operators of ski areas. There was an energy crisis, which not only cut down leisure driving by potential customers but saddled areas with higher energy prices. At the same time, liability insurance costs spiked. The histories of dozens of small ski areas end with the conclusion that it could not reopen one winter because the owners could not afford their insurance premiums.

Skiing was also a victim of its own success. With six times the number of American skiers in 1970 as in 1955, many skiers began searching for thrills beyond the local hill. And when they did visit a big resort, they rode relatively comfortable chair lifts instead of T-bars. They skied on groomed trails, many covered using something altogether new: snow-making equipment.

People's habits started to change, Mr. Davis said. They wanted bigger places with bigger restaurants and lodges, more places to stay, more grooming. The smaller areas didn't have the money for the new amenities.

As Mr. Jenkins said: To raise $40,000 for a new T-bar was one thing, but finding $250,000 for a new chair lift plus the snow-making you needed under it, well, that was out of reach.

So the crowds at the small areas dwindled, and bit by bit in the 1970s and 1980s, the areas closed, with some all but disappearing. Nature reclaimed some, as unattended undergrowth overwhelmed the old trails. New construction obliterated others. Or, in some cases, progress just obliviously climbed past.

In West Ossipee, N.H., a McDonald's went in where parts of the old Mount Whittier ski area once stood. The builders didn't bother to take down one of the gondola towers; they just built the McDonald's parking lot around it.

It was kind of sad, Mr. Davis said, because a lot of great old places full of memories just vanished.

If it was an end of an era, it went pretty much unnoticed at the time. Everyone's gaze was fixed on the next phase of skiing's expansion -- faster lifts, bigger trail systems and a booming apres-ski scene that swaddled skiing in flash and sizzle.

But in time, a certain wistfulness for skiing's homey roots surfaced. Mr. Davis and his colleagues study old journals and newspapers and regularly hike over hill and dale to uncover the old areas. People come to his Web site and contribute souvenirs, trail maps and personal mementos, whether it's a Haystack sweater or a Hogback poster. They won't let their lost ski areas be forgotten.

People want to tell their stories, he said. And now is the time to create the historical record. Before it's too late.

Moreover, it is important to rediscover these sites. Stand alongside Vermont's remote Route 8 gazing up at what once was Dutch Hill and you don't feel lost. Instead, you feel as if you have found something. There in the trees, on those barely recognizable trails, is the soul of American skiing.

[Illustration]PHOTOS: DESERTED: The abandoned lodge at Maple Valley is a sight often repeated in Vermont (pg. F7); NO LINES: A chairlift at Maple Valley in Vermont. (PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL O. BOISVERT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. F1)MAP (pg. F7) Map of Dutch Hill in Vermont.