About 30 minutes east of Burlington, Virginia, Bolton Valley Resort has long been cast in shadow by its larger, more famous neighbours.
The family-run ski area is located halfway between Stowe Mountain Resort and Sugar Bush, both owned by ski conglomerates, which rely on multi-mount passes. Stowe is epic and Sugarbush takes Ikon. Each resort has over 100 trails, over 2,000 feet of vertical drops, dozens of lifts and luxurious slope side accommodation.
Bolton Valley is relatively humble, with six lifts, 71 trails, 1,700 feet vertical drops and 60 rooms. This is one of the most popular ski areas in Indy Pass, and one of the few resorts offering small, independent mountains and night skiing. Lift tickets at Bolton are priced at less than $100 on most days and at night, half the price of Stowe and Sugarbush.
“We are the liters of a large ski area,” Bolton Valley president Lindsay Des Lauarier told me when he visited the resort last month. “We have a Formica in the bathroom, not marble.”
What Bolton lacks in glamour is more than making up for its terrain and friendly atmosphere. It cultivated a niche between the eastern ski area as a hybrid downhill and a backcountry resort, relying on the demand for backcountry skiing with the legendary 1,200-acre powder preserve known as the Bolton Backcountry.
Bolton Valley reinvented itself because it barely survived. A one-stop shop offering gear, guides and unique terrain – snow seekers can glide seamlessly between well-maintained, lifted trails and powdery backcountry glazes – dedicated skiers It was brought back from the brink by a new generation of famous ski families.
Bolton's Renaissance
Ralph's daughter, Deslauerz, opened the Bolton Valley in 1966, with the mission of building a “resort of working men.”
“Skiing was a gorgeous sport outside the stator,” she said. “He wanted it to have access to Vermont.” Night skiing was introduced so that locals could ski after work, and took over the mountains most winter afternoons. A yellow bus was introduced that distorted the student's scores.
“I think we taught skiing more than 50,000 local kids,” Death Lauriars said at his home near Bolton Base Lodge. “In the end, it probably saved the ski resort.”
By the 1990s, Death Laurias' vision of ski resorts for the public was a faint anachronism. Nearby ski resorts spent tens of millions of people on gorgeous makeovers and marketed themselves to wealthier customers. The outlook for small, independent ski areas like Bolton Valley seemed bleak.
Mr. Deslauriers lost the Bolton Valley to a bank in 1997, and the resort passed through several owners and even closed for the season. Locals moved to preserve it. Backcountry skiers flocked to Bolton for the beloved and fun people surrounding it, and found out in 2011 that the heart of the Backcountry Trail Network would be sold. They teamed up with the Vermontland Trust to raise $1.8 million to buy nearly 1,200 acres, which was then donated to the state, and are now part of the Mount Mansfield State Forest.
In 2017, Deslauriers surprised the ski world, simply because it cost money to build a resort before. This time he asked the kids to run it.
So, 45-year-old Lindsay took the helm and started the Bolton Valley Renaissance. She is saved by her brother Evan. Adam runs Bolton's backcountry centre. Eric, Head of Mountain Operations. Another brother, Rob, works as a hotel developer in Jackson, Wyoming and as a quiet advisor to Lindsay. Rob, Eric and Adam rose to fame as extreme skiers in the 1990s and were featured in over 20 films.
Running the ski area was not a life plan for Death Lauriars. She had just completed her Masters in Literature, and took on the job as a Montpellier advocate, leading a statewide campaign for progressive workplace policies like paid sick leave.
“My brother was a skier. I was obsessed with literature and other things,” she said. (She is also an expert skier, as she learned quickly when she skied with her later.)
However, when her father bought the ski resort back, Death Lauers reluctantly agreed to take charge.
The ski resort was “an extension of our home,” she said. But if she returned, she knew that Bolton Valley needed an update. She tapped political connections, raised $2 million in investments, funded improvements, and built mountain bike trails and wedding venues.
Together with Adam, she worked to make backcountry skiing a core part of Bolton Valley's new identity. They hired guides, invested and rented backcountry skiing and snowboarding equipment, and launched a backcountry clinic.
“If you don't care about trees”
Learning how to backcountry skiing comes from father and son Steve and Ryan Rogers, from Weymouth, Massachusetts, who drew to Bolton Valley on a January morning. They began taking educational backcountry tours. I tagged it together.
Steve, 56, works in Boston's affordable housing field, researched online, and Bolton Valley is the only place in New England, renting, teaching and skiing terrain for backcountry skiing and snowboarding. I decided that it was offered at some point.
After an hour's orientation in the warm ski centre, the pair (and i) went to the Bolton backcountry following Guide Scott Meyer.
“If you can do alpine skiing, you can probably pull this off, if you don't care about the trees,” Meyer said.
We skinned Bryant Camp, an old cabin built by Edward Bryant, a conservationist and forester who purchased the land around Bolton Mountain a century ago. We reached the top of the birch grade where we removed the climbing skin.
Looking at the beautiful, low-horned grades covered in swelling powder, the Rogers duo looked equally excited and uneasy. Meyer gently encouraged people to spend time focusing on the space between the trees, not the trees themselves.
They pushed away and quickly glided through the flour. A few spins and they laughed. Ryan, 24, has released a hoop that he is happy with.
“It was beautiful,” Steve said at the bottom of the run. “When I see the trees get a little faster, it was a bit of eye-opening and adrenaline pumping, but it was fantastic.”
Later that day, I found Deslauriers in her office overlooking the ski area.
She said the resort's total revenue has almost tripled since helmed in 2018, with season pass sales increasing by 30%, and the resort is profitable for the first time in years.
She said she enjoys taking on Titan in the ski industry.
The nearby resorts of the epic and icon “lead a gap in the market as we are happy to please,” she said.
The Multi Mountain Pass has fundamentally changed the nature of American skiing. Meanwhile, they brought huge profits to resort conglomerates and introduced them. The pass encouraged a crowd of skiers, but exacerbated traffic congestion, long lines and housing shortages in small resort communities. Skiers welcomed the savings and flexibility that Epic and Ikon brought, but participating resorts saw a dramatic increase in the cost of one-day lift tickets, with more than $300 in Vail and Park City and more than $200 in Stowe It's beyond.
The approximately $100 lift ticket “may sound pretty weird,” Deslauriers said, “on a powder day with a five-minute lift line and a 1,700-foot vertical foot.”
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