05/14/2026
Throwing it back thirty plus years to a New York Times piece featuring us and our friends at Burke Mountain
Writer Jack Cavanaugh wondered if the juice is worth the squeeze and ultimately concluded that it most certainly is…
“Among many skiers the feelings is, the closer the ski area the better. Such thinking may account in part for the popularity of such ski resorts as Hunter Mountain in the Catskills or Mount Snow in Vermont. The proximity brings with it bigger crowds, longer lift lines and higher prices. On the other hand, longer drives to relatively remote ski areas in northern New England can mean more for less money, not to mention shorter, or even nonexistent, lift lines.
On the advice of friends, my wife and I decided two years ago to try to determine whether there were indeed advantages to traveling considerably farther by car — and into colder climes — to ski in northern Vermont, far beyond more convenient resorts in Massachusetts and southern Vermont, where we had skied in the past. Like many skiers, we felt that spending five or more hours traveling to a ski area made sense only if you were doing so by plane and your destination was Europe, Aspen, Vail or Steamboat Springs. Our doubts have been dispelled, and we are now sold on skiing in northern Vermont, far removed from the throngs at nearer Northeastern cities.
Getting more for less is only part of the appeal of ski resorts such as Burke Mountain and Smugglers’ Notch in northern Vermont. There are also the esthetic advantages, mainly the vistas encountered while skiing down East Bowl at Burke Mountain or from the top of Madonna, at Smugglers’ Notch, the three-mountain resort about 65 miles west of Burke, from which, on the clearest of days, you can see Montreal, 90 miles to the north.”
