Vermont Snow Wizards

Pleistocene Dreams

2012-02-17T05:54:00.000-08:00

I have recurring dreams about skiing. It’s strange because I wasn’t born into a skiing family. My mother never skied and my sister never in my memory. My dad used skis like other Vermonters of his generation, for free thrills on winter days. However, given the realities of the 1930s I don’t think he had much leisure time for even free thrills. Despite this, I feel a strong inherent connection to the sport that has helped define our state. When I was very small I remember taking rides that ended in the parking lots of ski areas, places we called ski tows. The mountains were large, the activity perplexing. They remain some of my earliest memories, and in the twisted way of dreams, have been retooled in my subconscious.

The time is always early evening. Alpenglow reflects off the deep pillows of stark white snow, but also the powder blues, bright yellows and lime greens of painted infrastructure. Long, sharply creased shadows stretch away from the graceful lift towers and an assortment of ski conveyance. I see familiar pomas, t-bars and ancient wooden chairs, but also funiculars not to be found this side of Dr. Seuss, all evoking a sense of time past. The snow cats, too, in all their art-decoed glory, as though designed to surpass the sound barrier, recall a scene from the 1950’s that never was. Every building, whether lodge, lift shack or maintenance shed is decorated in faux-Tyrol. Wooden gingerbread frosted with snow and hung with icicles.

The peak, perhaps a bit reminiscent of Bromley Mt. as it may have appeared in prehistoric times, sits at the highest point of a mountain pass. Terrain falls away on every side. The air is absolutely still and crystal clear. I sense a cold that promises to grow much deeper. There’s never another soul in sight, and I feel vulnerable and exposed. I rarely ever actually ski in these dreams, but my tools are always with me: long wooden, hand carved skis with no metal edges, beaten winter boots held in place by ancient bear trap bindings, coiled metal clamped around my heel, a leather strap for a toe piece. In actuality, this equipment from an earlier generation is what I used when first learning how to ski.

My love for skiing began when I slapped ash (and often the similarly spelled body part) to snow. As a native Vermonter, it is my birthright. My family didn’t ski, but the rides to exotic ski tows and using my Dad’s old skis did more than introduce me to the sport. Skiing remains a passion that has taken me from the back hills of my hometown to ski areas and backcountry all over the country. And sometimes, when I’m lucky, to a ski area that exists only in my dreams.

Ferd Thoma and His Enchanted Ski Shop

2012-02-07T09:34:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time in Peru, VT there was an enchanted ski shop owned by a European immigrant named Ferdinand Thoma. Perhaps you have an image of Austrian alpine architecture and efficiency, maintained by a stately Tyrolean gentleman. Well, the reality was quite different, at least by the time I became acquainted with Ferd. He was a wizened old curmudgeon from Hungary, not Austria, and the Hillside Ski Shop was more the workshop of a mad scientist than an enclave of old world ambiance. Hillside was perhaps the area's first specialty ski shop, appropriately named as it clung to the steep hill beside Little and Big Bromley ski tows. The shop is long gone, but the building still stands, forlorn and forgotten, just west of the Sun Lodge on Route 11. Sixty years ago, however, the Hillside Ski Shop was a mecca for people seeking equipment, service and advice about the nascent sport of recreational skiing. Ferd was a brilliant purveyor of all three.

He was a friend and confidant of Fred Pabst, founder of Bromley and the man most responsible for developing the ski industry in southern Vermont. Fred and Ferd were, in many respects, Bromley's yin and yang, cut from very different cloth, but both necessary for creating the whole. In the decades of the 40's and 50's Bromley was one of eastern North America's signature resorts. Ferdinand Thoma represented alpine retail's cutting edge, offering the best equipment and fashion and the very latest in service technology, much of it his own design. In a time when Bromley attracted a largely urban crowd, Ferd was dedicated to making the sport accessible to locals, as well, providing the necessary gear at generous discounts, or at no charge, to those most in need. This tradition continued to the very end. The Hillside Ski Shop enjoyed a business bonanza that only the select few, fortunate and insightful enough to ride the crest of a successful trend, can experience.

By the time I met Ferd in 1989 the shop was nearing the end of a long decline. I worked at the Hillside Ski Shop for two seasons. It was like being a curator at a skiing Smithsonian. Ancient Henke leather boots in boxes were stacked next to hand-made wooden skis from Austria in original plastic wrappers, while clothing styles from the early '70's hung on display racks, effectively marking the date of his last order. All of it waited for consumers who stopped coming to the shop a generation earlier. During my tenure our specialty was service. Ferd would work on anything. No ski was beyond repair, no binding spring beyond replacement, no boot beyond rebuilding. The tools we used would be more familiar to Dr. Frankenstein then they would be to Walter Wintersteiger, but they worked. I'd never seen anything like them before and never will again, but they were the extension of a man who wasted nothing (every wax scraping was reused until it evaporated) and fixed everything.

Stories about Ferdinand's incredible life created the undercurrent of my time at Hillside, punctuated by wild arguments between Ferd and family members in bombastic Hungarian, regardless of any innocent non combatants (re: customers) who may have wandered in. As his one constant companion, tethered by a paycheck, I heard them all, and all of them many times. The tales of his later life were colored with anti-communist paranoia which led me to question their veracity: Soviet agents desperately trying to locate and silence this staunch enemy of the Kremlin, for example. However, his personal trials during World War II are documented. As an executive for Standard Oil in Budapest he was confronted by none other than Adolph Eichmann, demanding the names of Jewish employees. Ferd replied he could have the names or he could have the oil, but he couldn't have both, because Standard's decimated infrastructure would be unable to supply the goods. The Nazi thirst for petroleum saved the day for scores of Hungarian Jews. When the Soviets invaded Hungary during the War's final stages, Ferd organized armed resistance, finally fleeing for his life by swimming the freezing waters of the Danube, trailed by Russian bullets. His dramatic escape on foot through hostile eastern Europe in the winter of 1944 is the stuff of legend.

The Hillside Ski Shop closed in 1992, followed by Ferd's passing three years later. Virtually nothing of Ferd Thoma and decades of Hillside history remains in Peru, only a headstone shared with his wife. I run into few people who remember the man or the business. My feelings for Ferdinand are conflicted. I certainly learned from the man, though some of what I learned is filed in a HOW NOT TO... folder. Undoubtedly, others have created such a folder after working for me. There is value in such lessons. My time with Ferd was fleeting and entirely framed within a working relationship, so there is much for which I don't feel qualified to comment. I can tell you Ferdinand Thoma was a man who deserved to be remembered. He was a successful businessman, a pioneer in the truest sense of the word, certainly a survivor and in many respects, a hero. He could also tell an amazing story.

50 Years of Magic

2012-02-03T06:11:00.000-08:00

This weekend faithful skiers, riders, shoers, sliders and other alpine enthusiasts will celebrate Magic Mountain's 50th anniversary. Folks will be costumed in early 1960's ski garb. A note here: any style five decades old must be considered a costume, even when rocked as everyday-wear. We see it all at Magic. Additionally, leather boots, bamboo poles and 210cm Head Standards will be the norm, as skiers dust off their Stem Christies. Don't knock the Stem Christie until you've tried to turn a 210cm Head Standard.

Saturday night a party to raise the ghosts of apres' skis past, will rage in the Magic base lodge, featuring a remarkable video, transferred from 8mm movie film, depicting the placement of lift towers by helicopter in 1961. I've heard, but haven't verified, this is one of the earliest uses of a helicopter crane in the ski industry. If true, another footnote to the remarkably innovative list of accomplishments of Magic's founder, Hans Thorner. These towers still march their way up Black Line, an enduring example of how the Thorner family continues to effect everyday life at Magic Mountain. For those of you who were alive and skiing 50 years ago the video is a time machine providing a peek at how we looked, skied and raced in the days before ski brakes and snowboards.

As the birthplace of lift served skiing Vermont has a host of resorts old enough to qualify for AARP benefits. In 2011 Bromley celebrated its 75th birthday. Stratton hit the big five-oh earlier this season. There are few places in North America where the roots of skiing are set deeper and alpine history more venerable and accessible than in the southern Greens. Like lift towers scaling Magic's cliffs, the best ideas of 50 years ago still work today. As for 210cm Head Standards, not so much.

Woeful Weather

2012-01-24T08:35:00.000-08:00

Everyone who has ever made a living in winter sports has been trussed and tied to the vagaries of weather. Now, with the reality of global climate change, we are faced with unprecedented climatic challenge. The ski industry has suffered through mild winters with minimal snowfall in the past, but what happens when a season like the one we're experiencing now becomes the norm? Or worse, it becomes a legendary 'old fashioned winter' that today's gromms will reminisce about to their grand kids. "I remember the winter of aught-12 with two inch blizzards every other week for a month! We didn't see bare ground until the end of January!"

The recent 75th anniversary edition of Ski Magazine explored such a future, in which lower elevations of the West and Europe become unskiable. What happens to more elevation challenged areas like ours should be obvious. What's a passionate skier, rider or snowshoer to do? The future outlined in Ski contained solutions like skiing in giant snow globes, a la Dubai, or pursuing winter sports on synthetic surfaces that don't melt or get icy. Like Utah, except there's never a powder day on white astroturf. For myself, I look forward to charging down the Martian slopes of Olympic Mons, the tallest mountain in our solar system. Unlimited year round pow (red dust, actually, that's probably snorkel deep in spots), a third less gravity providing free style possibilities that would humble the best Earth-bound slopestylers ("Bro, I just killed that last 360,000!") and 80,000 feet of vert (think twenty Jackson Holes stacked on top of each other)! Pack your gear and some oxygen, 'cause there isn't much on Mars, and start saving now. I expect it might be a bit pricey.

That's what I thinking about now during an extended January thaw in the middle of a woeful winter. A couple of good powder dumps, however, and bare ground, Mars and Global Climate Change will be temporarily forgotten.

Volunteerism

2011-12-01T05:29:00.000-08:00

Magic Mountain staged three volunteer weekends this fall. Faithful supporters were invited to spend precious time away from home and family to clean, scrape, paint, saw, trim and hammer their way to improving the appearance and performance of the resort. The only recompense were burgers and soda served up by GM Jim Sullivan. Volunteerism may be the purest and most kinetic expression of devotion. Watching people trail down the mountain at the end of a volunteer day, burdened with chainsaws and string trimmers or spattered with grease and paint, is direct and undeniable evidence of the passion people have for Magic.

No doubt, other ski areas have devotees ready to shed blood, sweat and tears to improve its condition. I wonder, however, if as much significant work on the infrastructure is volunteered elsewhere? Do welders, carpenters and mechanics join with accountants, teachers and salesmen to ply their trades, in return for a couple of burgers, at other mountains? Maybe so. In the truest sense of the phrase, it's all good. It's just better, it seems, at Magic.

Good bye, good luck and thank you, Matt Lillard

2011-10-31T17:31:00.000-07:00

By now, everyone associated with Magic Mountain is aware that marketing director/mountain manager Matt Lillard has left to continue his resort operations career in Alaska. Matt is the new general manager at Eaglecrest, a Magic sized ski area in Juneau. He has already been embraced by the community, chosen for his experience and variety of skills developed during his years at Magic.

Let me take you back down memory lane. When Matt came on board the mountain was emerging from a period of mismanagement and misappropriation of resources. The website was grossly amateurish and other forms of social networking not utilized. Magic's marketing platform was gibberish, it's trail map complete with lifts and trails that didn't exist and the infrastructure pieced together with hope and duct tape. There was a vacuum at the top, in-fighting in the middle and disinterest at the bottom, leaving the people who loved it wondering how Magic could ever survive. Into this came Jim Sullivan and his hand-picked marketing guy, Matt Lillard. The task was daunting and his efforts largely under-appreciated. Matt walked point, leading the mountain's marketing in a new direction. He became the lightning rod for change, always a big target, always easy to find. Looking back it's strange how many of us resisted the changes he represented, given the desperate situation that he and Jim were left.

When Jim needed someone he could trust to keep mountain operations on task he sent in Matt. Despite the fact he had no experience with lifts, snowmaking or diesel mechanics, and despite the fact he already had a full-time job as marketing director, he accepted the responsibility. We often hear about people willing to step up huge, determined to do whatever it takes to succeed. Anyone who knows Matt knows one of those people.

His reward for his hard work and dedication is a top executive position at a dynamic little ski resort in Alaska. Our reward is a ski area that makes lots of fantastic snow and grooms it perfectly, a lift that is properly maintained, a consistent marketing message that continues to attract new Magic converts and a knowledgeable staff that's in it for more than a paycheck.
Thank you, Matt.

RETURN OF THE WIZARDS!

2009-11-14T15:56:00.000-08:00

The obituary was written, but Vermont Snow Wizards refused to succumb! As of Columbus Day it appeared we would be forced to close our doors. Since then, we located a new store location near Stratton to expand our warm and welcoming style to a whole new group of skiers and riders! We'll keep you posted as we continue towards our grand opening at the new location.

Meanwhile, our original store at the junction of Route 11 and the Magic Mountain Access Road in Londonderry is now open daily. We are currently featuring a binding check/tune-up special for skis and snowboards. Come visit us today at the foot of Magic Mountain!