The Ski Country Begins

The bare strips you can see cut down the mountainsides are ski trails, and skiing is a huge part of what this road is for — Route One Hundred connects most of Vermont's major ski areas like beads on a string.

It started earlier than you'd think. The first rope tow in the United States started turning in Woodstock, Vermont, in nineteen thirty-four — a length of rope and a Model T engine. Before that, if you wanted to ski down a mountain you walked up it first.

Then in the nineteen thirties the Civilian Conservation Corps — Depression-era work crews — cut ski trails all over these mountains, including some of the most famous runs in the East. A lot of what people ski in Vermont today was hand-cut by young men with axes in nineteen thirty-five, for a dollar a day.

What that means for you in summer or autumn: those trails are hiking routes, and the resorts run lifts for leaf-peepers and mountain bikers. If you want a mountaintop view without a hike, a scenic chairlift ride is usually available somewhere along this road, and in early October it's spectacular.

You'll pass the access roads for several of them. The mountains get bigger as we go south.