This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Dec. 28. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 4. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below: Who Jon Schaefer, Owner and General Manager of Berkshire East, Massachusetts and Catamount, straddling the border of Massachusetts and New York Recorded on December 6, 2023 About the mountains Berkshire East Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: The Schaefer family Located in: Charlemont, Massachusetts Year founded: 1960 Pass affiliations: * Berkshire Summit Pass: Unlimited Access * Indy Base Pass: 2 days with blackouts (reservations required) * Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackouts (reservations required) Closest neighboring ski areas: Eaglebrook School (:36), Brattleboro (:48), Hermitage Club (:48), Mt. Greylock Ski Club (:52), Mount Snow (:55), Jiminy Peak (:56), Bousquet (:56); Catamount is approximately 90 minutes south of Berkshire East Base elevation: 660 feet Summit elevation: 1,840 feet Vertical drop: 1,180 feet Skiable Acres: 180 Average annual snowfall: 110 inches Trail count: 45 Lift count: 7 (1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Berkshire East’s lift fleet) View historic Berkshire East trailmaps on skimap.org. Catamount Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: The Schaefer family Located in: Hillsdale, New York and South Egremont, Massachusetts (the resort straddles the state line, and generally seems to use the New York address as its location of record) Year founded: 1939 Pass affiliations: * Berkshire Summit Pass: Unlimited Access * Indy Base Pass and Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackouts (reservations required) Closest neighboring ski areas: Butternut (:19), Otis Ridge (:35), Bousquet (:40), Mohawk Mountain (:46), Jiminy Peak (:50), Mount Lakeridge (:55), Mt. Greylock Ski Club (1:02); Berkshire East sits approximately 90 minutes north of Catamount Base elevation: 1,000 feet Summit elevation: 2,000 feet Vertical drop: 1,000 feet Skiable Acres: 133 acres Average annual snowfall: 108 inches Trail count: 44 (35% green, 42% blue, 23% black/double-black) Lift count: 8 (2 fixed-grip quads, 3 triples, 3 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Catamount’s lift fleet) View historic Catamount trailmaps on skimap.org. Why I interviewed him Might I nominate Massachusetts as America’s most underappreciated ski state? It’s easy to understand the oversight. Bordered by three major ski states that are home to a combined 107 ski areas (50 in New York, 27 in Vermont, and 30 in New Hampshire), Massachusetts contains just 13 active lift-served mountains. Two (Easton School and Mount Greylock Ski Club) are private. Five of the remainder deliver vertical drops of 400 feet or fewer. The state’s entire lift-served skiable area clocks in at around 1,300 acres, which is smaller than Killington and just a touch larger than Solitude. But the code and character of those 11 public ski areas is what I’m interested in here. Winnowed from some 200 bumps that once ran ropetows up the incline, these survivors are super-adapters, the Darwinian capstones to a century-long puzzle: how to consistently offer skiing in a hostile world that hates you. New England is a rumbler, and always has been. Outside of northern Vermont’s Green Mountain Spine (Sugarbush, MRG, Bolton, Stowe, Smuggs, Jay), which snags 200-plus inches of almost automatic annual snowfall, the region’s six states can, on any given day from November to April, stage double as Santa’s Village or serve as props for sad brown Christmas pining. Immersive reading of the New England Ski History website suggests this contemporary reality reflects historical norms: prior to the widespread introduction of snowmaking, ski areas could sometimes offer just a single-digit number of ski days in particularly dif