Mad River Glen Is A Fraud
This so-called “independent” ski area is anything but
Slopes is once again teaming up with The Storm to document my ski season. In January, I decided to finally check out one of America’s most legendary ski areas: Mad River Glen, Vermont. Unfortunately, the experience was not what I had hoped for.
My main job as a ski journalist is to cut through the LIES, DECEPTION, and INFLATED STATISTICS peddled by ski areas’ so-called “marketing departments,” so I can bring my readers accurate portraits of ski resorts as they are, not the fairytales they’re made out to be.
This is why they call me The Truth God, and why they sometimes call this newsletter The Straight Talk Express.
Because I tell the truth even when it’s uncomfortable.
Even when it goes against sacred beliefs in the ski world.
Even when it calls out some of the most beloved mountains in all of skiing.
And I’m about to expose one of the biggest FRAUDS in American skiing: Mad River Glen “cooperative,” in “Vermont.”
WHAT “THEY” WANT YOU TO BELIEVE
Ski areas are notorious for adding a few feet to their vertical drops or a few inches to their daily snow reports. As you all know, The Straight Talk Express has no patience for this BULLSHIT, and I will CALL THEM OUT with a NUCLEAR TRUTH BOMB!!! But Mad River Glen is not just inflating a few statistics – their entire brand is built on a MOUNTAIN OF LIES, starting with this more than slightly exaggerated “trail map” posted to their website:
And here’s what you’ll read about Mad River Glen on their fallacious website (boldface mine - to highlight the ski area’s RAMPANT LIES, DISTORTIONS, UNTRUTHS, FALSEHOODS, AND DECEPTIONS!!!!!!):
Mad River Glen is like no other ski area in North America. The mountain is famous for its legendary expert terrain, picturesque and varied novice and intermediate trails and of course, the famous Single Chair. The extensive trail system follows the natural contours of General Stark Mountain to a single base area, making it easy for skiers of different abilities to ski together. An average of nearly 250 inches of natural snow each year combines with uncrowded slopes and a pristine mountain environment to create the unique Mad River Glen ski experience.
If you’re a skier, you have most likely heard of Mad River Glen. Amongst an industry of giants this relatively small ski area packs a big mountain punch. What is it that makes Mad River Glen a bucket list destination for all skiers?
It’s a combination of many things, and for every skier the answer is a little different. The area’s character, the result of a long and proud history, reflects the terrain and natural beauty. There is a special camaraderie among the skiers, with its co-op ownership, non-commercial, family-friendly atmosphere, dedicated staff, and – of course – the Single Chair, America’s favorite ski lift.
Mad River Glen offers the most challenging and diverse ski terrain in New England. The trails were cut to follow the mountain’s natural contours. On the one hand, skiers can descend the entire 2,037’ of vertical on true expert terrain with absolutely no run-outs. …
The Single Chair and Sunnyside Double limit uphill capacity which guarantees low skier density on the trails even on the busiest days. Mad River Glen is one of the last pillars of natural snow skiing in New England and is one of only three areas in North America that prohibit snowboarding.
Combined, these qualities create a ski experience that stands in stark contrast to the mainstream world of skiing. The various facets of the Mad River Glen ski experience appeal to different skiers in different ways, but together they create a sense of place that is truly unique. The mission of the Mad River Glen Cooperative is to protect and preserve these special qualities. You are invited to discover for yourself the experience that the skier-owners of Mad River Glen are dedicated to preserving.
Unfortunately for the Mad River Glen “co-op,” I took them up on this invitation to “discover for myself” this so-called “experience.” And it was an EXPERIENCE, all right. In fact, it was “THE EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME.”
MAD RIVER GLEN, HERE I COME
I have to admit that I was excited at first! I knew, from previous trips to Sunday River and Whiteface, that skiing in Vermont could be magical!!! I didn’t know if I would actually like to ride on a single-person chairlift, but I do appreciate one-of-a-kind ski lifts and ski history. I’d recently had the opportunity to ride on the famous six-person chairlift at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which is the only chairlift of its kind IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!!! I’ve also ridden America’s oldest and first chairlift, the Little Chief double chair at Shawnee Mountain, Pennsylvania, which was built in 1983!! Yes, that’s a “19” at the front of the year. So even if I didn’t end up liking the single chair in the end, the opportunity to experience a piece of Vermont and New England ski history, and to do it with NO SNOWBOARDERS around, sounded pretty good to me! Not that I’m against snowboarders!!! Lots of my friends are snowboarders!!!! It’s just that I ski SO FAST that they have a hard time staying out of my way while I absolutely dominate the terrain parks!!!
But I was also a little nervous! I’ve visited almost 10 different ski areas, and there’s a reason I was leaving Mad River Glen for last!!! Mad River Glen’s famous slogan is “SKI IT IF YOU CAN!!!” And while I know I’m usually one of the best skiers on the mountain because I go straight down the middle of black diamonds with no turns whatsoever, I felt like I was about to play one-on-one basketball against Michael Jordan and LeBron James and Kobe Bryant! And it was intimidating!!!
So I told my Pet Rectangle to set a route from my home in NYC to Mad River ski area, put The Straight Talk Express-mobile on cruise control, and headed toward New England! Little did the Pretenders and Fakers at Mad River know that I’d just launched a precision-guided Truth Missile from the far side of the Hudson!!!
Now, my first hunch that something was wrong was when the robots told me to drive through Pennsylvania. I didn’t remember driving through Pennsylvania the last time I drove to New England, to ski at Hunter Mountain, but I guessed that the robots must have discovered a shortcut. An average person who isn’t a technology expert such as myself probably would have stopped to second-guess the route, but I know a “LIFE HACK” when I see one!!!!!
Or so I thought!!! But after many hours of driving and a sumptuous steak dinner at an exquisite restaurant called Hoss’s Steak & Sea House (can you say “eighth-of-an-inch-thick-steak-with-unlimited-salad-bar-and-BYOB please???”), I ended up in OHIO! Which I know for a FACT is NOT part of New England anymore! But I thought maybe it was still a shortcut and I’d get to Vermont any minute, so I kept driving!
And a few hours later, I at long last arrived at MAD RIVER GLEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!:
WOW!!! Finally I was at Mad River Glen!!!!!!! I couldn’t believe it!!!!!! But I was still a little confused about the directions, so I approached a group of fellows who were grilling cans of beer in the bed of a lifted F-350 with vertical smokestack exhaust pipes. “Hey Fellas, good morning. Did I miss the ‘Welcome to Vermont’ sign?”
“No but you missed the ‘Go Fuck Yourself’ sign!” one of them yelled, before they all started in on some sort of impromptu spelling bee. “O-H-I-O!!!” they kept yelling. This continued for several minutes, until they began beating one another over the heads with red-and-gray folding chairs.
As I ducked and turned to avoid a Ziplock bag full of flaming poop that one of the young men had hurled at me, I caught my first glimpse of the “mountain.”
And this is when it started to set in!!!! That Mad River Glen was like the moon landing or the pyramids!!! FAKE!!! LIES!!! There was no “mountain” here - there was NOTHING here! Or almost nothing!!! Two-thousand vertical feet MY ASS!!! General Stark Mountain? More like General Napoleon Mountain!!! I could barely see this so-called “ski area” over their so-called “non-commercial” baselodge, which looks like a bus-station brew pub! Hardly what I’d call “historic!!!”
It’s hard to describe how I felt at that moment. I’ve been less disappointed after realizing I’d ordered a salad with raisins in it!!!!! (which is NEVER a problem as Hoss’s because you make YOUR OWN salad at the salad bar!).
So there I was, standed in OHIO among violent Spelling Bee Flashmobs, and I’m supposed to “ski” on some so-called “mountain” that I wouldn’t have been able to see over a handheld flagpole planted at the center of the parking lot? Like this one:
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But I’d come all this way. And I knew I’d get to eat at Hoss’s again on the way home even if the skiing wasn’t great! And, besides, they don’t call me the BULLSHIT ASSASSIN because I just believe whatever “advertising” tells me and give up without finding the TRUTH. So I went in and bought a lift ticket! And instead of handing me a sticker to attach to a mini-coathanger, like I would expect out of a supposedly “throwback” ski area, the lady who sold me the lift ticket told me I had to DOWNLOAD SOME APP and that the ticket would be ON MY PHONE! And I was like, “sure, just like the Pilgrims did it.” And I felt bad for being such a smart-Alec, but I was really mad about being tricked! They do call me THE ANGRY SKI CRITIC after all, and you don’t get a nickname like that for nothing!!!!!!!
But I looked past it. Because I really wanted to ride that single chair. And I went outside and there were chairlifts all over the place! Probably five or six altogether!!! But I didn’t see a one-person chairlift! They looked like they could all hold three or four people!!!! And I asked a 5-year-old who was passing by if he knew which chairlift was the single chair? And he gave me the finger and shouted “GO BUCKS!!!” then shotgunned a can of Milwaukee’s Best and threw the can at me!!! And I thought that was strange, but then the lift attendant did EXACTLY THE SAME THING!!!
But then I remembered that I was in Ohio. And I thought “Oh maybe those are single chairs” and they just look like four-person chairs because they’ve been retrofit to accommodate the locals! And I was embarrassed for having been so insensitive.
So I still wasn’t sure about the single chair. But guess what else??? There were snowboarders ALL OVER THE PLACE!!!
And so I stopped a passing ski patroller, and I said, “I know you weren’t expecting a visit from The TRUTH KING today, but you better kick those snowboarders out before I tell my 85-going-on-86 Facebook followers that Mad River Glen’s so-called ‘snowboard ban’ is phony!” And he said “Only if they’re from That State Up North! GO BUCKS!!!” Then he skied away.
So I figured I might as well finally ski. So I rode up the chairlift. And the view off the top was hardly of some “pristine mountain environment.” It was just a bunch of boring farms and shit. And the runs were NOT “challenging” OR “diverse” OR “legendary” like Mad River Glen’s website claimed!!! They’re just a bunch of big wide groomers! With snowguns all over them!!! So much for being a “pillar of natural snow skiing!!!!!!!”
And the runs were SHORT!!!! I’ve seen more vertical drop from a playground swingset:
TAKE SHELTER, A TRUTH TORNADO HAS BEEN SPOTTED IN THE AREA
All right, TEAM TRUTH, here’s the #RealTalkNoBullshit take that you come to The Straight Talk Express for: Mad River Glen is NOT in Vermont (it’s in Ohio)! It is NOT in New England (anymore)! It does NOT have a single-person chairlift (I don’t think)!!!! It is NOT a natural-snow ski area!! It is NOT challenging! There are SNOWBOARDERS everywhere!!!! And it was about as family friendly as a car crash! I hadn’t had that many beer cans thrown at me since I told my Uncle Pete that he couldn’t drive his go-kart on the interstate without probably getting a ticket!
But a true Truth Ninja acts not only in Stealth, but also in Frank Confrontation. And so I calmly approached the customer service desk and demanded to speak to a representative of the co-op. But the clerk behind the counter just kept mumbling something about how “it was only five plays… I shouldn’t a betted alls ah my teeth…” And finally herky-jerky pointed to a large map on the wall. So I went and looked at it. And it looked NOTHING like the fake made-up map on Mad River Glen’s website!!! And at the bottom, written real sneaky and small-like so I could hardly see it, was Mad River’s ultimate secret hiding in plain site: this so-called “independent,” “unique,” “non-commercial” ski area was OWNED BY FUCKING VAIL!!!!!
AND to add insult to injury, the fine print revealed that Mad River Glen was on THE FREAKING EPIC PASS!!!!!!!!:
I was raging hot by then. “I HOPE YOUR VACCINES ARE UP TO DATE,” I screamed at the ticket clerk, “BECAUSE A PLAGUE OF FACTUAL ACCURACY IS ON ITS WAY TO OHIO, AND I’M PATIENT ZERO!!!” I stormed out of there so fast that I don’t even remember leaving. Fortunately I was later able to hack into Mad River Glen’s parking lot surveillance footage of me streaking out of there:
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IN CONCLUSION: Mad River Glen is A FRAUD! It is a tiny small little ski area in Ohio that is owned by Vail and filled with snowboarders and unchallenging runs and boring regular chairlifts!!!! IT IS NOT a 2,000-vertical-foot skiers-only throwback collectively owned by a bunch of regular-Joe skiers in some dramatic Vermont mountain range with a special single chair and super-hard expert terrain and no snowboarders!!!!!! MAD RIVER GLEN IS A PACK OF LIES!!!!!
And I don’t care if you don’t want to hear it!!! This is why they call me THE LIQUIDATOR OF LIES!!! And sometimes also THE LIE DETECTOR!!! And also once in a while the EXTERMINATOR OF FALSEHOODS AND UNTRUTHS!!!! Some people put milk on their breakfast cereal, but I drown everything I eat in TRUTH SERUM!!!
Don’t want to hear it?
DON’T CARE!!!
Because MAD RIVER GLEN IS A LIE!!!
TRUTH ENEMA DELIVERED!!!!!!!!!
So take my advice and next time you want to ski in New England A) just fly there, because the GPS directions are super off, B) Go to a REAL classic, independent New England ski area, like Arapahoe Basin or Park City, C) grab a twelver of MGD before you roll into Hoss’s, and, D) Go Blue!!!
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A great April 1st post! Thank you Stuart.
I've seen this movie! "The Manhattanite who went up a hill and came down a mountain".