Northeast Slopes: The Little Ski Hill the Volunteers Built

On a winter Saturday in East Corinth, the lift line at Northeast Slopes looks like nothing else in American skiing. There is no RFID gate, no heated bubble chair, no base village with a Starbucks. There is a rope tow that has been running since 1936, a T-bar that volunteers spent five years fundraising to install, a small lodge kitchen serving grass-fed beef burgers topped with Cabot cheese, and a mountain staffed entirely by people who are there because they love it. This is skiing the way it used to be — and in Corinth, Vermont, it never stopped.

The story begins with a handshake and a wrong turn. In 1936, the Bradford Winter Sports Club installed a rope tow on Mt. Tug in Bradford — and got a snowless first season for its trouble. Club president George Eaton was driving up Route 25 toward Montpelier when he noticed a field in East Corinth holding far more snow. The field belonged to farmer Eugene Eastman, and a handshake deal put the club's rope tow on Eastman's north-facing pasture instead. The area opened in December 1936, and after the move it was renamed Northeast Slopes in 1946.

What happened next is the reason the place still exists. When the ski area needed saving in 1962, local skiers formed a nonprofit and took over operations — volunteers handling the grooming, expanding the terrain, and keeping lift tickets affordable for families. The pattern repeated: another nonprofit purchase in the mid-1980s (Northeast Slopes, Inc., which bought the Eastman Farm land and has run the hill since the 1986-87 season), and another community rescue in the early 2000s after lean snow years and dwindling visitors nearly closed it for good.

The main rope tow is the star of the show. Installed in 1936 and now extending some 1,250 feet up the mountain, it is considered one of the oldest continuously operating rope tows in the United States — and reportedly the world's fastest, having once been clocked at 27 miles per hour during a world-record speed attempt. Some original-era parts survive in the mechanism. A second, smaller rope tow serves beginners. Riding a rope tow is a skill — gloves grip, knees bend, and you learn fast — and it is a rite of passage that no detachable quad can replicate.

The T-bar has its own legend. The dream of adding one dated to 1972, but fundraising only began in earnest in 2004. Volunteers eventually raised roughly half of the $180,000 cost before a former patron, Leland Blodgett, heard about the effort, asked what was still needed, and — days after being told about $72,000 — simply put the money in the ski area's bank account. The John A. Pierson Jr. T-Bar, named for a volunteer of 50 years who drove the project but died just before its December 26, 2009 opening, was built with components from a former T-bar at Ski Bradford in Massachusetts — which had originally come from Stratton Mountain. The grooming machine, a hand-me-down from a ski area out west, is named Leland in the donor's honor.

The numbers are modest and proudly so: about 340 vertical feet, 35 acres, 12 trails, two rope tows and a T-bar. There is no snowmaking empire here, no grooming fleet — just volunteers, donations, and support from surrounding towns. The lodge kitchen keeps prices family-friendly: locally raised, grass-fed beef burgers, grilled cheese, Green Mountain Coffee and hot cocoa, and homemade treats like Pearl's famous whoopie pies. It is the anti-resort, and its fans wouldn't have it any other way.

There's a deeper culture here that big mountains can't manufacture. On a busy Saturday the lodge feels like a town meeting that happens to be wearing ski boots — everybody knows the volunteers by name, the kids race each other to the rope tow, and the whole operation runs on an honor system of goodwill. Nobody is upselling you a lesson package or a terrain-park pass. The product is simple: snow, a hill, a tow, and a burger. It turns out that's enough.

Getting there is part of the charm. Northeast Slopes sits on Route 25 in East Corinth, in the heart of the Upper Valley's quiet side — about 20 minutes from Bradford, within easy reach of the Connecticut River towns. The village of East Corinth itself is worth a look: a white-steepled classic where, film buffs note, Tim Burton's Beetlejuice was filmed in 1988, and the red barn housing one of the tow mechanisms was reportedly salvaged from the movie's set. The East Corinth General Store down the road is the classic country-store stop for gas, snacks, and supplies.

For families, Northeast Slopes is arguably the best learn-to-ski deal in New England. The beginner tow, the gentle pasture terrain, the absence of crowds and attitude — it is the kind of place where kids learn to turn without learning to fear the lift line. Generations of Upper Valley kids took their first slides here, and many of today's volunteers are yesterday's ski-school students, grown up and giving back. Check the area's website for operating days and conditions before you go; this is a volunteer-powered schedule, not a corporate calendar, and snow dictates everything.

Ninety years after a ski club president spotted a snowy field from his car window, Northeast Slopes endures as proof of a simple idea: that affordable, community-run skiing is worth preserving, and that a town that skis together stays together. Ski Vermont's official resort guide lists it alongside the state's biggest mountains without apology, and it belongs there — not for its vertical, but for its heart. In an era of mega-passes and $200 lift tickets, the little hill in East Corinth isn't a relic. It's a reminder of what the sport was always supposed to be.