When I was cutting my teeth on Eastern skiing in the 60's, Stowe always stood out as a final test on the road to skiing maturity. The Front Four were mine fields of precipitous treachery, and the reward of navigating them successfully with body and equipment in tact was the pure thrill of survival. Stowe was a kind of star chamber for the East's best skiers if you could make it here, you could make it anywhere. To ride the lift was to experience first-rate theater a revue of Eastern hotshots strutting their athletic, acrobatic stuff on the most challenging stage around.

There was more to the Stowe aura than just the skiing, too. Stowe had the quintessential mountain-top restaurant in the Octagon built of red clapboard, low-slung, half-buried in the snow. On warm spring days, sun-soaking revellers on the Octagon deck would use wine pouches as squirt guns to douse lift-riders preparing to unload from the parallel single and double chairs that passed close-by. The Stowe Community Church steeple was the quintessential foreground element in the quintessential winter-in-the-New-England-mountains photograph. The Germans have a word for it echt, meaning genuine, or pure. Stowe, to me, was echt.

Well, things change. Stowe no longer exudes quite the aura of tradition it once did, and part of it has to do with the softening of Stowe skiing. Stowe has evolved over the years into a well-rounded ski area for skiers of all abilities all for the better, I suppose, except that something of Stowe's star-chamber quality has been lost in the process. Although Goat and Star are as ferocious as ever, some of the teeth have been taken out of National and Lift Line. Widening, grooming, and snowmaking might now make them skiable throughout the season, but neither is quite the monster-mogul run it used to be. Beyond the ski area, commercial development along the access road has certainly brought zest to Stowe's nightlife, but it has simultaneously quashed some of that old-time echt-ness.

I don't want to sound overly stuck in the mud, though, because I still rank Stowe as it is today among the best ski areas in the East. As a resort town it's got about everything you'd ever want (except a much-needed stoplight at the critical intersection of Routes 100 and 108, the mountain-access road). Stowe today is just different than it used to be, that's all.

Utterly unchangeable, however, is what bowled me over about Stowe in the first place: the big mountain. Seeing Mt. Mansfield for the first time from the access road on a spring day many years ago, I thought it somehow seemed bigger than any mountain in New England had a right to be. The rocky summit ridges were still coated with their winter rime, creating an image of a huge, white-capped wave cresting over the countryside. I was in awe.

In those days, of course, the only ski trails on Mt. Mansfield were under the steep, up-turned side of the mountain call the Nose, which indeed extends from the ridgeline like a giant rendering of Jimmy Durante's schnozz. If you wanted intermediate skiing at Stowe, you were best off sticking with Spruce Peak, the neighboring but unconnected peak on the other side of Smugglers Notch. Until the gondola was installed on the broad, moderately pitched flanks under the"Chin" of the ridgeline, Mt. Mansfield skiing was, as I've already noted, a tough go for everyman.

	Stowe at a Glance Pluses and Minuses: Pluses: Wide variety of skiing, variety of lodging and dining, tradition, proximity to Burlington. Minuses: Lift lines, disconnected lay-out, shortage of on-slope lodging. Book Your Next Ski Trip to Stowe on GORP! Key Phone Numbers: Ski Area Information: 802-253-7311 Lodging Information: 800-253-4754 (resort lodging), 800-247-8693 (area lodging) Snow Conditions: 802-253-2222 Location: 6 miles north on Route 108 from Stowe village. Mailing address: Mt. Mansfield Resort, P.O. Box 1310, Stowe, VT 05672. Mountain Statistics: Vertical drop: 2,360 feet Summit elevation: 3,660 feet Base elevation: 1,300 feet Number of trails: 45 Lifts: 1 8-passenger gondola, 1 high-speed quad chair, 1 triple chair, 6 double chairs, 2 surface lifts Average annual snowfall: 250 inches Snowmaking coverage: 73% (350 acres)

Enough of the past. In a roundabout way, I've already given you the basic components of the Stowe layout. There is Stowe, the town, and Stowe, the ski area, umbilically connected by the six-mile access road. Except for the Inn at the Mountain (which in fact isn't quite at the mountain), there is no slopeside lodging at Stowe. Development at the base of the ski area is minimal; at the Mt. Mansfield base, there is an undersized, ill-placed (and, I might add, tradition-rich) base lodge that the ski area is eager to replace, and not much else. Fear not, however, a lodging shortage: inns and motels by the dozens line the access road (a.k.a. Route 108, Mountain Road) and Route 100, the north-south thoroughfare that passes through town.

The ski area itself comes in three distinct parts: The older Mt. Mansfield area, serviced by chairlifts, the gondola area, and Spruce Peak. It is one of Stowe's weaknesses that the three are somewhat disconnected. You can ski from the gondola base to the chairlift base and vice versa, but skiing the two trail systems in combination is difficult. Spruce Peak is separate enough from Mt. Mansfield so that I had several years of Stowe skiing under my belt before I even ventured over to Spruce. Stowe indeed has a terrific variety of skiing, but the layout tends to segregate skiers by ability: advanced skiers ski the Mansfield chairs, intermediates ski the gondola, lower intermediates and novices stick to Spruce.

Stowe is less than an hour from Burlington, and for that reason is convenient for fly-in weekenders and Burlington locals. That means weekends can get crowded, and Stowe's lift system is such that two lifts the high-speed quad that replaced the old single and double chairs and the gondola bear the brunt of the lift traffic. Weekend lift lines at both lifts tend to be long.

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But if the lines annoy you, give the non-vertical side of Stowe a shot. Cross-country skiing around Stowe is as good as it gets in Vermont. The Trapp family survived the perils of World War II and the treacle of The Sound of Music to settle in Stowe and establish a first-rate touring center. If you're not a track skier, the Mt. Mansfield massif abounds with backcountry trails.

Also abundant (as mentioned) are restaurants, clubs, spas, and all manner of post-skiing diversion. If skiing isn't enough action in a day for you, Stowe is one of the best places in New England to keep yourself entertained late into the night.