I've said that Stowe comes in three distinct parts. Actually, there are four separate base areas if you throw in the Toll House base at the Inn at the Mountain the first base you come to as you drive up Mountain Road. On most days, pass by the Toll House base; its one lift, which serves only the most novice of novice terrain, is there primarily to give inn guests lift access to the main mountain. On a super-busy day, however, you might consider pulling in here, seeing few other skiers do. It will mean a long, slow ride up the Toll House double chair to start the day, and an ultra-leisurely run-out at day's end, but that might be preferable to battling the cramped parking-lot scene at Mt. Mansfield.

As for the Mansfield base, I try to park as close as I can to the old Mansfield base lodge. That's primarily because I like to do most of my Stowe skiing from the Mansfield chairs. But it's also because traffic from both the gondola base and Mansfield base parking lots feed through a bottleneck here. My figuring is that being closer to the bottleneck rather than the bottom of the bottle, as it were is a way of avoiding undue end-of-the-day traffic-jam time.

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All things being equal, the Spruce Peak base is probably the best of the bunch. It involves less scrambling between parking lot, base lodge, and lifts than do the gondola and Mansfield bases. If you plan to stick exclusively to novice and intermediate slopes, this is definitely the place to go. But if you want more advanced skiing, you'll find yourself having to ride a shuttle bus over to Mansfield. Despite their relative proximity, the Mansfield and Spruce bases aren't, unfortunately, connected by ski trails. You can either hoof it between the two or ride the shuttle either way, an annoying interruption to the ski day. So in choosing your base area, do so with consideration of the skiers in your group: With an intermediate to expert group, head for Mansfield; with a lower-level group or a group with young kids, head for Spruce.