Image Courtesy of Bromley Resort

Sunburn is often more likely than frostbite on Bromley's south facing slopes.

As you drive along Vermont’s Route 11 from Chester to Manchester, Bromley’s big barn of a base lodge sits on the right side of the road just a few steps from the highway. Its south-facing slopes are just beyond a small parking lot. Bromley opened in 1936 when most skiers arrived by train, so parking wasn’t a big issue. Years later, when skiers started arriving by car, the parking lot was added across Route 11 and a police officer assisted skiers crossing the busy road. Later the resort put a pedestrian tunnel under the highway for safety’s sake.

Bromley is one of those ski areas that had an interesting character as its founder. Just as Walter Schoenknecht created a “Skiers’ Disneyland” at Mount Snow and Jim Kelly built Brodie, home of “Kelly’s Irish Alps,” Fred Pabst, the grandson of Captain Frederick Pabst who started the Pabst Brewing Company in Milwaukee, was the larger-than-life force behind Bromley.

Coming from such a famous family, Pabst wasn’t hurting for fun and adventure at a young age. He enjoyed skiing as a child, and in college he was a jumper at the University of Wisconsin. After college and grad school at Harvard he worked in the family business, but managed to get away to Europe in 1926 and skied with the famous Austrian instructor Hannes Schneider and Norway’s King Olaf.

After ten years in the brewing business, Pabst turned his back on the family enterprise and began to develop ski areas. At one time he had seventeen ski areas with rope tows in six states and Quebec. In 1936 he came up with the biggest improvement to skiing at the time.

Pabst is credited with inventing the J-bar. This lift was much easier to ride than a rope tow. It was the forerunner of the T-bar, which is really a double J-bar. At the start of World War Two he consolidated his operations and installed his J-bars and other lifts at Bromley.

Pabst expanded on a network that was already in place at Bromley. On over a thousand acres he established ten trails that were wider and more sculpted than at other ski areas at the time. Since most of Bromley’s trails face south, he had to work to maintain the snow. He took out any rocks and stumps and planted grass so the ski area could be open with very little snow cover.

Bromley is known as “Vermont’s Sun Mountain” because of its south-facing slopes. It’s psychologically warmer on a cold day because you are skiing in the sun. The snow softens earlier in the day. Springtime may find you fighting sunburn rather than frostbite.

Pabst’s sites were in the lead among Vermont ski areas in trail grooming, childcare and slopeside accommodations. The Bromley Sun Lodge is just a short walk away. Bromley was always known for its nursery program that even takes infants. In the 1970s Bromley expanded its snowmaking capacity to cover more than eighty percent of the trails. It was the industry’s first million-dollar snowmaking project.

There are forty-three trails served by two quad chairs, four double chairs and one T-bar. Bromley has east to moderate terrain over much of the mountain. It is a real ego builder since most skiers can ski or snowboard from the top down on a variety of trails. Names like Runaround, Pushover and Thruway are some of the long cruisers that Bromley is known for.

The East Side is where the steeper stuff is found. That’s where experts can ski or ride trails like Avalanche, Havoc and Corkscrew. Bromley has also added glade skiing between some trails. It’s also expanding its terrain parks and constructing a boardercross area for the coming season.

Lift tickets are reasonably priced. It costs $39 to ski or ride on weekdays and $65 on weekends. When I first started skiing there in the early ‘70s, Bromley was $5 and Stratton was $8. We chose Bromley for the savings.

Bromley is part of what is known as Vermont’s “Golden Triangle” that includes Stratton, Bromley and Magic. When you are on your skis or snowboard at one of them, you can clearly see the other two.
Bromley is the closest of the three to Manchester. That’s where the trains used to drop skiers off. Now, its proximity to Manchester opens a world of shopping pleasure at all the outlet stores. A variety of hotels, motels and guesthouses abound just seven miles away.

For over fifty years there has been a Bromley Outing Club. It helps children and adults participate in skiing and snowboarding at Bromley. Over six hundred children from eleven southern Vermont schools are involved in the program.

The base lodge at Bromley was one of the last to have a moose head hanging on the wall. It was removed because of its age and bad looks.

I remember Fred Pabst’s imposing figure striding around the base lodge at Bromley. He was six feet four with white hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. Fred Pabst was enshrined in the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 1969. He passed away in 1977, but you can be sure Pabst Blue Ribbon is still served in Bromley’s Wild Boar Lounge.