The storied history of Jay Peak Resort
Crazy is a loosely used word. It's one of those adjectives that has gotten squishier with time, being used to describe everything from glue to one's weekend in Vegas. But when you get Webster with it, when you read the word's dictionary list of synonyms, you can see why it was ascribed to those who thought Jay Peak could be turned into a place that people would actually travel hundreds of miles to visit.
After all, it is a bit irrational and definitely outlandish to stare up at a mountain that snarls at the sky and think, "Yeah; this is a great place to start a ski resort." But that's exactly what a local teacher, a priest, and a feed salesman thought back in 1953.
Ski tourism in Vermont was already generating $10 million a year by the early 1950s. Areas like Stowe and Mount Snow were pulling people out of such cities as Boston and New York, and a Newport high school teacher and president of the local Kiwanis Club wanted a piece of the coming boom for his community.
In addition to teaching agriculture, Harold Haynes began selling his idea of a ski hill to politicians and community leaders. He found relentless promoters in the Rev. George St. Onge, a local Catholic priest, and his neighbor Roy Barnett who made his living selling livestock feed, and by 1955 Jay Peak was incorporated. Of course there was no way to actually get to the still-trailless mountain, but this is a Jay Peak story after all.
Enter Walter Foeger
Over the next two years, Haynes and his crew would get the road they needed courtesy of the mythical forester Perry Merrill. They'd also go door to door over those 24 months selling $10 shares in their new company to raise capital. Spare time was spent cutting and surveying trails for 16 hours a day. But all of the sweat paid off when in January of 1957 the first T-bar began pulling skiers up the Open Slope trail. And that could have easily been the end of the story. Sure, there was now a road, a lift and a trail, but Jay Peak was still a pain to get to and it was always buried in snow. Why would anyone drive all the way to the Canadian border to go skiing? That answer was found in Walter Foeger.
Foeger was raised in the shadow of the Hahnekamm, the mountain that is part of the Kitzbuhel resort in Austria. He racked up awards as a kid not only winning ski races, but tennis and ice hockey championships as well. That drive and love of sport led to him being appointed the head coach of Spain's national ski and hockey teams, the former of which he would take to the 1952 Olympics. It also put him on Harold Haynes' radar.
Foeger arrived at Jay Peak in December of 1956 with a pair of skis and a dictionary. Over the next 12 years, he would rise from ski pro to become the mountain's vice president and general manager, and take Jay Peak's trail count from one to 40. More important, he was the first to give Jay Peak its tilted view of how things should be done.
The prevailing pedagogy of ski instruction back in Foeger's day centered around the American Ski Technique, a teaching method that put never-evers in snow plows hoping to progress them to the elusive stem-christie and from there, the Nirvana of the parallel turn. If you were lucky and had a modicum of athleticism, you could be an average skier in about a year. Foeger guaranteed he could make you a skier in a week ... or your money back.
Foeger's Natur Teknik took novices through a seven-day course of hop turns and hockey stops giving them a direct approach to the parallel turn. The technique proved so effective that by 1960, droves of people were driving up to Jay Peak from as far away as Philadelphia, and the mountain's ski pro found himself teaching classes of more than 50 soon-to-be skiers. By 1965 Foeger had certified over 100 ski instructors in his teaching method and the technique had spread as far south as the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.
Birth of the aerial tram
When not showing people how to get down the hill, he was dreaming of the best way to get them up it, a dream that resulted in Jay having the only aerial tram in Vermont. But to get the tram, Foeger couldn't just sell more $10 shares in the company. He had to find big money and he found it in the Weyerhaeuser Company.
The ski pro turned general manager engineered the sale of Jay Peak to the forestry-product giant in 1966. By 1967, Jay Peak had its signature tram, a new base lodge and a new lift. But Foeger's run-and-gun management style didn't fit with the Weyerhaeuser Company and by the spring of 1968, he was gone.
Weyerhaeuser held the reins for another 10 years, building the original Hotel Jay. Canadian resort operator Mount Saint-Sauveur would purchase Jay Peak in 1978 and in 1984, hire a guy from Jack Frost in the Poconos to come be Jay Peak's general manager.
Bill Stenger's early years at Jay Peak saw the old T-bar at Stateside go away in favor of the Jet Triple chair in 1985, the Bonaventure quad replace the old Muehler Double in 1987 and the Green Mountain Flyer come on line in 1999; all substantial accomplishments in their own right, but all paling when held against what Stenger started in 2008.
Along with business partner Ariel Quiros, Stenger purchased Jay Peak from MMS in June of 2008. Shortly thereafter, the two unleashed a $300 million revitalization initiative that opened a waterpark, ice arena, golf course, three hotels and hundreds of mountain cottages. And the mountain long thought of as a remote outpost, the one a local school teacher thought might bring prosperity to his hometown by getting a few thousand skiers to make the trip north, now hosts close to a million visitors a year.
JJ Toland is director of public relations, events and partnerships at Jay Peak Resort.
Specials at Jay Peak
February and early March deals:
Ski + Ride + Skate + Splash + Stay midweek (Feb. 2-March 12) from $336 per night for a family of 4. For the same rate you can choose to stay slopeside in a Stateside Hotel room or a little further from the lifts (but still just a couple of minutes from the base) in a larger 1-bedroom cottage with a full kitchen.
Vermonters and Other Mountain Pass Holders Always Ski/Ride for Less. Show proof of residency or your current season pass from another mountain and get a lift ticket for just $58
Upcoming Events
Saturday: The Mountain Dew Vertical Challenge, Stateside Cafeteria
Feb. 22: Hope on the Slopes ski for a cure
Feb. 23-28: 13th Annual Mardi Gras
March 7: Randonee Race
March 21-22: Ski The East's Extreme Comp
History Space series
This is the second part in the History Space series on Vermont ski areas. Next week: Sugarbush
More history of Vermont ski areas: