Skiing through American history

Vermont's backcountry ski trails were built as part of Roosevelt's New Deal in the Great Depression. Simon Akam discovers one presidential legacy Obama may find hard to follow
Skiing Vermont's Mount Mansfield forest trails
Skiing Vermont's Mount Mansfield forest trails. Photograph: Simon Akam

The trees on the upper flanks of Mount Mansfield were choked with snow. Spruce and hemlock, their branches sagged beneath a thick mantle that had tumbled out of a Vermont storm two days before. We advanced gingerly along the narrow path between the trunks, knocking showers of crystals off the foliage, and our skis creaked on the deep drifts underfoot. Then the slope began to steepen, and we knew that we had reached the start of the Teardrop Trail, one of the classic backcountry ski descents in the eastern United States.

The Teardrop, along with its Mount Mansfield neighbour the Bruce Trail, and a host of other wild forest ski runs across New England, is a direct legacy of the Great Depression. In 1933, with one in four Americans out of work, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps as part of his New Deal to reinvigorate the US economy. The aim of the CCC was to address national environmental needs while at the same time providing jobs, and in its nine-year life some 2.5 million men would pass through "Roosevelt's Forest Army".

In the western and southern US the organisation built roads, parks and irrigation systems, and provided disaster assistance. However, in New England, under the supervision of Vermont State Forester Perry Merrill, the corps set to work on a different project. Merrill was a fanatical skier, and used his "CCC boys" to cut several ski trails through the forests of Mount Mansfield above the Vermont town of Stowe. Other contingents chopped routes on Mount Washington in New Hampshire and Mount Greylock in Massachusetts.

Seven decades on, with the world engulfed by another deep economic recession, and with the speculation that the incoming Obama administration will try to implement a second New Deal, I wanted to trace the evergreen legacy of the first, in the coniferous woods of New England.

I travelled to Stowe, now a chic resort with a surfeit of clapboard churches, on the Amtrak Vermonter. The descendant of the original "snow trains" that first opened the New England mountains to tourists in the 1930s, the Vermonter pulls out of Penn Station in New York before winding its leisurely way into Connecticut and Massachusetts. There are certainly quicker ways to travel - the train from New York to Waterbury, the nearest station to Stowe, takes around nine hours, substantially longer than the drive - but few are more picturesque. As we ambled north, I watched the snow, a mere smattering in Manhattan, deepen steadily in the trackside woods. At Amherst, a college town in Massachusetts, icicles hung bayonet-length from the eaves of the station, and by the time we rolled into Vermont a fine spindrift had blown into the gangways between the carriages, riming the fixtures and doors.

After arriving at Waterbury, where ice-cream fans can take a tour of the Ben & Jerry's factory, I caught a lift for the few miles to Stowe. There I lodged in the Riverside Inn, a converted 19th-century farmhouse run by Julian and Kay Bartlett, a British couple who emigrated to Vermont from Hertfordshire 12 years ago.

I had arranged to ski the Teardrop and Bruce trails with Mark Puleio, a Vermont based mountain guide. Today it is possible to access the Bruce, though not the Teardrop, from the Stowe ski lift system. However, in order to experience the trails in the original spirit, Mark and I had decided to eschew lifts altogether, and to use legwork as 1930s skiers would have done. In order to make the ascents, we were equipped with touring skis with an adjustable binding that can unclip at the heel, and "skins" - nylon and mohair strips that attach to the base of the ski. Skins are smooth one way and rough the other, and allow the skier to move uphill without sliding back down.

Given the amount of climbing we had ahead of us an early start was required. It was well before dawn when we arrived at the bottom of the 1,340m (4,395ft) Mt Mansfield, but there was enough light from the dying moon that we barely needed our head-torches.

After a stiff hour-long 610m (2,000ft) climb, the wooded flanks of the valley had retreated below us and the sky was streaked violet behind the nearby Worcester range. Turning northwest, we then took a summer toll road, closed and covered in snow, that traverses the flanks of Mt Mansfield. From the valley below, the peak - the highest in Vermont - resembles a man's head in profile, and its summits are named after facial features. Beneath the "forehead", where a broadcasting tower wore a magnificent suit of ice armour, we crossed over to the other side of the mountain and reached the head of the Teardrop trail.

Stripping the skins from our skis, we clipped down our heels, and began the descent of the 70-year-old route. The conditions were excellent, with some banks of powder still intact, and the experience was totally removed from a typical resort run. The Teardrop twisted and chicaned down the hillside, always wide enough to ski, but in some places narrow enough for the branches to knit together overhead. Best of all, as the views opened up on to the rolling woodlands below, we had the run almost entirely to ourselves.

We skied 610 vertical metres (2,000ft) down until the forest thinned out from thick spruce to elegant pale birch. The snow cover waned too as we scrubbed off altitude, exposing rocks and branches, so we re-fitted our climbing skins at the very end of the trail and began to head back up. Another climb was needed in order to reach our second objective, the Bruce trail.

As we ascended the temperature plummeted and a savage wind begun to blow, so once we regained the toll road we wasted no time in hurrying back around the mountain to the head of the Bruce. There two local skiers joined us, making elegant telemark turns on their free-heel equipment. The second trail was a shorter descent than the Teardrop, but equally steep, dropping in a series of thrilling pitches through the woods before levelling out on the Nordic cross-country ski runs in the valley below.

In falling snow and fading light, we eventually left the forest and reached the warmth of the Matterhorn Bar and Grill ("the bar that invented aprés ski in America") in Stowe. After nine hours and 1,300m (4,300ft) of ascent a pint of River Trout beer was restorative. As I sipped the local dark brew, pumped from its keg with a hand-carved fish shaped tap, I decided that regardless of Obama's economic wizardry, in skiing terms Roosevelt's New Deal will be a hard act to follow.

Getting there

Amtrak offers return tickets to Stowe from New York City on the Vermonter train for $98 (£70);, +1 800 872 7245.

The Riverside Inn in Stowe has rooms in high season from $79;, +1 802 253 4217.

Mark Puleio is available for ski touring and alpine, rock and ice climbing. His private rate is $250 per day;, +1 802 888 3314.

Virgin Atlantic and British Airways are both offering a fare of £259 including all taxes and surcharges, valid for departures until 30 June. There is a minimum stay of a Saturday night and maximum of one year but they must be booked no later than 27 January. Through Trailfinders