Wecome Back, Sam!

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Sam von Trapp, and I recently retired from a career as a private ski instructor in Aspen, Colorado and private guiding in Portillo, Chile. My father, Johannes, encouraged me to work away from the family business for the last decade or so. I have now returned to spend time with my family and get involved in the Trapp Family Lodge.

One of my first projects here at the Lodge will be to install a snowmaking system. We don't want to make any big promises yet, but we are very optimistic about its prospects. We hope to make snow from the Touring Center out to the Picnic Knoll, covering the Teaching Track, Sugar Road, and the Fox Track. We also plan to connect from the Villas over to the Lodge on the Telemark Trail, allowing Villa residents to access the trail system from the Telemark Trail above Villas 5-8. This snowmaking system should allow us to cover a little over five kilometers of trails. It will allow beginners to learn, athletes to train, (although they may have to make a few laps) and the ability to access many of the higher elevation trails.We’re excited to offer an Intro to Performance Skiing and Racing Techniques in mid-December this year. We are cautiously optimistic that we will be able to cover at least a few kilometers by then.

There is often good snow cover in the higher elevations, so we hope that at times this will allow access as far as the Slayton Pasture Cabin, if Mother Nature blesses us up high. We feel very good about the plan we have in place, and of the group of employees and snowmaking consultants who are involved.We began installation in September and hope to have some cold, late fall days to test the system in November.

Our overall goal is to be able to "virtually guarantee" that we can stay open from mid- December through April, but obviously New England weather can be finicky so it will be interesting to see how we fare. Last year's balmy early winter would have been tough for snowmaking, so this winter we look forward to seeing a positive side in any early season cold spells.

I look forward to seeing you on the snow covered trails.

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