February Break

Every year there a few times where Okemo Mountain and surrounding towns explode with people. I'm not talking about a few more people, no I'm talking about thousands of people. In a town where the local high school looks like a freshman box dorm this is a lot of people. Usually these skiers from 'down country' (aka anywhere south of Vermont) come for the weekend, we tolerate them because we know they bring a serious amount of cash to the region and without them Okemo wouldn't stay open during the week for all us locals to enjoy it, but on school break week they're here all week long including both weekends on either end.

The two weeks a year where the locals want to pull their hair out are the Christmas/ Holiday Break and February Presidents Week. I didn't know this but not all schools in the states have a break in February to escape the winter blahs and go somewhere sunny, warm and full of sand. Although there is a large percentage of the population who feels that they would rather go skiing in the mountains. I live here all the time so vacationing here in February doesn't seem to be very exciting, but I could see where going somewhere different from your home during the break is pretty cool, even if it's just for a few days.

The towns surrounding ski mountains during this time triple in size, all the grocery stores are empty, there is huge amounts of traffic, and the local bars are full of Jersey Shore wannabees. Don't get me wrong, there is a certain entertainment value that is if you can find a way to get around the traffic. Skiing is something that I love to do, and more people coming up experiencing that and sharing it with their kiddos means there are just more people for me to share one of my passions with.

One thing that I do not do on either of the breaks is go skiing. It loses that meditative value when you have to dodge hundreds of people going down the trail. I'm faster than the average skier on Okemo, and the break weeks feel like I'm playing frogger only on skis.

So yes people from not Vermont, please come skiing but you'll see me out there next week.