Arising from the Valley

Here in the U.S. it is the holiday weekend commemorating the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is also one of the busiest weekends of the season in the ski industry. Consider also that Okemo is the busiest (by skier visits) ski resort in the Eastern U.S., and you may begin to understand what our mountain and our village of Ludlow are like at times like these. It's absolute madness here, and we're grateful for it.

The vast majority of our guests at Okemo travel from the Northeast corridor, especially from Connecticut, the northern suburbs of New York, and from the metro-Boston area. They tend to drive to Vermont on Interstate 91 which generally follows the Connecticut River along the border of Vermont and New Hampshire. I took the photos here this morning from the road where I live, looking Eastward towards the river in the direction from which so many of our guests have arrived.

Having so many people here who have traveled from many of the same towns lends the resort a bit of a festival atmosphere. Each day during a period like this one, the staff, having geared up for this important stretch, shares in this spirit, opening our doors in the figurative sense to all our visitors. And, once the sun goes down, we retreat again to our homes to remember why we do it and to recharge our batteries for the next day.