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December 26, 2011

NEW CHAIR DEBUTS AT BURKE MOUNTAIN SKI AREA -Saying, “I’ve waited 50 years for this,” Duffy Dodge, 85, St. Johnsbury, took the first trip to the top of Buke Mountain Ski Area Saturday. Riding with Dodge were, left to right, Joe Kasprzak, Director of Operations, Dodge, Tim McGuire, Burke Mountain General Manager and Kirk Dwyer, Headmaster of Burke Mountain Academy. Dodge inaugurated the first lift installed at Burke on Feb. 12, 1956.
 

Almost Fifty six years after the Burke Mountain Ski Area in East Burke inaugurated its first lift, a Pomalift that is still in service today, Burke Mountain launched its newest lift, an all new high speed quad that will take 1800 skiers an hour from the Mid Burke Lodge to the top of the Mountain in six minutes.
 

Duffy Dodge, St. Johnsbury, rode the first poma lift to the top of Burke Mountain with then Vermont Governor Joe Johnson on Feb. 12. 1956. On Saturday, close to 56 years later, Dodge, now 85, was one of the first skiers to ride the new detachable quad chair lift built and installed by Leitner Poma. Dodge is still a very active skier and a fixture at Burke. Commenting on the new lift, Dodge joked, "I've been waiting 50 years for this."
 

Riding in the first chair to take riders to the top, Dodge shared the chair with Joe Kasprzak, Director of Operations at Burke Mountain Ski Area, Tim McGuire, General Manager and Kirk Dwyer, Headmaster of Burke Mountain Academy, a renowed Academy that has trained world class skiers.
 

The five million dollar investment took all summer and fall to install and while the manufacturer, Leitner Poma installed the lift, the company relied heavily on local help to do the work, according to Kasprzak.
 

With the new lift, Burke Mountain Ski Area achieves the critical goal of accessing 100 percent of its skiable terrain by state of the art, high speed lifts. With 260 acres of skiable terrain, 80 percent of the trails are now covered by artificial snowmaking. According To Kasprzak, Burke averages a total of 230 inches of natural snow a year.
 

Kasprzak said the new lifts are a response to Burke's customer surveys which showed the number one concern of skiers was that Burke lacked a state of the art lift to the summit.
 

Burke Mountain Ski Area's new marketing slogan describes the Burke Mountain Ski Area as "True North," and returns what was historically the northern Vermont skiing experience to the Northeast Kingdom. Kasprzak sees the investments and upgrades to the Jay Peak Ski Area in Jay as a help to Burke, with skiers drawn to Jay trying out Burke as well.

Another huge asset for Burke is Kingdom Trails, an enormously popular series of bicycle trailers headquartered in East Burke. Each year Kingdom Trails brings thousands of trail bikers to Burke and 30 percent of the bicyclists are Canadian. Kingdom trails exposes those tourists to all the the Burke Mountain Ski Area and the Kingdom has to offer and will help attract those bicyclists back to ski.

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