Charlie Brown remembers the first time he stepped into the Blue Tooth, a tavern on the Sugarbush Access Road in Warren. It was 53 years ago, and he was a 28-year-old from Philadelphia up for a ski weekend. "The band was playing, there was a fire in the fireplace, huge icicles hanging from the roof all the way down to the ground, and I just went, 'Whew, I am in love," Brown recalled with a hearty chuckle. Within six years, he owned a piece of the rock-and-roll joint and was a full-time Mad River Valley resident. Brown's story is one that played out similarly for hundreds of other young, college-educated people who moved to Vermont in the 1960s and '70s to become "ski bums." Simply defined, those are individuals who move to a ski town, get a job that provides a ski pass as compensation, and then ski all winter — when they're not working or partying. "An educated, potentially productive member of society," clarified Carl Lobel, who was a public defender in New Jersey before he moved to the Mad River Valley in 1975. Win Smith, who left a plum job at Merrill Lynch to run the Sugarbush Resort in Warren, said the stereotypical ski bum has a "Peter Pan complex"— that is, he or she actively resists growing old. As a sociological phenomenon, though, the group is generally overlooked and undercounted, because of another influx of transplants during the same time period. An estimated 40,000 back-to-the-landers and hippies flocked to Vermont during the free-love era, increasing the state's population by 15 percent. Last fall, the Vermont Historical Society curated an exhibit that documented the movement and how it changed the state. Lobel, who still lives in Warren, found the exhibit lacking because it failed to recognize the contributions of his fellow snow bros — mostly white males from affluent families. "The ski bums that I knew were not motivated by idealism" like the hippies were, he acknowledged. "They just wanted to have a good time." But the winter-sports lovers did shape Vermont's economy, politics and culture, he argued. The pejorative term "ski bum" belies the entrepreneurial drive of these individuals, many of whom stayed and made Vermont what it is today. Is there a way to quantify their impact? The modern ski industry is a major economic driver in Vermont. It brings an estimated $700 million into…
Charlie Brown remembers the first time he stepped into the Blue Tooth, a tavern on the Sugarbush Access Road in Warren. It was 53 years ago, and he was a 28-year-old from Philadelphia up for a ski weekend. "The band was playing, there was a fire in the fireplace, huge icicles hanging from the roof all the way down to the ground, and I just went, 'Whew, I am in love," Brown recalled with a hearty chuckle. Within six years, he owned a piece of the rock-and-roll joint and was a full-time Mad River Valley resident. Brown's story is one that played out similarly for hundreds of other young, college-educated people who moved to Vermont in the 1960s and '70s to become "ski bums." Simply defined, those are individuals who move to a ski town, get a job that provides a ski pass as compensation, and then ski all winter — when they're not working or partying. "An educated, potentially productive member of society," clarified Carl Lobel, who was a public defender in New Jersey before he moved to the Mad River Valley in 1975. Win Smith, who left a plum job at Merrill Lynch to run the Sugarbush Resort in Warren, said the stereotypical ski bum has a "Peter Pan complex"— that is, he or she actively resists growing old. As a sociological phenomenon, though, the group is generally overlooked and undercounted, because of another influx of transplants during the same time period. An estimated 40,000 back-to-the-landers and hippies flocked to Vermont during the free-love era, increasing the state's population by 15 percent. Last fall, the Vermont Historical Society curated an exhibit that documented the movement and how it changed the state. Lobel, who still lives in Warren, found the exhibit lacking because it failed to recognize the contributions of his fellow snow bros — mostly white males from affluent families. "The ski bums that I knew were not motivated by idealism" like the hippies were, he acknowledged. "They just wanted to have a good time." But the winter-sports lovers did shape Vermont's economy, politics and culture, he argued. The pejorative term "ski bum" belies the entrepreneurial drive of these individuals, many of whom stayed and made Vermont what it is today. Is there a way to quantify their impact? The modern ski industry is a major economic driver in Vermont. It brings an estimated $700 million into…