Photo: Mad River Glen
Ski bums working for their season passes are the core of ski culture. These are the people whose lives are tethered to the winter months, sustaining themselves on odd jobs and seasonal gigs in between closing and opening day, then cashing in on every powder event possible once that first lift is fired up. Holding a year-round, nine-to-five isn’t an option because that means the most they can squeeze out of a bountiful winter is the occassional weekend warrior mission. But score a job as a lifty, maybe join the ski patrol, or any other resort job, and you can pay your way through winter with a season pass secured.
Ski bums in the Waitsfield, Vermont area have a totally different opportunity though. Instead of trading off entire winters on the clock for that pass, some are just cutting grass for a week and half at the end of summer. That’s all. Grab a scythe, get a tan, work your tail off for 12 days, and walk away with two weeks’ pay and a season pass.
That’s a deal. It’s the one offered by Mad River Glen, a Vermont area resort that just celebrated its 75th year this past winter. The historic resort might be best known for having the only single chair in the lower 48 states (and just one of two in all of North America). It’s truly an old school resort and its unique work opportunity fits right into that charm. It’s also one of a handful of places where snowboarding is banned, a policy that’s been in place since 1991.
The offer to those working the summer grass crew is pretty straight forward: Mow Some Grass, Earn Your Pass. It’s common for resorts to mow down slopes during the late summer/early fall months using tractors, but Mad River Glen also relies on handheld scythes to navigate the nooks and crannies of its most vertical terrain. Enter the mow crew, compiled of local skiers who will be brought on to do the job between September 9 and September 20 of this year.
“Most of the beginner and intermediate terrain is mowed with a tractor. (The) mow crew steps in to finish off the areas the tractor can’t go. We mow and move in a line shoulder-to-shoulder, hiking up the trails as we go. It can be tough work but the camaraderie makes it so much fun,” said the resort in a release, adding that on top of getting a pass and paycheck out of the deal, the mow crew gets a unique opportunity to learn the terrain they’ll be flying down all winter long.
According to a release from Mad River Glen, work begins at 7 a.m. and ends at around 3 p.m. for the mow crew, who get several short breaks throughout the day. The resort provides water and chairlift rides up and down.
