Johnathan Hanson 
Discover Smugglers Notch Skiing 2025 Adventures
On a January morning at Smugglers’ Notch, where the snow depth has reached 164 inches and counting, skiers picking their line down the Black Hole are experiencing something rare: genuine powder skiing in what’s typically considered the most challenging trail in the East. This triple-black diamond run, threading through Madonna Mountain’s steep terrain, usually demands absolute precision and edge control. But this winter, with thirty fresh inches in the last week carpeting the mountain’s thousand acres, even the most notorious runs have taken on a different character. The transformation extends beyond just the expert terrain—across all three peaks, skiers are discovering versions of Smuggs they’ve never known before.
Three Mountains, Three Personalities
Madonna Mountain stands as Smugglers’ most demanding peak, offering sustained steeps that make other Eastern resorts seem tame by comparison. Beyond the infamous Black Hole, Madonna harbors a collection of badass runs that would seem more at home in Utah than Vermont. Freefall lives up to its name, dropping away so steeply that from the top, skiers can see nothing but sky until they commit to their first turn. Upper FIS, a former race training venue, demands technical precision while Robin’s Run offers a more natural fall line through birch glades.
This season’s abundant snow has transformed Madonna’s character. Trails that typically require careful navigation between ice patches now hold deep snow in their fall lines. Upper Liftline, usually a mogul field that rattles teeth and tests edges, has become a playground of soft bumps and forgiving landings. Even Doc Dempsey’s, known for its unforgiving steeps, now allows for the kind of rhythmic powder turns that Eastern skiers usually only dream about.
Sterling Mountain, while often overshadowed by Madonna’s reputation, offers what many locals consider the resort’s best skiing. Its terrain provides a perfect middle ground—challenging enough for experts but approachable enough for strong intermediates. The mountain’s real gems hide in its glades. Poacher’s Woods demonstrates why tree skiing in Vermont requires a different technique than Western powder forests. Here, tight lines between maple and birch demand quick decisions and precise turns, but this winter’s conditions mean those turns can be made in boot-deep powder rather than hardpack.
Morse Mountain completes the trilogy with what might be the best learning terrain in New England. The mountain’s gentle pitch and methodically designed trails like Garden Path and Lower Morse Liftline create natural progressions that build confidence. This winter’s abundant snow has transformed the learning experience—instead of battling hard snow and ice, newcomers find themselves learning on forgiving surfaces that make the progression from snowplow to parallel turns more intuitive.
Beyond the Trails
Smugglers’ Notch’s character reveals itself in the spaces between marked trails. The resort’s boundary-to-boundary skiing policy, combined with this season’s deep snowpack, has opened up countless natural lines through the trees. Locals speak of routes between trails in reverent tones—the tight chute from Upper FIS that only becomes skiable in the deepest winters, the hidden powder field below Sterling Lift, unmarked glades that provide shelter and untracked snow on stormy days.
A History of Adaptation
The resort’s name comes from its location along a historic smuggling route to Canada, where during Prohibition, bootleggers navigated the narrow passage with contraband. When skiing arrived in the late 1950s, these same tight corridors and steep walls that once protected bootleggers became natural boundaries for some of the East’s most challenging ski terrain. The mountain’s early developers showed remarkable foresight, cutting trails that followed natural fall lines rather than forcing paths down the mountain.
The Modern Experience
Today’s Smugglers’ Notch maintains its rugged authenticity while offering modern amenities. The resort’s commitment to fixed-grip chairs might seem outdated to visitors used to high-speed quads and heated gondolas, but this deliberate choice preserves the mountain’s character. The extra chair time allows skiers to study their next lines or simply absorb the raw beauty of the notch itself.
The resort’s snowmaking system, which typically carries the heavy burden of coverage, now serves mainly to complement nature’s abundance. The system’s real value shows in how it’s used—not to cover every inch of terrain, but to strategically enhance natural snow patterns and maintain key connections between the mountains.
This season has revealed another aspect of Smugglers’ expertise—the art of managing abundant snow. The grooming team approaches each mountain differently. On Madonna, they leave much of the expert terrain untouched, allowing natural patterns of wind and snow to create features that challenge advanced skiers. Sterling sees a mix of grooming styles, with some trails manicured for high-speed cruising while others are left natural to preserve powder stashes. Morse receives the most consistent grooming, ensuring optimal conditions for learning and family skiing.
Village Life
The base area, known simply as The Village, centers around an authentic Vermont après-ski scene. The Black Bear Tavern, with its dozen draft lines featuring local Vermont breweries, provides a gathering spot for skiers comparing notes on the day’s runs. The conversations here often reveal the mountain’s hidden treasures—which glades are skiing best, where the wind has deposited the deepest snow, which trails to hit first on a powder morning.
At Bootleggers’ Lounge, the resort pays homage to its namesake smugglers while serving contemporary versions of their contraband. The walls display historical photos of the notch’s prohibition-era activities, creating a unique atmosphere where Vermont’s past and present converge. But perhaps the most authentic après-ski experience happens in Lot 1, at Sterling’s base, where locals gather around tailgates to grill and share stories of powder stashes and close calls.
Present and Future
The current season represents more than just good skiing—it’s a reminder of what Eastern skiing can be when conditions align. With 78 trails spread across three peaks—Smugglers’ Notch offers an uncommon variety of terrain for the East.
What distinguishes Smugglers’ Notch isn’t just the quantity of snow but how the terrain puts it to use. Madonna Mountain’s steep faces hold snow differently than Sterling’s protected glades or Morse’s open cruisers. Understanding these variations—how wind loads certain trails, where powder collects after a storm, which aspects hold snow longest—has long been part of the local knowledge passed between generations of Vermont skiers.
The challenge now lies in preserving this experience—not just the snow itself, but the knowledge of how to ski it, how to read it, how to find the best of it on any given day. As one local instructor puts it, “We’re not just teaching people how to ski anymore. We’re teaching them how to ski Smuggs.”
