“We collected a bunch of old frames and had ’em welded up for us,” Mills said. “We rode it to school the next day.” On the way home, the trio came to a T-intersection where “we couldn’t decide whether we wanted to go left or right. So we went straight into the curbstone.” Mills paused, lifted an eyebrow, then revealed a hole card. “It wasn’t a great machine,” he said. “But it wasn’t that bad, either. The wreck was more of a management problem than anything else.”
An ability to create or optimize the equipment — and maximize the performance of the personnel who run it — have been key factors in Mills’ ascent from the position of relief T-Bar operator to, at the age of 39, vice president/mountain operations of one of the most visible ski areas in the country. In the course of 18 years at Sunday River, he: has supervised the construction of more than a dozen lifts, overseen the construction of one of the continent’s biggest snowmaking systems (including the conceptualization of a computer control system now in use at ski areas in Canada and New Zealand, as well as the United States), increased trail acreage by a factor of five, built miles of road and half a dozen parking lots and become one of the most highly regarded pump-and-compressor men in the business. Articulate and (usually) soft spoken, Mills is known among suppliers as one of the toughest negotiators in the ski industry. With all of that, one of the most surprising aspects to Mills is that he is largely self-taught.
“I wanted to get a degree in psychology and go into social work,” Mills said. “When I showed up at the University of Maine for freshman enrollment, it was clear that almost everyone else was there to raise hell and have a good time. I’d done my share of that in high school, but I was a pretty serious student all the same. I had no intention of spending the next four years screwing around. I left the same day.”
Mills took whatever jobs he could find in his then-sleepy hometown of Bethel and started working as a relief T-bar operator at the tiny Sunday River ski area in January of 1974. “Within a week, it was clear that Burt had a lot of skills beyond being able to load a lift,” recalled Sunday River President Leslie B. Otten, who was then serving as general manager at Sunday River for the Sherburne Corporation. Mills’ job was immediately expanded to include lift and grooming apparatus maintenance.
“I was learning fast,” Mills said. “Things weren’t always smooth. One time we had a cat broken down at the top of the mountain. The operations manager wanted to patch it together and drive it down off the mountain to the shop, which would have done a lot of damage to the machine. I told him that if he wanted to do that, he could do the work himself, as I had no intention of damaging good machinery and doing a job twice in the process. He told me, ‘Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, do it yourself.’ And he left. So I fixed it. After I fixed it, I started hiking down the mountain — I didn’t know how to drive the thing — and I just kept on walking. I figured that after some of the things I’d said, I was done. Two days later, I got a call asking where the hell I was.”
Mills’ attention shifted to snowmaking in the mid 1970s. He left the resort briefly during the summer of 1980, after being told that to stay employed by the Sherburne Corporation, which then owned Sunday River, he’d need to move over to Killington. Mills thought about it and took a job as a millwright in a local paper mill instead. Then Otten stepped in.
“When I decided to buy Sunday River,” Otten said, “it was with the idea that I could pull together a core of people I could count on. I don’t think I’d have bought the area if I couldn’t have gotten Burt and several other people to come on board. Burt has been involved in every major decision since. During the early days, I was generally the ideas and Burt was generally the execution. But when we built our first chairlift together, it was kind of hard to tell who was the brains and who was the brawn.”
Mills and Otten went on to build a lot of apparatus together, some more successful than others. Facing the budget crunches typical of small ski areas and dissatisfied with the performance of commercially available grooming apparatus, they built two snowcats from scrounged parts and custom-built frames much beefier than those commercially available. The machines were the mainstay of the fleet for two years.
Then came some lean snow years when Mills and Otten decided that if they could be more successful with off-season trail mowing, runs could open with less snow. They jury-rigged a flail mower, driven by a gas-pony engine, to mount on the front of a Bombardier Muskeg. “The flail was aircraft cable,” Mills explained. “We’d put U-bolts on the ends of the cable to keep the ends from fraying. Les and I were riding on the Muskeg, mowing up a storm. It was working great. All of a sudden we started seeing odd tracks appearing through the grass 60 feet out in front of us. It dawned on us that the U-bolts were flying off like bullets. And since the engine was way out in front of us, neither of us wanted to get off the Muskeg to turn it off …”
“In those days, with a resort and a staff as small as ours, you had to wear a lot of different hats,” said Mills. “Run lifts. Fix them. Drive cats. Fix them. And a patrolier. Flip burgers. About the only thing I never did was teach people to ski.” A pause. “I was a little too busy teaching myself that trick.”
Mills’ family and friends were puzzled as to why he’d become involved in the struggling resort. “The pay wasn’t great. And the hours were horrendous. A lot of folks thought it was a bad bet,” he said. “But I shared Les’ vision of the possibility of the resort. And it was like an alchemist’s dream … it was all our there. All of the ingredients — the mountains, the water for snowmaking, the skiers — you just had to figure out how to put it together. Each time you did something, you had a chance to make it better.”
“Burt’s vision makes him exceptional,” agreed David Roberts, President of SnowStar Pipelines. “It’s very easy to look at a project in terms of ‘this summer, next winter.’ But Burt is different — he’s always looking five, ten years out. He thinks in terms of how a given project will fit into his long-term strategic plan. He has a focused vision of what he wants the mountain to be, and that relates to the customer’s enjoyment of the sport.”
Otten cites snow quality as a primary factor for the double-digit annual skier visit growth in recent years. As the mountain grew, Mills’ responsibilities expanded. He initially struggled and then flourished as his job evolved from total hands-on to managerial. Even now, however, moments at the desk tend to be snatched at odd hours. Mills still rolls up his sleeves to assist in the repair of pumps and chairlifts. He relishes the opportunity to pull a shift in an excavator. He makes gun runs with the snowmaking crews. He is constantly involved in research and development of snow grooming equipment and techniques. But his greatest challenge — and deepest pleasure — lies in coaching the team of key operations personnel he calls the “Ring of Fire.”
“My success has been the result of having the capacity to think out of both sides of the brain,” he said. “A coach can never let the players forget the basics — the full-court press, the one-on-one. You do them every time and everyone has to know their move. But the other side of the brain has to be able teach the players to take advantage of the fast break — to capitalize quickly on a situation, to turn a challenge into an opportunity.”
“As Sunday River started to gain a higher profile, we started to attract highly capable people who could also see the possibilities. One of the hardest things for me was to let them make mistakes I could see coming. I learned to step in only if the mistake would hurt the company, and gave them space wherever I could. The Ring of Fire is a group of very smart, independent thinkers. Letting them explore their own limits taught them the need to work as a team. And they’re one hell of a team.”
The high expectations extend well beyond the Sunday River staff. “Sunday River is not an easy mountain to do business with,” said Roberts. “Burt is very demanding and very knowledgeable. But if you deliver on your promises, you enjoy a fantastic relationship. Some ski areas spend a lot of time counting how much money they’ve paid to suppliers. Burt insists on getting his money’s worth, but he really understands the supplier’s side of the business. He genuinely respects and appreciates what you do in contributing to Sunday River’s success.”
Mills looks forward to continuing Sunday River’s, and his own, track record of success in the evolution of ski resort technology and operations. “What keeps me going is the opportunity to try new things and to work with highly motivated, intelligent people,” he said.
There are other motivations as well. “I was standing on Tower 4 of the Aurora Peak quad recently,” he said. “It was 6:30 in the morning, and the wind was howling. I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I was determined to stare down Mother Nature and make the wind go away. And as I was hanging on to keep from being blown off, I started thinking how beautiful the world was … how powerful and gorgeous the wind and the mountains and the snow are … I just felt really grateful to be able to do what I do.”
And the wind? A sober look. “Well, I’m not claiming I had anything to do with it.” A pause. A grin. “But the wind DID drop, and that lift DID open on time.”
