Well, Charlie Lord is gone. Died in Stowe, Vermont on Friday, November 13, in his 95th year. Never heard of Charlie? Don’t expect you should. Came to Stowe in 1933, a civil engineer laid off by the Vermont Highway Department. Depression years, you know. Then Roosevelt got the Civilian Conservation Corps going, to give people jobs, and Charlie signed on as a trail engineer and he built the Lord trail on Mt. Mansfield and he just never stopped. He built the best damn ski trails ever cut in America and he did it with the precision of an engineer and the heart of a lover.
He cut the trails that made Vermont as famous for skiing as for maple syrup. On Mt. Mansfield, which he loved—but maybe not more than Tuckerman’s on Mt. Washington—he created The Lord, The Bruce, The Nosedive (ahh, you don’t remember the rhythm and adrenaline pull of taking the Seven Turns full bent? Too bad!) and many others.
A Charlie Lord trail has a special personality—narrow and cut with many turns, but turns that follow the contour of the mountain, so there is a swing. Sort of what Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey had.
Skiers, once they knew some of the rudiments of the sport, so often found a spiritual breakthrough on a Charlie Lord trail. That rhythm—that sensual, sexual, downhill flow on a serpentine trail that is not too easy and not too harsh, caught the soul and sent it soaring. And those who found the shining on a Charlie Lord trail became propagators of this sport of skiing, and spread it around the country.
If you find yourself on Mt. Mansfield this winter, check out the Bruce. It’s been kept in shape by the Stowe Irregulars. It works well with the new skis, but let them run and shake loose your mind and your soul will sing and the wind will freshen your face and the sun flick its warmth and the beech trees are crisp in front of their etched blue shadows and you don’t stop, all the way to Ranch Camp. And if there is corn snow, you’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven to visit Charlie.
