On almost any day of the season—from opening to closing—Mount Snow’s Carinthia will be jamming with pros throwing huge airs, freeskiers and riders hitting features or riding the rails and young kids (a.k.a ‘groms’) just learning to jump. And thanks to Mount Snow’s extensive snowmaking, just five days after the ski area opened for the season in 2022, Carinthia’s The Gulch was the only terrain park in the East that was open top to bottom.
Carinthia was once its own ski area. Now, it’s connected to the rest of Mount Snow, an annexed base area with a $22-million base lodge that opened for the 2018/19 season with a top-floor restaurant, The Iron Loft, with views of the action below.
One of the largest terrain parks in the country, Carinthia comprises more than 100 aces of trails, woods runs and terrain challenges, with man-made features that can range from a monster 500-foot-long superpipe and 65-foot jumps, to a rotating set of creative features such as Rockstar-branded rails to hit, a Toyota-branded staircase, the popular Mamba (a long, large metal pipe that’s half sunk in the snow), rails and others. There are also a series of dedicated terrain areas designed to help younger skiers and riders and those who are just learning to progress.
“We’ve always been known for our really big features,” says Kevin Harrington, Mount Snow’s Senior Operations Manager, “but recently we’ve been focusing on making Carinthia accessible to all and finding that our progression parks like Fools’ Gold and The Gulch are some of the most popular areas on the mountain.”
Progressing with the Terrain
“Being able to ski or ride Carinthia requires you to learn and understand every single possible principle that you would need to become a well-rounded skier or rider, from the development of turn fundamentals, all the way through skiing in the woods and moguls and, obviously sliding on metal and plastic, hitting jumps and all that,” says Brian Knowles, the head freeskiing coach at Mount Snow Ski Club’s weekend freesking program.
In total, Carinthia has ten dedicated terrain parks. For top-level skiers and riders, there’s Inferno (back this year following a two-year hiatus) and for those who want a chairlift audience, Nitro runs below the lift. Inferno, which has played host to the X Games, features big jumps and rails. “On any given day you’ll probably see a few pros or people whose names you know there,” says Knowles. Junkyard has a rotating set of creative rails and other features. The Farm incorporates Vermont icons such as wooden rail fences and sap buckets while Prospector is constructed out of timber sourced on hill. “It looks like what would happen if Paul Bunyan got behind the wheel of a PistenBully,” an article in New Schoolers once claimed.
Mount Snow’s staff often works with local skiers and riders on ideas to craft many of these. “The diggers are out there every day and if you throw them a compliment or recognize their hard work, they’ll usually take your input,” says Knowles.
But what Knowles values the most is that “Mount Snow’s Carinthia is really all about progression. There are places and features for pretty much every ability from never-evers to pros.”
A World Champion Training Ground
Carinthia is also where many pros got their start. “There's so much history at Carinthia, it has led the way in the industry for a long time,” says Knowles, who has been in the area for several decades and has coached the likes of Mac Forehand, a former World Champion in Big Air who calls Carinthia his home training park. “There are a lot of resorts out West now that have huge parks, but they really came up on the back of what Carinthia was doing years ago. People come here for that history and legacy.”
Since it was first developed in 2008, Carinthia has been as a training ground for the best freeskiers and riders on the planet. Kelly Clark, three-time Olympic medalist, was there before the park was even built. She was born in 1983, when Carinthia was still its own ski area, separate from Mount Snow. But by the time she was riding a snowboard, Carinthia had become part of the larger Mount Snow resort and by 1992, the ski area had a small terrain park, Un Blanco Gulch.
In 2008-2009, all of Mount Snow’s terrain parks were moved to Carinthia and Un Blanco Gulch became simply, The Gulch—an easier park, with progressively more difficult features leading up to the big, bad-ass Inferno.
Devin Logan was 13 when “Carinthia Parks” came to be. “I was a grom and for me freestyle still meant training on moguls, but I was learning how to slide rails and chase my brothers around the park,” recalls Logan, who went on to become a three-time Olympian and the only halfpipe and slopestyle skier to win the overall World Cup for freestyle skiing.
“There is so much that Carinthia has to choose from—all these cool little trails and boxes and rails to slide,” Logan says. “You can start at the grommet level and then move up. When I was little, Inferno scared me so much. My brothers and the boys dared me to do these huge jumps there. There’s a great feeling when you end up conquering something that scared you. When you do, you ask yourself ‘why did I not do that before?’”
Freeskier Mac Forehand (the 2019 World Cup overall champion in Big Air) and his U.S. Ski Team teammate Caroline Claire also learned the tricks of their trade here, driving over from Stratton Mountain School where they were enrolled, to train. Freeskier Ian Compton and the Level 1 film crew also got their start here.
A Place for Spectating
Mount Snow has also played host to some of the biggest freeskiing and freeriding events, including the X Games, which it hosted in 2000 and 2001, before Carinthia came to be; the first winter Dew Tour (2008-2009) and the Carinthia Classic. Last held in 2019 (pre-Covid) the Carinthia Classic was rail jam held in a one-of-a-kind, plaza-style setup loaded with rails, boxes, and a whole arsenal of unique features and a $20,000 purse. “It was often held after hours under the lights which made for great spectating,” says Knowles. This year the Carinthia Classic is back as a daytime event, being held March 11.
Knowles is excited to see events come back to Carinthia. “We’re hosting the Futures Tour this January 16-19 and I’m stoked to see the Classic come back,” he says. “Events are so much a part of the scene here and they make for great spectating, whether you’re a park skier or rider or not.”