Courtesy of Smugglers’ Notch
7LISA GOSSELIN, STOWE
Editorial Director, Eating Well
I was born in France. Growing up, I skied all over the Alps, where there’s great powder skiing, but it’s not like
eastern tree skiing, which is my favorite. I moved to Vermont in 2001 and started working for Kelliher Samets
Volk [a marketing firm]. Then 9-11 happened and there was no way I was going back to New York. But I got a
wonderful offer to be the editor of Islands magazine in California, which I did for two years. Fortunately I had kept
my house in Vermont, because later I joined Eating Well.
What really makes Vermont special is that there’s a community so tightly focused around skiing. Some other
resort towns are missing the people who’ve been here for years and years. Here, you can be going up the lift with
somebody who spends their summers farming and whose great-grandfather farmed these same lands. And the
skiers at Stowe are some of the best I’ve seen anywhere. There were times this winter when I found myself going
through the trees with 15 people whooping and hollering all around me and just thinking to myself: “This is what
it’s all about. This is fun.”
ToP TrAiL: The Noel Chutes, or the 100-Inch Chutes, at Stowe.
APrèS SPo T: The Matterhorn (in Stowe) is one of the all time greatest bars in the world. It’s welcoming, no matter
if you’re a young family with a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old and there’s a band playing; the kids will be out playing
on the dance floor. Plus they have some of the best sushi in the state. You can go in there and have a beer and a
burger, dance or sit by the river and relax with a glass of wine.
48 skivermont.com
