During the ascent to the top of Berkshire East Mountain resort’s new rollercoaster, the Thunderbolt, a man has plenty of time to study the steep incline of the longest alpine coaster track in North America — and the jagged, vertiginous underlying terrain.
Jon Schaefer, one of the park’s owners and the man in charge of the new attraction, was in the coaster behind me, but that did little to ease my anxiety. I reminded myself that I’d been in hairier situations touring new mountain facilities with Schaefer before. As I neared the top, I tried to remember what he’d said about using the brakes, something like, “You don’t need to, but …”
I felt gravity kick in the second I went over the top as I felt the coaster plummeting down. A hairpin corner suddenly in my way; I wanted to grab the brakes, but my brain — still wired for competition and too proud to let Schaefer see me sweat — won out. My hands relaxed on the lever and I let the coaster run. I assured myself I was safe, but the feeling that I might blow a corner and go flying off the mountain never left me.
At the bottom, I felt wobbly getting back to my feet. But then, I wasn’t the only one taking a plunge with equal measures of fear and exhilaration.
The Thunderbolt is a mile of steel rail snaking up and down the west face of Mt. Institute to the base area of the Berkshire East ski resort in Charlemont. In addition to being a cheap thrill — $15 a pop — the coaster represents an enormous investment, and risk, by the resort’s owners, the Schaefer family. The $2 million spent on the coaster, in fact, represents only a fraction of what the family has poured into the resort over the last six years.
At a time when even the most daring banker would likely question the investment potential of a ski resort in Charlemont, Berkshire East is expanding. It’s how the family plans to keep the resort viable. In recent years, Berkshire East has seen the addition of ziplines, tubing and new snow-making equipment, just to name some of the updates.
A skier’s mountain known as a center for regional alpine racing and a top notch ski patrol, Berkshire East wasn’t always kind to less-than-expert skiers. That’s all changed, as the resort has more than tripled its capacity to turn water into really good snow. It’s even allowed the resort to escape its reputation as “Berkshire Ice.” The last five winters have been record years in terms of skier visits and revenues, Schaefer says.
Still, the mortality rate in the ski business is staggering: when Roy Schaefer, Jon’s father, bought Berkshire East in 1976, there were about 800 ski resorts in the United States. Today, fewer than 200 remain in operation. The picture in Massachusetts is just as bleak. Of about 200 ski areas ever opened and operated in the Baystate, more than 170 have since failed.
Despite the odds, Roy Schaefer’s sons have made a large and personal investment in their father’s ski area. They are doing it while Roy is still active in the business, and they are doing it with the same do-it-yourself spirit that guided their father. The Schaefers hope the expansion of Berkshire East will save the mountain from the forces killing other ski areas. It is, Jon Schaefer acknowledged, a journey to a not-entirely-clear future.
“It sounds incredibly irrational that we started out without a really clear vision of where we were going, but that’s the truth,”Schaefer said. “We knew we wanted to keep Berkshire East alive, not just in a business sense, but to preserve the spirit of the place. To do that, you don’t do it the way the consultants say to do it. You do it your own way.”
Berkshire East was in bankruptcy when Jon’s father bought it in 1976.
Despite years of high interest rates and a tough economy that hit the ski resort hard, Roy Schaefer resuscitated Berkshire East. After managing to survive the big snow droughts of the ’80s, which made the mountain dependent on expensive snowmaking machines and gave the advantage to Berkshire East’s bigger, plusher, better-capitalized competitors, Roy continued to upgrade his facilities, catering to school groups and season pass holders — the core market that sustained the resort through lean years and allowed it to get back in the game in the ’90s.
The ski area survived, his sons said, by the family making conservative business decisions. Over the years, for pennies on the dollar, Roy bought equipment from more than 20 resorts around the country closing down or buying newer equipment, from local hills like Berkshire Snow Basin and Mt. Tom and from as far away as Berthoud Pass in Colorado and Sierra Ski Ranch in Truckee, Calif.
Berkshire East isn’t going for the cheapest enhancements with this renovation.
The expansion is being fueled by money Jim Schaefer, the eldest of Roy and Becky’s four sons, earned during his career as an investment banker. In recent years, Jim has invested several million in the mountain, beginning in 2010 with a windmill, which gives the area greater control over energy costs. While continuing to invest in snow sports and winter hospitality, the resort added other adventure sports, including zipline canopy touring. Berkshire East broadened its winter appeal with a new tubing park, lodge with a restaurant and bar, two lifts and enough snowmaking gear to cover the whole mountain with snow in less than a week of cold nights.
This summer, Jon and his crew opened 50 miles of mountain bike trails on the Berkshire East property. This fall, the Schaefers bought the Warfield House, a restaurant and banquet facility situated on a 500-acre hillside farm that looks across the Deerfield River Valley to the slopes of Berkshire East.
The spending on new attractions and upgrades, in addition to money needed to maintain existing infrastructure, has, so far, only increased the red ink on the balance sheet. But Thunderbolt has already started paying for itself, with thousands of visitors lining up for a ride. A few of the visitors are familiar with the mountain through skiing, tubing or the Beast’s zipline tour, but mostly it’s a new clientele.
Despite signs that the expansion is working, these are still tense days. Along the way, Jon has often said that there is still more money going out than coming it.
I was with Schaefer in December, 2013, when he helped a crew install a huge, underground water tank to comply with state laws requiring that a reserve water source be available for a fire prevention sprinkler system in the new lodge and bar. Usually upbeat for any project requiring lots of heavy equipment, he seemed glum. The Schaefers hadn’t anticipated the extra expense of the water tank. Jon, the youngest of the Schaefer brothers and the general manager at Berkshire East, was visibly frustrated at the idea of throwing “a couple hundred thousand bucks in a hole in the ground.”
Too many local ski resorts have found that “hole in the ground” has no bottom.
Jeremy Davis is the founder of the New England Lost Ski Area Project, “preserving the history of 607 lost ski areas in New England and 83 elsewhere!”
The NELSAP website lists more than 60 ski areas that have closed since the 1930s in western Massachusetts. A few of the small areas survive, including Otis Ridge, Bousquet in Pittsfield and Blandford. Only a few “big” resorts remain in operation — what Davis called “a mid-sized mountain — including Jiminy Peak in Hancock, Butternut in Great Barrington, Wachusett in Princeton, and, of course, Berkshire East. (See local timeline of ski resorts on Page 21.)
“Berkshire East is unusual,” says Davis who skis the Beast just about every year. “It’s really diversified. They’ve gone into things that really weren’t around 25 years ago. They have great terrain for a 1,000 foot mountain, lots of interesting trails and some pretty steep stuff. And they’ve always put money into snowmaking — into the skiing.”
Smaller ski areas flourished in western Massachusetts before the ’70s, an era before multi-lane highways made it easy to travel to bigger mountains, and prior to the era of artificial snow. In the days when all ski hills depended on natural snow, small areas could draw a crowd. After big areas began making snow, the smaller ones were left behind, unable to afford the cost of the equipment.
“A lot of the lost areas closed because they couldn’t expand. Physically, they didn’t quite have the vertical and they couldn’t compete with the bigger mountains,” Davis said.
Having seen the resort’s evolution over more than 20 years, Davis said he doubts the relaxed, fun Berkshire East vibe will get lost in the expansion.
“The owners are hands-on, and that makes a big difference. The fact that they’re skiers is rare and it’s good, because they’re doing it because they love it,” he said.
Davis says he is especially impressed by the new lodge at Berkshire East, built with timbers harvested on the mountain, show the owners’ dedication to skiing, Davis said.
“It really adds to the mountain. It’s well done — big windows looking out at the mountain. You’d be surprised at how many resorts have dark, boring lodges.”
Amenities and all-season activities are becoming more and more necessary for a ski area’s survival; it makes the area less reliant on snow conditions.
“The number one issue with ski resorts is the weather,” said Mike Sacenti of Hospitality Investment Management in East Longmeadow, an asset management firm working with resorts all over the world. Sacenti has followed the news about Berkshire East’s recent investments with interest, he said.
“In my view, it’s a bad bet to go into business with Mother Nature,” he said. “[The Schaefers] were smart to do the mountain coaster and the zipline. It gives them three-season income with much lower costs. I’d bet they end up making more from those attractions than from skiing.”
Sacenti said that small mountains like the former Mt. Tom were more gifts to the community by their owners than real money-making ventures.
“For [Dan] O’Connell, Mt. Tom was a labor of love,” Sacenti said, referring to the late founder of the now-defunct ski area in Holyoke. “He did it for his community, not to make money.” Berkshire East is a bigger mountain, and the moves to make it a four-season resort make sense, Sacenti said. But as resort investments go, a Massachusetts ski area is still risky.
“If Jim Schaefer is pouring his money into his family’s ski resort because he wants to keep it alive and help Charlemont, God bless him. But he probably has better uses for his money.”
As a regular skier on the Schaefers’ mountain for more than a decade and an occasional visitor before that, I’ve been listening to their plans for the mountain with a mix of excitement and trepidation. As much as I understood the ski area had to grow or likely perish, I feared the resort I loved would get lost in the shuffle.
Five years later, many of the Schaefers’ plans have been realized. Yet the vibe of the mountain seems largely unchanged, despite a fair amount of worry on Jon’s part. As a member of a generation that plugs into social media, the youngest brother hears every bit of praise and criticism leveled at the resort.
In the future, the Schaefers plan to keep their eyes on the core.
“That foundation was, and still is, the key to any success we have. It allowed us to stay in business into the 1990s, when we were able to start investing, upgrading the lodge and improving our snowmaking.”
The words Jim Schaefer spoke that night in 2008, when the family came together in support of the massive investment, are as true today as they were then:
“We want to be the best small ski resort in New England. We’re all in. Double down!”•
