Hermitage Club is Vermont’s Private Ski Hideaway

By Heather Burke, Boston.com Correspondent

Ever skied at a private ski club? Picture yourself skiing satiny powder with friends and having lunch and après ski in a grand mountain lodge. A valet stores your skis and fetches your car, while you place your ski boots on the dryers in your mahogany locker. Membership has its privileges, and private powder days on 45 ski trails, at Haystack Mountain – a private ski playground in southern Vermont called Hermitage.

The Hermitage Club is like the Yellowstone Club of the East, opened in 2011. Its pay to play, initial membership is $75,000 (less than Montana’s Yellowstone Club’s $300,000), and the play here is top-notch, from the exclusive 194-acre ski area to private concerts at the magnificent $30 mill Clubhouse complete with a spa, movie theater, bowling alley, and game room for the kids, and a future luxury hotel.

The 1964 Haystack ski area, on the same ridge line as Mount Snow, that struggled for years is now a haven for wealthy ski families that join The Club to escape from lift lines and crowded base lodges, preferring to ski and socialize with like-minded, well-funded friends.

If you think Hermitage Club sounds snobbish, guess again. Hermitage Club members enjoy casual, active weekends here, carving corduroy and untracked powder on 1,400’ vertical served by five lifts before gathering for a grand buffet by the massive stone fireplace in the Clubhouse – the largest timber frame building east of the Mississippi. Afternoons bring Clubhouse Spa treatments, après ski at the slope view bar, kids’ activities in their own zone downstairs, and gourmet dinners with entertainment.

Members aren’t stuffy, though they stuff as much fun in a day as possible in their beautiful 1,400-acre Vermont retreat, snowmobiling on Haystack after the lifts close, snowshoeing or taking the snow cat “Catillac” up to the summit Cabin for cocktails at 3,200’, or skinning up the mountain for a moonlight ski down.

Hermitage Club founder, Jim Barnes, loves music so much he books top 70s and 80s bands to play in the Clubhouse on Saturday nights. This winter Cheap Trick, Hall & Oates, Kenny Loggins, and America have performed. It was Barnes’ brainstorm to offer cat skiing and snowmobile skiing to members on Mondays when the lifts aren’t running. Already 500 members have joined the Hermitage Club since its opening, and the Club is on pace to hit the the 1,500-member goal in the next two years according to Rees Pinney, VP Membership Development.

The benefit for active families that can afford The Hermitage Club is everything you love about skiing, with none of the hassle. You arrive and yours skis, slopes, meals and lodging are prepped to perfection – the untracked groomed trails await. Next winter, members will be whisked up the mountain on a brand new six-passenger heated-seat bubble-covered chairlift, a $7 million high-speed lift like Okemo’s – for a fraction of the skiers. There’s a heli-pad, and an airport, even a jet share program from the city.

I had the opportunity to ski at The Hermitage Club last week, on a blue sky powder day. The people were so friendly – and I am not a member (I wish). There was no long slog from the parking lot, no lift lines for the cushy monogrammed chairlifts, no cafeteria tray at lunch, the snow was silky soft, and the views pristine. I could get use to The Hermitage.

By Heather Burke, Hermitage Club Photos by Greg Burke