Stowe is the Pinacle of East Coast Skiing

Featured Image: Emily Kokot

FREESKIER's 2026 Resort Rankings are here, as debuted in Volume 28 Issue 2. Defining the Top 10 Ski Resorts in North America is no easy task, but our edit team was up to the challenge. Endless debates and nuanced arguments lead to a list we're proud of. And who better to explain these mountains than the skiers who know them best? Dive into Connor Davis's fantastic portrait of Stowe; the realest skiing on the East Coast.

On the East Coast, your favorite place to ski isn’t usually the steepest, deepest or fanciest. More often than not, it’s just the place you grew up skiing. And that’s because of the little things: the creaky lifts, the musty lodges, the secret tree stashes that—whether this is true or not—only you know about.

As for me, I grew up on a dirt road in Vermont in a town of 400 people, and the little things shaped my entire outlook on life. Today I live in Maine, and there’s no shortage of charm here, either. All my life—from Vermont’s Magic Mountain and Mad River Glen to Maine’s Camden Snow Bowl and Lost Valley—these backwoods, laid-back places collectively share number one in my heart.

But if you put rustic charm aside, place nostalgia on the back burner and look at the fundamental factors that make a ski resort objectively incredible, there’s one place that stands above the rest—across the entire East Coast—in my book. And that place is Stowe.

I’m attempting to put an unbiased hat on here, looking at the facts in front of me to make this case. And I’ll start at the base. While most across the East Coast are rough around the edges—or rough around the edges with some cosmetic touch-ups—Stowe’s Spruce Peak base area looks like something you’d find out West. Vaulted ceilings, heated walkways, proper slopeside lodging—all the bells and whistles.

The Spruce Peak zone, in particular, has seen hundreds of millions of dollars in investment since 2003—over two decades of continuous development—that immediately sets the place apart. And I say all this because sometimes it’s nice to have fancy things. And at Stowe, everything is pretty damn fancy.

It’s also nice to keep things steep and deep, which Stowe delivers on, tenfold. I was fully convinced of this a few years back when a three-foot storm was spiraling toward the Green Mountains and I made a last-minute decision to get myself stuck there. I splurged on two nights at The Lodge at Spruce Peak—the nucleus of that fancy base area—chasing locals around one legendary lap after another. It was worth every penny.

The mountain is pretty spread out, but the most concentrated zone of proper, rowdy skiing is off the FourRunner Quad. From the top, there’s a handful of steep, butt-clenching tree runs to skier’s left like Goat and Nosedive. My personal favorite, though, is skier’s right under the adjacent Lookout Double. The lift doesn’t seem to run very often, and the turns underneath it never disappoint. It’s a narrow run with a constant left-sloping fall line, and the whole thing feels like surfing a wave—carving left-footers, slashing right-footers, with a bunch of playful drops and side hits in between.

Take a ride up the iconic Gondolier, and you’ll be that much closer to the proper summit of Mount Mansfield. It’s here where locals and other skiers who know what they’re doing will hike beyond the lift access and ski above-treeline terrain. Just look up Mike Hayes on Instagram and you’ll see what I mean. Up there, it doesn’t matter whether you can afford a fancy mac and cheese bowl at the base or not—the terrain is the real deal, and it’s the literal top of Vermont.

I could go on listing zones and name-dropping trails. But why would I? You’ve surely heard of Stowe. You just needed a little reminder that, despite changes in ownership, crowded weekends and whatever else might be a deterrent, Stowe is the OG. Which brings me to my final point.

Some know this, some don’t, but before Stowe was even Stowe, back in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps were hand-glading trails from the top of Mansfield—basically just to stay busy. This was post–Great Depression, when no one could find work and the then-wise government sent the boys up the hill to make sure—at the very least—the public had some suitable ski trails to hike up and send down. How times have changed.

These weren’t just paths through the woods; they were blueprints for what Eastern skiing would become—narrow, twisting, fall-line runs that hugged the mountain instead of bulldozing through it. The first chairlift arrived in 1940, turning those raw, hand-cut trails into the foundation of Stowe Mountain Resort. To this day, you can still trace their DNA in the mountain’s rhythm—the way Mansfield demands flow, precision and respect.

The luxury, the infrastructure, the buzz—they’re all impressive. But what makes Stowe truly number one is how, beneath all of it, the same mountain still hums with that original pulse. The town sitting quaintly below it. The people who call it home and take good care of you when you visit. It all happened at Stowe good reason.

That’s the thing. I’ve always been quick to admit that popular places are usually popular for a reason—and still worth a look. The Grand Canyon changed my life. Canals of Venice—haven’t been the same since. Disney World…almost had you there.

But Stowe rules. So check the weather. Get there midweek. Wake up early. Bring sharp skis. Leave slow friends behind. Go fast. Take chances. And make the mountain proud. You’ll agree with every word here, guaranteed.