Skiing at Sugarbush

Legendary and pioneering photographer Toni Frissell (neé Antoinette Frissell Bacon) had a fascinating career that was as long and winding as the slopes depicted here at Sugarbush. Located in the Green Mountains of Warren, Vermont, the Sugarbush Resort opened in the winter of 1958 to the delight of New England snow bunnies who were eager to jump on ski runs they had not yet experienced. Sugarbush wasn’t the only new skiing haven in America that year: a whopping twelve other major ski resorts debuted simultaneously. Greek Peak Mountain Resort in New York’s Finger Lakes, along with Bend, Oregon’s Mount Bachelor Ski Area and Aspen, Colorado’s Aspen Highlands and Buttermilk resorts were but a few of skiers’ new playgrounds. 
 
Skiing as a practice dates back to 6,000 BC. It was adopted recreationally and competitively in America in the mid-1800s, but the sport really started to experience its first big mainstream boom a few years before Skiing at Sugarbush was taken. In fact, over 200 ski resorts opened in the U.S. between 1955 and 1980, ballooning the industry into a massive player in the ecosystem of American tourism. From the get-go, Sports Illustrated was there to cover the trend as thoroughly as the powder that covered all those peaks. Frissell, who worked commercially for the magazine in the years before her career culminated in 1967, was on the scene to document Sugarbush as an example of the nation’s increasingly plentiful winter wonderlands.