Vermont
VT wins big in USA Today’s 10 best ski and snowboard awards. Here’s a full list of winners
Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe opens for the season
Skiers and snowboarders flock to Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe on opening day 2024.
Planning a winter ski trip? Consider heading to the mountains of Vermont.
USA Today’s 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards just released its best of ski and snowboard rankings, and Vermont won a total of 11 awards. The annual 10Best awards highlight the best in travel, food and lifestyle, and winners are chosen by a public voting poll after being nominated by industry experts. This year’s best of ski and snowboard awards ranks lodgings, locations and services for the winter sports across the United States.
In addition to Stowe placing as the third best ski town in the country, Vermont ski accommodations placed in the following categories: best apres-ski bar, best ski restaurant, best ski shop, best place for snow tubing, best cross-country ski resort and best ski hotel.
Here’s what to know about the winners:
The Belfry
Housed in a former one-room schoolhouse, The Belfry is a charming pub just minutes away from Jay Peak Resort. Between a robust beer and wine selection and a menu full of pub classics like wings and burgers, The Belfry is the perfect place to grab a drink after a day of skiing – earning the sixth spot on the list of apres-ski bars.
The Belfry is open for thirsty skiiers every day except Wednesday, with hours from 4-9 p.m. on Friday-Saturday and 4-8 p.m. every other day.
Award: No. 6 in Best Apres-Ski Bar
Location: 14 Amidon Road, Montgomery Center, VT
Cliff House Restaurant
Cliff House Restaurant, one of the restaurants at Stowe Mountain Resort, offers a mountainside eating experience at the top of the gondola on Mount Mansfield. The restaurant is known for American cuisine with a rustic Vermont flair, serving classics like chicken sandwiches and New England clam chowder.
Stowe’s Cliff House is open for lunch from 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. daily once the season starts on Dec. 14. A valid ticket or season pass is required to ride the gondola to the restaurant.
Award: No. 8 in Best Ski Restaurant
Location: 7231 Mountain Road, Stowe, VT (top of the mountain gondola)
The INN Restaurant & Bar
Taking the third place spot for best ski restaurant is the restaurant at The INN, a quaint inn in Montgomery Center.
Guests have a choice of eating in the intimate dining room, lively tavern or riverside deck. The INN’s seasonal menus offer upscale comfort food made from fresh, local ingredients, completed with various craft cocktails.
The inn’s restaurant is open year-round on Thursday-Sunday starting at 5 p.m. Reservations are highly recommended.
Award: No. 3 in Best Ski Restaurant
Location: 241 Main St., Montgomery Center, VT
Darkside Snowboards
Darkside Snowboards is a premiere snowboarding shop with locations in Killington and Ludlow. Just making the list of best ski shops at 10th place, this shop has everything a snowboarder could want, from performance and freestyle boards to boots, helmets, goggles and clothing for the sport. Darkside does also offer ski rentals, but mainly focuses on snowboarding equipment.
Hours for this snowboard shop are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily in Ludlow and 9 a.m.-6 p.m. daily in Killington, with extended late-night hours Monday-Wednesday.
Award: No. 10 in Best Ski Shop
Location: 1842 Killington Road, Killington, VT; 57 Pond St., Ludlow, VT
Skiology Ski and Sports
Right down the road from Downside Snowboards in Killington is Skiology Ski and Sports, USA Today’s second choice pick for best ski shop. The store offers a wide range of high-performance skis, from recreational to racing and all-mountain to powder, as well as daily ski rentals and professional tuning services.
Skiology is open from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 7:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.
Award: No. 2 in Best Ski Shop
Location: 937 Killington Road, Killington, VT
Pinnacle Ski and Sports
Pinnacle Ski and Sports, a Stowe ski shop that has been open for over 35 years, took the top spot for ski shops in this year’s 10Best awards.
Along with a wide selection of equipment and apparel, Pinnacle offers custom boot fitting, ski and snowboard rentals, ski mounting and tuning, ski repairs and a delivery concierge service. The shop is open daily from 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
Award: No. 1 in Best Ski Shop
Location: 1652 Mountain Road, Stowe, VT
Mount Snow Resort
Ranking fifth for best snow tubing location is Mount Snow Resort, a slopeside resort in the southern Vermont town of West Dover. The resort’s tubing hill has eight lanes and a conveyor lift, with tickets for two-hour time slots available.
In addition to snow tubing, Mount Snow has 86 skiing trails, a halfpipe and large terrain park. For those who want to stay, the Grand Summit Resort Hotel, Mount Snow’s lodging property, has almost 200 guest rooms and amenities like a spa, a health club, a heated pool and many locations for dining and retail.
Award: No. 5 in Best Place for Snow Tubing
Location: 39 Mount Snow Road, West Dover, VT
Viking Nordic Center
Londonderry’s Viking Nordic Center has over 16 miles of woodsy ski trails through classic Vermont scenery along the West River. All levels and types of cross-country skiing are welcome, whether classic, skate or snowshoe. For those just starting, the resort also offers lessons and rentals.
On select nights during ski season, Viking Nordic Center lights about two miles of their trails with overhead lights and gas lanterns from the 1900s, creating a unique nighttime skiing experience.
Award: No. 8 in Best Cross-Country Ski Resort
Location: 615 Little Pond Road, Londonderry, VT
Bolton Valley Nordic Center
Located in Bolton Valley overlooking the scenic Lake Champlain, Bolton Valley Nordic Center is a mountain adventure resort with the highest elevation in the Northeast.
The backcountry terrain offers trails for Nordic skiers and snowshoe enthusiasts of all levels, earning the resort a fifth place ranking in best cross-country ski resort. Additionally, Bolton Valley has paths for alpine, night and backcountry skiing, totaling in 71 trails.
Award: No. 5 in Best Cross-Country Ski Resort
Location: 4302 Bolton Valley Access Road, Bolton, VT
Topnotch Resort
Topnotch Resort, a luxury resort and spa located in the foothills of Mount Mansfield, ranked sixth for best ski hotel. Cozy, sophisticated rooms come together with beautiful gardens and a contemporary restaurant for a charming New England stay.
Along with skiing and snowboarding through the Stowe Mountain Resort, Topnotch has over 100 acres of activities like hiking, biking and horseback riding. Amenities include a spa, a fitness center, three pools, a tennis academy and seasonal activities.
Award: No. 6 in Best Ski Hotel
Location: 4000 Mountain Road, Stowe, VT
QUECHEE, Vt. (WCAX) – Crews worked across the White River Valley on Friday to restore power and clean up debris after two EF-1 tornadoes touched down in Vermont, including one that swept through Quechee.
Joe Haynes stared over his yard in Woodstock, with chunks of his roof scattered across it, wondering about the next steps.
Reporter Connor Ullathorne: How long will this all take to clean up?
Joe Haynes: Oh, I have no idea.
He said he’s lucky he and his nearby neighbors are safe and are not blocked in.
“Some of the trees were down. They’ll be down for awhile but they can make their way out,” Haynes said.
Crews in Woodstock continued clearing trees and downed power lines along Route 4. That’s where Tiffany Miller was working inside the Mountain Creamery when the tornado passed right over the store. Nobody was injured, but their new walk-in storage ended up in the trees.
“It’s definitely a big setback for us. We were getting ready to have it wired up tomorrow. So I mean we definitely have a lot of elbow grease and hours to put in to get back up to where we were,” Miller said.
She said she was happy to see how many customers have checked in on them.
“It’s nice to see that no matter what, in some bad case– storms or indifferent– that we can still come together and be there for each other,” Miller said.
Farther east in Quechee, workers hacked away at trees and swept away debris along the golf course and roads.
“It’s crazy they want to see. Everybody cares about their community and all their assets and amenities, so it’s nice to see everybody come together,” Quechee Club General Manager Brian Kelley said.
Kelley said they were out early Friday, and many residents were shocked at the damage. He’s still hopeful the area can come together and support each other.
“We normally do about 200 rounds a day going into one of our peak weekends. We’ve got the balloon festival this weekend, so we have that population in town, so a little bit of disappointment but people have been great and supportive, and we’ll be back at it tomorrow,” Kelley said.
Kelley said it should be a few days until they are back to full force in Quechee.
Many others across the region told us they’re now focused on getting back to normal.
Click here for the latest forecast from the WCAX First Alert Weather Team.
Copyright 2026 WCAX. All rights reserved.
Vermont
New owners of Vermont Packinghouse plan for local growth – The Vermont Journal & The Shopper
NORTH SPRINGFIELD, Vt. – For years, limited meat processing capacity in Vermont has forced many farmers to sell their livestock out of state. A recent ownership transition at a meat processing plant in North Springfield aims to change that by helping ensure locally raised meats can continue to be processed, packaged, and sold in Vermont.
The Vermont Packinghouse (VPH), located at 25 Fairbanks Road in North Springfield, was recently sold in two subsequent transactions to a new ownership group led by longtime food service and distribution leader Louis Helbling.
The 50,000-square-foot United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) facility processes and packages beef and pork from small- and medium-sized farms across New England. The sale of both the business and the building marks a new phase of growth and stability for a key regional meat processing operation that has been managed by multiple entities in recent years.
Longtime Springfield businessman Mark Curran, of Curran-Birge, purchased the former Ben & Jerry’s manufacturing plant in 2013 with the goal of easing a major bottleneck for Vermont meat producers by expanding much-needed processing capacity. Curran and his former business partner Steve Birge worked with Temple Grandin, a renowned designer of humane livestock facilities, to develop a slaughter facility that minimizes stress on the animals.
The facility was operated by Minnesota-based Lorentz Meats from 2014 to 2020, and later by Walden Local Meat Co. from 2023 to 2026. Throughout that time, Curran maintained ownership of the building, carefully stewarding an asset he believed held long-term potential for the region.
On May 29, Curran sold the property to a new ownership group led by Helbling, a veteran of food service sales, operations, and senior management. Under the newly formed Vermont Packing & Trading, Helbling is focused on expanding market opportunities for locally grown meats while creating jobs and supporting local farms. With a passion for the food industry, Helbling was drawn to Vermont’s specialty food culture and deep agricultural heritage.
“With Louis’ decades of work in the New England food industry, there is real opportunity to open more markets for local beef and pork producers outside of Vermont,” Curran said. “Another initiative will be to retain more of Vermont’s dairy culls from leaving the state and keep more value-added processing here.”
Helbling and his team will continue to work closely with Curran, Black River Produce – a distributor with deep ties to the operation – and the owners of Walden Local Meat Co. to ensure a smooth transition of both building ownership and day-to-day operations.
“We have all worked very hard over the past six months to keep VPH open and in a position to rehire a very talented and dedicated workforce as quickly as possible,” Helbling said.
With a new management team in place, the facility is entering its next phase of operations focused on future growth.
Upgrades to the USDA facility are already underway, alongside efforts to expand cold storage capacity to meet growing regional demand. “Adding to the existing footprint with additional freezer and cold storage will give us the capacity we need to grow as a business and add to the local workforce over the next five years,” Helbling said.
He added that he and his team will continue working with Curran to revitalize the landmark facility and restore it as a source of pride for families, employees, and local farms.
“All of us involved in this journey are excited to be working and relocating to the great State of Vermont,” Helbling said. “We are operating and moving quickly to bring business from all over the Northeast to Springfield.”
Vermont Packing & Trading was formed after the April 2026 sale of the Vermont Packinghouse business and is seeking new partners and producers across the Northeast.
SHELBURNE — Norman Rockwell lived for a time in suburban New York City and died and was buried in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. But for 14 years in between, the artist spent perhaps the most prolific period of his career in Vermont creating his best-known works.
That’s how Shelburne Museum curator Carolyn Bauer sees it — and how the museum’s latest exhibition treats the artist.
“Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont,” which opens June 20 and runs through Oct. 25, displays 40 of the 175 covers Rockwell famously created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine during his time in Vermont between 1939 and 1953.
Also on display are prints of “The Four Freedoms,” maybe his most famed works of all, which represent American ideals spelled out by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. Paintings in the exhibition include “The Young Lady with the Shiner” and “The Tattoo Artist,” both whimsical, recognizable pieces used as covers for The Saturday Evening Post.
“It’s very accessible work and approachable,” Bauer said.
The display features the three paintings that inspired the exhibition, given to the Shelburne Museum by Rock of Ages, the Barre granite quarry and monument maker. Those Rockwell paintings filled a significant gap in the museum’s art collection, which includes works by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Grandma Moses and Andrew Wyeth but, until recently, none by Rockwell, perhaps the best-known artist to have lived here.
“It feels like a homecoming in many regards,” Bauer said.
Moving to southern VT, finding ‘the every American’
The exhibition frames Rockwell’s time in Vermont around the tenor of the times in America. As the Great Depression was ending, World War II was looming and the nation was growing more urban and industrialized, much of the public was yearning for greater simplicity, Bauer said.
Rockwell was among them, leaving New Rochelle north of New York City for the quietude of Arlington in southern Vermont.
He was not alone. Contemporary artists including Mead Schaeffer, John Atherton and Gene Pelham would settle in Arlington too, creating what Bauer termed “the golden illustrator days” in Vermont.
Rockwell’s art, as the 152-page hardcover catalogue accompanying the exhibition notes, shows “how Vermont itself came to embody American ideals in the national imagination.”
Rockwell and his fellow Arlington artists used each other as models in their creations. “They really would work collaboratively,” Bauer said.
Pelham’s daughter, Melinda, is shown in the exhibition in two works: “The Babysitter,” a painting of a girl holding a crying baby that’s on loan from The Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont and an admission submission Rockwell sent to Kellogg’s of a girl clutching a cereal-laden spoon to her mouth.
Doctors, mail deliverers and shopkeepers from Arlington populated his work. Bauer said Rockwell usually gave models $5 and a can of Coca-Cola.
“He was recycling and using just about everybody in town,” Bauer said. That included himself: Rockwell added his own visage to the multiple faces in “The Gossip,” which shows him lashing out at a woman who’s started the rumor-mongering.
Bauer said Rockwell wanted to cultivate a sense of place by using Vermonters known for their austere self-reliance at the forefront of his work. He also found “the every American” ideal in town, Bauer said, though his art reflected a pronounced lack of diversity.
In later work, Rockwell would confront race and segregation as the Civil Rights Movement swept the U.S.
“He was progressive,” Bauer said.
Inspired by paintings donated by Rock of Ages
“Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont” was inspired by the 2025 museum acquisition of a trio of Rockwell works that once hung in the Barre offices of Rock of Ages. The granite company contacted the museum asking if it could donate the paintings, Bauer said, prompting staffers to wonder momentarily, “Is this real?”
Rockwell created advertisements for Rock of Ages and gave the paintings upon which the ads were based to the company. “Kneeling Girl” from 1955, making its debut at the Shelburne Museum, takes place in front of a gravestone engraved with the name Newton.
Rock of Ages donated two versions of 1963 work “The Craftsman,” a muted draft and a more luminous final version that were first displayed at the museum last year. They depict Rock of Ages stonecutter George Seivwright working in the shadow of a memorial bearing the name “Norwell,” a portmanteau of Rockwell’s first and last names.
Bauer called the paintings “incredible works of art that were circulated widely” in ads, brochures and pamphlets touting Rock of Ages and its world-famous Vermont granite. Though Rockwell had left Vermont for Massachusetts by the time he created those paintings, they do what Rockwell had done when he lived in Arlington — show the nation and the world what Vermont and Vermonters are capable of.
“We are just eager for our visitors to see these paintings,” Bauer said.
If you go
WHAT: “Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont”
WHEN: June 20 through Oct. 25
WHERE: Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education, Shelburne Museum
INFORMATION: $8-$25 museum admission; free under age 5 and for active military and Shelburne Museum members. shelburnemuseum.org
Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@burlingtonfreepress.com.
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