The next day we would move over to Mount Mansfield.It snowed that night. Not a little coating, but a big, American-style dump of woolly flakes that settled several feet deep. Snow-ploughs were out early and the atmosphere over muffins at the Harvest Market was charged "It doesn't get much better than this," I was assured And nor does it. While the boys were at their lessons on Spruce Peak, I went up Mount Mansfield Not all its runs are double-black diamonds. One of them, the Toll Road, opened to horse and buggy traffic in 1870, offers more than 3.5 miles of gentle downhill cruising.I was alone for my first run down the intermediate trails, but as the morning went on, more and more people came, among them a ski instructor from Mont Tremblant, across the border in Canada. "I heard about the snow here," he explained as we went up, "and reckoned it was going to be one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences."He wasn't wrong. Snowboarding has become more of a lifestyle than a sport, and the instructors who took them onto the slopes seemed the epitome of that spirit: laid-back, super-friendly and wearing the right labels.
With the boys in the safe hands of cool dudes, I clipped into my skis.There are three main ski areas. Spruce Peak has the gentlest slopes, though even here there is fun to be had. The Gondolier, an eight-person gondola, runs almost 8,000ft up the steeper slope of Mount Mansfield's neighbour And then there is the mount itself. For the first couple of days I stayed on the easier slopes, carving my way down some beautiful broad trails and keeping an eye out for the boys, who had quickly taken to their boards.
At the end of the first day, they were both gliding gracefully down Spruce Peak's intermediate slopes. At the end of the second day, after their lessons, I took them up to the steeper slopes. It hadn't snowed since our arrival and some of the surface was hard - and fast - as ice. But apart from a few falls, we managed everything the peak had to offer.
