The Retreat Ski Area

The Retreat Ski Area in North Sherburne, Vermont, was a rope tow hill just above Route 100, fourteen miles from Rutland, in the part of the old town of Sherburne that is now Killington. Claus A. Bartenstein, known to everyone in town as Bart, ran it from the 1946-47 season until 1950. Skiers also called it Bart's Tow. Bartenstein was a mechanical engineer who had raced in Europe in the 1920s, and he settled in North Sherburne in 1946 with plans for a ski hill of his own.

He built the tow himself. A Ford Model A engine and transmission sat on a cement base inside a small tow house with a warming hut, and a one-inch rope ran 600 feet up the hill over automobile wheels mounted on telephone-type poles. The track dipped and crested so sharply that small children ended up hanging from the rope, and one regular remembered it as the craziest tow he ever rode. The tow served open slopes and several cut trails, including Christmas Tree Alley, which ran 1,200 feet. Lights were added later for night skiing, and a day of skiing cost a dollar.

The Bartensteins also ran the Retreat lodge across Route 100, where a dormitory slept 30 guests and a floodlit skating rink sat nearby. A trail called the Feed Bag connected the lodge to the slopes, and a station wagon carried skiers from Rutland in the morning and back at night.

When the Korean War began in 1950, Bartenstein went back to engineering work and sold the tow equipment to Pico, where it ran for years afterward. The walkway from the parking area became Bart's Hill Road, and the old ski hill was sold off as building lots. The road still runs up the slope near the Welcome to Killington sign on Route 100.