Tyrolean Days and Chicken Dance Nights
Ahh, the good old days…It is hard for me to believe how many years have gone by since my family and I came to Stratton Mountain as skiers, only to love all Vermont’s seasons so much that we eventually moved here permanently. It was in the late 1960s when we first came to ski and Stratton was a much smaller community with a very definite Tyrolean flavor. Emo Henrich was head of the ski school, he and his wife Annedore owned and ran the Birkenhaus Inn and restaurant. Herbie and Gretel Schachinger were proprietors of the Liftline Lodge and Walter and Hanna Heigl managed the Hotel Tyrol. There was a lot of Gemütlichkeit in the air back then.
Memories of these happy days include tea dancing in the Bear’s Den, (Can you believe it?), Tyrolean evenings as part of the ski school week with lots of chicken dancing and schuhplattling, the Stratton Mountain Boys playing daily in the base lodge après ski and most of all skiing over to the Liftline Lodge for delicious lunches then using the little lift across the road to ski back to the main base lodge. There were fabulous picnics in the spring orchestrated by the Birkenhaus at the top of the Grizzly Bear complete with a raw bar, champagne and wonderful delights on the grill. In fact in those days there was a lot of picnicking on the mountaintop during springtime with people hauling grills, food and supplies up the lifts.
