I have friends that recently sold their cabin, which was very nearby, but not technically at the resort. It’s a great resort. The golf course is nice and the skiing is very good. The only real issue I have with it vs most of the bigger resorts in Vermont and NH is there is nothing else in town. You need to rely on the resort for dining etc. There’s a few places off mountain, but I really mean a few. The area is great if you want to have toys like 4-wheelers and snowmobiles. My buddy had a couple of 4-wheelers and he took me on a long tour through an extensive trail system. It was literally endless. You can actually see it on Google Earth. It is very impressive.
Stowe, VT is kind of the benchmark in New England for a quintessential ski town. Bars, breweries, restaurants, little white church etc. We have a place there and have been enjoying the town for 20 years. Our kids love it too and someday they will bring their kids there. They never get bored in Stowe. Summer and Fall are active with some different things to do, lots of restaurants, bars, even a little movie theater and multiple golf courses. At Sugarloaf they will need to play golf at the resort, mountain bike or play tennis in the summer but there isn’t the abundance of festivals, mini golf, bowling, shops, pizza places etc. that Stowe and other areas have. Sugarloaf offers a lot though.
I would say there are three things I prefer about Sugarloaf by comparison. One is that there is a lot of true wilderness around, which I enjoy sometimes. That part of Maine is very wild. Second, is people there can ride dirt bikes and do other stuff in the woods without a care. There’s nobody around if you go to the right spots. It almost felt like being in Montana somewhere off grid. There wasn’t a ton of rules or anything, just people enjoying the outdoors and a lot of moose. Lastly, I felt like there was a good sense of community within the resort. The staff and locals seemed to know each other. When we went to happy hour at the big bar in the lodge on a winter evening the first time we were there our friends knew a bunch of the people and we all hung out together. They were friendly and down to earth. The resort at Stowe feels far more exclusive and geared toward travelers than regulars. When we went back to Sugarloaf in the fall on another occasion, I played golf on my own twice and was invited to have lunch with the locals (second homeowners, not local really) that I was paired up with both times. I have to admit, the last time we were there, I was really sad to leave. It was a great experience. It felt a little like going back to the good old days at times.
