To our Berkshire East and Catamount pass holders:You know how much my family cares about independent mountains, about community, and about doing things the right way. We love the hill towns of western Mass because they helped shape us as adults by giving us that awesome mix of great communities, with great adventure sports and filled with great peo...

It is with heavy hearts and lots of fond memories that we remember Paul Putnam. Our long-time race coach and mentor passed away on September 6 after a challenging illness. Paul grew up in Northfield and, accompanied by his two older brothers, grew up skiing around the farm rope tows of the area. He worked for one year at Berkshire East in the ski s...

To our Berkshire East and Catamount Guests and Employees: Berkshire East will close for the season today, Thursday, March 12 at 4pm and Catamount Ski Area will not reopen this weekend. COVID-19 has been discovered in the surrounding hill towns and multiple people are being quarantined. To be clear, no known Berkshire East or Catamount customers or ...

Dear Seasons Pass Holders and Friends, As I am sure that many of you have seen, on March 12, 2020 we made the decision to close Berkshire East and Catamount Resorts for winter operations due to the Coronavirus. On that day we chose to lead the ski industry into its early close. Believe me when I tell you that decision was one of the hardest decisio...

THE VIRAL TRAJECTORY OF GOGGLES FOR DOCS As reported by www.vtskiandride.com On the night of March 11, Jon Schaefer read an article about the spread of COVID-19. He turned off the lights and went to sleep. "Five minutes later, I woke up and knew what we had to do," he said. Schaefer, who runs Berkshire East (the ski area in northwestern Massachuset...

26 days ago, on March 28, 2020 at 8am, a single email appeared in my inbox. This simple moment initiated a series of actions that galvanized the ski and action sport worlds into a focused, global effort to bring protective eye wear to health care workers practicing 'battlefield medicine' in the war against the coronavirus. Our organization has work...

A LETTER FROM JON SCHAEFER On Thursday, March 12, 2020, Berkshire East and Catamount became the first ski areas to shut down for COVID. Within 100 hours, most ski areas in the country had followed suit. The next 16 days were full of uncertainty, nervousness, and fear. At both mountains, we concluded that we would approach the year dynamically. We w...

A LETTER FROM JON SCHAEFER Happy New Year to every one of you who make up our awesome community! 2020 started in an inauspicious way at Berkshire East and Catamount. As 2019 wound down, a severe ice storm shut down the ski resorts on December 30, and on the 31rst our crews worked tirelessly to reopen the mountains. For me, I spent New Years Eve in ...

A LETTER FROM JON SCHAEFER Dear Berkshire East and Catamount Passholders and Guests, Ahh, March in Massachusetts, thou art more lovely and more temperate than… than… than, the arctic? Anyway, I am confident that soon enough we will settle into the business of spring skiing -- at least for a few weeks. Or maybe longer? I'm happy to announce that we ...

STATUS UPDATES Hi all. Jon Schaefer here. I run Berkshire East and Catamount. My family has owned Berkshire East since 1976, and Catamount since 2018. When we bought Catamount in 2018, we committed to revitalizing it and haven't stopped. Admittedly, these improvements haven't been easy, and there have been some real challenges. In June 2020, we dis...

From my seat as an operator of ski areas, I've spent the better part of 15 years trying to get 6 inches of snow made on mountains that had a mile of ice on them for the better part of the last 100,000 years. An effort that is challenging, irrational and phenomenal all wrapped into one. In that role, I have gotten to meet many people, done many thin...