Vermont Ski & Snowboard Museum's Red Bench Speaker Series will celebrate Stratton's 60th anniversary this Thursday at 7:00 pm via Zoom. An impressive panel of Stratton Mountain insiders will gather to sit on the virtual "red bench" to share their memories and the history of Stratton Mountain.

Stratton's lifts began turning in December 1961 and it has since notched a succession of "firsts," including flying lift towers in with a helicopter, hosting the first World Cup ski race in Vermont, being the first major resort to welcome snowboarding, and the 30-year home of the US Open Snowboarding Championships. Stratton was also a pioneer in building a medical clinic at the base of the mountain to care for injured skiers, and one of the first ski areas to host a ski racing academy, Stratton Mountain School, in 1972.

Panelists Lee Romano and Mercedes Henrich Ross will lead viewers through Stratton's first sixty years including how Tyrolean-inspired inns and a chalet community, Austrian ski instructors and the famous musical Stratton Mountain Boys.

Former Stratton Mountain School Head and Nordic Coach Sverre Caldwell will explain the school's inception and how this small academy has produced fifty-one Olympians that have brought home eight Olympic medals, including recent Beijing medal winners SMS Alum Lindsey Jacobellis and Jessie Diggins.

Seth Boyd, the Executive Director of the Carlos Otis Clinic, will be on hand to outline the original vision for the on-site medical clinic. He'll talk about the improvements to their orthopedic care over the past fifty years.

Kimet Hand, with her decades of deep institutional knowledge makes her an ideal moderator for this event.

We hope you'll join us for this milestone event and bring your questions for the Q&A session at the end.

Visit www.VTSSM.org/events receive a free ZOOM invite. The discussion begins at 7:00 PM and is complimentary, but a $10 donation from each guest is encouraged, greatly appreciated, and helps keep this series going.

Series sponsors include r.k. Miles, Schoeller Textil, AJ's Ski & Sports, Sisler Builders, and Vermont Ski + Ride.