Berkshire East Ski Resort

Per New England Ski History, whose own page carries a self-contradiction, the area's infobox lists "First Season: 1953-54" for the Thunder Mountain Ski Association, formed in October 1953 by Arthur Parker and others, which ran rope tows that winter before failing commercially and sitting dismantled by 1958. A wholly separate corporation, Thunder Mountain Skiing, Inc., formed in Connecticut on July 15, 1960, signed a new 15-year lease beginning August 1, 1960, and built the chairlift-and-T-Bar operation that "finally debuted with T-Bar operations on Thursday, December 28, 1961," per that same source's narrative. The area was renamed Berkshire East for the 1969-70 season, per New England Ski History, "for ski conditions reporting and credit purposes." After a mid-1970s bankruptcy put the area under bank ownership, Roy Schaefer operated it for the bank and then purchased it, together with Union Terminal Piers, in 1976-77; in July 2007, Roy Schaefer and his son Jim Schaefer bought the ski area outright from its parent corporation. Berkshire East completed a 291-foot-tall wind turbine near the top of the mountain during the winter of 2010-2011, per New England Ski History, and added a solar farm in 2012. The resort's own dedicated renewable-energy page states: "Powered by a 500kWh solar facility and a 900kWh wind turbine, Berkshire East is the only ski area in the world to generate 100% of our electricity from on-site renewable energy" -- a figure attributed here to the resort's own page rather than restated as settled fact, since that page's text labels both installations' capacity in "kWh," a unit of energy rather than power. A separate Berkshire East overview page states, in wording the renewable-energy page does not match, that "Berkshire East is the first ski area in the world to generate 100% of our power from on-site renewable energy" -- the overview page says "first," the renewable-energy page says "only," unreconciled with each other. Per the renewable-energy page, the turbine's tower stands 277 feet tall with three 91-foot blades, a hub height of about 195 feet, and a maximum rotation of 27 rpm; the solar array consists of 1,800 panels across a 10-acre field mounted on 90 solar trackers, 24 panels per pole, which the page states "produce 35%-45% more electricity than a fixed panel." The same page states the resort "has a signed agreement with a company pioneering the development of Micro Pump Storage solutions," a planned water-based storage system it describes as working like "a really big, non-toxic, renewable battery" -- a signed agreement, per the resort's own wording, not a completed installation. Bear Den Partners, the ownership group led by Jon Schaefer of the family that owns Berkshire East, closed on its purchase of Burke Mountain Resort in Vermont on Friday, May 2, 2025, for $11.5 million, per SAM (Ski Area Management), a sale approved by the overseeing Florida receivership judge; Bear Den Partners then acquired majority ownership of Smugglers' Notch Resort in Vermont, as reported by the Greenfield Recorder on February 13, 2026, with previous owner Bill Stritzler remaining a minority shareholder and his daughter Lisa Howe serving as an advisor. Per the Greenfield Recorder's March 24, 2026 report, the Schaefer family announced on March 23, 2026 that it was transitioning ownership of Berkshire East itself, together with Catamount Mountain Resort, to Bear Den Partners LLC -- an announced transition, not a completed sale at the time of that report -- with Jon Schaefer calling it "an evolution for my family, not an exit," and the article stating that Berkshire East's and Catamount's leadership would remain the same.