Ski Trip

In an effort to get back to the actual life story part of my blog I was remembering our ski trips my friends and I used to take. Every year we went to this event called "Snow Fest for the Animals" The place was called "Brodie Mountain" and I have since learned that it is now closed, which is very sad as it was a wonderful place to go and the owners were lovely people who cared about animal welfare.

Brodie Mountain (ski area)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brodie Mountain Ski Area (closed)
Location: New Ashford, Massachusetts, US
Nearest city: Pittsfield
Vertical: 1,250 ft
Runs: 40
Longest run: 2 mi
Lift system: 4 chairs: 4 Doubles

Brodie Mountain was a ski resort in New Ashford, Massachusetts, in the Taconic Mountains in the far northwestern part of the state. It opened in 1964 and thrived for a time by using then-cutting-edge innovations like top-to-bottom snowmaking and lighted night skiing. Founder Jim Kelly gave the resort an Irish theme: its nickname was "Kelly's Irish Alps"; the slopes had names like "Shamrock," "Killarney," and "JFK"; and the base lodge housed an Irish-themed saloon that did a rousing business in drinks and live music. But like many small independent ski areas, Brodie lost business over time to larger, higher-capitalized, corporate-owned resorts.

In 1999 the Kellys sold it to the owners of nearby Jiminy Peak, who closed Brodie in 2002 and sold it to a Texas-based condominium developer. The area continued to operate snow tubing, in conjunction with Jiminy Peak, through the 2006-2007 season.


With a vertical drop of 1,250 feet and four chairlifts, Brodie is the largest closed ski area in the Berkshires. Part of the mountain is now proposed for a wind energy project.

Every year we would get a group together and go to the "Snow Fest for the animals" at Brodie and every year we would get there and there would be NO SNOW! We began calling it the "Snow Farce for the animals" since we usually ended up hiking or drinking instead. Never once did we ski. We always had a great time though and one of my cherished items is the key chain I got there. When it finally broke, L gave me hers so I still have one. The first year we stayed at the actual ski lodge itself but after that we stayed off site. One year gave us the never ending joke of L getting up at 5 am and having a regular day while "normal" people slept. She has always been an early riser but that particular year one day I woke up at 8 am to find she had already gone out for coffee, took a long walk, had breakfast and was reading a newspaper! Now we joke that L will jog around the block, make breakfast, have coffee, read a book, bake a cake, all before 5 am.

These trips also gave us one of our funniest memories. My friend gave me a postcard once of a cat looking shocked with the legend "Keep your fork, there's pie!". That postcard became a big joke in our group of friends. We used to say it to each other all the time. I used it as the signature line in my emails. On our first trip to the Snowfest, we had dinner at the ski lodge with a large group of assembled animal rights activists featuring animal activist speakers. The last speaker of the evening announced "Hope you kept your forks, there is pie!" we all looked at each other and burst out laughing. As the pie was served, sheepishly we looked at each other as we realized we hadn't kept our forks and we ended up eating our pie with spoons from our coffee. After all the years of repeating the cat's advice to keep our forks, we hadn't and had to use spoons.
Remember folks "Keep Your Forks, There is Pie!"