Elizabeth “Betsy” Stratton Pratt, the former owner of Mad River Glen who played a key role in converting the ski area to a cooperative, died Friday at the age of 95. According to an announcement from Mad River Glen, Pratt spent her final days surrounded by loved ones, watching a livestream of snow falling gently on the single chairlift that scales the mountain she loved.
Pratt was born Elizabeth Love Stratton on March 12, 1928. She grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and first learned to ski as a student at Vassar College. There, she joined the New York Amateur Ski Club, which had been founded in 1931 by Roland Palmedo.
Pratt then moved to New York City to work for the Ford Foundation and on a ski trip in 1954 met Truxton Pratt, a New York banker, whom she would later marry. Pratt had four children, Polly, Amanda, Elizabeth and Truxton, who grew up learning to navigate Mad River Glen’s slopes, visiting the mountain frequently to stay at their family ski home in Fayston.
Pratt, her husband and other investors bought Mad River Glen in 1972, purchasing the 1,800 acres of General Stark Mountain from Palmedo, who first opened the slopes to skiers in 1948.
Eric Friedman, executive director of the Mad River Valley Chamber of Commerce, met Pratt as a skier at Mad River Glen. He described her as an excellent skier and beloved community member who could be both “cantankerous” and “visionary.”
Reminiscing about his 35-year-long friendship with Pratt, Friedman talked about “legendary stories” that showed her sharp wit and clear-eyed commitment to local skiers. He described Pratt’s “uniform” — a dependable blue Oxford shirt and khaki skirt, which she wore everywhere while off the slopes. Back in the day, Friedman said, Pratt could often be seen smoking a corncob pipe.
“She created a sense of family among the staff that is unsurpassed,” Friedman said. “I’m so fortunate to have worked in a place that cared about the people so much.”
According to those who knew her, Pratt helped to sustain Palmedo’s vision for Mad River Glen as a rustic haven for skiing, left unscathed by the rapid development of other local ski areas, such as Stowe Mountain Resort, which Palmedo co-owned in the 1930s until he left out of frustration at budding commercialization efforts.
“I am suspicious of man’s effort to improve nature,” Palmedo said, according to a biography written by Philip F. Palmedo and published in 2017.
Pratt echoed Palmedo’s sentiments in a 1992 Powder Magazine interview with Waterbury journalist David Goodman. “I believe the mountains belong first to the local communities and that they should have a say what they want their mountains to be,” Pratt told Goodman, who hosts and produces the Vermont Conversation podcast for VTDigger. “If it is only big corporations controlling mountains and the local community, I think that’s unfortunate.”
In 1995, as much of the ski industry was facing pressures toward consolidation, Pratt organized to sell the mountain to a cooperative of its own skiers, believing that cooperative ownership would allow the local community to maintain influence over the mountain’s future. Thanks to Pratt’s vision, Friedman said, the co-op is still alive and well today. With about 2,300 members, it remains the only cooperatively owned ski area in the United States.
“People were like, ‘Oh, this will never happen, it’ll never work,’” Friedman said. “But because of Betsy’s vision, it did work. We were successful with the co-op by doing everything wrong (on) the ski industry’s (terms). Whatever the conventional wisdom was, we did the exact opposite on so many different levels. And we got that from her.”
Melinda Moulton, a resident of Huntington and former CEO of Main Street Landing, met Pratt in 1978 when Pratt hired her to run the ski school desk at Mad River Glen. In an article for The Valley Reporter in January, Moulton said Pratt quickly became one of her strongest female role models.
“She was loved, feared, respected, and, although tiny in body, her stature was tall and powerful … when she spoke you listened because what she had to say mattered,” Moulton wrote. “Pratt leaves a legacy steeped in challenging work, personal sacrifice, innate genius, and gritty tenacity.”
In September 2022, Pratt was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum, where she was recognized as a “pioneer in the industry (who) rose to iconic stature for her sharp business acumen and eccentric personality,” according to an announcement issued by the ski area.
Rick Moulton, a longtime ski instructor at Mad River Glen and the filmmaker behind “Spirit of a Classic,” a 1988 production made to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Mad River Glen, said he hopes the ski area will name a trail after Pratt.
“We’re eternally grateful that she did not allow the ski area to become corporatized. She kept it for the sport of skiing, the way it always was and still is. Hats off to Betsy. I just thank her up and down,” he said.
