The Barn Raising of Burke
- Taylor Staubach
- 4 days ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
THE BEAR DEN PARTNERS BRING THE SKI RESORT BACK TO LIFE
By Taylor Staubach
Holiday 2025
There are some deals that start in boardrooms. Others have more humble beginnings, fueled by nostalgia. The Bear Den, located at Burke Mountain in Northeast Vermont, is called by some “the last great American après ski bar.” Its sawdust-like floor and walls lined with the framed faces of local ski families encapsulate this sentimental vibe. It proved to be the perfect incubator for a new deal for the Vermont ski resort. Amid the clink of beer mugs and the easy camaraderie of those who ski the Northeast Kingdom, a plan emerged to rescue the mountain they loved from a decade of neglect and fraud.
The partners—ski industry veterans Jon Schaefer, Ken Graham, and Willy Booker-—adopted the bar’s namesake as a way to bless their union. The ethos of Bear Den Partners seems to echo a memory from partner Ken Graham’s childhood. “I grew up near Amish country in Pennsylvania,” Graham says. “When I was a kid, I saw an Amish barn raising. It always stuck with me. That’s what we’re looking to do right now, is another Amish barn raising, to collaborate with the community so we all benefit together.” That feeling of communal effort, instead of a corporate mission statement, defines their project—a collective lift to save the mountain they all love.
This spirit of shared effort connects Burke Mountain’s future to the proven, sustainable model of its partners, the Schaefer family. The family, including majority owner Jim Schaefer and CEO Jon Schaefer, owns and operates both Berkshire East in Charlemont and Catamount Ski Area in South Egremont/Hillsdale, New York. Their track record is one of innovation and energy independence. Berkshire East—recognized as a leader in summer operations with its mountain biking, zip lines, and mountain coaster—is also an environmental pioneer. It is the first and only ski area in the world to generate all of its electricity from on-site renewable resources: a 500 kWh solar facility and 900 kWh wind turbine. The family’s playbook, successfully applied to revitalize Catamount, is now being tailored for Burke.
Nearly 50 years earlier, Roy Schaefer, an experienced ski area manager, took over a bankrupt Berkshire East (then known as Thunder Mountain), offering to run it for the bank. He purchased the mountain out of bankruptcy in 1976 for a single dollar, with big plans to revive it.
His youngest son, Jon, grew up in the shadow of that revitalization project, spending much of his childhood on skis, with the mountain as both playground and classroom. His early education was hands-on; he was around lift repairs from a young age, as the family stripped used lift equipment from shuttered ski resorts to keep Berkshire East running.
Roy’s hands-on philosophy became the foundation of the family business. In 2008, Jon moved to Charlemont to learn the business from his father. His own influence soon manifested into tangible improvements. After he was introduced to zip lines on a surf trip to Costa Rica, Jon outfitted Berkshire East with two lines built by 2009 and a third zip line added in 2010. The focus on four-season diversification increased with the launch of Thunder Mountain Bike Park in 2018, which would become the East Coast’s number-one-rated bike park the following year. That same spring, another well-known Berkshire County resort, Catamount Ski Area, became available. Jim Schaefer spearheaded the acquisition, bringing the resort into the family fold. Jon applied the Berkshire East playbook to Catamount. In the fall of 2019, the “Catamonster” opened, becoming the longest zip line in the United States and the seventh-longest in the world.
At roughly 3,200 feet high, Burke Mountain is what geologists call a “monadnock,” from an indigenous Abenaki word for “mountain that stands alone.” It weathered decades of instability, including ownership changes, bankruptcies, and false starts, culminating in a massive fraud case. More than nine years ago, a Florida judge appointed a receiver after federal officials seized Burke Mountain and nearby Jay Peak. They accused the then-owner of both mountains, Ariel Quiros, of defrauding his investors of more than $200 million in what’s been characterized as the largest fraud in Vermont history.
This cycle of failure and betrayal eroded local faith in the mountain. The uncertainty impacted the surrounding community, which is deeply intertwined with the mountain’s economy and identity. Still, Burke refused to die because so many people carried it in their hearts.
An enduring source of that passion is the Kingdom Trails Network, a 100-mile multipurpose trail system that originated at the mountain’s base. This world-renowned network, maintained by the nonprofit Kingdom Trails Association, is a community barn-raising of another sort: Approximately 100 private land owners have granted use of their property, creating over 240 acres of shared recreational land.
Amid the chaos, Burke Mountain Academy (BMA) has remained as another anchor. The school, founded in 1970 as the first ski academy of its kind, has produced more than 154 National Ski Team members and 37 Olympians, including Lanesborough native Mikaela Shiffrin. Willy Booker, who grew up in Colorado, came to BMA in 1991 as an eighth-grader. He graduated from the academy in 1996, became a ski coach at BMA, left briefly for a career in the ski industry, and returned to BMA in a full-circle moment as Head of School in 2017.
According to Booker, Burke has managed to stay afloat due to its authenticity. “I feel like, to the diehard skiers, the mountain has survived in spite of all these people,” he says. “And that speaks to the core character of the place. I think Burke is a place that a lot of skiers would gravitate to because of the mountain’s authentic nature and the local area. I think there are a lot of skiers who are looking for a less crowded, less corporate, less cookie-cutter type of experience.”
All three men are cut from similar cloth. No one is a mogul; they’re all mountain people, attached to Burke by common and lifelong ties. For Graham, the connection is multi-generational. “There are five kids in my family, all five of us went to BMA,” he says. “We have another four in the next generation, including my daughter, who went there. So nine Grahams. There’s 30 of us who have been season pass holders at Burke.”
His father, Don Graham, was the first chairman of BMA and benefactor of the school for 50 years. Don bought Burke out of bankruptcy in 2001 and has historically assisted with other improvements at the resort.
The trio that makes up Bear Den Partners was completed by Schaefer, whose experience turning around Berkshire East and Catamount, as well as consulting at Bousquet, the Hermitage Club, and the new Hinata Retreat in Charlemont, provides the playbook for operational expertise. Schaefer, who attended Middlebury College, raced in multiple national championship ski events and coached the Middlebury Ski Team, has his own personal history with Burke, including holding his bachelor party on the mountain. Schaefer’s “hands-on owner/operator, family vibe” resonated with Graham.
“I was always hoping that Ken would want to step forward and buy it himself,” Booker says. “And then, maybe four or five years ago, in the heart of COVID, Jon and Jim Schaefer reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I know, you know, the mountain's going to have to sell. We own Berkshire East.’ We knew each other casually through ski racing; we all ski raced growing up, and they said, ‘How do you see this going down? We would be interested.’ And from that point on, I just ended up talking to Jon a lot. We would spend long mountain bike rides together when he’d come up and we’d talk about the mountain, what it needs, and how do you fix it? I introduced Jon to Ken, and then, over the course of a few years, the three of us kept talking about it. Ultimately, it was pretty obvious that this was the right ownership group.”
Graham and Jon Schaefer, along with Booker, would meet over beers at the Bear Den and dream about taking the mountain back for the community. In May 2025, the dream materialized with their purchase of Burke Mountain. “Our mantra is skiing like it used to be,” says Graham. “That’s the mission. And it’s really simple.”
The barn raising had its foundation. Now came the work.
Their plans to revitalize the place are immediate and ambitious, focused on strengthening the mountain’s infrastructure without changing Burke’s character. Plans to quadruple snowmaking capabilities, from “100 gallons a minute to 4,000,” Schaefer says, are underway. “We’re spending as much on resort improvements as we did on purchasing the resort,” he says, explaining that the efficiency gains will reduce snowmaking time from 1,200 hours to about 400 hours. “We brought almost four miles of pipeline—eight-inch pipes being welded together up and down the mountain with 150 snow guns being added.”
Lift upgrades are also a top priority—addressing years of deferred maintenance—as well as hotel and restaurant improvements and upgrades to the resort’s digital infrastructure. “There’s another way to look at this, like what isn’t being touched this year?” Schaefer says with a laugh.
The intention remains to honor the raw, unpolished skiing that has always defined Burke. The mountain offers a mix of woods skiing and open trails, with a separate base area just for new and beginning skiers, which Graham says is one of Burke’s best-kept secrets. “There are four or five runs that are all easily accessible,” he says. “It's a nice quad chair. There's the lodge right at the bottom. It is a super-great place where you're not squeezed into some corner for beginning skiing. You have your own little kind of mini resort for beginners.”
True to their barn-raising spirit, the partners frame their mission in practical, no-nonsense terms—to reinforce Burke’s heart with a sustainable business model. “We finally agreed on a two-word business plan. As the kids say in ski racing, when they’re going out of the start—you’ve got to send it,” Graham says. “So we said, that’s our plan. Whatever we do, we just have to send it.” For the locals who kept skiing and supporting Burke through the lean years, it has always been more than just a mountain; it’s a community hub. In its own way, every skier who kept showing up or community member who offered their help was raising a beam, adding to the frame. The partners' roles are to build a foundation strong enough to carry it forward.
“Burke has a lot of people who are already invested in the area, but it needs a little more energy so that it can be financially viable,” Booker says. “It’s a great mountain, a great place. It’s got people who are really passionate about it, but the financial model hasn’t been there to make it sustainable. There's one major cog missing in the flywheel. And that’s what we’re trying to solve.”
The solution may be immediately visible to visitors this winter. The massive snowmaking overhaul means guests can expect to see snow guns firing on multiple trails simultaneously, a dramatic change from the past. These efficiency gains translate directly to more reliable early-season coverage and a faster path to opening all of the skiable terrain.
“If Berkshire East and Catamount can be open the weekend of Thanksgiving or the first week of December, that’s great,” says Schaefer, outlining an aggressive timeline made possible by the new infrastructure. “If Burke can be opened by mid-November, that’s a target for us.”
For skiers, this means a return to Burke’s infamous character, layered with a new snow-covered foundation of reliability. The partners are meticulously addressing years of deferred maintenance on the lift system to ensure the four lifts—including the two high-speed quads that access the mountain’s renowned expert terrain—run smoothly and consistently.
Schaefer sees this as a way to compete directly with his previous success. While Catamount, under his family’s stewardship, has thrived with upgrades and reliable operations, Burke has languished for far too long under receivership. “Catamount was beating Burke, then our goal is to flip that this year,” he laughs, noting that the friendly rivalry between the family resorts underscores a serious commitment to elevate Burke from a state of “deferred maintenance” to a position of competitive strength.
Back Where It All Began
At the Bear Den this winter, the birthplace of the deal, beers will clink and laughter will echo away from the hum of the mountain outside. All the partners agree that what’s unique about the Bear Den and Burke is the community. “I know for the BMA staff and visitors, that's a really important thing, to be able to go there on a Friday night with friends and colleagues and just have a beer and decompress or go ski for a couple runs and have a beer,” says Booker. “And that ultimately is a big part of the indescribable environment that we're trying to create up here. Of course, there needs to be development in order for the mountain to be financially viable, but we want to do it in such a way where those really important aspects of the community aren't ruined.” Burke Mountain will rise once again, rugged and snow-dusted, standing tall against the winter sky because its people raised it together.
MATT WHITCOMB LOOKS BACK AT HIS SMALLTOWN UPBRINGING AS HE
PREPARES FOR THE WINTER OLYMPICS
COMMUNITY, COMPETITION, AND COLD WEATHER FUN IN THE BERKSHIRES
Comments