How to Ride VT DH (With Free Tickets!)
Keep your pedals level and your brakes hot as you tour three of Vermont’s best lift-served trail systems with huge discounts, as part of VMBA’s mountain bike park member benefits.
There’s simply no better way to progress as a mountain biker than by lapping lifts at a bike park. By strategically deploying your VMBA membership benefits, you can enjoy a long weekend of lift-served downhill at Stratton, Killington, and Bolton Valley Resort and ride each day free of charge.
Here’s how to do it:
Gather your friends and grab your VMBA Memberships
You’ll each need to be a member. Families get 1 ticket per family member.Book your lodging at Killington for Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights
Choose to stay at the hotel or in one of the many condos.Plan on riding Killington on Friday, Bolton on Saturday and Stratton on Sunday
You’ll do a little driving on Saturday and Sunday, but it’s worth it!Reserve your bikes and equipment and/or sign up for a lesson
Bike parks are best on downhill bikes and with proper gear. All skill levels can benefit from a lesson.Checkout places to eat and other attractions while you’re in VT
There are lots of great food stops in VT, especially as you drive to Bolton and Stratton.
Details:
Stratton and Killington offers a free downhill mountain bike lift ticket to VMBA Members
Bolton Valley offers two 50% off tickets per member
Killington’s free ticket is not valid on Saturday
Bolton Valley and Stratton are only open Friday - Sunday
All three bike parks have on-site DH bike and protective gear rentals
VMBA Members also get discounts at restaurants and lodging in these areas
All VT Bike Parks with VMBA Membership Benefits:
Stratton Mountain Resort Bike Park: One free downhill mountain bike lift ticket
Killington Bike Park: One free downhill mountain bike lift ticket (valid Sunday - Friday)
Bolton Valley Resort: Two 50% off downhill mountain bike lift tickets
Burke Mountain Bike Park: Two 50% off downhill mountain bike lift tickets
About the Stratton Bike Park : The southernmost of VMBA’s mountain bike park partners, Stratton Mountain Resort maintains a legacy of welcoming vacationing New Englanders that scratches back all the way back to 1961, when it opened its first lifts for skiing. The resort has grown a lot since then, but its base village is still full of adventurous spirits and smiles. Book near the Main Base Lodge for convenient access to the village and chairlifts.
At the bike park, you’ll find ten miles of singletrack and over seven hundred vertical feet of lift-served terrain. Designed and built by Sinuosity, a Vermont-based trail builder, Stratton’s trails feature both machine-built lines and hand-shaped features, creating ample opportunity for progression and excitement across all ability levels.
Pro tip: Stop by Upper Standard Coffee Company in Stratton Village. More than a cafe and coffee roaster, this base area staple also serves pastries, Belgian Liège waffles, grilled cheeses, and boozy milkshakes.
About the Killington Bike Park: Killington hosts the largest ski area in the Eastern United States and is also home to the fastest-growing mountain bike park in New England. It offers a classic resort-town feel and all of the convenient amenities that go with it: lots of lodging and food options, non-cycling activity options (including endless hikes and the Killington Adventure Center), and convenient gear rentals.
The Killington Bike Park boasts two chairlifts and a gondola that provide access to over thirty miles of downhill mountain biking trails and more than 1,700 feet of potential descending. With everything from fast flow to teeth-rattling chunder on offer, you’re sure to find—and feast upon—whatever flavor of riding experience you seek. Everything is clearly marked and easy to navigate, so pre-ride, re-ride, freeride your way to a good time.
Pro tip: Cap off a day of riding with a trip to the top of the K1 Express Gondola, which stops just short of the rock-topped Killington Peak. Plop down in an Adirondack chair to take in the panoramic views, then cruise down “Off the Top”, a 3 mile descent trail that leads all the way down to the resort base below.
About the Bolton Valley Bike Park: Located just northwest of historic Waterbury, Vermont (and only thirty minutes from Burlington), Bolton Valley Resort is a unique, high mountain alpine village surrounded by rolling hills of forest. Owned and operated by members of the same family that founded the resort sixty years ago, Bolton has invested in significant capital improvements in recent years to deliver on an experience that is both authentic and elevated.
First opened in 2021, this Bolton’s new bike park includes over 900 feet of vertical descending. While there are a few beginner-appropriate trails down low, the upper park includes some of the gnarliest riding in the state and caters best to more advanced riders.
Bolton first opened to mountain bikers in 2021, and already the resort has built a solid variety of trails, with flow, tech, and jump options all on offer. A number of flow trails—including Ebascootcha, which grades its ~1,000 feet of vertical drop over more than three miles of winding descending—cater well to beginners, but much of the park caters best to more advanced riders, with the upper trails hosting some of the gnarliest riding in the state.
Pro tip: Try your hand at disc golf with the free pitch and putt course at Bolton Valley Resort.
About the Burke Mountain Bike Park: Nestled in Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom, Burke Mountain Bike Park is surrounded by natural beauty and old-school Vermont community. Following a long history of logging and dairy farming, the last decade has brought a boom of development for mountain biking in the region, and the Burke Mountain Bike Park is no exception.
Accessed by the Sherburne Express High Speed Quad or car shuttles up the Burke Toll Road, Burke has a variety of downhill terrain to meet riders where they are and progress them to the next level. Just be sure to pre-ride everything and be careful about your speed: many features on the mountain require a bit of finesse to get right. Luckily, you’ll have lap after lap to do so.
Pro tip: At the bottom of the hill, brake (and break) for lunch at The View Pub, which serves elevated bar food from the second story of the Burke Mountain Hotel. As you eat, admire the strange geologic formation that is the Willoughby Gap, which looks like a bite taken out of a ridge of trees. On the left is Mount Pisgah and on right, Mount Hor; in between is a space likely eroded by an ancient valley ice lobe long melted away.
But wait, aren’t these all ski resorts?
Winter in Vermont is not what it used to be. According to the 2021 Vermont Climate Assessment, winter temperatures have increased 2.5 times faster than annual temperatures over the past sixty years, and the freeze-free period has grown by three weeks since 1960. And while overall winter precipitation has increased, snowfall has been on the decline, meaning that winter rains are becoming more common.
Bike parks have become a popular way for ski areas worldwide to attract visitors in the off-season, and as the effects of climate change makes ski tourism less reliable each year, many Vermont resorts have doubled down on investing in their summer recreational infrastructure. The result is an explosion of new and expanded bike parks that welcome riders of all abilities. Concentrated enough to visit a few in a weekend and generous with their benefits to VMBA members, these resorts make a new type of summer road trip possible among the region’s mountain bikers.