Burke Mountain Purchased By Owner of Catamount, Berkshire East

Originally posted on SNOWBOARDER | By Josh Sullivan | Last updated May 9, 2025 7:23 AM ET

A ski area essential to the snowboarding culture of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom has been kept out of the hands of Vail Resorts by a New England-based ownership group.

Bear Den Partners closed on the sale of Burke Mountain on May 2, 2025. The group includes the Schaefer family, who runs Catamount Resort on the New York/Massachusetts border, Berkshire East in Massachusetts, and Big Red Cats in Rossland, Birtish Columbia. The mountain was sold for $11.5 million. The plans to revamp the resort will cost around $30 million.

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Jon Schaefer will oversee Burke’s operations, the Burlington Free Press reported. The group will try to triple its snowmaking capacity in time for the 2025-2026 season, partner Ken Graham said in a news release. It will also aim to expand rideable terrain, and add some “minor lift upgrades” in time for the following season.

With the purchase of the the ski area comes Burke Mountain Academy, which was was once home to skiing greats such as Shane McConkey and Mikaela Shiffrin. “It’s like a fairytale outcome for our school,” BMA’s Willy Booker told the local CBS station.

Burke has four lifts and 54 trails. It will be a member of the Indy Pass.

Burke plays an important role to the locals. Though it’s nestled near the Victory State Forest, it serves as the only local spot for those nearby wishing to ski or ride. Jay Peak is located an hour to the north, and Bretton Woods is located an hour to the south. Both ski areas cater to out-of-towners as well, rather than the locals. With 2,011 feet of vertical drop, Burke is anything but a small little neighborhood hill, though it still offers the same benefits to local school districts that are associated with that type of ski area.

It is unsure whether that vibe will remain, with the new ownership group.

“I think we have an opportunity to really unleash the potential here with the right capital investment to drive important automation and improvements in snowmaking, especially,” Graham said to the VTDigger. “We’re prepared. We’re coming in swinging, I’d say.”

Burke Mountain was caught up in one of the most peculiar scandals to hit the snowsports world in modern history. Bill Stenger and Airel Quiros defrauded foreign investors of $200 million in a Ponzi scheme. The duo did so under the guise that foreign investors would be able to obtain EB-5 visas offered to immigrant investors who invested $500,000 in an economically depressed area. Amenity upgrades and a new biotech company were all a part of the plan, one that would employ up to 10,000 people. Instead, the duo misused $200 million of the funds on purchases like a condo at Trump Place in New York, the New York Times reported.

After the Securities and Exchange Commission seized Jay Peak and Burke in 2016, the ski area was under federal receivership. Then in the fall of 2022, Jay Peak was purchased by Pacific Group Resorts for $76 million, but the future of Burke was still up in the air.