Reader Athlete July 2009: Neil Van Dyke

Sky Barsch

Age: 55
Residence: Stowe
Family: Wife, Carol; three children, Sarah, 22, Forrest, 20, and Lia, 16
Occupation: Owner, Golden Eagle Resort
Primary sport: Hiking and Nordic skiing

VS: You helped found Stowe Mountain Rescue. Why?
NVD: At the time I was on both the Stowe Fire Department and the Stowe Rescue Squad as a volunteer. We had a number of backcountry accidents and typically the fire department and rescue squad would get called to respond to them. A couple of us felt that we didn’t have the proper training and equipment for those kinds of incidents.
So we approached the town in 1980 with the request to create Stowe Mountain Rescue, and they approved it.

VS: What are some of the types of situations you respond to?
NVD: Pretty much anything that the ambulance can’t drive to. So most typically, in the spring, summer, and fall, it’s hikers. Probably the most common thing is someone tripped and has an ankle injury, can’t walk any farther, and needs assistance in getting out. Over the years, we’ve been to plane crashes, and we do water rescue. In the winter it’s ice climbers, back-country skiers, and snowmobile accidents. Think of any way people recreate in Vermont, and that’s what we respond to.

VS: What sport or activity makes for the toughest rescues?
NVD: I would say probably the most technical and difficult rescues we’ve had are people who have gotten themselves into technical terrain without the proper equipment and training. People who end up in an area where you really should be rock climbing with ropes and equipment, and they’re just scrambling and ultimately getting themselves in trouble.

VS: Have you ever had to be rescued?
NVD: Actually, I have. In the mid- 1990s, I was involved in a rescue up in Smugglers’ Notch. Some people had scrambled up into one of the gullies and got stuck on a cliff face. I was going up with another rescuer to bring them down. A part of the face of the cliff just broke away while I was attached to it, and I fell 60 feet and hit the ground. I punctured a lung, had broken ribs, and a broken wrist. The other people were not injured. Then the focus became on rescuing me. It was an interesting experience, and it gave me some perspective on what it’s like to be on the other end of things.

VS: You’re still with Stowe Mountain Rescue. You didn’t get spooked?
NVD: My family got spooked. It was already sort of a compromise with my family at that point, to be able to do rescue. From that point forward I took more of a management role.

VS: You’re on the board of the Green Mountain Club. What does that involve?
NVD: I’m involved in the overall vision and management, setting direction for the club, and providing assistance to the staff on both management and policy issues. I sit on the finance committee, so I work on the budget. I try to volunteer as I have time. But I have a lot of other volunteer commitments. I don’t get out volunteering on the trails as much as I’d like to.

VS: Are you an avid hiker?
NVD: I am. That’s sort of my favorite sport and has been for a long time. I’ve climbed all 111 peaks over 4,000 feet in the northeast U.S. All of my kids are “46ers” (people who have climbed all 46 major peaks in the Adirondacks). I’ve done all of those with all of my kids. I have managed to carve some time out of my work schedule the past three summers to fulfill a lifelong dream of working as a backcountry ranger in the Adirondack High Peaks. Actually getting paid to spend long days hiking on patrol in some of the Northeast's most beautiful mountain back-country is a sweet deal!

VS: There are a ton of hiking trails in Stowe. Which is your favorite?
NVD: I think probably the Hazelton Trail-Long Trail loop on Mount Mansfield. You go up Mount Mansfield on the Hazelton Trail, traverse the summit ridge on the Long Trail, and come down the Long Trail past Taft Lodge.

VS: How did you get interested in the outdoors?
NVD: I started by going to summer camp, Camp Lincoln in the Adirondacks, when I was in high school. The camp’s focus was on hiking trips and canoeing trips. Basically, I fell in love with those types of activities. I went to college at Dartmouth and was very involved in the Dartmouth Outing Club.

VS: How did you land in the hospitality business?
NVD: Basically, it was my wife’s family’s business. It’s been here since the 1960s. I went to graduate school for forestry, and we got married in Stowe just afterward. I was looking for a job in the recreation field when I started at the Golden Eagle Lodge part-time, and I’ve been here ever since.

VS: Why did you stay?
NVD: First of all, I love being in Stowe. It’s a great place to live and raise a family. As far as the business goes, I really enjoy the variety. It’s a lot of fun to get to know people who are coming and visiting Stowe. We have a lot of repeat guests who have been coming for the last 20 or 30 years. We’ve made a lot of friends.

VS: You mentioned you have a lot of other volunteer commitments. What else are you involved in?
NVD: I’m the vice president of the Mountain Rescue Association, which is a national organization made up of mountain rescue teams from all over the country. There are over 100, and most of them are out West. I’m very involved with their board, and I do a lot of traveling. The winter meetings are always in Salt Lake City, and the spring meetings rotate around the country. We hosted it in Stowe last year, which was the first time it’s been held east of the Mississippi. This year it’s out in Mount Hood.

VS: So it’s always somewhere cool and outdoorsy; they’re never going to make you go to Disney or a place like that?
NVD: Right. It’s been in places like Vail and California. It’s always in a mountain area, and my wife and I try to make a vacation out of it.

VS: Is your wife outdoorsy, too?
NVD: Yes. We do a lot of hiking together. We do a lot of Nordic skiing together, too. My wife is the Stowe High School Nordic coach, and she works at the Mount Mansfield Cross-Country Ski Touring Center. We also do a lot of canoeing. We used to do canoe racing when we were a bit younger, but now it’s more for recreation.

VS: How did you two meet?
NVD: Carol and I met during a Dartmouth Outing Club trip. She needed a ride, and I had a car. We found we shared a love of being in the outdoors, and since then we have hiked, canoed, run, and skied many thousands of miles together. We decided to get married while on a hike up Cascade Mountain in the Adirondack High Peaks. We used to do competitive tandem canoe racing, but Carol is much more the competitor these days. She continues to compete in running and Nordic ski races, while I spend my time hiking, skiing, and canoeing in the backcountry.

— Sky Barsch