Fountain Mountain

Way back in the 1960s in the Green Mountain state, nearby the Mount Snow resort, perched beside small Snow Lake, was a peculiar formation that you don’t see today, locals called in Fountain Mountain, it came about this way: The founder of Mount Snow resort built the Snow Lake Hotel, and put a fountain in the lake where water sprayed and swelled. It was quite a majestic sight even in winter time, the water catching the sunlight, rain of shimmering shine. But what the builders didn’t know was that the winds blew north, and spraying water built up there ice coating more and more, until deep into wintertime a new mountain took shape, this hundred-foot tall peak of ice loomed high above the place. It’s creation unexpected, but people got a thrill, they’d hike up to the top of it, ski down to test their skill. Sometimes they even set courses, short slaloms on the ice, and you’d see long lines of racers, that must’ve been a sight. Year after year, it rose up there, sometimes lasting to June, rising like an ice volcano, fed by the fountain’s plume. (And though they didn’t tell folks this, it didn’t smell that great, since back then the resort’s sewage was just dumped in the lake.) But all weird things come to an end, and in the seventies the energy crisis hit home, cost electricity. The fancy fountain went away, no ice hill now in sight, Fountain Mountain only exists in pictures black and white.