Stem Cabin was a building within the old Ranch Camp complex in Ranch Camp Valley, south of Mount Mansfield near Stowe, Vermont, which the Burlington Section of the Green Mountain Club leased from Craig O. Burt and the Burt Lumber Company beginning in the spring of 1964. It served as the Section’s private outpost for roughly a decade — a snug base for snowshoe treks, ski tours, and communal meals in a valley with one of the most storied winter-sports histories in Vermont. The cabin was not a Long Trail shelter in the conventional sense: it stood apart from the trail system, available to GMC members by reservation at a nominal fee, and run entirely by the Burlington Section. When the Section found the burden of maintaining the building too great alongside its other responsibilities, the lease was abandoned. The Ranch Valley passed to conservation ownership in 1978 as part of a major Burt family land donation; the buildings eventually came down, and today only a ski-area trail sign marks the site.
Setting: Ranch Camp Valley and Mount Mansfield
Ranch Camp Valley — also called Ranch Valley — lies on the eastern flank of the Mount Mansfield massif, south of the main summit ridge and north of Nebraska Notch. The valley drains eastward toward Stowe, tucked between the ridge bearing Taylor Lodge to the north and the lower shoulders of Luce Hill and Edson Hill to the south and east. The Ridgelines essay on the history of the old Town of Mansfield (which was dissolved and absorbed into Underhill and Stowe in 1848) identifies Ranch Camp as one of the "familiar Stowe names that were once part of Mansfield," along with the upper Nebraska Valley and Luce Hill — placing it within a landscape that was once its own remote township. Ira Allen, who surveyed the original town in the late eighteenth century and recognized at once that the rugged terrain would make farming difficult, might have been surprised to learn that the valley’s inaccessibility would eventually become one of its virtues: the Spring 1994 Long Trail News described Ranch Valley as "one of the few remaining closed watersheds in the state."
The valley is accessible via the Nebraska Notch Trail corridor and, in winter, by a route that skirts the lower slopes of Mount Mansfield. For the Burlington Section, this proximity to the mountain made Ranch Camp an ideal base for ski tours up toward Taft Lodge and the Chin — several accounts in the Long Trail News note that members "sometimes skied up and down Mt. Mansfield from there."
Ranch Camp: Lumber Camp and Ski Center (pre-1964)
The land in Ranch Valley was part of the Burt family’s extensive timber holdings in the Stowe area. The Burt Lumber Company operated in the region for generations, and the original Ranch Camp buildings were lumber camp structures erected to house workers during logging operations. By the early 1930s, when the Vermont ski boom was just beginning, the camp’s location near the Mount Mansfield slopes gave it a new potential.
In June 1933 the Civilian Conservation Corps — operating from a camp nearby — began construction of the Bruce Trail, described in the Spring 1994 Long Trail News as "the first trail on Mount Mansfield specifically for skiing" and running four and a half miles. The GMC photograph collection holds two images of CCC crews at Ranch Camp during this work, dated 1933, showing the camp in its early transition from lumber base to ski center. By the 1933–34 season, Ranch Camp had entered a new chapter: the Spring 1994 Long Trail News notes that it "started operation with bunks for up to fifty skiers."
The 10th edition Long Trail Guide Book (1935) was the first to acknowledge the camp in print, noting that "the Mount Mansfield Ski Club, of Stowe" maintained "a winter camp, called the Ranch Camp (also shown on large map), which is used by skiing parties almost every week-end during the season." The description recurred, nearly verbatim, in the 11th edition (1937) and 12th edition (1940). For those editions’ readers, Ranch Camp was simply the ski club’s weekend base — a familiar name on the map of the Mount Mansfield backcountry.
The 1940s saw Ranch Camp in its full stride. Photographs in the GMC collection show the camp’s buildings in 1944, including an image labeled "Stem Cabin, 1944" and another "Ranch Camp sign, 1944" — confirming that the name "Stem Cabin" was already in use for one of the buildings before the GMC ever arrived. The name almost certainly derives from the vocabulary of skiing: the stem (as in the stem christie or stem turn) was the foundational technique of alpine skiing instruction in the 1930s and 1940s, and a building at a ski camp called "Stem Cabin" was in that era a natural christening. A 1962 photograph labeled "Stem Cabin at Ranch Valley" shows the building still standing, in the years just before the GMC lease.
The ski center era came to a quiet close. The Spring 1994 Long Trail News records that Ranch Camp "ceased operation in the spring of 1950" — the same year that commercial skiing on Mount Mansfield was expanding rapidly, with rope tows and eventually a chair lift drawing skiers to the organized resort on the toll road side. The backcountry ski camp model that had defined Ranch Camp in the 1930s and ’40s was becoming obsolete.
Craig Burt and the Burlington Section Lease (1964)
Craig O. Burt was not merely the landowner — he was a Stowe man whose family had shaped Ranch Valley for generations and who remained personally connected to the place throughout his life. Marjorie Holmes’s History of the Green Mountain Club, Burlington Section identifies him as "an early member of the section," which gives the 1964 lease the character of a gift from a friend as much as a commercial transaction. The Summer 2004 Long Trail News reviewed his posthumous memoir, We Lived in Stowe (2003), noting that Burt had named his publishing imprint "Ranch Camp Publishers" — a final tribute to the valley that had defined his family’s relationship with the mountain.
The lease was arranged in the spring of 1964. Leland Brown, the Burlington Section’s treasurer, and member Joseph Frank handled the logistics. The August 1964 Long Trail News reported the outcome in the Burlington Section’s regular column: "The Burlington Section has rented a camp in Ranch Camp Valley from Mr. Burt, solely for the use of section members and their friends. The Valley is up in the Smuggler’s Notch region, near the ski areas. In earlier years of the skiing era, it was a popular spot for cross country skiing and lumber-man style meals." On April 12, 1964, the Section staged a housewarming party at the cabin: seventy-two members "came in for a look-see and refreshments" — a turnout that reflected both the novelty of having a section base and the social energy the Burlington Section brought to everything it did.
Once arrangements were in place, Leland Brown became the reservation contact. The May 1966 Long Trail News carried the announcement that would be reprinted in subsequent issues: "Our Stem Cabin in Ranch Camp Valley, Stowe is open to all GMC members, for a nominal fee. Individuals or sections interested in staying at the cabin should contact Lee Brown 802-862-3357 for reservations and information." The cabin was not exclusively for Burlington members — any GMC member could arrange to use it, making it one of the few GMC-affiliated facilities in the Stowe area at the time.
Stem Cabin in Use: A Burlington Section Outpost (1964–c. 1972)
For the better part of a decade, Stem Cabin appeared regularly in the Burlington Section’s outing reports — a reliable anchor in a schedule that ranged across Vermont and into the Adirondacks. The pattern established itself quickly: Ranch Camp outings happened most often in winter, typically as snowshoe treks or ski tours, and they tended to center on food.
The Section’s social character made Stem Cabin something more than a shelter. The February 1966 Long Trail News records a November 1965 overnighter at Ranch Camp led by Charlotte Philbrook that drew twenty-one members. The May 1966 issue describes a presidential snowshoe hike, conducted "at 20 degrees below zero," during which the Section president found himself locked out of Stem Cabin until "amateur locksmith Pete Eberhardt let us into Stem Cabin" — a small incident that captures the cabin’s role as the punchline and payoff of a winter adventure. The November 1966 issue notes that Roy Buchanan hosted thirteen trail-clearing workers at Ranch Camp on a Saturday night, after a summer assault on thirty-six side trails in the Mansfield area.
The February 1968 and May 1969 Long Trail News reports both include Ranch Camp snowshoe and ski outings in the Section’s winter schedule. The outing culture that grew up around the cabin became a feature of Burlington Section life — it was the kind of place where members went expecting both exertion and a good meal.
The most celebrated figure in Ranch Camp’s GMC chapter was Al Wurthmann, whose reputation as a camp cook became section legend. The February 1971 Long Trail News reported what became the canonical story: "In November Al Wurthmann announced a surprise dinner at an undisclosed destination. His reputation as a cook drew a crowd of almost twenty who thoroughly enjoyed a chicken dinner with all the fixings at Ranch Camp." The destination was only revealed to participants upon arrival; Wurthmann’s cooking was the attraction, and Stem Cabin was the venue.
By the early 1970s, Ranch Camp still appeared in the Burlington Section’s outing calendar, listed among destinations like Wiley Lodge, Mount Hunger, and Camel’s Hump. The May 1972 Long Trail News mentions it in passing — evidence that the cabin was still in regular use, if no longer the novelty it had been in 1964.
End of the Lease and the Valley’s Conservation Legacy
The precise year the Burlington Section abandoned the lease is not recorded in the Long Trail News. The Section’s own history, written by Marjorie Holmes, attributes the decision to practicality: "the problems of maintaining it along with other responsibilities of the section made it seem wise to abandon the lease." The May 1978 Long Trail News used the same language, almost word for word — apparently drawing on Holmes’s account — in reporting that the lease had ended "for several years beginning in 1964."
The occasion for that 1978 account was significant: Jan Abbot’s article reported that the Burt family had donated approximately 6,000 acres in the Mount Mansfield area to conservation — the largest single land protection event in the GMC’s history to that point. The parcel joined two previously separate portions of the Mount Mansfield State Forest and included Ranch Valley itself, Nebraska Notch, and approximately four and a half miles of the Long Trail between Taylor Lodge and Bolton Mountain, along with Taylor Lodge itself. Dr. Hubert Vogelmann of the Vermont Chapter of The Nature Conservancy explained that Ranch Valley was "one of the few remaining closed watersheds in the state." The Burt family’s land — the lumber camp that became a ski center that became a GMC outpost — passed into permanent public protection.
The buildings at Ranch Camp eventually came down. Dot Myer’s memoir in the Fall 2014 Ridgelines notes simply: "The buildings are now all gone, but there is a sign on one of the Mt. Mansfield Ski Area’s trails showing where Ranch Camp was." Craig Burt’s memoir, We Lived in Stowe, published the year before his death, preserved the valley’s history under the imprint he called Ranch Camp Publishers.
Sources
Long Trail News, August 1964, p. 4. Green Mountain Club. [Burlington Section report, Larry Dean: first announcement of the lease from Mr. Burt; description of April 12 housewarming.]
Long Trail News, August 1965, p. 4. Green Mountain Club. ["The Ranch Camp day trip on April 10th, led by Shirley Wilcox, found 27 taking part."]
Long Trail News, February 1966, p. 3. Green Mountain Club. [Burlington Section report: November 1965 Ranch Camp overnighter, 21 members, led by Charlotte Philbrook.]
Long Trail News, May 1966, p. 5. Green Mountain Club. [Burlington Section report: Stem Cabin snowshoe hike at 20 degrees below zero; announcement of Stem Cabin availability to all GMC members, Lee Brown contact.]
Long Trail News, November 1966, p. 4. Green Mountain Club. [Roy Buchanan hosts trail workers at Ranch Camp; Ranch Camp Overnight listed in winter hike schedule.]
Long Trail News, May 1967, p. 4. Green Mountain Club. [Ranch Camp day outing by Fred and Veronica Evering.]
Long Trail News, May 1968, p. 3. Green Mountain Club. ["February 18: Snowshoe trek to Ranch Camp."]
Long Trail News, May 1969, p. 5. Green Mountain Club. [Al Wurthmann’s Washington’s Birthday overnight hike to Ranch Camp.]
Long Trail News, February 1971, p. 7. Green Mountain Club. [Al Wurthmann’s surprise chicken dinner at Ranch Camp, crowd of almost twenty.]
Long Trail News, May 1972, p. 4. Green Mountain Club. [Ranch Camp listed among Burlington Section hike destinations.]
Long Trail News, May 1978, p. 10. Green Mountain Club. [Jan Abbot: Burt family land conservation; history of the Burlington Section lease: "originally a lumber camp and later a center of ski activity in the 1930’s and 1940’s."]
Long Trail News, Spring 1994, p. 13. Green Mountain Club. [Chronology of Ranch Camp ski history from Robert Hagerman’s Mansfield, the Story of Vermont’s Loftiest Mountain: CCC Bruce Trail construction June 9, 1933; Ranch Camp operation 1933–34 season through spring 1950; bunks for up to fifty skiers.]
Long Trail News, Summer 2004, p. 18. Green Mountain Club. [Review of Craig O. Burt, We Lived in Stowe: A Memoir (Middlebury, VT: Ranch Camp Publishers, 2003).]
Ridgelines (Burlington), January 2000, p. 3. Burlington Section, Green Mountain Club. [History of the old Town of Mansfield; Ranch Camp named as a Stowe landmark with Mansfield origins.]
Ridgelines (Burlington), Fall 2014, p. 3. Burlington Section, Green Mountain Club. [Dot Myer memoir: Ranch Camp rented from Burt Lumber Company in the 1960s; used for hiking, skiing, snowshoeing; buildings now gone.]
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 10th ed. Waterbury, VT: Green Mountain Club, 1935, p. 49. [First mention of Ranch Camp: "a winter camp, called the Ranch Camp … used by skiing parties almost every week-end during the season."]
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 11th ed. Waterbury, VT: Green Mountain Club, 1937, p. 53. [Ranch Camp mentioned as Mount Mansfield Ski Club winter camp.]
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 12th ed. Waterbury, VT: Green Mountain Club, 1940, p. 56. [Ranch Camp mentioned as Mount Mansfield Ski Club winter camp.]
Holmes, Marjorie. History of the Green Mountain Club, Burlington Section. Green Mountain Club, n.d., p. 14. ["In 1964, the Burlington section acquired the use of another building when Mr. Craig Burt of Stowe, an early member of the section, leased to the club the Stem Cabin in Ranch Valley to the south of Mt. Mansfield."]
Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History, 2nd ed. Waterbury, VT: Green Mountain Club, 1999, p. 96.
