♪ [skate blades carving ice] WILLEM: Kiki and I are sitting here talking to Paige Radney.

Originally from Buffalo?

PAIGE: Yeah.

WILLEM: School teacher?

PAIGE: Yep.

WILLEM: Who came here to pursue something a better dream?

PAIGE: A more fun dream.

That's for sure.

[both laughing] WILLEM: Oh yeah.

♪ [skate blades carving ice] When Paige heads out the door for work every morning, she ends up here.

♪ [skates blades carving ice] This is Lake Morey.

PAIGE: Yep.

WILLEM: Named for Samuel Morey, who lived across the river in Orford, New Hampshire.

PAIGE: Yes.

WILLEM: Lake Morey sits just off Interstate 91 in Fairlee, Vermont.

♪ Paige is in charge of recreation at the Lake Morey Resort.

Her job is to get people out the door and onto the lake.

♪ You're busy in the summer?

PAIGE: Yes.

We have two busy seasons: summer and February.

[Paige chuckles] WILLEM: You’re in your February busy season.

People come to skate and ski and that's it?

PAIGE: Yeah.

Yeah, the ice trail is a pretty unique attraction.

So, it draws people from all over the place.

WILLEM: Yeah.

You bet.

♪ [skate blades carving ice] Now, this is not your typical skating trail.

♪ [skate blades carving ice] To get a sense of how different it really is, you have to see it from up here.

♪ How long is it?

PAIGE: Right now, it's about three and a half miles.

It's gotten up to four and a half.

It just depends on ice conditions and where we're able to blaze the trail.

[engine starting] [whirring] [snow landing softly] MARK: Yeah.

The ice trail is about fifteen years old.

A gentleman by the name of Jamie Hess, who used to own Nordic Skater, he went to Scandinavia and saw that people were skating on trails.

So, when he came back to the States, he looked at Lake Morey and he started grooming an ice trail on the lake.

And then, in partnership with Upper Valley Trails Alliance, they worked on it for a year or two years.

[skate blades carving ice] And then, Lake Morey Resort took over as we have the ample amount of labor and we have the equipment that's able to really get you down to a nice black, solid sheet of ice.

♪ WILLEM: Mark Avery's family has owned the Lake Morey Resort for three generations.

♪ ♪ [stickhandling sounds] He took what Jamie had started years ago and kept it going.

♪ [skate blades carving ice] ♪ MARK: Yeah.

For the hotel, it really created an avenue for winter business.

We're in the large Connecticut River Valley, an hour away from all the major ski resorts, and, of course, if people want to go to Killington or Stowe, they're going to stay right there.

They're not going to stay with us.

So, we had a lake outside our back door.

So, we developed a skating program both with pond hockey tournaments and the ever-popular skating trail.

[skate blades carving ice] WILLEM: Until recently, Mark and his team ran both the skating programs on the lake... and groomed the ice.

That changed.

MARK: Actually, the Town of Fairlee runs this now because the insurance policy at the hotel wouldn't cover any lake ice activities.

So, the town graciously took over operation of the ice trail.

[whirring] I maintain the ice; get out there with a four-wheeler, a plow, and a brush and keep it going.

And now, with the Town of Fairlee, I’m volunteering my time to operate it.

[skate blades carving ice] WILLEM: Now, on a busy day, how many people are on the loop?

PAIGE: Thousands.

Two or three thousand over the course of the day.

WILLEM: Thousands?

On the loop?

PAIGE: Of course, not everybody stays out all day.

[chuckling] It's cold.

But yeah.

[skate blades carving ice] WILLEM: Wow.

PAIGE: But some people will stay out and do the loop five or ten times.

WILLEM: Yeah?

PAIGE: Yep.

WILLEM: I had no idea you had that many, though.

PAIGE: Yeah.

WILLEM: Woah.

MAN: Come on, baby.

We’re having a good time!

Let’s see it.

♪ [skate blades carving ice] MARK: And it brings in 2,000 people on a weekend to small-town Fairlee, Vermont, so it's really a great addition to the local economy.

[skate blades carving ice] WILLEM: Do you come up here often or what?

WOMAN: We've come up here every year since my son over there was six months old.

So, for the last fourteen years with a big group of people.

WILLEM: Beautiful.

How long are you staying?

WOMAN: Just a couple nights.

♪ [skate blades carving ice] WILLEM: When Jamie Hess returned from Scandinavia with the idea of skating on Lake Morey, he also brought with him a pair of Nordic skates.

♪ [skate blades carving ice] The idea caught on.

What you're wearing are called Nordic skates.

WOMAN: Nordic skates.

Yep.

WILLEM: They're just blades that clip onto your existing... cross-country ski boots?

WOMAN: Yeah, they're like cross- country ski boots with blades.

And so, your foot lifts up.

Super comfortable; much more comfortable than regular skates.

WILLEM: Yeah, yeah.

They can be a little tight.

WOMAN: Yeah.

They're comfy.

WILLEM: That's nice.

And the heel is loose, right?

WOMAN: Yeah.

The heel comes up, and it means that when you skate you can do longer glides.

WILLEM: Oh, that's wonderful.

WOMAN: Yeah.

WILLEM: You could pretend you’re Hans Brinker.

[laughing] WOMAN: That’s right!

We can go really fast.

[skate blades carving ice] WILLEM: Are you any good?

GIRL: I can get around.

We're going to do the loop.

Like, I've learned how to do it up here.

WILLEM: How many times a day you fall?

GIRL: Um...

FRIEND: She just fell.

GIRL: I just fell [laughter] walking down here, but once I'm on the ice, I'll probably be fine.

[laughter] GIRL: Yeah... WILLEM: But you're okay now.

You’ve got traction.

GIRL: Yeah, exactly.

[laughter] WILLEM: Beauty.

♪ [skate blades carving ice] GIRL: I really like it compared to other skating because you can, like, go so much faster without moving as much.

And it helps get around, definitely.

And it feels pretty stable.

It's kind of like skiing like cross-country skiing.

WILLEM: Yeah.

You go like the wind with these things.

♪ [skate blades carving ice] We tried to film this story for three years prior to this winter, but for three years, the weather didn't cooperate.

♪ [skate blades carving ice] MARK: Last couple of years, we’ve had three weeks of skating: the first two weekends of February and the last weekend of January.

Climate change warmer weather has really affected the ice trail.

This year, it’s been really good.

We opened up in mid-January and we had some prolonged cold, dry weather, which is perfect for the ice trail.

But, in recent years, just like last night, when you get an inch and a half of snow, sleet, slush I call it slain now: sleet and rain.

It's like a new type of precipitation and rain.

It wreaks havoc on the trail, and that's what we’ve been getting the past couple years because it's just a few degrees warmer and it's above the freezing point.

PAIGE: I think it's... very important, specifically, to have free open spaces like this that allow people to access the outdoors in a way that's fun and recreational and doesn't cost them a dime.

It perpetuates the love of the outdoors; it keeps people active; it maintains a culture that has been around for a really long time.

WILLEM: Yeah.

PAIGE: And in the face of things like climate change, it really illustrates to people why it's important to maintain spaces like this.

♪ [skate blades carving ice] WOMAN: I've never been anywhere where there's anything like this, like having this, you know, incredible loop.

And it's beautiful.

And yeah, I don't know any other.

It's what I look forward to in the winter doing this Nordic skating and being outside.

♪ WILLEM: Yeah!

WOMAN: It makes winter bearable.

WILLEM: And where else could you go?

WOMAN: There's nothing around here.

There's nowhere else.

I mean, there's some ponds around us in Western, MA, but nothing where you can do these long WILLEM: Yeah.

At a hockey rink, you got to do two strides on one skate and two strides on the other.

WOMAN: Yeah, yeah.

No, this is like nothing.

WILLEM: Yeah.

WOMAN: Beautiful.

WILLEM: Yeah.

You can let er go.

WOMAN: It’s magical.

♪