Page 18 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 1 Fall 2012

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am von Trapp will indefinitely remain linked to
Julie Andrews, who portrayed the saintly singing
postulant parading as his real-life strong-willed grand-
mother, but he has grown up and is making his own mark
on the storied property. Running a lodge is exhausting
work, but there’s nothing von Trapp would ask of his
staff, which bulges to 250 employees in the high season,
that he wouldn’t do or hasn’t done himself. He has held
every title from dishwasher to bellman to front desk
clerk. Sometimes he meets a visiting family in the lodge’s
main parking lot and, when they inquire about his role,
he tells them he makes snow.
“I know there’s a direct impact on the guest experience
no matter what the job is,” he says. “And, of course, you
have a greater motivation to perform when you work
with your family.” (He jokes that when he and his father
have a disagreement he has to “remind him that I went to
St. Paul’s, so in the end my opinion is most likely correct.”)
Since his return in 2007, von Trapp has built a nine-
hole disc golf course, engineered a snow-making opera-
tion (hence his identification with the task), and added
mountain biking trails to the property’s already thriving
Nordic ski reputation. Von Trapp spent his first summer
back carving out the landscape for cycling with the help
of a 68-year-old Austrian operating an excavator as von
Trapp wielded a shovel.
Among his countless duties on the property, von Trapp
lists trail clearing at the top. And you believe him when
you enter his office, which sits in a modestly appointed
Austrian-influenced outbuilding across the street from
the Main Lodge. In a corner by the door, a fire-fighting
model axe called a Pulaski stands on its dirt-covered
head, waiting to be called into service. Hardcover
copies of his family’s biographies line a bookshelf, and
a world map adorns his wall. There is one photo of him
surfing in Brazil and another of a hotel in Portillo, Chile
– vestiges of the life he led in his decade-long hiatus
from Stowe.
Though it’s not always easy living at work, von Trapp
mixes business with recreation by traveling to his office
in the winter via “commute chutes” – trails through the
woods that he cleared so he can strap on his cross country
skis to make his way to work each winter day. In addition
to his laptop, he carries a hacksaw in his backpack in the
winter months to cut down any branches that threaten
to encroach on the lodge’s many trails. It’s not uncom-
mon for him to climb high above the property into a
hemlock tree to clear branches that prevent snow from
covering the trails.
The 50 Scotch Highland cows on the property, whose
steady moos provide the soundtrack to a summer morn-
ing breakfast overlooking the mountains of Vermont, are
fed from the spent grain that is a byproduct of the brew-
ing of Trapp Lager.
“The great thing about the spent grain is that the
starch has been removed in the brewing process so
there is none of the negative impact on the livestock,”
von Trapp proudly explains.
The two-year-old on-site brewery is a 12,000-barrel-
a-year enterprise that von Trapp and his father (who
still holds the title of president) hope to expand to 50,000
barrels as a way to supplement the painting and roofing
and lawn care and other endless maintenance punch
lists that are a daily reality of running a large property.
“The brewery was a departure,” explains von Trapp,
noting that the label’s logo features an Alpine goat called
an ibex, known to range in Austria. “My father had to
convince his mother to serve alcohol on the premises
at all. Now, someday, instead of being a hotel with a
brewery, we might actually be a brewery with a hotel.”
The proposed brewery expansion would produce
enough spent grain to sell to other farmers in the area.
Meanwhile, Johannes, Sam’s father, has led the lodge’s
composting efforts for decades in a way that Sam credits
as being “ahead of his time.” About 200,000 pounds of
kitchen waste a year combat the less-than-ideal fertility
of Vermont’s hills. And at their home on the outskirts of
the property, Sam and his wife, Elisa, are experimenting
with sheep as a way to replace lawnmowers.
“A lot of it is being a Vermonter because you have to
be careful in Vermont,” he says. “The growing season is
short, the winters are cold. The options are relatively
limited agriculturally. Vermonters have always been
relatively frugal and self-reliant. Another part of it is
being Austrian. The Austrian culture is very similar to
Vermont in a lot of ways. The locavore movement has
really taken off, but it was a big part of Austria for a long
time – making your own cheese, milking your own cows.
If we get the right people to help us with these things, it
means I get to focus on doing the things I love, which are
trail work and talking to people about the agriculture and
efficiency programs.”
“We get to people through The Sound of Music,” he
adds, “but we use that to talk about the things that are
important to us. Whenever my dad is exasperated by
answering the same question for the 40,000th time, I
remind him that these people have given him a podium
where he can choose to speak about conservation or
S