Carinthia Patch (Star Emblem) — c. 1970s

A vintage Carinthia Ski Area patch from Wilmington, Vermont, estimated to date from the 1970s, featuring the name in heavy red serif lettering with a four-pointed star burst set against the last letter. Cream twill, rounded corners, SKI AREA in small block caps underneath, the whole thing ringed in a red merrowed border.

Carinthia is a province in southern Austria, and in the 1960s somebody in Wilmington, Vermont decided that was the right name for a small independent ski area on the shoulder of a hill in the Deerfield Valley. The whole period worked like that. If you wanted skiing to sound serious, you borrowed a word from somewhere with real mountains.

It ran on its own for roughly two decades — modest, separate, with its own lifts, its own ticket and its own patches. Mount Snow bought it in 1986.

The name survived the sale, which is the part that makes this strange. There is still a Carinthia at Mount Snow. It is the terrain park. Teenagers ride there on a thing named after an Austrian province by way of an independent ski area none of them has heard of, and the chain of custody runs straight through this patch.

It is the only case in this catalog of a lost ski area's name outliving the ski area by forty years and counting.

Embroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.