Stratton has claimed a 2,003' vertical drop for at least 30 years. You can not ski 2,003' vertical on Stratton’s marked trails.
The common misconception
Many people think that the largest vertical you can ski at Stratton is from the summit to the main base area. This is actually not true, because the sunbowl is actually at a lower altitude. The gondola only climbs 1,742 feet but since the sunbowl is lower, summit to main base is not Stratton’s vertical drop.
The less common misconception
Many people assume that this surely means that the sunbowl base area is 2,003' below the summit. This is not the case.
Lift installation surveys tell us that the Sunrise and Shooting star chairs rise a combined 1,920' vertical. Sunrise chair starts at the lowest point of the sunbowl base area and Shooting Star ends at the summit.
In addition, google earth thinks that the sunbowl base area is at 2,000 feet above sea level (1,875' below the summit).
How did they get 2,003?
We don’t know for sure how Stratton got their “2,003' vertical drop”, but we do have a pretty decent guess.
A few months ago somebody made a reddit post about this topic. Redditor u/revirdam did some detective work and found a point of interest exactly 2,003" feet below the advertised 3,875" high summit.
Yes, from what I can tell, Stratton legitimately bases their vertical drop off of where the “welcome” sign is. If you’ve ever been to Stratton, you’d know that this sign is more than a mile down the road from the ski area. There is no trails or lifts connecting this sign to the ski area. There’s a valley between the ski area and this sign, so you physically can not ski to here from the resort.
Ski resort marketing can be useful sometimes, but sometimes you should probably double check another source just to be sure.
