UVM here. Haven't been here for the ski season yet but we have Stowe, Sugarbush, Bolton, Smuggs, MRG, and Jay all between a half hour and and hour and fifteen minutes away. The ski and snowboard club is the second biggest in the country. If you join FST you have access to vans to and from the mountain 7 days a week, along with access to trampoline training, coaching, discounts at the ski rack, deals on orage, Fischer, and Faction, and preseason airbag training at waterville. As far as social life goes, it's not as easy to find parties as a freshman guy, but I still manage to find at least one almost every weekend. If you can't find a party, there's usually multiple good concerts in burlington every week. Also at any given moment it smells like weed somewhere on campus. Generally people just smoke openly on the redstone green day and night, but you can pretty much get away with smoking anywhere as long as you aren't stupid. Only complaints are diversity (which UVM lacks) and the food (which isn't that great).