Over the years, I’ve had a few opportunities to visit Smugglers’ Notch, but until early February, I had never taken advantage of their winter programs for kids. I had skied the mountain enough to know that while their specialty is families, the mountain is a challenge for any level skier.

Smuggs’ vertical drop is 2,610 feet, second in Vermont only to Killington, and more than Stowe, Sugarbush and Jay Peak. That makes it third in New England behind Killington and Sugarloaf. That’s big mountain skiing, but it’s not why the resort has been ranked No. 1 for families repeatedly by Family Circle Magazine.

I knew from a summer visit with granddaughter Kate how their summer camp for kids worked. Now I had a chance with her little brother Keegan to see how the ski camps functioned.

We arrived in mid afternoon on Sunday and went to the meeting house where the Discovery Dynamos (Ages 3-5, level I) would meet. There Keegan met his instructors, and we learned about the program.

Our part was simple. Drop him off at 8:45 a.m. and don’t worry about him until we picked him up at 4 p.m. Everything was taken care of, including lunch and entertainment after they quit skiing at 2:15.

This gave us time to return to boot up and ski down to a lift, which would take us to the top of Morse Mountain where we could ski over to the base of Madonna Mountain. This got us to the meeting place for the Mountain Experience group well before the 10 a.m.. This is a program designed to get veteran skiers involved with ski school, something ski resorts have tried to do for years.

Most longtime skiers want nothing to do with traditional ski school, where an instructor takes a class out, lines them up, tells them what he wants, demonstrates and has each member of the group ski down one at a time while he observes. Count me among those skiers. The Mountain Experience is different.

First, it’s a four-day program which runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., not just an hour and a half. Groups are kept small and carefully matched for ability.

The idea is to explore the mountain with occasional tips on technique. Also included are tips on equipment,a demo day or a tune-up and lunch.

Our instructor was Glen Findholt, a PSIA Level III, who has found an ideal life after 30 years with IBM. He skis all winter and in the summer hosts sailing cruises on Lake Champlain in what he calls his classic sloop, “Friend Ship.” And it is a true Friendship Sloop, made right here in Maine.

Our group had a variety of levels because a family wanted to ski together. They ranged from low intermediate to advanced, and Glen did a great job working with the each individual. Glen would tell the class where we were headed and ski down to a point where he could watch. At each stop, he might give someone a tip or merely a compliment, and we would head down again. This kept us moving, and we explored a good part of Sterling Mountain, second highest of the three – Madonna and Morse.

Our lunch was in a cabin at the top of Sterling where hearty stews are popular. I opted for the venison stew (Bambi stew to the locals), and it was plenty with some homemade biscuits. While I enjoyed skiing with Glen and the group, Pat was more interested in seeing how Keegan was doing, and I had only one more day to see the rest of the mountain. The next morning, I met Pepper Johnson, another top instructor at the base of Morse for a mountain tour.

On our ride up the Madonna I lift, (All six chair lifts are doubles) Pepper pointed out some of the mountain’s toughest runs. The lift line itself is a double black and dropping away to our left we could see Upper FIS, Freefall and the triple black Black Hole. This resort known for its family programs, has some of the gnarliest terrain anywhere in the East. That’s why college kids from Burlington can be found there whenever they can get away from school.

I’ll admit I didn’t ski any of those ungroomed bump runs, but we got a good look at a number of them from above and below as skied the groomed runs with fresh powder.

The two to three inches at the base turned into eight or so at the top, and we skied a variety of runs on both Madonna and Sterling before meeting Pat for lunch at Green Peppers in the Sterling/Madonna base lodge. After lunch, Pepper had a class to teach, and I had all I needed, so we headed back to the Village Center on a shuttle bus.

We didn’t need to pick up Keegan until 4, but he wanted to go swimming so we went directly from the kids center to the pool. There are pools attached to a number of the condos, but the biggest is next to the fun zone, a building loaded with slides and other amusements. After an hour in the pool, it was back to the condo where we called out to have pizza delivered.

We enjoyed ourselves as adults on and off the mountain, but what about Keegan? Pat had gone to watch the second day and couldn’t believe it when she saw him on the lift with another five-year-old. Then she went to watch the class get on the lift. There were three attendants. One made sure the kids were upright and headed in the proper direction. The other two were positioned on either side of the lift and lifted the kids on while lowering the bar. At the top two more attendants made sure they all got off OK.

We saw that kind of attention to detail everywhere. And most important, we watched him ski. He had gone from walking a little and sliding around with adult help to actually skiing by himself – in two and half days. It’s too bad we couldn’t have stayed the entire week, but we now know why Smugglers’ Notch has such a great reputation for getting kids on skis and families having fun.

Dave Irons is a freelance writer who lives in Westbrook.