The car shuttle seems to confuse folks who haven't done it before. We have to do some driving before we ski, do not confuse the 'morning meeting place' and the 'start of skiing'. The morning meeting place is where we usually finish our skiing for the day.
The daily routine is that we will all meet at a pre-determined morning meeting place and time. We will then leave some cars at the morning meeting place and drive everyone to the start of skiing in as few cars as possible, leaving those cars at start of skiing. We will then ski the section and finish at the end of skiing point, which is often the morning meeting place. Then some folks with cars at the end of skiing point will have to bring people back to their cars at the start of skiing. If you do this for enough years, you will have skied the length of Vermont once, and driven it four times. But some of the drives are very pretty.
Please be careful with carpooling to the start, if you show up at the morning meeting place with all your seats and ski rack filled then you can't help with any part of the car shuttle. If someone wants to bring a 15- passenger van and a driver, I bet some folks would buy you beers.
There are three main scenarios once we have all met at the morning meeting place:
1) You drive your car in the morning: You fill your car with other skiers and their gear at the morning meeting place, and drive to the start of skiing. Then you ski (usually ending up at the morning meeting place), then you get in someone else's car, along with a bunch of the other drivers, and they drive you back to your car at the start of skiing. In this case you might want to leave a warm coat and/or boots in one of the cars that stays at the morning meeting place, so you'll have something dry and warm to wear when you are driven back to your car. But make sure they won't have already left when you finish.
2) You ride with someone else in the morning: You leave your car at the morning meeting place and ride with others to the start of skiing. Then you ski back to your car (usually ending up at the morning meeting place), and, most likely, you will then drive some morning drivers back to their cars at the start of skiing after we all finish skiing. In this case you can leave your warm clothes in your car, but you don't want to take anything you don't want to ski with while you are riding down to the start of skiing, in other words, you get into the car ready to ski.
3) You don't drive at all, just ride with others to the start of skiing, and aren't needed for returning drivers to their cars at the end of the day.
In any case, do not leave the end of skiing until you have been checked off the list and have checked with the leader to see if you are needed for more driving. This means you may be hanging around the trail head for a while, in most cases there should be a car you can get into to stay warm if needed.
If we have a large group of skiers registered for any day, I may decide that we will ski in two groups, one northbound and one southbound, and do key swaps. Therefore I may change some morning meeting places!! Please go to the Schedule page for details. This shouldn't effect your morning driving times, as the changes aren't very far. The big advantage is that less time is spent in cars.
If we do a key-swap, we will all meet together at the morning meeting place and arrange who skis which way and what cars go where. You can choose to ski southbound (SB) or NB. We'll need at least six skiers to go each way to make the swap work, but it doesn't have to be split evenly, so you should get to ski whichever way you want. Marie and I will be skiing NB each day, other co-leaders will handle the SB groups.
For a key swap, we meet at the morning meeting place and you drive someone else's car to your start of skiing. Someone else drives your car to the other starting point. The two groups ski toward each other, and at some point (if all goes well) the two groups meet, ideally for lunch, and car keys are swapped. At the end of the ski, you get into your car and go on your merry way. This means that all cars involved will be driven by someone else at some point so leave the Tesla at home and bring your beater BMW. If you want to have a dry jacket waiting for you at the end, you'll have to plan ahead carefully.