On a clear winter day in Central Pennsylvania, you don’t need a road sign or Google Map to tell you where Roundtop is. You can spot it from the highways and back roads alike, a white-capped ridge that seems to rise out of the farmland, lit up at night like a beacon.
“That’s the best thing about the mountain,” Ted McDowell said. “You can see it from everywhere. Free advertising. You can see it from everywhere.”
McDowell would know. He’s in his fourth winter as general manager of Roundtop Mountain Resort in Lewisberry, but his relationship with the place goes back to long before he had an office and a radio. Like so many people in this region, he grew up coming here, first as a kid from Lancaster County, then as a teenager who figured out how to keep skiing by organizing group trips.
“I would put together ski groups with churches and Boy Scout groups, and then organize it so I could get a free bus ride, a free ticket to come over and ski,” he said.
That kind of origin story fits Roundtop. The resort sits minutes from Harrisburg but feels a world away once you turn off the main road and roll into the base area. Roundtop bills itself as a “perfect backyard escape,” built on “sixty years of love and care,” a place that has quietly embedded itself in the winter rhythm of this area for decades.
McDowell’s path to running the mountain took him far from home before it brought him back. After attending Penn State, he took a leave of absence, flew to California with everything he owned in a backpack and studied ski business management at a college near Lake Tahoe. He worked his way up through food and beverage – “the best job to have to ski the most,” he said – and spent years at major western resorts, including Heavenly and Northstar, before returning east.
“I moved out west to get into the ski business,” he said, “and came back as a general manager of the resort I left. So, it’s kind of a full circle journey.”
That sense of continuity is part of what makes Roundtop feel personal to so many locals. On paper, the mountain is compact enough to be approachable – 600 feet of vertical drop with a 1,335-foot summit and a 735-foot base – but it’s big enough to build a full day around, whether you’re chasing turns, learning your first stop or squeezing in night laps after work.
Roundtop’s trail count sits at 21, served by nine lifts, with 100% snowmaking coverage and three terrain parks. The terrain breakdown tells you something, too: 19% beginner, 24% intermediate and 57% advanced.
In other words, this is not just a bunny hill with a lodge. It’s a real ski mountain, one that’s raised generations of skiers and riders within easy driving distance of Harrisburg, Hershey, York and beyond.
McDowell said he saw that multigenerational pull on opening day this season, which landed on the second Saturday in December.
“It was one of our best opening days in a long time,” he said. “We have an incredible, very experienced mountain operations team here, decades of experience, and they were able to provide a big opening footprint, make lots of snow.”
There’s a particular kind of joy that comes with the first chair of the year: The reunion energy of seeing familiar faces bundled up in the lift line, the buzz of the DJ, the first lift ride where you realize, yes, winter is finally here. Roundtop leans into that feeling with small traditions that are part goofy, part genius.
Pocket bacon is one of them.
Partnering with Weaver’s, McDowell said Roundtop hands out foil-wrapped bacon strips that you literally keep warm in your jacket while you ski.
“You put it in your pocket,” he explained. “Then when you’re on the slopes, you’re on the lift, you pull it out, eat the bacon. Get a little energy for the day.”
It’s the sort of detail that tells you everything you need to know about the place. Roundtop is serious about skiing — but it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
What it does take seriously is the product underfoot.
Perfect weather conditions in early December gave the snowmaking team a head start, and McDowell talked about snowmaking with the respect of someone who has watched it make or break seasons.
“We need cold, dry temperatures to make the best snow,” he said. “It’s a mix of temperature and humidity. It’s called wet bulb.”
If you’ve ever wondered what’s happening when you see snow guns blasting into the night, McDowell put it in plain terms: “Snowmaking is really just compressed air and water,” he said. In the right conditions, the system atomizes water into a fine mist and “turns into snow before it hits the ground.”
This year, he said, Roundtop invested in that system, including upgrades to its water supply and a rebuilt snowmaking pump, and added two groomers to the fleet. The payoff is the thing skiers notice immediately: consistent coverage, a solid base and that freshly corduroyed snow surface in the morning.
“People don’t understand how much work we put in over the summer to be ready for that,” McDowell said.
Roundtop’s own “fun facts” page nods to a couple of reasons the mountain holds snow well: It notes the resort’s “perfect North Face” and even points out that it has “one of the only covered carpet lifts in the area.”
Those details matter most to beginners, families and anyone who’s ever tried to wrangle kids into boots in January wind. And that’s where Roundtop shines. It’s built for first-timers without feeling like it’s only for first-timers.
When McDowell talks to newcomers, his first advice is simple: Plan ahead.
“What they want to do is go online and get everything in advance,” he said. “That’s the best way. That’s the best deal they can get.”
Then, once you arrive, he has a landmark for you – a classic, small-mountain piece of wayfinding.
“We have a big clock tower at one of our lodges,” he said. “If people are like, ‘I don’t know where to go,’ they see a big clock tower – head towards that.”
From there, the mountain unfolds in a progression that locals know almost by muscle memory. McDowell recommends that beginners start in the Discovery area, using the carpet lift to get comfortable without the pressure of loading a chair. Then, as confidence grows, they move to the Drummer Boy lift and the beginner trio of trails: Drummer Boy, Fanny Hill and Powder Horn.
“A big thing here is kind of work your way, if you’re looking up the mountain, from the right to the left,” he said.
It’s a natural learning curve, and it leads to a badge-of-honor moment: graduating to the Minuteman lift.
“It’s kind of a thing to get past Minuteman,” McDowell said. “You want to be an intermediate skier by the time you do that.”
For advanced skiers, Roundtop still has teeth. McDowell pointed to Ramrod and Gunbarrel as signature double-black headwall runs on the far left of the hill, steep enough to make your heart rate change before you even drop in.
“You want to be an advanced skier to be skiing Ramrod,” he said.
His own favorite run, though, isn’t just about steepness. It’s about place.
“Barrett’s Trail,” he said, describing a narrow route that winds through the woods from the top. “We can’t always get it open just the way it’s exposed, but it winds through the woods. It’s pretty neat.”
And yes, snowboards are welcome across the mountain.
“We’re 100% snowboarder friendly,” McDowell said. “The whole mountain is open to snowboarding.”
He’s seen how that inclusiveness plays out in small moments. One of his favorite stories involves a young girl who decided she didn’t want to choose sides between her skiing friends and her snowboarding friends.
“She was taking snowboarding lessons so she could be that person that could ski and snowboard and bridge the gap and bring her friends together,” he said.
The resort also offers snow tubing for those who don’t ski or snowboard.
Even the food has gotten a little more playful. McDowell mentioned a refreshed theme in the base area: the Smokehouse is leaning into a new concept called “The Coop,” built around easy crowd-pleasers like chicken and fries. Up top, he pointed to a mountaintop stop called Top Dogs, the kind of place that makes perfect sense once you’ve earned the view. There is also a lounge and a food court providing other options.
On clear days, the reward is obvious. Roundtop’s summit is the highest point in York County, McDowell noted, and the sightlines stretch toward Harrisburg.
Roundtop runs midweek deals aimed at getting people on snow without sacrificing the whole weekend. The resort promotes College Nights on Thursdays, offering discounts for students from early January into March.
McDowell said Roundtop is also running a similar discounted night on Wednesdays this season, widening that midweek on-ramp for anyone who wants to ski after work.
And for passholders, this is a season when bringing a friend is easier. Epic Friend Tickets provide 50% off lift tickets at Vail Resorts’ North American destinations, and Epic’s lift-ticket promotion allows eligible guests to apply the value of a lift ticket toward savings on a pass for the following season.
Roundtop’s winter calendar includes bigger community moments, too. In early December, the resort held its 9th Annual Ullr Fest, hosted by Tröegs Independent Brewing, a bonfire-driven kickoff that has become a local winter ritual.
McDowell also highlighted Winter Carnival, a family-focused day designed to pull the base area into a festival atmosphere, along with rail jams in the terrain park that include a kid-centered “Grom Jam” that gives younger riders a chance to practice with park staff and compete for prizes.
For McDowell, the through-line in all of it is the experience – not just the skiing itself, but the way a small mountain becomes part of a family’s history.
“There have been people who’ve been skiing here for generations,” he said. “They came out, they skied here as a kid … and now they’re bringing their kids out.”
He paused, then framed it the way you might talk about a neighborhood park or a hometown ball field, something you don’t really own, but you feel responsible for.
“I feel like I’m the current steward of this mountain,” he said. “There have been leaders before me, and there will be leaders after me, and it’s my job to take care of it for our customers who consider it their mountain.”
That stewardship shows up in the people who have made Roundtop their second home. McDowell mentioned longtime staffers – including mountain operations manager Jim Garling, who he said has been with the resort for 45 years – and he talked about Roundtop as an employer of countless teenagers in the region.
“What I hear a lot is that we are the first job for a lot of kids in this region,” he said. “People say, ‘Oh, that was my first job at Roundtop.’”
When the season gets busy, when the snow guns are running overnight and the mountain is adjusting by the hour, McDowell said he doesn’t dread the chaos. He feeds on it.
“I really like the ramp-up period,” he said. “I like the constant dynamic of things can change and will change at any moment. … It’s hectic, but I enjoy it.”
Roundtop, after all, was built for movement. In winter, it’s skis and boards and the steady rhythm of chairs climbing the hill. In summer, it becomes a warm-weather version of the same idea: get outside, wear yourself out and go home happy.
The resort promotes summer camps that lean into classic day-camp energy – paddling, kayaking, swimming, rock climbing, fishing, archery, dodgeball – and it hosts what it calls Central Pennsylvania’s largest paintball operation, with 11 fields ranging from a two-story container setup to scenario-style courses.
The resort even pegs itself as “situated 75 miles north of Baltimore,” positioning the mountain as a day-trip fun hub for families well beyond the immediate Harrisburg area.
Roundtop remains a year-round landmark and, when the slopes glow under the lights and the mountain turns white, it becomes the most visible reminder in the region that winter has arrived.
