If you want a taste of skiing’s early days, set your vehicle’s GPS to Woodstock, Vt., drive north and head back in time.

For Woodstock — The Green, Central and Elm Streets, Middle Covered Bridge, Suicide Six Ski Area, Mount Tom, Billings Farm and Museum — is a living museum, really.

Browse the nooks and crannies of F.H. Gillingham & Sons General Store on Elm Street, and you’ll feel like it’s 1936, the year Bunny Bertram moved his Model-T Ford-driven rope tow to Hill No. 6 from Clinton Gilbert’s pasture and dubbed his ski area Suicide Six.

But browse the Internet in the cozy library of the Woodstock Inn, and you’ll know it’s 2007.

Woodstock is one of the few New England ski towns that has retained the charm of a bygone era when skiers rode trains from Boston and New York, filled farmhouses and inns, wore woolen pants, sweaters and socks, sidestepped up hilly pastures and meadows to pack natural snow and then slid down those hills on long, unwieldy hickory slats. Manchester Center, Vt., is another of those quaint villages. In New Hampshire, I think of North Conway, Jackson and Franconia.

Last weekend, Suicide Six looked much as it might have seven decades ago in a lean snow year. Only four of the area’s 23 trails were open because of the prolonged stretch of warmer-than-normal weather that hampered snowmaking. The beginner’s slope on the left of the base area and Easy Mile running top to bottom on the right had been open for a awhile, but Showoff and The Face, the steep open slopes dominating the front of the hill, had opened just a few days earlier.

There was no snow anywhere else but for the base and those four slopes and trails. Grass on the hill was still greeen, and the parking area was muddy and riddled with puddles. The atmosphere felt more like spring than mid-winter.

“It’s pretty glum,” ski patroller Vali Stuntz said when asked the mood in town. She had just taken a run down The Face and was going in for lunch. The few dozen skiers on the hill appeared to be having fun, and members of the Suicide six racing team were helping to set up a training course.

“Everybody here is having fun. People are taking a lot of lessons,” she said.

As if on cue, a voice from the loudspeaker announced that the noon lesson would meet in five minutes.

Cold weather since last weekend has enabled Suicide Six’ snowmakers to open two more trails for a total of six. An inch or two of crusted snow covered the ground closer to town, brightening spirits. Heavier snow in other parts of ski country plus consistent cold for snowmaking have meant improving conditions by the day.

Every skier should visit Suicide Six at least once, if only for the history. Wallace “Bunny” Bertram, a Dartmouth grad — the college is about 20 miles east on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River — set up the first ski tow in the United States on Gilbert’s Hill, just off Route 12 north of town, in 1934. Winter sports — sledding, tobogganing, snowshoeing and skiing — had begun on the carriage trails on Mount Tom and nearby slopes in the 1890s, and the Woodstock Inn opened a winter sports center at the Woodstock Country Club in 1910.

But it was Bertram’s rope tow that spawned an industry. Two years later, having decided that Hill No. 6 just over a ridge from Gilbert’s Hill and about three miles from town was more suitable for skiing, he moved and opened Suicide Six.

Why such a name for a ski hill? That’s easy. While exploring the terrain, Bertram and his skiing buddies noted that it would be suicide to ski the steep slope on Topographical Map Hill No. 6. Thus, Suicide Six.

The Face is steep at the top, flattens a bit in the middle and drops again toward the bottom. It’s a perfect racing slope, and citizens, collegians and Olympians have tested themselves there for 70 years. The Fisk Trophy Race is the longest-running ski race in America.

There are a few other black diamonds on the trail map and a handful of blue squares for cruisers and green circles for beginners. Snowmaking covers 50 percent of the terrain, and two double chairs and a J-bar provide the uphill transportation. The vertical drop of 650 feet provides a longest run of one mile.

The base lodge, built in 1978 to replace an old chicken coop, is small but bright and inviting and decorated with ski memorabilia.

Bertram sold Suicide Six to Laurance S. Rockefeller in 1961. Rockefeller also bought the Woodstock Country Club that year and the Woodstock Inn in 1968. Woodstock Resort Corp. operates all three properties today.

The Woodstock Touring Center operates out of the golf clubhouse and manages cross-country and snowshoe trails on the golf course and on Mount Tom and Mount Peg. There was no snow on those trails last weekend and only a couple of inches as of Friday.

The Woodstock Health and Fitness Center is on the golf course 1.5 miles from the inn and features two indoor tennis courts, squash courts, a swimming pool and workout areas.

The 142-room Woodstock Inn overlooks The Green and has three restaurants, a library and several cozy corners to curl up with a book or laptop. Befitting a 21st century hotel, the public areas and certain rooms offer wireless Internet connection.

Suicide six plans a 70th anniversary celebration Feb. 17. For information, contact the Woodstock Inn & Resort at (866) 448-7900 or visit woodstockinn.com

mszostak@projo.com