He founded the Mount Mansfield Lift Company which built Stowe's first chairlift, and created the Mad River Glen ski area.
In 1927, a month after Charles Lindbergh's solo crossing of the Atlantic, Palmedo worked with Robert Lehman to structure financing for Juan Trippe's precursor to Pan American Airways.
The club awarded honorary memberships to Palmedo's friends in Europe who were also early promoters of the sport, such as famed ski instructor Hannes Schneider and slalom inventor Arnold Lunn.
When Schneider was jailed in 1938 for his outspoken criticism of Nazi Germany, Palmedo organized club members to gather several hundred signatures to petition his release.
[10] In search of more skiable terrain, Palmedo wrote a letter in 1931 addressed simply to the "Postmaster, Stowe Vermont", inquiring about winter accommodation and accessibility of the toll road on Mount Mansfield.
[11][12] Upon their return to New York, Palmedo shared his experience with the skiing community in an article in Ski Bulletin, writing "a week or ten days could be spent at Stowe and a different trip or circuit taken each day…"[13] The next year, with Palmedo's encouragement, Craig Burt, Abner Coleman, and Charles Lord organized the Civilian Conservation Corps to cut the first trails on the mountain.
[14] When the National Downhill Championships were held at Stowe in 1938, skiers had to walk down an unplowed road to the base, and then hike further to the top of the Nose Dive trail.
That year's downhill champion, Grace Carter Lindley, and Roland Palmedo agreed that it was time to introduce Americans to the kind of European experience of trains and surface tows that lifted skiers to snowy peaks.
Stowe area skiers like Sepp Ruschp, Charles Lord, and Gale Shaw invested, as well as Amateur Ski Club of New York members Godfrey Rockefeller and Lowell Thomas.
Because the mountain was owned by the State of Vermont and prohibited private use, the company arranged to donate the lift in exchange for the right to lease it back for ten years.
[15] Roland was impressed by the Swiss Army Rescue Unit that provided aid to injured skiers at the Parsenn resort in Davos, Switzerland, and encouraged something similar at Stowe.
Palmedo lamented the lack of overall vision that resulted in trails resembling a "great gash down the mountainside" and feared a crowded mountain when skiers began arriving by the busload.
[23] The base was free of hotels and nightlife, with a single chair ready to carry skiers to narrow trails that ran along the natural contours of the mountain.
[24] Palmedo's original vision of his ideal ski area was echoed in the 1995 charter of the Mad River Glen Cooperative which was created "to forever protect the classic Mad River Glen skiing experience by preserving low skier density, natural terrain and forests, varied trail character, and friendly community atmosphere for the benefit of shareholders, area personnel and patrons.
"[25] Later the Mad River Glen experience was articulated by a loyal skier's essay which was read ceremoniously at the dismantling of the original single chair lift in 2007.