Did they let you drive up to top or does the family tradition demand a march from the base area?
You are kind of expected to skin if possible but there are no hard & fast rules, except to keep grinning no matter how bad it is. This is pretty much standard in backcountry skiing. The only way to tell that a good backcountry skier is suffering is that they tell more and worse jokes than usual.
In some years we have parked at the State Park entrance walked 200 yards on the road and then skinned up which cuts the vertical in half. This year we parked at the base and got the full 1000 ft. Mark had to bail early to go to his Mom's dinner in Conn. When we returned to our cars we found he had left us a 6 pack of Heineken. b/c skiers are like that too.
Edited to say that sometimes Tday is at my daughter's in Burlington, VT. Then the skin & ski is on natural snow and much better. 2 yrs. ago we skied 18" of new powder at Mad River. It was the 2nd biggest storm of that season.