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Who

Peter Disch, General Manager of Mount Sunapee, New Hampshire (following this interview, Vail Resorts promoted Disch to Vice President of Mountain Operations at its Heavenly ski area in California; he will start that new position on Aug. 5, 2024; as of July 27, Vail had yet to name the next GM of Sunapee.)

Recorded on

June 24, 2024

About Mount Sunapee

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: The State of New Hampshire; operated by Vail Resorts

Located in: Newbury, New Hampshire

Year founded: 1948

Pass affiliations:

* Epic Pass, Epic Local Pass, Northeast Value Epic Pass: unlimited access

* Northeast Midweek Epic Pass: midweek access, including holidays

Closest neighboring (public) ski areas: Pats Peak (:28), Whaleback (:29), Arrowhead (:29), Ragged (:38), Veterans Memorial (:42), Ascutney (:45), Crotched (:48), Quechee (:50), Granite Gorge (:51), McIntyre (:53), Saskadena Six (1:04), Tenney (1:06)

Base elevation: 1,233 feet

Summit elevation: 2,743 feet

Vertical drop: 1,510 feet

Skiable Acres: 233 acres

Average annual snowfall: 130 inches

Trail count: 67 (29% beginner, 47% intermediate, 24% advanced)

Lift count: 8 (2 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 3 conveyors – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Mount Sunapee’s lift fleet.)

History: Read New England Ski History’s overview of Mount Sunapee

View historic Mount Sunapee trailmaps on skimap.org.

Why I interviewed him

New Hampshire state highway 103 gives you nothing. Straight-ish and flattish, lined with trees and the storage-unit detritus of the American outskirts, nothing about the road suggests a ski-area approach. Looping south off the great roundabout-ish junction onto Mt. Sunapee Road still underwhelms. As though you’ve turned into someone’s driveway, or are seeking some obscure historical monument, or simply made a mistake. Because what, really, could be back there to ski?

And then you arrive. All at once. A parking lot. The end of the road. The ski area heaves upward on three sides. Lifts all over. The top is up there somewhere. It’s not quite Silverton-Telluride smash-into-the-backside-of-a-box-canyon dramatic, but maybe it’s as close as you get in New Hampshire, or at least southern New Hampshire, less than two hours north of Boston.

But the true awe waits up high. North off the summit, Lake Sunapee dominates the foreground, deep blue-black or white-over-ice in midwinter, like the flat unfinished center of a puzzle made from the hills and forests that rise and roll from all sides. Thirty miles west, across the lowlands where the Connecticut River marks the frontier with Vermont, stands Okemo, interstate-wide highways of white strafing the two-mile face.

Then you ski. Sunapee does not measure big but it feels big, an Alpine illusion exploding over the flats. Fifteen hundred vertical feet is plenty of vertical feet, especially when it rolls down the frontside like a waterfall. Glades everywhere, when they’re live, which is less often than you’d hope but more often than you’d think. Good runs, cruisers and slashers, a whole separate face for beginners, a 374-vertical-foot ski-area-within-a-ski-area, perfectly spliced from the pitched main mountain.

Southern New Hampshire has a lot of ski areas, and a lot of well-run ski areas, but not a lot of truly great pure ski areas. Sunapee, as both an artwork and a plaything, surpasses them all, the ribeye on the grill stacked with hamburgers, a delightful and filling treat.

What we talked about

Sunapee enhancements ahead of the 2024-25 winter; a new parking lot incoming; whether Sunapee considered paid parking to resolve its post-Covid, post-Northeast Epic Pass launch backups; the differences in Midwest, West, and Eastern ski cultures; the big threat to Mount Sunapee in the early 1900s; the Mueller family legacy and “The Sunapee Difference”; what it means for Vail Resorts to operate a state-owned ski area; how cash flows from Sunapee to Cannon; Sunapee’s masterplan; the long-delayed West Bowl expansion; incredible views from the Sunapee summit; the proposed Sun Bowl-North Peak connection; potential upgrades for the Sunapee Express, North Peak, and Spruce lifts; the South Peak beginner area; why Sunapee built a ski-through lighthouse; why high-speed ropetows rule; the potential for Sunapee night-skiing; whether Sunapee should be unlimited on the Northeast Value Pass (which it currently is); and why Vail’s New Hampshire mountains are on the same Epic Day Pass tier as its Midwest ski areas.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Should states own ski areas? And if so, should state agencies run those ski areas, or should they be contracted to private operators?

These are fraught questions, especially in New York, where three state-owned ski areas (Whiteface, Gore, and Belleayre) guzzle tens of millions of dollars in new lift, snowmaking, and other infrastructure while competing directly against dozens of tax-paying, family-owned operations spinning Hall double chairs that predate the assassination of JFK. The state agency that operates the three ski areas plus Lake Placid’s competition facilities, the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA), reported a $47.3 million operating loss for the fiscal year ending March 30, following a loss of $29.3 million the prior year. Yet there are no serious proposals at the state-government level to even explore what it would mean to contract a private operator to run the facilities.

If New York state officials were ever so inspired, they could look 100 miles east, where the State of New Hampshire has run a sort of A-B experiment on its two owned ski areas since the late 1990s. New Hampshire’s state parks association has operated Cannon Mountain since North America’s first aerial tram opened on the site in 1938. For a long time, the agency operated Mount Sunapee as well. But in 1998, the state leased the ski area to the Mueller family, who had spent the past decade and a half transforming Okemo from a T-bar-clotted dump into one of Vermont’s largest and most modern resorts.

Twenty-six years later, that arrangement stands: the state owns and operates Cannon, and owns Sunapee but leases it to a private operator (Vail Resorts assumed or renewed the lease when they purchased the Muellers’ Triple Peaks company, which included Okemo and Crested Butte, Colorado, in 2018). As part of that contract, a portion of Sunapee’s revenues each year funnel into a capital fund for Cannon.

So, does this arrangement work? For Vail, for the state, for taxpayers, for Sunapee, and for Cannon? As we consider the future of skiing, these are important questions: to what extent should the state sponsor recreation, especially when that form of recreation competes directly against private, tax-paying businesses who are, essentially, subsidizing their competition? It’s tempting to offer a reflexive ideological answer here, but nuance interrupts us at ground-level. Alterra, for instance, leases and operates Winter Park from the City of Denver. Seems logical, but a peak-day walk-up Winter Park lift ticket will cost you around $260 for the 2024-25 winter. Is this a fair one-day entry fee for a city-owned entity?

The story of Mount Sunapee, a prominent and busy ski area in a prominent and busy ski state, is an important part of that larger should-government-own-ski-areas conversation. The state seems happy to let Vail run their mountain, but equally happy to continue running Cannon. That’s curious, especially in a state with a libertarian streak that often pledges allegiance by hoisting two middle fingers skyward. The one-private-one-public arrangement was a logical experiment that, 26 years later, is starting to feel a bit schizophrenic, illustrative of the broader social and economic complexities of changing who runs a business and how they do that. Is Vail Resorts better at running commercial ski centers than the State of New Hampshire? They sure as hell should be. But are they? And should Sunapee serve as a template for New York and the other states, counties, and cities that own ski areas? To decide if it works, we first have to understand how it works, and we spend a big part of this interview doing exactly that.

What I got wrong

* When listing the Vail Resorts with paid parking lots, I accidentally slipped Sunapee in place of Mount Snow, Vermont. Only the latter has paid parking.

* When asking Disch about Sunapee’s masterplan, I accidentally tossed Sunapee into Vail’s Peak Resorts acquisition in 2019. But Peak never operated Sunapee. The resort entered Vail’s portfolio as part of its acquisition of Triple Peaks – which also included Okemo and Crested Butte – in 2018.

* I neglected to elaborate on what a “chondola” lift is. It’s a lift that alternates (usually six-person) chairs with (usually eight-person) gondola cabins. The only active such lift in New England is at Sunday River, but Arizona Snowbowl, Northstar, Copper Mountain, and Beaver Creek operate six/eight-passenger chondolas in the American West. Telluride runs a short chondola with four-person chairs and four-person gondola cars.

* I said that the six New England states combined covered an area “less than half the size of Colorado.” This is incorrect: the six New England states, combined, cover 71,987 square miles; Colorado is 103,610 square miles.

Why you should ski Mount Sunapee

Ski area rankings are hard. Properly done, they include dozens of inputs, considering every facet of the mountain across the breadth of a season from the point of view of multiple skiers. Sunapee on an empty midweek powder day might be the best day of your life. Sunapee on a Saturday when it hasn’t snowed in three weeks but everyone in Boston shows up anyway might be the worst. For this reason, I largely avoid assembling lists of the best or worst this or that and abstain, mostly, from criticizing mountain ops – the urge to let anecdote stand in for observable pattern and truth is strong.

So when I do stuff ski areas into a hierarchy, it’s generally grounded in what’s objective and observable: Cottonwoods snow really is fluffier and more bounteous than almost all other snow; Tahoe resort density really does make it one of the world’s great ski centers; Northern Vermont really does deliver far deeper snow and better average conditions than the rest of New England. In that same shaky, room-for-caveats manner, I’m comfortable saying this: Mount Sunapee’s South Peak delivers one of the best beginner/novice experiences in the Northeast.

Arrive childless and experienced, and it’s likely you’ll ignore this zone altogether. Which is precisely what makes it so great: almost completely cut off from the main mountain, South Peak is free from high-altitude bombers racing back to the lifts. Three progression carpets offer the perfect ramp-up experience. The 374-vertical-foot quad rises high enough to feel grown-up without stoking the summit lakeview vertigo. The trails are gently tilted but numerous and interesting. Other than potential for an errant turn down Sunnyside toward the Sunapee Express, it’s almost impossible to get lost. It’s as though someone chopped a mid-sized Midwest ski area from the earth, airlifted it east, and stapled it onto the edge of Sunapee:

A few other Northeast ski areas offer this sort of ski-area-within-a-ski-area beginner separation – Burke, Belleayre, Whiteface, and Smugglers’ Notch all host expansive standalone beginner zones. But Sunapee’s is one of the easiest to access for New England’s core Boston market, and, because of the Epic Pass, one of the most affordable.

For everyone else, Sunapee’s main mountain distills everything that is great and terrible about New England skiing: a respectable vertical drop; a tight, complex, and varied trail network; a detached-from-conditions determination to be outdoors in the worst of it. But also impossible weekend crowds, long snow draughts, a tendency to overgroom even when the snow does fall, and an over-emphasis on driving, with nowhere to stay on-mountain. But even when it’s not perfect, which it almost never is, Sunapee is always, objectively, a great natural ski mountain, a fall-line classic, a little outpost of the north suspiciously far south.  

Podcast Notes

On Sunapee’s masterplan and West Bowl expansion

As a state park, Mount Sunapee is required to submit an updated masterplan every five years. The most transformative piece of this would be the West Bowl expansion, a 1,082-vertical-foot pod running skiers’ left off the current summit (right in purple on the map below):

The masterplan also proposes upgrades for several of Sunapee’s existing lifts, including the Sunapee Express and the Spruce and North Peak triples:

On past Storm Skiing Podcasts:

Disch mentions a recent podcast that I recorded with Attitash, New Hampshire GM Brandon Schwarz. You can listen to that here. I’ve also recorded pods with the leaders of a dozen other New Hampshire mountains:

* Wildcat GM JD Crichton (May 30, 2024)

* Gunstock President & GM Tom Day (April 15, 2024) – now retired

* Tenney Mountain GM Dan Egan (April 8, 2024) – no longer works at Tenney

* Cranmore President & GM Ben Wilcox (Oct. 16, 2023)

* Dartmouth Skiway GM Mark Adamczyk (June 12, 2023)

* Granite Gorge GM Keith Kreischer (May 30, 2023)

* Loon Mountain President & GM Brian Norton (Nov. 14, 2022)

* Pats Peak GM Kris Blomback (Sept. 26, 2022)

* Ragged Mountain GM Erik Barnes (April 26, 2022)

* Whaleback Mountain Executive Director Jon Hunt (June 16, 2021)

* Waterville Valley President & GM Tim Smith (Feb. 22, 2021)

* Cannon Mountain GM John DeVivo (Oct. 6, 2020) – now GM at Antelope Butte, Wyoming

On New England ski area density

Disch referenced the density of ski areas in New England. With 100 ski areas crammed into six states, this is without question the densest concentration of lift-served skiing in the United States. Here’s an inventory:

On the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

From 1933 to 1942 – the height of the Great Depression – a federal government agency knows as the Civilian Conservation Corps recruited single men between the ages of 18 and 25 to “improve America’s public lands, forests, and parks.” Some of this work included the cutting of ski trails on then-virgin mountains, including Mount Sunapee. While the CCC trail is no longer in use on Sunapee, that first project sparked the notion of skiing on the mountain and led to the development of the ski area we know today.

On potential Northeast expansions and there being “a bunch that are proposed all over the region”

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but a few of the larger Northeast expansions that are creeping toward reality include a new trailpod at Berkshire East:

This massive, village-connecting expansion that would completely transform Waterville Valley:

The de-facto resurrection of New York’s lost Highmount ski area with an expansion from adjacent Belleayre:

And the monster proposed Western Territories expansion that could double the size of Sunday River. There’s no public map of this one presently available.

On high-speed ropetows

I’ll keep beating the crap out of this horse until you all realize that I’m right:

A high-speed ropetow at Spirit Mountain, Minnesota. Video by Stuart Winchester.

On Crotched proximity and night skiing

We talk briefly about past plans for night-skiing on Sunapee, and Disch argues that, while that may have made sense when the Muellers owned the ski area, it’s no longer likely since Vail also owns Crotched, which hosts one of New England’s largest night-skiing operations less than an hour south. It’s a fantastic little operation, a once-abandoned mountain completely rebuilt from the studs by Peak Resorts:

On the Epic Day Pass

Here’s another thing I don’t plan to stop talking about ever:

The Storm explores the world of North American lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.

The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 48/100 in 2024, and number 548 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019.

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on July 7. It dropped for free subscribers on July 14. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:

Who

Chip Chase, Founder and Owner of White Grass Ski Touring Center, West Virginia

Recorded on

May 16, 2024

About White Grass Touring Center

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Chip Chase

Located in: Davis, West Virginia

Year founded: 1979 (at a different location)

Pass affiliations: Indy Pass and Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackouts

Closest neighboring ski areas: Canaan Valley (8 minutes), Timberline (11 minutes)

Base elevation: 3,220 feet (below the lodge)

Summit elevation: 4,463 feet (atop Weiss Knob)

Vertical drop: 1,243 feet

Skiable Acres: 2,500

Average annual snowfall: 140 inches

Trail count: 42 (50 km of maintained trails)

Lift count: None

Why I interviewed him

One habit I’ve borrowed from the mostly now-defunct U.S. ski magazines is their unapologetic focus always and only on Alpine skiing. This is not a snowsports newsletter or a wintertime recreation newsletter or a mountain lifestyle newsletter. I’m not interested in ice climbing or snowshoeing or even snowboarding, which I’ve never attempted and probably never will. I’m not chasing the hot fads like Norwegian goat fjording, which is where you paddle around glaciers in an ice canoe, with an assist tow from a swimming goat. And I’ve narrowed the focus much more than my traditionalist antecedents, avoiding even passing references to food, drink, lodging, gear, helicopters, snowcats, whacky characters, or competitions of any kind (one of the principal reasons I ski is that it is an unmeasured, individualistic sport).

Which, way to squeeze all the fun out of it, Stu. But shearing off 90 percent of all possible subject matter allows me to cover the small spectrum of things that I do actually care about – the experience of traveling to and around a lift-served snowsportskiing facility, with a strange side obsession with urban planning and land-use policy – over the broadest possible geographic area (currently the entire United States and Canada, though mostly that’s Western Canada right now because I haven’t yet consumed quantities of ayahuasca sufficient to unlock the intellectual and spiritual depths where the names and statistical profiles of all 412* Quebecois ski areas could dwell).

So that’s why I don’t write about cross-country skiing or cross-country ski centers. Sure, they’re Alpine skiing-adjacent, but so is lift-served MTB and those crazy jungle gym swingy-bridge things and ziplining and, like, freaking ice skating. If I covered everything that existed around a lift-served ski area, I would quickly grow bored with this whole exercise. Because frankly the only thing I care about is skiing.

Downhill skiing. The uphill part, much as it’s fetishized by the ski media and the self-proclaimed hardcore, is a little bit confusing. Because you’re going the wrong way, man. No one shows up at Six Flags and says oh actually I would prefer to walk to the top of Dr. Diabolical’s Cliffhanger. Like do you not see the chairlift sitting right f*****g there?

But here we are anyway: I’m featuring a cross-country skiing center on my podcast that’s stubbornly devoted always and only to Alpine skiing. And not just a cross-country ski center, but one that, by the nature of its layout, requires some uphill travel to complete most loops. Why would I do this to myself, and to my readers/listeners?

Well, several factors collided to interest me in White Grass, including:

* The ski area sits on the site of an abandoned circa-1950s downhill ski area, Weiss Knob. White Grass has incorporated much of the left-over refuse – the lodge, the ropetow engines – into the functioning or aesthetic of the current business. The first thing you see upon arrival at White Grass is a mainline clearcut rising above a huddle of low-slung buildings – Weiss Knob’s old maintrail.

* White Grass sits between two active downhill ski areas: Timberline, a former podcast subject that is among the best-run operations in America, and state-owned Canaan Valley, a longtime Indy Pass partner. It’s possible to ski across White Grass from either direction to connect all three ski areas into one giant odyssey.

* White Grass is itself an Indy Pass partner, one of 43 Nordic ski areas on the pass last year (Indy has yet to finalize its 2024-25 roster).

* White Grass averages 95 days of annual operation despite having no snowmaking. On the East Coast. In the Mid-Atlantic. They’re able to do this because, yes, they sit at a 3,220-foot base elevation (higher than anything in New England; Saddleback, in Maine, is the highest in that region, at 2,460 feet), but also because they have perfected the art of snow-farming. Chase tells me they’ve never missed a season altogether, despite sitting at the same approximate latitude as Washington, D.C.

* While I don’t care about going uphill at a ski area that’s equipped with mechanical lifts, I do find the notion of an uphill-only ski area rather compelling. Because it’s a low-impact, high-vibe concept that may be the blueprint for future new-ski-area development in a U.S. America that’s otherwise allergic to building things because oh that mud puddle over there is actually a fossilized brontosaurus footprint or something. That’s why I covered the failed Bluebird Backcountry. Like what if we had a ski area without the avalanche danger of wandering into the mountains and without the tension with lift-ticket holders who resent the a.m. chewing-up of their cord and pow? While it does not market itself this way, White Grass is in fact such a center, an East Coast Bluebird Backcountry that allows and is seeing growing numbers of people who like to make skiing into work AT Bros.

All of which, I’ll admit, still makes White Grass lift-served-skiing adjacent, somewhere on the spectrum between snowboarding (basically the same experience as far as lifts and terrain are concerned) and ice canoeing (yes I’m just making crap up). But Chase reached out to me and I stopped in and skied around in January completely stupid to the fact that I was about to have a massive heart attack and die, and I just kind of fell in love with the place: its ambling, bucolic setting; its improvised, handcrafted feel; its improbable existence next door to and amid the Industrial Ski Machine.

So here we are: something a little different. Don’t worry, this will not become a cross-country ski podcast, but if I mix one in every 177 episodes or so, I hope you’ll understand.

*The actual number of operating ski areas in Quebec is 412,904.

What we talked about

White Grass’ snow-blowing microclimate; why White Grass’ customers tend to be “easy to please”; “we don’t need a million skiers – we just need a couple hundred”; snow farming – what it is and how it works; White Grass’ double life in the summer; a brief history of the abandoned/eventually repurposed Weiss Knob ski area; considering snowmaking; 280 inches of snow in West Virginia; why West Virginia; the state’s ski culture; where and when Chase founded White Grass, and why he moved it to its current location; how an Alpine skier fell for the XC world; how a ski area electric bill is “about $5 per day”; preserving what remains of Weiss Knob; White Grass’ growing AT community; the mountain’s “incredible” glade skiing; whether Chase ever considered a chairlift at White Grass; is atmosphere made or does it happen?; “the last thing I want to do is retire”; Chip’s favorite ski areas; an argument for slow downhill skiing; the neighboring Timberline and Canaan Valley; why Timberline is “bound for glory”; the Indy Pass; XC grooming; and White Grass’ shelter system.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

I kind of hate the word “authentic,” at least in the context of skiing. It’s a little bit reductive and way too limiting. It implies that nothing planned or designed or industrially scaled can ever achieve a greater cultural resonance than a TGI Friday’s. By this definition, Vail Mountain – with its built-from-the-wilderness walkable base village, high-speed lift fleet, and corporate marquee – fails the banjo-strumming rubric set by the Authenticity Police, despite being one of our greatest ski centers. Real-ass skiers, don’t you know, only ride chairlifts powered from windmills hand-built by 17th Century Dutch immigrants. Everything else is corporate b******t. (Unless those high-speed lifts are at Alta or Wolf Creek or Revelstoke – then they’re real as f**k Brah; do you see how stupid this all is?)

Still, I understand the impulses stoking that sentiment. Roughly one out of every four U.S. skier visits is at a Vail Resort. About one in four is in Colorado. That puts a lot of pressure on a relatively small number of ski centers to define the activity for an enormous percentage of the skiing population. “Authentic,” I think, has become a euphemism for “not standing in a Saturday powder-day liftline that extends down Interstate 70 to Topeka with a bunch of people from Manhattan who don’t know how to ski powder.” Or, in other words, a place where you can ski without a lot of crowding and expense and the associated hassles.

White Grass succeeds in offering that. Here are the prices:

Here is the outside of the lodge:

And the inside:

Here is the rental counter:

And here’s the lost-and-found, in case you lose something (somehow they actually fit skis in there; it’s like one of those magic tents from Harry Potter that looks like a commando bivouac from the outside but expands into King Tut’s palace once you walk in):

The whole operation is simple, approachable, affordable, and relaxed. This is an everyone-in-the-base-lodge-seems-to-know-one-another kind of spot, an improbable backwoods redoubt along those ever-winding West Virginia roads, a snow hole in the map where no snow makes sense, as though driving up the access road rips you through a wormhole to some different, less-complicated world.

What I got wrong

I said the base areas for Stowe, Sugarbush, and Killington sat “closer to 2,000 feet, or even below that.” The actual numbers are: Stowe (1,559 feet), Sugarbush (1,483 feet), Killington (1,165 feet).

I accidentally referred to the old Weiss Knob ski area as “White Knob” one time.

Why you should ski White Grass

There are not a lot of skiing options in the Southeast, which I consider the ski areas seated along the Appalachians running from Cloudmont in Alabama up through Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland. There are only 18 ski areas in the entire region, and most would count even fewer, since Snowshoe Bro gets Very Mad at me when I count Silver Creek as a separate ski area (which it once was until Snowshoe purchased it in 1992, and still is physically until/unless Alterra ever develops this proposed interconnect from 1978):

No one really agrees on what Southeast skiing is. The set of ski states I outline above is the same one that Ski Southeast covers. DC Ski includes Pennsylvania (home to another 20-plus ski areas), which from a cultural, travel, and demographic standpoint makes sense. Things start to feel very different in New York, though Open Snow’s Mid-Atlantic updates include all of the state’s ski areas south of the Adirondacks.

Anyway, the region’s terrain, from a fall line, pure-skiing point of view, is actually quite good, especially in good snow years. The lift infrastructure tends to be far more modern than what you’ll find in, say, the Midwest. And the vertical drops and overall terrain footprints are respectable. Megapass penetration is deep, and you can visit a majority of the region with an Epic, Indy, or Ikon Pass:

However. Pretty much everything from the Poconos on south tends to be mobbed at all times by novice skiers. The whole experience can be tainted by an unruly dynamic of people who don’t understand how liftlines work and ski areas that make no effort to manage liftlines. It kind of sucks, frankly, during busy times. And if this is your drive-to region, you may be in search of an alternative. White Grass, with its absence of lifts and therefore liftlines, can at least deliver a different story for your weekend ski experience.

It's also just kind of an amazing place to behold. I often describe West Virginia as the forgotten state. It’s surrounded by Pennsylvania (sixth in population among the 50 U.S. states, with 13 million residents), Ohio (8th, 11.8 M), Kentucky (27th, 4.5 M), Virginia (13th, 8.7 M), and Maryland (20th, 6.2 M). And yet West Virginia ranks 40th among U.S. states in population, with just 1.8 million people. That fact – despite the state’s size (it’s twice as large as Maryland) and location at the crossroads of busy transcontinental corridors – is explained by the abrupt, fortress-like mountains that have made travel into and through the state slow and inconvenient for centuries. You can crisscross parts of West Virginia on interstate highways and the still-incomplete Corridor H, but much of the state’s natural awe lies down narrow, never-straight roads that punch through a raw and forgotten wilderness, dotted, every so often, with industrial wreckage and towns wherever the flats open up for an acre or 10. Other than the tailgating pickup trucks, it doesn’t feel anything like America. It doesn’t really feel like anything else at all. It’s just West Virginia, a place that’s impossible to imagine until you see it.

Podcast Notes

On Weiss Knob Ski Area (1959)

I can’t find any trailmaps for Weiss Knob, the legacy lift-served ski area that White Grass is built on top of. But Chip and his team have kept the main trail clear:

It rises dramatically over the base area:

Ski up and around, and you’ll find remnants of the ropetows:

West Virginia Snow Sports Museum hall-of-famers Bob and Anita Barton founded Weiss Knob in 1955. From the museum’s website:

While the Ski Club of Washington, DC was on a mission to find an elusive ski drift in West Virginia, Bob was on a parallel mission.  By 1955, Bob had installed a 1,200-foot rope tow next door to the Ski Club's Driftland.  The original Weiss Knob Ski Area was on what is now the "Meadows" at Canaan Valley Resort.  By 1958, Weiss Knob featured two rope tows and a T-bar lift.

In 1959, Bob moved Weiss Knob to the back of Bald Knob (out of the wind) on what is now White Grass Touring Center.

According to Chase, the Bartons went on to have some involvement in a “ski area up at Alpine Lake.” This was, according to DC Ski, a 450-footer with a handful of surface lifts. Here’s a circa 1980 trailmap:

The place is still in business, though they dismantled the downhill ski operation decades ago.

On the three side-by-side ski areas

White Grass sits directly between two lift-served ski areas: state-owned Canaan Valley and newly renovated Timberline. Here’s an overview of each:

Timberline

Base elevation: 3,268 feet

Summit elevation: 4,268 feet

Vertical drop: 1,000 feet

Skiable Acres: 100

Average annual snowfall: 150 inches

Trail count: 20 (2 double-black, 2 black, 6 intermediate, 10 beginner), plus two named glades and two terrain parks

Lift count: 4 (1 high-speed six-pack, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Timberline’s lift fleet)

Canaan Valley

Base elevation: 3,430 feet

Summit elevation: 4,280 feet

Vertical drop: 850 feet

Skiable Acres: 95

Average annual snowfall: 117 inches

Trail count: 47 (44% advanced/expert, 36% intermediate, 20% beginner)

Lift count: 4 (1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 1 carpet - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Canaan Valley’s lift fleet)

And here’s what they all look like side-by-side IRL:

On other podcast interviews

Chip referenced a couple of previous Storm Skiing Podcasts: SMI Snow Makers President Joe VanderKelen and Snowbasin GM Davy Ratchford. You can view the full archive (as well as scheduled podcasts) here.

On West Virginia statistics

Chase cited a few statistical rankings for West Virginia that I couldn’t quite verify:

* On West Virginia being the only U.S. state that is “100 percent mountains” – I couldn’t find affirmation of this exactly, though I certainly believe it’s more mountainous than the big Western ski states, most of which are more plains than mountains. Vermont can feel like nothing but mountains, with just a handful of north-south routes cut through the state. Maybe Hawaii? I don’t know. Some of these stats are harder to verify than I would have guessed.

* On West Virginia as the “second-most forested U.S. state behind Maine” – sources were a bit more consistent on this: every one confirmed Maine as the most-forested state (with nearly 90 percent of its land covered), then listed New Hampshire as second (~84 percent), and West Virginia as third (79 percent).

* On West Virginia being “the only state in the nation where the population is dropping” – U.S. Census Bureau data suggests that eight U.S. states lost residents last year: New York (-0.52), Louisiana (-0.31%), Hawaii (-0.3%), Illinois (-0.26%), West Virginia (-0.22%), California (-0.19%), Oregon (-0.14%), and Pennsylvania (-0.08%).

On the White Grass documentary

There are a bunch of videos on White Grass’ website. This is the most recent:

On other atmospheric ski areas

Chase mentions a number of ski areas that deliver the same sort of atmospheric charge as White Grass. I’ve featured a number of them on past podcasts, including Mad River Glen, Mount Bohemia, Palisades Tahoe, Snowbird, and Bolton Valley.

On the Soul of Alta movie

Alta also made Chase’s list, and he calls out the recent Soul of Alta movie as being particularly resonant of the mountain’s special vibe:

On resentment and New York State-owned ski areas

I refer briefly to the ongoing resentment between New York’s privately owned, tax-paying ski areas and the trio of heavily subsidized state-owned operations: Gore, Whiteface, and Belleayre. I’ve detailed that conflict numerous times. This interview with the owners of Plattekill, which sits right down the road from Belle, crystalizes the main conflict points.

On White Grass’ little shelters all over the trails

These are just so cool:

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Who

Steve Paccagnan, President and CEO of Panorama Mountain, British Columbia

Recorded on

March 27, 2024

About Panorama

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Panorama Mountain Village, Inc., a group of local investors

Located in: Panorama, British Columbia, Canada

Year founded: 1962

Pass affiliations:

* Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts

* Ikon Base Pass: 5 days, holiday blackouts

* Mountain Collective: 2 days, no blackouts

* Lake Louise Pass: view details here

Closest neighboring ski areas: Fairmont Hot Springs (:45), Kimberley (1:43), Kicking Horse (1:54) – travel times will vary considerably depending upon road conditions and time of year

Base elevation: 3,773 feet/1,150 meters

Summit elevation: 8,038 feet/2,450 meters

Vertical drop: 4,265 feet/1,300 meters

Skiable Acres: 2,975

Average annual snowfall: 204 inches/520 centimeters

Trail count: 135 (30% expert, 20% advanced, 35% intermediate, 15% beginner)

Lift count: 10 (1 eight-passenger pulse gondola, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 1 platter, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Panorama’s lift fleet)

Why I interviewed him

U.S. America is making a mistake. In skiing, as in so many other arenas, we prioritize status quo protectionism over measured, holistic development that would reorient our built environments around humans, rather than cars, shrinking our overall impact while easing our access to the mountains and permitting more people to enjoy them. Our cluttered and interminable western approach roads, our mountain-town housing shortages, our liftlines backed up to Kansas are all the result of deliberate generational decisions to prioritize cars over transit, open space over dense walkable communities, and blanket wilderness protection over metered development of new public ski areas in regions where the established businesses - and their surrounding infrastructure - are overwhelmed.

I write about these things a lot. This pisses some of you off. I’m OK with that. I’m not here to recycle the broken ideas that have made U.S. skiing into the mess that (in some fundamental ways, in certain regions) it is. I’m here to figure out how it can be better. The skiing itself, mind you, tends to be fabulous. It is everything that surrounds the mountains that can spoil the experience: the cost, the hassle, the sprawl. There are better ways to do this, to get people to the mountains and to house them there, both to live and to vacation. We know this because other countries already do a lot of the things that we ought to be doing. And the most culturally similar and geographically cozy one is so close we can touch it.

U.S. America and U.S. Americans are ceding North American skiing’s future to British Columbia. This is where virtually all of the continent’s major resort development has occurred over the past three decades. Why do you suppose so many skiers from Washington State spend so much time at Whistler? Yes, it’s the largest resort in North America, with knockout terrain and lots of snow. But Crystal and Stevens Pass and Baker all get plenty of snow and are large enough to give most skiers just about anything they need. What Whistler has that none of them do is an expansive pedestrian base village with an almost infinite number of ski-in, ski-out beds and places to eat, drink, and shop. A dense community in the mountains. That’s worth driving four or more hours north for, even if you have to deal with the pain-in-the-ass border slowdowns to get there.

This is not an accident, and Whistler is not an outlier. Over the past 30-plus years, the province of British Columbia has deliberately shaped its regulatory environment and developmental policies to encourage and lubricate ski resort evolution and growth. While all-new ski resort developments often stall, one small ski area after another has grown from community bump to major resort over the past several decades. Tiny Mount Mackenzie became titanic Revelstoke, which towers over even mighty Whistler. Backwater Whitetooth blew upward and outward into sprawling, ferocious Kicking Horse. Little Tod Mountain evolved into Sun Peaks, now the second-largest ski area in Canada. While the resort has retained its name over the decades, the transformation of Panorama has been just as thorough and dramatic.

Meanwhile, in America, we stagnate. Every proposed terrain expansion or transit alternative or housing development crashes headfirst into a shredder of bureaucratic holdups, lawsuits, and citizen campaigns. There are too many ways to stop things, and too many people whose narrow visions of what the world ought to be blockade the sort of wholesale rethinking of community architecture that would make the mountains more livable and accessible.

This has worked for a while. It’s still sort of working now. But each year, as the same two companies sell more and more passes to access a relatively stable number of U.S. ski areas, the traffic, liftlines, and cost of visiting these large resorts grows. Locals will find a way, pick their spots. But destination skiers with a menu of big-mountain options will eventually realize that I-70 is not a mandatory obstacle to maneuver on a good ski vacation. They can head north, instead, with the same ski pass they already have, and spend a week at Red or Fernie or Kimberley or Revelstoke or Sun Peaks or Kicking Horse.

Or Panorama. Three thousand acres, 4,265 vertical feet, no lines, and no hassle getting there other than summoning the patience to endure long drives down Canadian two-laners. As the U.S. blunders along, Canada kept moving. The story of Panorama shows us how.

What we talked about

A snowmaking blitz; what happened when Panorama joined the Ikon Pass; how Covid savaged the international skier game; Panorama in the ‘80s; Intrawest arrives; a summit lift at last; village-building; reviving Mt. Baldy, B.C.; Mont Ste. Marie and learning French; why Intrawest sold the ski area; modernizing the lift system; busy busy Copper; leaving for Kicking Horse; Resorts of the Canadian Rockies arrives; who owns Panorama; whether the resort will stay independent; potential lift replacements and terrain expansions; could we ever see a lift in Taynton Bowl?; explaining those big sections of the trailmap that are blocked off with purple borders; and whitebark pine conservation.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

It wouldn’t be fair to call Panorama a Powder Highway sleeper. The place seems to be doing fine as a business, with plenty of skier traffic to support continuous expansive infrastructure upgrades. But with lower average annual snowfall totals than Revy and Whitewater and Fernie and Red, Panorama does tend to get fewer shout-outs through the media and social media megaphones. It’s Northstar to Palisades Tahoe, Keystone to A-Basin, Park City to the Cottonwoods: the less-snowy, less-intense neighbor that collects families in wholesome Build-A-Bear fashion.

But Panorama is wrapping up its second full season on the Ikon Pass, and its second winter since Canada finally unlocked its Covid-era borders. What impact, if any, would those two developments have on Panorama’s famously uncrowded slopes? Even if Colorad-Bro would never deign to turn his Subaru north, would Kansas Karl or North Dakota Norman load the kids into the minivan for something farther but less annoying?

Not yet, it turns out. Or at least, not in great enough numbers to wreck the place. But there is another angle to the Panorama story that intrigues me. Like Copper Mountain, Mountain Creek, and Whistler, Panorama once belonged to Intrawest. Unlike Winter Park, Steamboat, Stratton, and Snowshoe, they did not remain part of the enterprise long enough to live second lives as part of Alterra Mountain Company. But what if they had? Our big-mountain coalitions have somewhat ossified over these past half-dozen years, so that we think of ski areas as Ikon mountains or Epic mountains or Indy mountains or independent mountains. But these rosters, like the composition of sports teams or, increasingly, leagues, can fluctuate wildly over time. I do wonder how Whistler would look under Alterra and Ikon, or what impact Mountain Creek-as-unlimited-Ikon mountain would have had on the megapass market in New York City? We don’t really know. But Panorama, as a onetime Intrawest mountain that rejoined the family through the backdoor with Ikon membership, does give us a sort-of in-between case, a kind of What If? episode of skiing.

Which would be a fun thought experiment under any circumstances. But how cool to hear about the whole evolution from a guy who saw it all happen first-hand over the course of four decades? Who saw it from all levels and from all angles, who knew the players and who helped push the boulder uphill himself? That’s increasingly rare with big mountains, in this era of executive rotations and promotions, to get access to a top leader in possession of institutional knowledge that he himself helped to draft. It was, I’m happy to say, as good as I’d hoped.

What I got wrong

I said that Panorama was “one of the closest B.C. ski areas to the United States.” This is not quite right. While the ski area is just 100 or so miles from the international border, more than a dozen ski areas sit closer to the U.S., including majors such as Kimberley, Fernie, Whitewater, and Red Mountain.

Why you should ski Panorama

Let’s acknowledge, first of all, that Panorama has a few things working against it: it’s more than twice as far from Calgary airport – most skiers’ likely port of entry – than Banff and its trio of excellent ski areas; it’s the least powdery major ski resort on the Powder Highway; and while the skiable acreage and vertical drop are impressive, skiers must ride three lifts and a Snowcat to lap much of the best terrain.

But even that extra drive still gets you to the bump in under four hours on good roads – hardly an endurance test. Sure, they get more snow in Utah, but have you ever been in Utah on a powder day? Enjoy that first untracked run, because unless you’re a local who knows exactly where to go, it will probably be your only one. And lapping multiple lifts is more of a psychological exercise than a practical one when there are few to no liftlines.

And dang the views when you get there:

There are plenty of large, under-trafficked ski resorts remaining in the United States. But they tend to be hundreds of miles past the middle of nowhere, with 60-year-old chairlifts and little or no snowmaking, and nowhere to sleep other than the back of your van. In BC, you can find the best of America’s Big Empties crossed with the modern lift fleets of the sprawling conglomerate-owned pinball machines. And oh by the way you get a hell of a discount off of already low-seeming (compared to the big-mountain U.S.) prices: an American dollar, as of April 16, was worth $1.38 Canadian.

Podcast Notes

On Intrawest

Panorama, as a former Intrawest-owned resort, could easily have been part of Alterra Mountain Company right now. Instead, it was one of several ski areas sold off in the years before the legacy company stuffed its remainders into the Anti-Vail:

On Mont Ste. Marie

Mont Ste. Marie is one of approximately 45,000 ski areas in Quebec, and the only one, coincidentally, that I’ve actually skied. Paccagnan happened to be GM when I skied there, in 2002:

On Kicking Horse

It’s incredible how many U.S. Americans remain unaware of Kicking Horse, which offers what is probably the most ferocious inbounds ski terrain in North America, 4,314 vertical feet of straight down:

Well, almost straight down. The bottom bit is fairly tame. That’s because Kicking Horse, like many B.C. ski areas, began as a community bump and exploded skyward with an assist from the province. Here’s what the ski area, then known as “Whitetooth,” looked like circa 1994:

This sort of transformation happens all the time in British Columbia, and is the result of a deliberate, forward-looking development philosophy that has mostly evaporated in the U.S. American West.

On the Powder Highway

Panorama lacks the notoriety of its Powder Highway size-peers, mostly because the terrain is overall a bit milder and the volume of natural snow a bit lower than many of the other ski areas. Here’s a basic Powder Highway map:

And a statistical breakdown:

On the Lake Louise Pass

I already covered this one in my podcast with Red Mountain CEO Howard Katkov a couple months back:

Katkov mentions the “Lake Louise Pass,” which Red participates in, along with Castle Mountain and Panorama. He’s referring to the Lake Louise Plus Card, which costs $134 Canadian up front. Skiers then get their first, fourth, and seventh days free, and 20 percent off lift tickets for each additional visit. While these sorts of discount cards have been diminished by Epkon domination, versions of them still provide good value across the continent. The Colorado Gems Card, Smugglers’ Notch’s Bash Badge, and ORDA’s frequent skier cards are all solid options for skiers looking to dodge the megapass circus.

On Panorama’s masterplan:

On Mt. Baldy, B.C.

Paccagnan helped revitalize a struggling Mt. Baldy, British Columbia, in the 1990s. Here was the ski area’s 1991 footprint:

And here’s what it looks like today – the ski area joined Indy Pass for the 2023-24 ski season:

On Panorama’s evolution

Panorama, like many B.C. ski areas, has evolved significantly over the past several decades. Here’s what the place looked like in 1990, not long after Paccagnan started and before Intrawest bought the place. A true summit lift was still theoretical, Taynton Bowl remained out of bounds, and the upper-mountain lifts were a mix of double chairs and T-bars:

By 1995, just two years after Intrawest had purchased the ski area, the company had installed a summit T-bar and opened huge tracts of advanced terrain off the top of the mountain:

The summit T ended up being a temporary solution. By 2005, Intrawest had thoroughly modernized the lift system, with a sequence of high-speed quads out of the base transporting skiers to the fixed-grip Summit Quad. Taynton Bowl became part of the marked and managed terrain:

On Whitebark Pine certification

A bit of background on Panorama’s certification as a “whitebark pine-friendly ski resort” – from East Kootenay News Online Weekly:

The Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada has certified Panorama Mountain Resort as a Whitebark Pine Friendly Ski Area, the first resort in Canada to receive this designation.

The certification recognizes the resort’s long and continued efforts to support the recovery of whitebark pine within its ski area boundary, a threatened tree species that plays a critical role in the biodiversity of mountain ecosystems. ,,,

Found across the subalpine of interior B.C., Alberta and parts of the U.S, this slow growing, five needle pine is an integral part of an ecosystem that many other species depend on for survival. The tree’s cones hold some of the most nutritious seeds in the mountains and sustain Grizzly bears and birds, including the Clark’s nutcracker which has a unique symbiotic relationship with the tree. The deep and widespread roots of the whitebark pine contribute to the health of watersheds by stabilizing alpine slopes and regulating snowpack run-off.

Over the past decade, whitebark pine numbers have fallen dramatically due in large part to a non-native fungal disease known as white pine blister rust that has been infecting and killing the trees at an alarming rate. Since 2012, the whitebark pine has been listed as endangered under the Government of Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA), and was recently added to the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service’s threatened species list.

Panorama Mountain Resort has collaborated with the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada to facilitate restoration projects including cone collection and tree plantings within the resort’s ski area.

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Who

Taylor Middleton, President and Chief Operating Officer of Big Sky Resort, Montana

Recorded on

April 4, 2022

About Big Sky

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Boyne Resorts

Base elevation: 6,800 feet at Madison Base

Summit elevation: 11,166 feet

Vertical drop: 4,350 feet

Skiable Acres: 5,850

Average annual snowfall: 400-plus inches

Trail count: 300 (18% expert, 35% advanced, 25% intermediate, 22% beginner)

Terrain parks: 6

Lift count: 39 (1 15-passenger tram, 1 high-speed eight-pack, 3 high-speed six-packs, 4 high-speed quads, 3 fixed-grip quads, 9 triples, 5 doubles, 3 platters, 2 ropetows, 8 carpet lifts) – View Lift Blog’s inventory of Big Sky’s lift fleet.

Uphill capacity: 41,000 skiers per hour

Why I interviewed him

Big Sky opened in 1973, as the American ski industry’s big-mountain land grab was fizzling. Seven years later, Taylor Middleton wandered into town, an Alabama boy wired for adventure. What he found an hour and five minutes south of Bozeman, population 21,645 at the time, was a backwater bump of the sort that still populate the Montana wilds: four or five lifts, 20 or so runs, Lone Peak hovering godlike over it all. A hell of a view and dumptrucks worth of snow and not a whole lot else.

Over the next 42 years, Big Sky would evolve into one of North America’s great ski areas. The Storm, as regular readers know, can be prone to hyperbole. My worldview is tilted toward ennoblement. Even the scraggliest lift-served snowsliding outposts have virtue in their histories, their idiosyncrasies, their improbable continued existence in a world that frustrates such ventures in 10 dozen ways.

That won’t be necessary here. Big Sky is titanic, sprawling, impossible. Alps-like in its scale and above-treeline drama. Mixed into the 300 named trails are two dozen-ish triple black diamonds. They mean it: to ski Big Couloir or North Summit Snowfield off the top of the tram requires an avalanche beacon, a partner, and a sign-out with Patrol.

But this radness is a small part of the experience. At almost 6,000 acres, Big Sky is nearly the same size as Boyne’s other nine resorts combined*. It is the third-largest ski area in the United States, and it took the combination of Park City with neighboring Park West (7,300 acres), and the connection of the Alpine Meadows and Olympic sides of Palisades Tahoe (6,000 acres) to out-big Big Sky (Big Sky is itself the combination of two ski areas, as it absorbed the old Moonlight Basin in 2013). Even when the base-to-base gondola finally cracks open over Tahoe next year, Palisades Tahoe’s terrain will remain fragmented. Endless, nearly boundless skiing of the sort that defines Big Sky is rare in America.

Which takes us back to Middleton. Big Sky could have been a lot of things in underdeveloped Montana. A rugged single-chair backwater like Turner. A teaser that stopped short of the looming snowfields, like Teton Pass. A fun but lost-in-time burner like Lost Trail. A regional hotshot like Bridger Bowl, with slow lifts, rad terrain, and lots of hiking. Instead it’s one of the most complete and up-to-date ski resorts in North America. How did that happen? Most American ski resorts are just old enough that the pioneering generation, the one that actualized a dream out of the wilderness, are long gone. Big Sky will be 50 years old next year, but for a lot of reasons – not the least among them a stable ownership group (Boyne has owned the ski area since 1976) – a lot of the people who helped mold the place into a monster are still around.

Middleton did not just watch all of this happen – he’s a big part of the reason it happened at all. I wanted to hear his story, and the story of the mountain, firsthand.

*Boyne’s nine other ski areas total 7,200 acres: Summit at Snoqualmie (1,981 acres), Sugarloaf (1,230), Brighton (1,050), Sunday River (870), Cypress (600), The Highlands at Harbor Springs (435), Boyne Mountain (415), Loon (370), and Shawnee Peak (249).

What we talked about

The 2021-22 ski season so far at Big Sky; how an Alabama boy ended up running one of the biggest ski resorts in America; yes there is a ski area in Alabama; dusty, cow-town Bozeman and Big Sky circa 1981; how the mountain grew from a backwater bump with five lifts and 20 runs to a sprawling behemoth that sits alongside the best resorts on the continent; the audacity of the Lone Peak Tram; installing a secret summit lift without the knowledge of the company’s CEO; like a glacier the tram base crawls across the valley; how and why the tram has no towers; how Big Sky’s reputation changed when the tram popped open in 1995; the wild terrain hanging off the summit of Lone Peak; “there’s not an easy way down”; how Patrol tamed the mountain to make it skiable; the power of skier self-selection; the inbounds runs that require Patrol check-in and avy equipment; why Big Sky limits Big Couloir to eight skiers an hour; why skiing got so lame in the ‘80s and how the Lone Peak tram helped nudge the industry out of its stupor; John Kircher and putting skiing first; the good old days of walking right onto the tram; the tram reservation system, how it’s worked out, and whether it’s here to stay; going deep on Big Sky’s forthcoming mega-gondola-tram network; the location of the new tram, its terminals, and its single tower; the fate of the current tram’s terminals; characteristics of the new tram cabins; why Big Sky removed its original two gondolas and why it’s bringing that sort of lift back; the fastest lift on the mountain; an overview of the new gondola; the advantages of operating on private land; Big Sky hates liftlines; when we’ll be able to ride these monster new lifts; where we may see new or upgraded lifts; how close we may be to a second out-of-base lift at Moonlight Basin, where it would run, what it might be called, and what sort of lift we could see; “there are little pods of terrain all over our mountain that we haven’t cleared yet”; how Big Sky came to absorb the formerly independent Moonlight Basin and how it changed the ski area as a whole; Big Sky’s 360-degree ski experience; an encomium to James Neuhaus; how the initial Ikon Pass backlash from 2018-19 has aged; why the resort will require Ikon reservations next season; why Big Sky remained on the Ikon Base Pass as Aspen, Jackson Hole, and others fled, and whether leaving that tier for the Base Plus is still a possibility; the power of Boyne’s network and how it’s helped prop the company up from within over the decades; “I’m getting really tired of pulling Sugarloaf stickers off my lifts”; Boyne’s tiered pass products and how they manage crowds while creating options for everyone; and Big Sky’s commitment to building employee housing.     

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

For most of its existence, Boyne Resorts has made a brand out of statement lifts, inventing, with its partners, the triple chair and the quad in the 1960s. Boyne brought America’s first six-pack in 1992 (at Boyne Mountain), and the country’s first eight-pack in 2018 (at Big Sky), trailing Europe on the latter but soundly stomping its American competitors. Still, compared to its peers, Big Sky doddered along with a rattletrap lift fleet for decades. By the time Big Sky installed its fourth high-speed lift in 2004*, Vail Mountain already had 15 of them (and had since at least 2001).

But over the past half-dozen years, Boyne has gotten aggressive. By next season, four of its 10 ski areas will have the monster eight-packs already in place at Big Sky and Loon – 80 percent of all such lifts on the continent. A major promised component of the company’s 2030 plans is beefed-up lift infrastructure at Sunday River, Sugarloaf, Loon, Boyne Mountain, and The Highlands at Harbor Springs. But the most dramatic changes are coming to Big Sky, Boyne’s flagship.

After rolling out four high-speed lifts in five years (the Powder Seeker six in 2016, Ramcharger 8 and the Shedhorn high-speed quad in 2018, and the Swift Current 6 in 2021), Big Sky recently unveiled a gargantuan base-to-summit lift network that will transform the mountain, (probably) eliminating Mountain Village liftlines and delivering skiers to the high alpine without the zigzagging adventure across the now-scattered lift network. Skiers will board a two-stage out-of-base gondola cresting near the base of Powder Seeker before transferring to a higher-capacity tram within the same building. This second machine will likely be a hauler in the spirit of the school-bus-shaped big-boys at Jackson and Snowbird (though it will, as Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher told me, have outward-facing seats), and will certainly haul more skiers than the current 15-passenger version, which is a triumph of engineering but one built for a different time. The whole complex will sit like this in relation to the current lift network:

Once this titanic project is finished, Big Sky may be closer to complete than its enormous lift count (39) suggests. Eight of the remaining lifts are carpets. Ten more are designated “real-estate lifts” and are of no consequence to the on-the-mountain ski experience. As the sparkling new out-of-base fleet materialized, once-promised upgrades to Southern Comfort, Iron Horse, and Lone Moose disappeared from the 2025 plan. But none of these feel particularly consequential. Southern Comfort is a detachable quad, not even 20 years old. Iron Horse is a fixed-grip quad, but it was installed in 1994 and probably has plenty of useful life remaining. Lone Moose, a Yan triple that arrived used from Keystone in 1999, suggests the most pressing need for an upgrade, but it’s tucked at the far end of the resort and serves just a handful of runs – there are better places to spend money.

The most obvious place is the Madison Base, above which 2,000 acres of former Moonlight Basin terrain rises toward Lone Peak. Aside from a beginner quad, the Six Shooter six-pack serves this entire area. The possibility of another lift here is tantalizing, and we discuss this in depth on the podcast. Also, terrain expansion could be coming, here and elsewhere around the ski area. “There are little pods of terrain all over the mountain that we haven’t developed yet,” Middleton told me.  

There is a logic to this improvisational, discuss-one-thing-and-do-another swagger that Big Sky has: the place sits entirely on private property. This is a rare situation for a large Western U.S. resort, most of which sit on Forest Service land and operate under long-term leases. That means that the master plans, the public comment periods, the endless back-and-forth with the Forest Service, the perpetual scaling back of grand plans – none of that is Big Sky’s problem. As Boyne tips over its Money Bin and empties it into its Montana crown jewel, we are witnessing an interesting real-time experiment in private willfulness versus the public-private model upon which so much of our big-resort infrastructure rests. Don’t tell Free Market Bro, but the more Boyne proves it can act as a responsible mountain steward without turning the place into a set piece from the latter half of The Lorax, the more I like Big Sky’s model.  

*When the Six Shooter high-speed six-pack came online in 2003, Moonlight Basin was still a separate resort.

Questions I wish I’d asked

However. I don’t really understand if Boyne is truly in a yeah-let’s-just-build-like-nine-hot tubs-in-a-bear-den free-for-all situation or not. Just because the resort is not subject to Forest Service approvals (which, frankly, have allowed far more ski resort development than they have shut down over the past six decades), does not mean it can just do whatever the hell it wants all the time. Probably. I don’t know because I didn’t ask, and I probably should have. I will say that Boyne has emphasized its role as an environmental steward more and more over the past decade, joining Powdr, Vail, and Alterra last year in a “shared commitment around sustainability and advocacy.”

I also would have liked to have gotten more into these “terrain pods all over the mountain.” Which is funny because Big Sky is already like the size of Delaware and I’m all worried about it expanding. But really I started this podcast because I can’t stop thinking about this kind of thing. It’s a form of experiential avarice that I have no other outlet for.

What I got wrong

When I interviewed Jackson Hole President Mary Kate Buckley in November, I accidentally referred to her as the resort’s “CEO.” I then made a correction in the article that accompanied that podcast. And then during this interview I again referred to Buckley as Jackson Hole’s “CEO.” So I’m again printing a correction because apparently I’m a nitwit. I’m sorry Mary Kate you’re doing a great job and you don’t deserve this.

Also, at one point in the interview when we were discussing trailmaps, I referred to “Lone Peak” as “Big Sky.”

Why you should ski Big Sky

Because there are a couple dozen you just have to hit at some point, right? If you’re in North America, it’s these ones. Just about everybody reading this has probably skied some of them, and most of us (outside of Peter Landsman from Lift Blog), have probably not skied all of them. It’s a big list, it’s a big continent, and time and money are not eternal things.

So we all have our calculus on where we go and when. Like a lot of Midwestern- or Eastern-based skiers, my Western travels have been heavily skewed toward whatever is in the orbit of Denver and Salt Lake airports. And why not? The I-70 and Wasatch resorts are enormous, interesting, snowy, and convenient. And, until the advent of the triple-digit walk-up day ticket, affordable (they still are, so long as you plan your ski season like a cicada, securing you earthly access 17 years in advance).

For a long time, Big Sky was the opposite of convenient. Bozeman airport was small, expensive, and hard to reach. The mountain itself was cold and far, with a mostly slow lift fleet. As the mainline Colorado and Utah destinations rapidly modernized in the 80s and 90s, Big Sky took its time.  

That time has come. Bozeman airport now welcomes direct flights from 30 markets. Flights are quite affordable. Tens of millions of dollars’ worth of sparkling new lifts strafe Big Sky’s 300 runs. The resort is a headliner on the Ikon Pass. Getting to and skiing Big Sky has never been easier.

And oh yeah the skiing. See trailmap, above. If I need to convince you that Big Sky is worth your time, then what are we even doing here?

More Big Sky

* Middleton and I discuss an excellent history of the Lone Peak Tram written by respected ski journalist Marc Peruzzi. This video tells the story very well, and includes footage of a young Taylor Middleton:

* The news section of Big Sky’s website is, in general, excellent, with stories written by freelance journalists who appear to have quite a bit of editorial leeway. This is rarer than you would imagine.

* We also discussed this letter that Middleton drafted to the Big Sky community in response to Ikon Pass backlash during the 2018-19 season. A response to that.

* Oh, and yes, there is a ski area in Alabama, as Middleton and I discussed on the podcast. No, it’s not indoors. It hasn’t opened in a couple years, mostly becaue of Covid-related things, but you can follow their operations on their Facebook page. Frankly it kind of looks like any little bump outside of Milwaukee or Grand Rapids:

A pictorial history of Big Sky’s development

1975

This is the earliest Big Sky map I could find – four lifts and 18 runs, with parking right at the base.

1978

A few years later, the far side of Andesite was online:

1995

Nearly two decades later, the resort is still relatively contained, but Challenger, Iron Horse, and Southern Comfort add distinct expert, intermediate, and beginner pods on opposite sides of the ski area. Two gondolas now run out of the Mountain Village base in this 1994-95 trailmap:

1997

The tram, installed in summer 1995, changed everything, blowing the resort up to its summit. That same year, Big Sky also ran the Shedhorn double up the backside of the peak:

In 2013, the mountain acquired adjacent Moonlight Basin, giving us the foundation of today’s Big Sky. Boyne CEO Stephen Kircher has told me on numerous occasions that the ski area is committed to keeping its paper trailmaps in perpetuity. Snag one as a memento when you’re there – this place is changing fast, and they won’t be up-to-date for long.

The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 36/100 in 2022. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane). You can also email skiing@substack.com.

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Who

Nick Mir, co-owner and general manager of Snow Ridge, New York

Recorded on

March 29, 2022

About Snow Ridge

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Money quote:

If you want western powder, the best place to find it in the east is the Tug Hill Plateau in New York, and upland region east of Lake Ontario. They should coin the phrase “Greatest Snow in the East.” They get tons of lake effect and most of this snow is high quality. Unfortunately, they lack an essential ingredient for powder skiing: mountains! There is, however, one ski area on the Tug Hill Plateau’s steeper eastern face, Snow Ridge, which offers up about [500] vertical feet of skiing. As a kid growing up in upstate NY, my first true deep-powder experiences were at Snow Ridge.

- From a 2015 Washington Post interview with Jim Steenburgh, “professor of atmospheric science at the University of Utah, an expert on mountain weather and climate, and a die-hard skier,” and author of Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth: Weather, Climate Change, and Finding Deep Powder in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains and around the World.

Owned by: The mother-son team of Cyndy Sisto and Nick Mir

Base elevation: 1,350 feet

Summit elevation: 1,850 feet

Vertical drop: 500 feet

Average annual snowfall: 230 inches

Trail count: 31 (14% expert, 48% advanced, 27% intermediate, 11% beginner)

Lift count: 5 (3 doubles, 1 T-bar, 1 carpet) - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Snow Ridge’s lift fleet

Why I interviewed him

The perception is hard-wired and widespread, intractable and exasperating: the East is ice. Inclines paved like a boat launch. Volcanic. Like skiing on the surface of the moon. It is meant as a jab from the high-altitude West, but the East believes it too. The Born from Ice crowds tut-tuts about the internet, “if you can ski the East, you can ski anywhere,” casting the whole of it as a kind of marine-camp proving ground, the bent-rimmed backyard hoop to the glorious Rockies, skiing’s NBA.

This whole story is sort of true and it’s sort of not. Lacking the West’s high alpine, New England and New York are vulnerable to season-long freeze-thaw cycles, to bands of rain and ice storms and sleet and hail. Mix in high skier density, narrow trails, and the impossible predominance of windshield-wiper turns, and you get trails skied off by 11 on weekends, hardboiled moguls, concrete layers set like booby traps at the well of spring slush turns. It can be an amazing mess.

But some regions are tidier than others. The Northeast is like Manhattan, a city of neighborhoods, each one distinct. As with the West, altitude matters, as does aspect and shape of the mountain. And water, or proximity to it. There are two places in the Northeast where some combination of these elements combines to produce outsized snowfall: the Green Mountain Spine in Northern Vermont (especially Sugarbush north to Jay Peak), and the Tug Hill Plateau, seated just east of Lake Ontario in Upstate New York. Snow Ridge hangs off the eastern edge of this geologic feature, in the bullseye of the lake effect snowtrain. Observe:

The result is something special, a microclimate more typical of the world’s high-mountain redoubts. “We could get two feet of snow here, and literally 15 minutes down the road they could have gotten a dusting,” Mir told me in the interview.

Snow Ridge is not the only New York ski area floating in this nirvana zone. McCauley – 633 vertical feet of snow-choked boulder fields and glades parked 32 miles to the east – and 300-foot Dry Hill are also hooked up to nature’s firehose. Woods Valley catches a lot of it as well. It’s a fun little foursome, undersized and overserved, and, for the wily and adventurous among us, fortunately overlooked.

What we talked about

Thoughts on pushing Snow Ridge’s closing date into April if conditions ever allow; I admit I don’t really understand what a rail jam is - sue me; the complexity and expense of building a good terrain park; growing up at Toggenburg; ski racing and its frustrations; fleeing West to ski-bum Colorado and Oregon and the eventual pull of home; how a long-time ski family came to own their own ski area; “we actually did this” – what it felt like to get the keys to the kingdom; the condition of Snow Ridge when Mir arrived in 2015; the intense commitment and effort necessary to run a family ski area; resilience in the maw of a break-even business; how long it took to turn a profit; how much a guy who owns a ski area actually get to ski; why Snow Ridge removed and did not replace the Snowy Meadows double; how much it costs to run a chairlift; possible future consolidation of Ridge Runner and North Chair; the natural-snow, mostly ungroomed hideaway of the Snow Pocket terrain and T-bar; the anomaly of fresh-powder laps at a modern lift-served U.S. ski resort and how Snow Ridge delivers; whether Snow Pocket could ever get a chairlift; whether we could ever see a lift return to South Slope; the eventual fate of the retired top T-bar terminal; where and why Snow Ridge expanded its trail network for the 2021-22 ski season; why Snow Ridge moved the progression park from the carpet area to the top of the mountain; where we can expect to see additional new trails next season; potential future expansion skier’s right off the top of the Pocket T-bar and skier’s left off the top of North; the gnarly existing terrain cut through North; Snow Ridge’s powder bullseye on the edge of the Tug Hill Plateau; the quality of Lake Ontario lake effect snow; plans to amp up the snowmaking system; grooming and the art of crafting an interesting mountain; why Snow Ridge joined the Indy Pass; the mountain’s budget season pass; new reciprocal partners for 2022-23; reaction to Toggenburg closing; whether Mir would have bought the ski area had he had the chance; competing against enormous state-owned ski areas as a family-owned small business; and New York’s rebate program for high-efficiency snowguns.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

It’s too early to say which forces will capsize the next wave of yet-to-be lost ski areas. After nominal or nonexistent snowmaking drove hundreds of mountains to failure in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, the number of lift-served bumps has stayed relatively stable since around 2005, hovering between a high of 485 for the 2006-07 season to a pandemic-induced low of 462 last year (a handful of ski areas voluntarily suspended operations to pass on the complications of socially distant skiing).

With the exception of a few dozen snow-choked Western mountains and some ropetow bumps that survive by the sky, pretty much all of today’s survivors built their way into resilience one mile of pipe and snowgun at a time. That, more than anything, stabilized the ski landscape, giving us the rough U.S. ski area footprint we know today.

But it won’t be enough forever. As well-capitalized standouts such as Holiday Valley, Windham, and state-owned Gore have modernized their lift fleets and snowmaking systems, many of New York’s family-owned ski areas have languished. Dozens of chairlifts that predate the moon landing still spin across the state*. Antique snowguns - electricity hogs that blow marginal snow and under very specific conditions - are still in widespread use. No one’s, like, pulling a snowcat with oxen or anything, but they are really rubberbanding this thing together in many cases.

Fortunately, there is a hack. All you need is an individual with the energy of a nuclear reactor and the patience of tectonic plates. The person has to love owning a ski area more than they love skiing – because they’ll hardly ever get to ski – and be willing to compete against ski areas 10 times their size that their own tax dollars subsidize. And they have to believe in their own vision more than the slaughterhouse of weather gutting their life’s work outside all winter long.

This is the reality at Snow Ridge. The lift fleet was installed before the breakup of Pangea. When Mir and his mother arrived in 2015, pretty much everything was gassed out: those lifts, the snowmaking, the buildings, the groomer. The place was a museum. And not in the way that Mad River Glen is a museum, intentionally funky and camouflaging newness beneath a vintage sheen. Snow Ridge was falling apart.

Seven years later, those lifts are still there, but they’ve been overhauled and fixed up. Much of the snowmaking plant is new. Two modern groomers buff the slopes. The bar is beautiful, and Mir and Sisto and the rest of their family are rehabbing the rest of the buildings room by room – when I stopped by in January, the ski area had re-opened a remodeled bathroom that day.

Mir is young, outspoken, determined, smart. And he saved Snow Ridge. Not every back-of-the-woods bump is going to survive the great modernization, with its rush to ecommerce and D-line detachables and snowguns activated from an app. But many will, and those that do are going to have leaders like him to guide them through it.

*Don’t do it, Identifies-Solutions-In-Need-Of-A-Problem-Bro. New York is one of the most highly regulated states in the country, and these lifts are inspected by a state agency annually. Ski Areas of New York also runs one of the most well-regarded lift-safety programs in the country, and serious chairlift accidents are remarkably rare here, in spite of more than 4 million annual skier visits.

Why you should ski Snow Ridge

New York has a lot of ski areas. It does not have a lot of wild ski areas, with the sort of yeah-maybe-this-was-a-terrible-idea runs that slug you like a car crash. Snow Ridge is an exception, with a little slice of madness christened North Ridge that will smash your face in without asking permission. Think Paradise at Mad River Glen, but without the vert or the waterfall, a half-dozen tangled lines spiraling in and around a matrix of drainages. Amazing Grace is the truly feral one, a Pinocchio-down-the-whale’s-throat plunge into the bristling abyss.

Snow Ridge only gives you 500 vertical feet, but it’s a big 500. It’s all fall-line, for starters, like skiing the edge of a pyramid. The terrain tames out in the evacuation from North Ridge, but it’s still straight down, expansive, and empty. On MLK Day last year I lapped the Snow Pocket T-bar nine times as foot-deep powder stood in untouched fields visible from the lift line. I feasted. In and out of the glades, along the tree-lined plunge of Kuersteiner off the top of South, down the narrow swordfight of the unmarked abandoned South T-bar line. All day long like this, 34 runs and no liftlines, lapping that New York natural to exhaustion.

Snow Ridge is one of six Indy Pass partners scattered across New York. It floats in a Bermuda Triangle between Greek Peak to the south, Titus to the north, and Catamount to the east. While, as Mir told me in our conversation, it’s getting busier, Snow Ridge is still a hideaway, the back-pocket secret you can save for a holiday powder day, when the masses throttle the Northeast giants with the kind of meme-spawning liftlines their big-time marketing and megapass affiliations bring. Or watch the weather and sneak up when everyone else gets skunked and that little circle of pink hovers near the top of America.

More Snow Ridge

* New York Ski Blog’s interview with Mir last year.

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Who

Nadia Guerriero, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Beaver Creek, Colorado

Recorded on

March 25, 2022

About Beaver Creek

Click here for a mountain stats overview

* Owned by: Vail Resorts

* Base elevation: 7,400 feet at Arrowhead Village; 8,100 feet at Beaver Creek Village

* Summit elevation: 11,440 feet

* Vertical drop: 3,340 feet (continuous)

* Skiable acres: 2,082

* Average annual snowfall: 325 inches

* Trail count: 150 (39% advanced, 42% intermediate, 19% beginner)

* Lift count: 24 (12 high-speed quads, 1 chondola, 2 gondolas, 1 triple, 1 double, 7 conveyors - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Beaver Creek’s lift fleet)

* Uphill capacity: 48,264 skiers per hour

Why I interviewed her

America may or may not have suspected, when Beaver Creek flipped the power on in 1980 with three double chairs and three triples, that we were nearing the end of big-time ski resort construction in the United States. In the previous decade, Keystone (1970), Snowbird (1971), Copper Mountain (1972), Kirkwood (1972), Northstar (1972), Powder Mountain (1972), Telluride (1972), and Big Sky (1973) had all come online. Breckenridge (1961), Crested Butte (1962), Vail (1962), Park City (1963), Schweitzer (1963), Steamboat (1963), Crystal Mountain Washington (1964), Mt. Rose (1964), Purgatory (1965), Diamond Peak (1966), Jackson Hole (1966), Mission Ridge (1966), Snowmass (1967), Sierra-at-Tahoe (1968), and Grand Targhee (1969) had materialized out of the wilderness the decade before. This was a country that thought big and acted big, that crafted the tangible out of the improbable: a high-end ski resort, buffed smooth as an interstate and hemmed in by the faux villages of aspirational America, rising 3,000 feet out of the Colorado wilderness. The resort would be Vail’s answer to Aspen, high-end and straight down, without the drive to the end of the world.

But after Deer Valley cranked to life the following year, big-mountain ski area development mostly broke down in the United States. The mammoth Yellowstone Club – all private, exclusively for individuals who consider automobiles to be single-use disposables – didn’t open until 1997. Tamarack, Idaho, was the next entrant, in 2004. The private Wasatch Peaks should open soon, and Mayflower may follow. But for the most part, this is a nation that, for better or worse, has decided to make do with the ski resorts it has.

So what? Well, I lay this history out to make a simple point: Beaver Creek is about the best illustration we have of how and where we would build a ski resort if we still built ski resorts, with all our modern technology and understanding. The fall lines are incredible. The lift network sprawls and hums. The little walkable villages excise vehicles at exactly the right points. The place is just magnificent.

The aversion to large-scale mountain construction did not, fortunately, temper Beaver Creek’s ambition. That simple half-dozen lifts multiplied to the west until the network overran and absorbed the formerly independent Arrowhead ski area. In 1991, Beaver Creek ran a high-speed quad up Grouse Mountain, one of the best pure black-diamond pods in Colorado. This year, the ski area added McCoy Park, a terrific high-altitude beginner pod, which complements the green-circle paradise off the Red Buffalo Express, already some of the most expansive top-of-the-world beginner terrain in America.

Not that Beaver Creek got everything it wanted. A long-imagined 3.8-mile gondola connection to Vail, with a waystation at the long-abandoned Meadow Mountain ski area in Minturn, has been stalled for years. A lift up from Eagle-Vail would also be nice (and would eliminate a lot of traffic). But this isn’t the Alps, and the notion of lifts-as-transit is a tough sell to U.S. Americans, even in a valley already served by 55 of them (Vail Mountain has 31 lifts on top of Beaver Creek’s 24). They’d rather just drive around in the snow.

Whatever. It’s a pretty fine complex just the way it is. And it’s one with a big, bold, ever-changing present. Beaver Creek is, along with Whistler and Vail Mountain, one of Vail Resorts’ three flagships, a standard-setter and an aspirational end-point for all those Epic Pass buyers around Milwaukee and Minneapolis and Detroit and Cleveland. This one has been on my list since the day I launched The Storm, and I was happy to finally lock it down.

What we talked about

Why Beaver Creek is closing a bit later than usual this season; Guerriero’s early career as an agent for snowsports athletes, including Picabo Street and Johnny Moseley; night skiing at Eldora; working at pre-Vail Northstar; reactions to Vail buying Northstar; taking the lead at Beaver Creek; the differences between running a ski resort in Colorado versus Tahoe; what it means to get 600-plus inches of snow in a season; what elevates Beaver Creek to alpha status along with Vail Mountain and Whistler among Vail’s 40 resorts; going deep on the evolution and opening of McCoy Park, Beaver Creek’s top-of-the-mountain gladed beginner oasis; why the mountain converted McCoy to downhill terrain when it already had the excellent Red Buffalo pod on the summit of Beaver Creek Mountain; once again, I go on and on about green-circle glades; thoughts on the mountain’s lift fleet and where we could see upgrades next; why Beaver Creek doesn’t tend to see monster liftlines and the weird un-business of the ski area in general; the status of the long-discussed Vail Mountain-to-Beaver Creek gondola; thoughts on the rolling disaster that is Colorado’s Interstate 70; how Arrowhead, once an independent ski area, became part of Beaver Creek; the surprising sprawl and variety of Beaver Creek; potential future terrain expansions; the mountain’s high-end and rapidly evolving on-mountain food scene; cookies!; watching the evolution of the Epic Pass from the inside; whether Vail would ever build another ski area from scratch; Vail’s deliberate efforts to create leadership opportunities for women within its network; the mountain-town housing crisis; thoughts on Vail’s massive employee and housing investment; and Guerriero’s efforts to address the mountain-town mental health crisis.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Two words: McCoy Park. I recall skiing past this oddly wide-open and empty bowl, perched atop the mountain like some snowy pit-mine, years ago and wondering what was going on in there. The trailmap explained. For a long time, it was a Nordic and snowshoeing center. But this year, Beaver Creek finally finished a long-planned project to drop a new beginner center into the bowl. Two lifts and a clutch of blues and greens, some ungroomed, a contained adventure center for the graduated-from-the-carpet set that’s craving top-of-the-mountain adventure without the whooshing crowds or oops-I-just-skied-into-a-mogul-field regrets. Reviews have been solid.

There’s one more thing: Vail has quietly built a very deep roster of women mountain leaders. Four of the company’s five Colorado resorts, and eight of its 40*, are led by women. Women hold approximately 45 percent of Vail’s corporate leadership roles, and half of its 10 board of directors members are women. Also, according to a Vail spokeswoman, CEO Kirsten Lynch is the only female CEO among travel and leisure companies listed on the 2021 Fortune 100 list.

These gender-diversity efforts are, Vail Resorts’ Director of Corporate Communications Jamie Alvarez told me, “intentional and explicit. The ski industry has traditionally been male-dominated, particularly in senior leadership roles. As a company, Vail Resorts has prioritized creating an environment that encourages and enables growth opportunities for women at all levels of the company. This isn’t just in corporate, but also throughout our operations. We are proud of our industry-leading accomplishments and are committed to continuing to accelerate women at our company and in our industry.”

They should be.

*The eight current women heads of Vail Resorts are: Jody Churich at Breckenridge, Nadia Guerriero at Beaver Creek, Beth Howard at Vail, Tara Schoedinger at Crested Butte, Dierdra Walsh at Northstar, Belinda Trembath at Perisher, Sue Donnelly at Crotched, and Robin Kisiel at Whitetail. Vail recently promoted Mount Snow GM Tracy Bartels to VP of mountain planning, projects, and maintenance, overseeing maintenance and mountain-planning efforts across the portfolio.

Questions I wish I’d asked

I’ve always found it interesting that Alterra chose to leave Deer Valley off the unlimited tier of the Ikon Pass, while Vail granted unlimited Beaver Creek access on its comparatively cheap Epic Pass (Deer Valley’s season pass is $2,675). Both ski areas have similar philosophies around grooming, on-mountain food, and delivering a high-end experience. My guess is that this model works at Beaver Creek because it’s just a little bit harder to get to, while you can fall off your patio in Salt Lake City and end up at the top of Deer Valley’s Empire Express. Since Alterra just limited Deer Valley access even more, yanking it off the Ikon Base Pass, I’m guessing they’re fairly committed to that model, but it’s still an interesting contrast that I’d like to explore more at some point.

What I got wrong

Nadia and I discussed one of the more tedious meta-critiques of Vail, which is that the company makes all its resorts the same. I don’t agree with this narrative, but the example I gave on the podcast was, to be honest, pretty lame, as I couched my counterpoint in a discussion of how Beaver Creek and Northstar differ operations-wise. Which, of course. No one is comparing Kirkwood to Mad River, Ohio from a snowfall and terrain point of view. What I should have done instead is to ask Guerriero what makes each resort culturally distinct. That’s on me.

I also made the assertion that skiers could drop into McCoy Park from the top of the Bachelor Gulch lift, which is untrue. The three lifts with McCoy access (aside from the two lifts within the bowl intself) are Strawberry Express, Larkspur Express, and Upper Beaver Creek Express. I made a bad assumption based on the trailmap.

Why you should ski Beaver Creek

Living in New York, I find myself in a lot of casual conversation with skiers pointed west for a week at Vail. I don’t know why (actually I do know why), but New Yorkers are drawn to the place like cows to grass. Like hipsters to $9 coffee drinks. Like U.S. Americans to 18-wheel-drive pickups. Like… well, they really like Vail, OK? And every time someone tells me about their long-planned trip to Vail, I ask them how many days they plan on spending at Beaver Creek, and (just about) every time, their answer is the same:

Zero.

This, to me, is flabbergasting. A Storm reader, Chris Stebbins, articulated this phenomenon in an email to me recently:

“Beaver Creek is the single biggest mystery in skidom in my humble opinion. On Epic. On I-70.  Just 12 minutes past Vail. 15 high-speed lifts strung across six pods, suiting every ability. A huge bed base, with a mountain ‘village.’ And I’m making 15-minute laps on Centennial. On a perfect blue-bird day. After 16 inches of snow. On a Saturday. During Presidents’ Week.”

I don’t get it either, Chris. But there it is. I’ve been having similar experiences at Beaver Creek for almost 20 years. Enormous powder days, lapping Birds of Prey and Grouse Mountain, no liftlines all day. Maybe here and there on Centennial. Once or twice on Larkspur or Rose Bowl. The entirety of the Arrowhead and Bachelor Gulch side deserted, always, like some leftover idyll intact and functional after an apocalyptic incineration of mankind. Once, on Redtail, or maybe it was Harrier, I crested the drop-off at mid-day to catch the growling hulks of half a dozen Snowcats drifting out of my siteline. Ahead of me a corduroy carpet, woven and royal, the union of all that is best in nature and best in technology. And no one to fight for it. I stood there perched over the Rockies just staring. Like I’m in a museum and contemplating something improbably manmade and ancient. Glorious. And 18 years later I still think about those turns, the large arcing sort born of absolute confidence in the moment, those Rossi hourglass twin-tips bought at an Ann Arbor ski shop and buried, for an ecstatic instant, in the test-lab best-case-scenario of their design.

Look, I love Vail Mountain as much as anyone. It’s titanic and frenetic and pitch-perfect for hero turns on one of the most unintimidating big mountains in North America. I could spend the rest of my life skiing there and only there and be like, “OK well if it has to be one place I’m just relieved it’s not Ski Ward.” But the dismissive attitude toward 2,082-acre Beaver Creek, with its 3,340-foot vertical drop and zippidy-doo lift fleet and endless sprawling trail network, is amazing. The terrain, especially on Grouse, is steep and fall-line beautiful. My last trip to Beaver Creek – a midwinter pow-day Sunday where I never so much as shared a chair with another skier – was a dozen runs off Grouse, eight of those in the tangled wilds of Royal Elk Glades.

All of which is a long way of suggesting that you work at least one Beaver Creek day into your next Vail run. It may be right down the road from Vail and an Epic Pass headliner, but Beaver Creek feels like it’s on another planet, or at least lodged within another decade.

Oh yeah, and the cookies. Just trust me on this one. Go there.

A pictorial history of Beaver Creek’s development

Beaver Creek opened with six chairlifts, all on the main mountain, in 1980. By the next season, a triple ran up Strawberry Park. McCoy Park is a named section of the ski area more than four decades before it would enter the downhill system:

The Larkspur triple came online in 1983. Two years later, McCoy Park is defined on the trailmap as a Nordic center:

In 1991, Grouse Mountain opened:

In 1997, Beaver Creek as we know it today came together, with lift connections from Rose Bowl all the way to Arrowhead, which was once an independent ski area. Beaver Creek purchased the small mountain in 1993 and eventually connected it to the rest of the resort via the Bachelor Gulch terrain expansion. Here’s what the mountain looked like in 1998:

The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 31/100 in 2022. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer. You can also email skiing@substack.com.

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Who

Travis Seeholzer, Third-Generation Owner and Mountain Operations Manager of Beaver Mountain, Utah

Recorded on

March 21, 2022

About Beaver Mountain

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: The Seeholzer Family (since 1939!)

Base elevation: 7,200 feet

Summit elevation: 8,860 feet

Vertical drop: 1,660 feet

Skiable acres: 828

Average annual snowfall: 400-plus inches

Trail count: 48 (25% advanced, 40% intermediate, 35% beginner)

Lift count: 6 (3 triples, 1 double, 2 conveyors - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Beaver Mountain’s lift fleet

Why I interviewed him

When our son turned 1 year old, my wife and I hosted a small baby-naming ceremony for our families. To prepare for this event, I tapped into my aunt’s extensive ancestry.com research. What I found both surprised me and explained everything: tracing my paternal lineage back for centuries, no one had died in the place where they were born since George Winchester, born in Hemel Hempstead, Herfordshire, England in 1555. George begot Daniell, and his son Daniell edged closer to London until Willoughby jumped the Atlantic and landed in South Carolina sometime in the early 1700s. The pattern continued through William, Francis, Jonathan, Wiley, Edward, Herman, Ken, and then me. Four hundred years of getting the hell out of wherever you were from. I’m sure my kids will leave New York City the second they can program their robocars to fly them to Moonbase Six – my 13-year-old daughter already hates the subway and just wants to live somewhere “where I can look outside and see grass.”

Perhaps because of this generational wanderlust, I’ve always been interested in the multi-generational clans who unite around place and purpose. I was in awe of kids in my grade school whose grandparents lived across the street from them, amazed by my neighbor who had attended my high school in the ancient 1960s, astonished to realize that local landmarks or roads were named after families whose children I knew well.

Many – probably most – ski areas started as family concerns. Gramps and the boys went up-mountain with some chainsaws and a tractor, and the next thing you knew you had a ski area. Over the generations, most of these went bust, and most of the rest grew and grew until the grandkids said to Big Ski Company X, “Wait, you’ll give me how much money to just go sit on my ass for the rest of my life?”

That never happened at Beaver Mountain. Harry Seeholzer hacked the joint out of the wilderness in 1939, and the Seeholzers are still running it 83 years later. That alone makes this a good story. A family could be running a petting zoo for eight decades and I’d want to host them on the podcast to talk about it. But add in 400 inches of Utah pow, a tie-in with the comet-across-the-night-sky Indy Pass, and a bursting-at-the-seams ski area acting as Exhibit A for why Vail and the Epic Pass may be the best thing to ever happen to independent skiing, and this is a conversation I couldn’t book fast enough.

What we talked about

Utah’s not-so-snowy (for Utah) season so far; Remembrances of Travis’ grandpa, Harry Seeholzer, who was born in 1902 and founded Beaver Mountain in 1939; a bygone America where hardscrabble ancestors lived off the land; the big change in Logan Canyon management that allowed Beaver to open for skiing; the ski area’s different locations over time; what inspired Seeholzer’s grandfather to found a ski area long before the sport had entered the American mainstream; what saved Beaver Mountain in the 1960s; how a group of good-old boys hand-built a parking lot, baselodge, and chairlift in the course of a single summer; the transformational installation of the Harry’s Dream chairlift; the vagaries of running a ski area with no snowmaking; growing up and raising your family at a ski area; the old days of driving through Utah snowstorms that would close canyons today; how rapidly and profoundly Utah skiing has changed in recent years; how the megapass scene has transformed Beaver; who really runs Beaver Mountain; the story behind the woman who will hand you your Beaver Mountain lift ticket; the pride and pressure of maintaining an 83-year-old family business; whether the Seeholzer family is destined to continue managing the ski area; “there’s definitely no motivation to sell the ski area”; deciding what’s next as the megapass refugees roll in off the horizon; Beaver’s massive forthcoming base area expansion; tech’s place in the future of small ski areas; why Beaver Mountain still has RFID season passes but metal sticky-wickets for day passes; the downside of technology; the kids just don’t get the wicket tickets; reaction to nearby Cherry Peak, one of the newest ski areas in the country, opening in 2015; where we could see expansion and what it would take to make it happen; how Beaver Mountain shifted from federal to state land; where Beaver may drop a new chairlift and which chairs are priority for upgrades; the story behind the 20-year-old Marge’s terrain expansion and how that transformed Beaver Mountain; musings on being the new home of Keystone’s Ruby lift and Alta’s Germania; why Germania was such a great lift and what made it unique; why Beaver Mountain doesn’t have snowmaking and whether it ever could; why Beaver Mountain was one of the first to adopt the discount volume season-pass strategy and why they have persisted with it; how Beaver Mountain joined the Indy Pass; why the ski area blacked out weekends and holidays this season and why that’s likely to continue; and why Beaver still maintains reciprocal partnerships with a number of mid-sized regional ski areas.    

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

The West is dotted with ski areas like Beaver Mountain, three- or four-lift outposts serving a hyper-local population of families and school groups and the unexpectedly hardcore, the retiree or the stay-at-homer racking up 100 days a year while the rest of us are yelling at each other on Facebook.

For decades, many of us have treated these bumps like the bounce house at Six Flags. “Yeah, that’s cute, but I’m moving right along past it to crush the Triple Upside Down Tyrannosaurus Rexicoaster. On the fourth loop they have a Siberian tiger fighting a white rhino in a 10-foot cage!” So tourists drive right past places like Homewood or Sunlight or Diamond Peak or Monarch or Sundance or Bridger Bowl. They didn’t fly across the country to ski at some rinky-dink place that’s five times the size of their local and gets 10 times the snow – they’re here to wait an hour on the Snowbird tram line and post about it on Instagram. Many locals have a more nuanced view - enough of them that Beaver Mountain lasted eight decades with little help from the outside world. But for a lot of people, ski area choice was a pretty simple equation of size + snowfall + reputation = where I’m going.

But this attitude is evolving, for a lot of reasons. One, the Epic Pass worked too well. Not only did it hyper-activate capacity at most Vail-owned mountains, but it spawned the Ikon Pass, which also worked too well. Trying to ski a weekend powder day in the Wasatch is like trying to catch the last lifeboat off the Titanic. You have a lot of competition. People, especially locals, need a break, and they’re seeing what else is out there. Beaver Mountain is not Alta (nothing is), but on a mid-winter Saturday, it’s not a bad stand-in if you can skip the canyon traffic and not spend much of the day plotting a Wile E. Coyote network of fake “to Little Cottonwood Canyon” signs that send unsuspecting tourists sailing off a cliff.

The second reason is the Indy Pass, which arrived at the perfect historical moment, when both the Epic and the Ikon passes had corralled the continent’s biggest butt-kickers onto a pair of thousand-dollar-ish products and everyone else was sitting around going, “huh, would you look at that?” And Indy Pass was sitting there like, “Oh, you want a lesser-known ski area with comparable terrain and maybe one or two fewer four-horse chariot lifts? Well here’s like 80 of them.” But while Indy raised the general awareness of these back-of-the-canyon outposts, it never overran them – passholders only get two days at each mountain. And the blackout dates can be insane – there are more full moons in an average month than days you can use your Indy Pass at Beaver Mountain. Nonetheless, the ski area’s presence on the Indy Pass has worked as an attention-grabber - Seeholzer told me on the podcast that Beaver Mountain was the most-searched resort on the Indy coalition during its first year.

The final reason is a mix of things, rising from our current cultural fixations on the local, the family-owned, the “authentic,” and the relatively unknown. In this arena, social media helps. “Oh, you took a vacation to Park City? Nice job tracking down the busiest ski resort in Utah, Inspector Gadget. Hey how about this gorgeous powder dump I found in the back of a canyon a couple hours away?”

Eighty-three years ago, Travis Seeholzer’s grandfather staked out a ski center on the fringes of the Utah wilderness. Word just now got out to the rest of us. It’s time to give these places the love they deserve.

Why you should ski Beaver Mountain

Utah has fewer ski areas than you probably think: just 15, less than half the number of Colorado or, gulp, Wisconsin. The state is tied with Montana for 12th in total number of ski areas, according to the National Ski Areas Association. And yet, Utah finished third in skier visits last year, with 5.3 million. That’s behind only California’s 6.8 million and Colorado’s astonishing 12 million.

The reason is that Utah has some seriously kick-ass mountains, most of them are on some megapass or another, and all of them are exceedingly easy to access. Park City is an Epic Pass headliner. More than a third of the state’s ski areas – Alta, Snowbird, Brighton, Solitude, Deer Valley, and Snowbasin – have lined up on the Ikon Pass. Beaver joins Powder Mountain and Eagle Point on the Indy Pass, and MCP’s Power Pass claims Brian Head and Nordic Valley. That really just leaves Sundance and Cherry Peak as true independents (the remainder are specialized facilities like Woodward or the Olympic training center, or surface-lift bumps out in the hinterlands).

All of that is a long way of saying that it can be hard to find your own little bit of lift-served Utah. Even out-of-the-way Beaver Mountain is facing some volume concerns, as Seeholzer points out in the podcast. But crowding means different things at different places, and while you may be looking at some weekend liftlines at Beaver, the low-capacity, fixed-grip fleet keeps the trails relatively empty.

And while you’re waiting in line, you can think about this: you’re part of a pretty cool story, of a single family whose story echoes across generations and up Logan Canyon to the end of the road.

The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 30/100 in 2022. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer. You can also email skiing@substack.com.

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Who

Andrew Halmi, General Manager of Mount Pleasant of Edinboro, Pennsylvania

Recorded on

March 1, 2022

Why I interviewed him

Cold and hilly, with the Appalachian spine slashing southwest-to-northeast across the map, Pennsylvania is a monster ski state, with 28 lift-served mountains. Most of these are bunched across the southern tier, in Vailville from Seven Springs to Roundtop, or along the eastern border with New Jersey, from Spring Mountain up to Elk.

And then there’s Mount Pleasant, drifting alone in the state’s far northwest corner, hundreds of miles and hours of driving from the next-closest in-state ski areas. It’s like one of those nature documentaries with a drone floating over the lone baby buffalo standing apart from the herd, bunched and snorting about the quality of this year’s grass crop. You look for the circling wolves or lions and wait for the poor thing to be transformed into lunch. It’s isn’t entirely clear how any other outcome is possible.

But Mount Pleasant is the Spud Webb of Pennsylvania skiing, the unassuming 5’6” kid who wins the NBA Slam Dunk Contest (that actually happened). The ski area is, first of all, well-positioned, seated less than 17 miles off the shores of the Lake Eerie snow factory. The ski area often leads the state in snowfall, with up to 200 inches in a bomber year. Again, this is in Pennsylvania. Every ski area in the Poconos combined doesn’t get 200 inches some years.

Second, while it’s separated from its in-state ski-area homeboys by at least three hours of highway, Mount Pleasant is quite well-positioned from a business point of view. Eerie, population 97,000-ish, is just 20 miles away. The county has around 270,000 residents altogether. Other than Peek’n Peak, stationed 32 miles away across the New York state line, Mount Pleasant has those skiers all to itself.

But neither of those things is the essential ingredient to Mount Pleasant’s improbable survival amid the graveyard of lost ski areas haunting Pennsylvania’s mountains. Cliché alert: the secret is the people. Launched as a notion in the 70s and crushed by the snow droughts and changing economy of the 80s, Mount Pleasant hung on through the 90s, barely solvent as a ski club running on the clunky machinery of faded decades. When the current owners bought the joint in the mid-2000s, it was a time machine at best and a hospice patient at worst, waiting to be guided toward the light.

Since then, the place has punched its way out of the grave, and it’s now a thriving little ski area, with a modern triple chair and improving snowmaking. The owners, Doug and Laura Sinsabaugh, are local school teachers who have poured every dollar of profit back into the ski area. They have invested millions and, according to Halmi, never put a cent in their own pockets. They’ve shown remarkable resilience and ingenuity, installing the chairlift – which came used from Granite Peak, Wisconsin – themselves and slowly, methodically upgrading the snowmaking plant.

The place still has a long way to go. Only half the trails have snowmaking. The lodge – a repurposed dairy barn – is perhaps the most remarkable building in Northeast skiing, but it’s roughly the size of an F-350 truckbed. The beginner area is still served by a J-bar that makes the VCR look like a miracle of modern machinery.

Improvements for all of these elements are underway, as we discuss in the podcast. Last year’s Covid-driven outdoor boom accelerated Mount Pleasant’s renaissance, re-introducing the little ski area to a jaded local population who had, not unfairly, dismissed it as a relic. When they showed up in 2021 for their first visit in seven or 10 or 15 years, they found the formerly problematic T-bar sitting in a pile in the parking lot and a glimmering chairlift staggering up the incline and a place with a spark and a future. It’s really an incredible story, and I’m as excited to share this one as any I’ve ever recorded.

What we talked about

Mount Pleasant’s strong Instagram account; I told Halmi to get Mount Pleasant onto Twitter and then he got it onto Twitter so give the joint a follow; how hard it is for someone who works at a ski area to ski sometimes; Mount Pleasant in its member-owned, ragtag days under the Mountain View name; how close the ski area came to not opening for the 2020-21 ski season and how that season re-ignited Mount Pleasant’s business; when and why the ski area failed and what resurrected it; puttering through 28-day operating seasons; the couple who saved the ski area and hauled it into modernity; “this was as close as you could get to starting a ski area from scratch”; why the owners have returned 100 percent of the ski area’s profit back into rebuilding it; Pennsylvania as a ski state; why Mount Pleasant survived as so many small ski areas across the state went extinct; the Lone Ranger of Pennsylvania skiing; the enormous challenge of moving a used triple chair from Granite Peak, Wisconsin, to Mount Pleasant; how a team of people from a ski area that had never had a chairlift demolished their old T-bar and installed a new lift over the course of one offseason; getting the lift towers installed with a crew of “three or four,” and without a helicopter; oops the chairs arrived with no safety bars; the vagaries of safety-bar cultures across the United States; how the chairlift changed the character and energy of the ski area; pouring one out for the T-bar; how many people you can get on a single T-bar; where the old T-bar is today and the inventive way Mount Pleasant may repurpose it; what kind of chairlift Mount Pleasant would like next and where that would go; the other upgrades that have to happen before a new chair is a possibility; how much it costs to install snowmaking on a single trail; how the ski area’s beginner area could evolve; why Mount Pleasant has a carpet lift sitting in its parking lot; yes there is such a thing as 200 inches of snow in a single Pennsylvania ski season; the mountain’s long-term snowmaking plans; Mount Pleasant’s threaded-through-the-forest trail network and border-to-border ski philosophy; why the ski area has minimal terrain park features and whether that could change; what happened to the old Minute Man trail and whether it could ever come back into the trail network; how Mount Pleasant managed to stay open seven nights per week in a challenging labor market; what would happen to the ski area were it to change its operating schedule after its season-pass sale; what happened when Vail moved into nearby Ohio; Mount Pleasant’s unique baselodge; whether we could see Mount Pleasant on the Indy Pass or any other pass coalitions; and season passes.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Small ski areas, I think, are having a moment. I don’t have any data to prove that, but everywhere I look, megapass burnout it palpable. I love the rambling adventure of big ski areas. The sport could not be mainstream without them. But that doesn’t mean that a big ski area is the best ski area for every ski day. Sometimes a slowpoke day through the slowpoke woods is all you need. You don’t have to fight for your life to find a parking spot or line up for the chairlift or buy a Rice Krispy Treat. You just ski. It’s a different enough kind of skiing that it feels like a different sport altogether.

There’s a bit of a positive feedback loop going on here. Skiers – especially skiers with kids – seek out an experience that isn’t defined by Times-Square-on-New-Year’s-Eve crowds. They find little back-of-the-woods bumps like Mount Pleasant or Maple Ski Ridge, New York or Whaleback, New Hampshire. They like it. They tell their friends. The incremental revenue generated from this word-of-mouth uptick in visits goes straight back into the mountain. A place like Mount Pleasant trades a Roman-era T-bar for a modern chairlift. That baseline experience in place, its future becomes more certain, and all of skiing benefits from a healthier beginner mountain.

Mount Pleasant is pretty much exactly all of this. It’s just big enough to not bore a seasoned skier while remaining approachable enough for someone who’s never clicked in. It’s not an easy balance to achieve. Halmi, the owners, everyone involved with this place have accomplished something pretty cool: saved a dying ski area without a huge airdrop of cash. It’s a story that others who want to do the same could surely benefit from hearing.

Why you should ski Mount Pleasant of Edinboro

I said this to Halmi on the podcast, and I’ll repeat it here: I liked Mount Pleasant a lot more than I was expecting to. Not that I thought I would dislike it. I am a huge fan of small ski areas. But many of them, admirable as their mission is, are not super compelling from a terrain point of view, with a clear-cut hillside stripped of the deadly obstacles (read: trees), that their first-timer clientele may have a habit of smashing into.

What I found was a neat little trail system woven through the woods. It’s a layout that encourages exploration and find-your-own lines inventiveness. I’ll admit I hit it after a storm cycle, when the snow stood deep in the trees and the old T-bar line was skiable. That did favorably color my impression of the place – snow makes everything better. But the overall trail-management approach resonated with me in a way that’s rare for sub-400-vertical-foot ski areas. It felt like a ski area run by skiers, which is not as universal as you may suppose.

It also just feels cool to be there. The dairy barn/lodge alone would be an attraction even if you had no interest in anything above it. The fact that the ski area not only still has, but still uses a 1976 Tucker Sno-Cat is one of the raddest things in America (the mountain also has modern groomers). The place bristles with life and energy, a real kids-and-families joint materializing out of the Pennsylvania backroads.

The place has some quirks. The steepest part of the main slope is near the bottom – a nightmare for a beginner’s-oriented hill. If you follow the abandoned T-bar all the way down, you find yourself on the far side of the tubing hill, and it’s an adventure in poling, a ride up the J-bar, and a duck-walk back up to the chairlift to find your way home. But it’s all part of the adventure, and all part of the character of this fabulous little ski area. It feels well-loved and well-cared-for, and that is clear the minute you arrive.

More Mount Pleasant of Edinboro

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Mount Pleasant’s lift fleet

* Historic Mount Pleasant trailmaps on skimap.org

* Mount Pleasant season passes

* A trailmap and brochure from Mount Pleasant’s inaugural season, 1970-71:

* Here’s a photo of the lodge prior to its conversion from a dairy barn:

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To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Prices increase and a partial paywall activates on March 14. Organizations can email skiing@substack.com or reply to this email to add multiple users on one account.

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Spot and Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Amber Broadaway, President and Chief Operating Officer of Solitude Mountain, Utah

Recorded on

February 28, 2022

Why I interviewed her

Because upon returning from my last dazzling trip up the Cottonwoods I scrawled this recollection in an early issue of The Storm Skiing Journal:

And the most amazing part of all this is after leaping half mad with joy down the snowy majestically treed hillsides through endlessly refilled powder so deep you can’t find the bottom with a pole stuck handle-deep into the incline, you descend from this frozen kingdom thousands of feet but only dozens of minutes to bland and sprawling Salt Lake City, not a snowflake on the ground, the whole of it so jarring and typically American that it’s hard to believe in the majestic land you just left. This is not like driving up to Killington from Rutland on an October or June day and being like, “Cool there’s snow,” which is a novelty and a triumph of technology. This is more Disney, more Tolkien, like a land where there’s realms and each realm is themed and magnificently distinct even though they appear stacked one after another on ancient hand-drawn scroll maps marked with dragons and sailing ships and skulls. And down below is the realm of the Big Box and the interstate wide and flat, and above is the Winter Realm, a triumph of nature, where a snow trap tens of millions of years in the making spins out a microclimate so wild and improbable and brilliant that the only way to believe in it is to go and stand there and say holy f*****g s**t man it’s actually real.

I skied Alta and Snowbird, in Little Cottonwood, on that trip, but no matter. Brighton and Solitude, right next door in Big Cottonwood Canyon, are smaller and get slightly less snow, but that’s like pointing out that a tiger is bigger and stronger than a leopard: true but irrelevant. Both are pretty good at killing things. And the four resorts seated at the top of the Wasatch are absolute killers.

With Solitude, that’s easy to overlook. It doesn’t have that flip-to-the-magazine-centerfold rep as a jaw-dropper, but look at the trailmap:

Plenty of good stuff in there. Link it together with Brighton, right next door (the two are connected), and you have 2,700 acres of Wasatch featherbeds. That’s more skiable terrain than Sun Valley or Jackson Hole.

That’s a pretty good story, and it’s one I wanted in on.

What we talked about

Solitude’s 2021-22 snow whiplash; growing up skiing at Ascutney, Vermont and thoughts on the state of the ski area today; living through the mountain’s two bankruptcies; finding a new home at Sugarbush when Ascutney shut down; the vast differences in snowfall and ski-terrain quality between Northern Vermont and the rest of New England; the characters that populate the Mad River Valley and Sugarbush; working with and learning from Win Smith, who brought Sugarbush back from the American Skiing Company abyss; how Broadaway reacted when Smith sold Sugarbush, one of the largest independent ski areas in New England, to Alterra; why she now believes that was the right decision; moving from the frozen East to the sunny West; an update on Solitude’s master plan; the vast differences in snowmaking between the East and West and the future of snowmaking at Solitude; the next candidate for lift replacement; thoughts on the current issues navigating between Solitude’s base areas; why the mountain changed its base-to-base shuttle route this season; whether Solitude is considering six- or eight-passenger lifts; Whether there’s room or need for a lift in Honeycomb Canyon or elsewhere within the current mountain footprint; whether Solitude could expand; why Solitude doesn’t have terrain parks and whether it ever could; the Solitude-Brighton interconnect and the relationship between the two mountains; the impossible matrix of Big Cottonwood Canyon parking, mass transit, and traffic and long-term plans to improve the whole mess; how much Cottonwoods shuttle service costs Solitude each year; why the Cottonwoods public transit buses don’t have ski racks; thoughts on the proposed Little Cottonwood gondola; and whether Solitude will continue to sit on the unlimited-with-blackouts Ikon Base Pass tier.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

For decades, Solitude just sort of sat there. On one side, rollicking and enormous Park City and rollercoaster-smooth Deer Valley. On the other side, Alta and Snowbird, the greatest skiing in America. Being a slightly smaller version of the best thing ever isn’t a bad thing to be, and locals and savvy tourists had the joint to themselves. Brighton too.

Yeah that’s over. Blame the Ikon Pass. Blame the fact that Utah’s population has doubled in 30 years. Blame social media for blowing its cover. Blame whatever you want. The universe doesn’t care. Here’s a fact: the hokey-pokey Solitude of the Vanilla Ice era is gone, and it’s not coming back. The place has to evolve. Step one was taming traffic, in part by adopting a paid parking plan two years ago. That landed like a Prius at a monster truck rally: with intense ridicule and indignation from long-time skiers. Step two was more buses and easier access to them. Step three is the big, broad future, and what comes next is up to Alterra. It’s time to get creative.

Unfortunately, I conducted this interview a few days before Alterra dropped its 2022-23 Ikon Pass suite. Not that it would have substantively changed our conversation, because Solitude’s positioning on the pass remains unchanged from previous years: unlimited access on the full pass; unlimited access less blackouts on the Base Pass. But knowledge of the radical access changes in Ikon this season versus Ikon next season would have allowed us to focus on the pass release’s meta-narrative: Alterra is deeply committed to creating a quality ski experience. That’s why Alta and Deer Valley jumped off the Ikon Base Pass and up to the Base Plus pass. That’s why Crystal followed Deer Valley off of the unlimited tier even on the full-priced Ikon Pass. And that’s why prices continued to tick up even as Alterra’s main competitor dropped its prices significantly.

Empowered by this philosophy, Solitude, it appears, will continue to evolve to meet the moment. They probably won’t get every detail right. No one ever does. But in skiing, trying counts for a lot. By making us buy our passes before the lifts start spinning, the big ski areas of U.S. America have us in a corner. They don’t really have to fix traffic or liftlines or base-lodge flow or grooming or snowmaking in hopes that we’ll show up next weekend and buy a lift ticket. They could just cross their fingers that the season nets more good days than bad, and that that one untracked first-chair run we snagged with GoPro footage and that earned us a million WhatsUps on Ho-Down will erase the misery of a ski day that feels more like a commute on the New York City subway than an escape into the wilderness. Solitude – and sister resort Crystal, which is facing similar population pressures – have earned our faith that the status quo won’t stand when it stops being fun, even if that means hard or unpopular changes.

Questions I wish I’d asked

Alterra’s last two mountain-manager appointments have been women (the other is Dee Byrne at Palisades Tahoe), and I wanted to ask her about how Alterra cultivates leaders who may have formerly been shut out of the long-male-dominated ski industry. I also really like Solitude’s new habit of keeping the lifts spinning for an extra hour after daylight-savings time, which I assume she imported from Sugarbush, which has long done that to beat spring freeze-thaws and enjoy the longer days. Finally, I wanted to ask her about the ski area’s reduced-price lift tickets for Moonbeam Express, the Link double, and the magic carpet – I wish more ski areas would discount tickets for beginner areas instead of charging full freight for someone who’s still deciding if they even like snowsports-sliding.

What I got wrong

I mentioned to Broadaway that Solitude had a great “November and December.” I was mis-remembering: the mountain, like much of the West, had snow in October, followed by a dry November, followed by a December from the Siberian Ice Age.

Why you should ski Solitude

Most of us don’t need much more than this: 500 inches of snow, 2,500 feet of vert, ribbons of tree-studded pitches rippling off the summit ridgelines. Throw in four high-speed quads, a pass that you probably already own, and the fact that you practically step out of the airport terminal and onto the lift, and the place is pretty much an automatic stop on any Utah tour. And if you get lucky, you might catch a day like this:

More Solitude

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Solitude’s lift fleet

* Solitude trailmaps on skimap.org

* Inspired by Win’s Word, the frequent blog penned by former Sugarbush owner Win Smith, Broadaway launched the biweekly Amber’s Updates. Most posts also include a video component. Here, she discusses the possibility of terrain parks at Solitude and the ski area’s first-ever pond skim:

More Vermont

Broadaway and I talked at length about her childhood ski area, the much-bedeviled Ascutney, Vermont. This recent New York Times article catalogues the ski area’s woes and eventual triumph:

In its heyday, the Ascutney ski resort boasted 1,800 vertical feet of skiing on over 50 trails, and included a high-speed quad chairlift, three triple chairlifts and a double chairlift. But when it closed in 2010 because of scant snow and mismanagement (twin killers of small ski resorts), it threatened to take with it the nearby community of West Windsor, Vt., population 1,099.

“Property values plummeted, condos on the mountain saw their value decrease by more than half, and taxes went up,” recalled Glenn Seward, who worked at the resort for 18 years, once as the director of mountain operations. The town’s general store, the gathering place of the community, also went broke and closed.

“We were desperate,” said Mr. Seward, who at the time was chair of the West Windsor Selectboard, a Vermont town’s equivalent of a city council.

That desperation led the community to hitch its fortune to the mountain, becoming a model for how a small ski area and its community can thrive in the era of climate change. Working with the state of Vermont as well as the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, the town bought the failed ski area in 2015. But instead of allowing a private company to run the mountain, contracting out its operations, the local residents themselves would chart a sustainable, volunteer-driven path for the ski area.

Full read recommended.

And yes, Utah, I know 99 percent of you have no interest in ever skiing east of the Rockies, and you may have found our 20-minute discussion of Vermont and Sugarbush tedious. But just because a ski area is not Snowbird does not mean it isn’t worth skiing. Sugarbush is an amazing place (and that Slide Brook Express Quad that connects the two sides of the mountain - once separate ski areas - is scaled down to fit the map; it is the longest chairlift in the world, at 11,012 feet, or more than two miles):

And despite what you’ve no doubt heard about the East Coast’s reputation as a Zamboni proving ground, northern Vermont is different. Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, Bolton Valley, Stowe, Smugglers’ Notch, and Jay Peak can get up to twice the snowfall of their New England brothers. The terrain is steep, technical, narrow, expansive, and interesting. If you ever deign to, as we say, Ski the East, start with Sugarbush and work your way north to Jay. You might actually like it.

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Spot and Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Rick Schmitz, Co-Owner of Nordic Mountain, Little Switzerland, and The Rock Snowpark, Wisconsin

Recorded on

February 7, 2022

Why I interviewed him

Because no one cares about small ski areas. At least that’s the conclusion you can come to if, like me, you lurk amid the If-It’s-Not-A-Redwood-It’s-Deadwood Size-Matters Bros that animate Facebook ski groups. Take, for example, the incisive observation of one Mr. Forrest Michael Culp to my announcement in the Colorado Ski and Snowboard group that Sunlight had joined the Indy Pass:

“Looks boring”

Does it?

“I’ll have to try it just don’t like small mountains / short runs”

Sunlight has a 2,000-foot vertical drop and sits on 730 acres. Its summit lift is 7,260 feet long – nearly a mile and a half. The ski area is larger than Aspen Mountain or Sugarbush. If this dude thinks Sunlight is small, then my guess is he’s driving one hell of a pickup truck.

If Mr. Culp looks down on Sunlight, I wonder what his opinion would be of Rick Schmitz’s trio of Wisconsin bumps: 265-vertical-foot Nordic Mountain, 230-foot The Rock Snowpark, and 200-foot Little Switzerland?

It really doesn’t matter. What interested me was why someone had built a mini-conglomerate of such ski areas, and how he had transformed them into what were by all accounts highly successful businesses.

Turns out that small ski areas are cash registers on an incline. At least if you do it right. My first tip-off to this was my podcast interview last year with current Granite Peak and former Mad River, Ohio General Manager Greg Fisher. He described a frantic 12-week season of 12-hour-plus days, a Columbus-area bump mobbed by school kids, teenage parksters, and Ohio State party people, an absolute tidal wave for the brief winter. And 300-foot Mad River is hardly a special case – mountainvertical.com counts at least 42 ski areas with 300 vertical feet or fewer across the United States, and I know of several dozen more not inventoried on the site. My guess is that around 20 percent of America’s 462 active ski areas fit into this micro-hill category.

Not all of them are great businesses – many of them, especially in New England, barely scratch out a dozen operating days in a good year and are run mostly by volunteers. But Schmitz’s hills are great businesses. This was not pre-ordained. When Schmitz bought Nordic Mountain in 2005 at age 22, the ski area had lost money in each of the previous five seasons. Little Switzerland had been closed for five years when he and his brothers hooked up the respirator and saved it from an alternate future as a real-estate development. And The Rock Snowpark sat mostly ignored among an entertainment megaplex outside Milwaukee for years before Schmitz stepped in as operator.

Schmitz turned them all around. Adding a twist to the story, Schmitz for several years ran Blackjack, a 638-vertical-foot romper in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that averages more than 200 inches of snow per year. He learned, he told me, that “the better ski hill is not always the better business.” He sold his stake in the UP bomber several years ago and has been focused on his Wisconsin resorts ever since.

Yes, small ski areas are vital to the health of the industry, as incubators of future I-70 vacationers and Whistler cliff-jumpers who hone their aerials with endless ropetow park laps. Yes, they are vital community gathering places that transform brutal winter from endurance test to celebration. Yes, they provide a humbling reprieve for the EpKon hoppers who’ve become enamored with high-speed terrarium lifts that each come with their own raccoon or marsupial for your personal entertainment.

But that’s not all they are. They’re also, with the right leader, damn good businesses. I wanted to find out how.

What we talked about

Keeping the momentum from last year’s Covid outdoor boom; how often the owner of three ski areas skis; the intensity of working the short Midwest dawn-to-dusk ski season; growing up in a middle-class ski family and how that sets the culture for Schmitz’s ski areas today; balancing affordability with rising costs; how Schmitz came to own Nordic Mountain at age 22 as a flat-broke business student; how to ignore the haters when you’re taking a risk; how someone who’s never worked at a ski area learns how to run a ski area that he’s just purchased; why snowmaking has to come before everything and why that means much more than just guns; the evolution of Nordic Mountain from a run-down, barely-break-even operation in 2005 to a successful business today; how Schmitz became part-owner and manager of burly Blackjack, Michigan; why the better ski hill is not always the better business; why Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is the bomber sweet spot of Midwest skiing; how Schmitz bought and re-opened Little Switzerland, his childhood ski hill; “you don’t hire someone to do something you can do yourself”; why Schmitz ultimately sold Blackjack and focused his efforts on his smaller Wisconsin ski areas; why small ski areas fail; how Little Switzerland nearly became a real estate development and what saved it from the bulldozer; what remained after Little Switzerland sold itself off for parts and how Schmitz and his family got it running again after a five-year closure; assembling a ski-area staff from scratch; the incredible value in a name; a deep look at Little Switzerland’s antique up-and-over Riblet doubles, which each serve both sides of the ski area:

How Schmitz came to run The Rock Snowpark; “the model is people, population, and location, location, location”; the enormous challenges required to reinvigorate the ski area; why Schmitz replaced a chairlift with a high-speed ropetow; the vastly different personalities of Schmitz’s two Milwaukee-adjacent, 200-ish-vertical-foot bumps; “our ultimate goal is to change peoples lives with the sport of skiing or snowboarding”; Milwaukee as a ski market; the importance of night-skiing in the Midwest; a wishlist of upgrades at all three ski areas; new buildings incoming; whether Schmitz would ever buy another ski area; why he no longer believes every ski area can be saved; why Schmitz’s three ski areas require an upgrade for a multi-mountain pass; and why all three ski areas joined the Indy Pass (and why The Rock held off on joining).

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

When Indy Pass debuted in 2019 with a selection of Wisconsin ski areas, I thought Little Switzerland and Nordic Mountain were odd choices. After all, the state has a number of well-appointed 500-ish footers with robust trailmaps: Devil’s Head, Cascade, La Crosse, and Whitecap. Granite Peak – which Indy later added – towers over them all at 700 feet. In general, Indy was aiming for tier-two resorts like Brundage or Berkshire East or Black Mountain – good-sized ski areas that were just a little less well-capitalized and a bit smaller than the corporate big boys in their neighborhoods. What was with the Wisconsin molehills?

The molehills, as it turns out, are run by one of a new generation of ski area operators that is aggressively reshaping what a ski area is and how it should operate. Schmitz is the Midwest version of Jon Schaefer, the second-generation owner of Berkshire East who is one of the most original minds in American skiing. I first read about him in Chris Diamond’s Ski Inc. 2020, as a case study of how regional mini-conglomerates were quickly becoming an alternate model for a sustainable skiing future. When I asked Indy Pass founder Doug Fish which of his partners would make a good podcast interview, Schmitz was among his top suggestions.

Good call. This was one of my favorite podcast conversations yet. There’s a reason it’s nearly two hours long. Schmitz has a lot of ideas, a ton of positive energy, and an incredibly captivating backstory. Even if you have no interest in Midwest skiing, I’d encourage you to check this one out. Hell, even if you have no interest in skiing whatsoever, you ought to listen. Schmitz’s story is one we can all learn from, an inspiring lesson in how to chase and create a fulfilling life, how to cede your dreams with grace when they don’t work out, and how to ignore the negative people around you and make the improbable into the inevitable. It sounds clichéd, but everything he talks about really happens, and it’s powerful stuff.

Why you should ski Little Switzerland, Nordic Mountain, and The Rock Snowpark

In my relentless romp around the ski world, I’ve come to appreciate the salutary effects of small ski areas. The energy at a place like Killington or Sunday River or Steamboat or Snowbird is infectious, the terrain amazing, the sheer scale impossible, mesmerizing. However, a good ski season, for me, is like a good movie. It can’t all be tension and drama. It needs some levity, some lulls, some unexpected and novel moments. At Snowbird I feel the need to throw myself through vertical forests over and over again. I’ve been there 10 times and have never skied Chip’s run or any other blue unless I was traversing or funneling down to a lift. The place is a proving ground, rowdy and relentless. To cruise Snowbird groomers is a waste, like going to Paris and eating at McDonald’s.

But sometimes I do just want to cruise. Or do fast laps on a modest pitch with big fast turns. Or lap a subdued terrain park and take a little air. Just ski without stress or expectation or the gnawing sense that I need to challenge myself.

Enter small ski areas. Skiing this year at Nashoba Valley or Mount Pleasant or Cockaigne or Sawmill or Otis Ridge was delightful. Relaxed skiing. No pressure to burrow into the hard stuff because there is no hard stuff. Cruise along, enjoy the forest, find interesting lines and side hits. Then I would go to Smugglers’ Notch and ski stuff like this:

Balance.

Another rad thing about small ski areas: they tend to be close to lots and lots of people, including, likely, you. And since the season passes tend to be inexpensive, you can tack one onto your EpKon Pass and crush night turns after work for an hour or two. Who cares if it’s only 200 feet of vert? Do you drink 12 beers every time you crack one open? Sometimes one or two is enough, and sometimes a few laps on a bump is enough to get your fix between weekend runs to Mount Radness. If I lived in Milwaukee, I can guarantee you I’d own a Granite Peak season pass and one at one of the eight local bumps orbiting the city.

As far as skiing these ski areas, specifically, Schmitz lays it out: Little Switzerland draws families, The Rock is the spot for park laps. Nordic is a bit farther out, but if you live anywhere nearby, the pass is a no-brainer: seven days a week of night skiing. Hit it for a couple hours two or three nights per week, and suddenly skiing isn’t something you do when you can get away – it’s your gym, your zone-out time. It’s part of your routine. Something you do, and not something you wait for.

More Little Switzerland, Nordic Mountain, and The Rock Snowpark

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Little Switzerland’s lift fleet

* Historic Little Switzerland trailmaps on skimap.org

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Nordic Mountain’s lift fleet

* Historic Nordic Mountain trailmaps on skimap.org

* Nordic Mountain’s current trailmap:

* Lift Blog’s inventory of The Rock Snowpark’s lift fleet

* Historic Rock Snowpark trailmaps on skimap.org

* The Rock Snowpark’s current trailmap:

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Spot and Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Mike Chumbler, President and General Manager of The Highlands at Harbor Springs (formerly Boyne Highlands), Michigan

Recorded on

January 24, 2022

Why I interviewed him

Despite the widespread skier habit of using “ski area,” “mountain,” and “ski resort” interchangeably, each of these descriptors has very distinct connotations. The Midwest has a lot of ski areas – 90 between Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin alone, according to the National Ski Areas Association. It has exactly one actual mountain – Mount Bohemia, 900 vertical feet of cliffs and glades spiraling off the northernmost tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. But the region has very few true ski resorts – a place where one can expect lodging, dining, and an experience beyond lifts and turns. In fact, the Midwest’s one mountain is not even a resort – there’s not much at Bohemia beyond some yurts and a hot tub the size of Lake Michigan. And neither are most of the Midwest’s other ski areas. The average Midwest ski area has 10 chairlifts serving 10 runs on 200 vertical feet next to a K-Mart. If these are ski resorts, then the Playschool slide my 5-year-old keeps in our backyard is Disney World.

It’s all very confusing. Beaming in from east or west, it can be hard to discern the differences between 500-foot bumps. How could one be so much different from another? How could any actually rise to the status of ski resort?

Well, here’s Exhibit A of a true Midwestern ski resort, The Highlands at Harbor Springs:

You won’t probably understand it until you get on the ground and ski, but the place rambles. That Interconnect lift is far longer than it appears on the map – a trick of aspect employed to spare our eyes the dead space. Riding up and over the knolls between the North Face and the main ski area is a delightful journey, one that seems to transport you to a different ski area altogether. You can spend the afternoon there, amble back. The main face is all skiable from the Heather Express, but there are plenty of hidden nooks, little glades, trails snaking through the trees. Highlands skis like an easy videogame, one where you’re unlikely to get eaten by a dragon but will probably find a secret stash of gems or a fire shield hidden in a forest. The ski area maintains a strong variety of terrain parks, with plenty of just-boosty enough mini-features for the non-radsters that want to ride with me. Taken together, these characteristics mute the 550-foot vertical drop. It may not be what you expect out of a ski resort, but it’s enough, it turns out, to make one anyway.

And, this being Boyne, everything is well run. The grooming is unreasonably good, even following the nastiest refreezes. The lift fleet is older than color television, but they all seem to run fine – and most of them will be gone within the decade. Beyond the hill, there’s plenty of lodging and plenty to do. As you know, I care about nothing except the skiing, so I’ll let you explore that for yourself, but this is a true ski resort in a region of ski areas, and without the true, geographically defined mountain that typically acts as the foundation of the resort experience.

This is the largest ski area in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, a frozen-solid ski-mad region that will take what it can get. When I began skiing as a teenager, I worked my way up to The Highlands, wanting to save the biggest experience for last. I’m glad I did. Arriving on a sub-zero January day in 1996, the place felt like the Midwest bigtime, like something I was finally ready for. Twenty-five years later, The Highlands is about to join its sister resort, Boyne Mountain, in the statement-making business of showcasing for the ski world just how outsized a Midwest ski experience can be. I wanted to lock into the folks making this happen right from the outset, to grab us all a front-row seat to the coming transformation.

What we talked about

Chumbler’s evolution from golf intern to head of The Highlands whole ski and golf operation; the importance of golf to Boyne’s North American empire; The Highlands 2030 transformation plan; why the ski area changed its name from “Boyne Highlands” to “The Highlands at Harbor Springs”; the endless process of changing a ski-area name; the transition to RFID and whether we could ever see gates beyond the Heather Express; future snowmaking upgrades; Boyne’s VP of Snow surface and Design; which lifts the resort intends to upgrade first; how long it will take to upgrade or replace every lift on the mountain; whether the ski area will replace Heather, their newest lift; How The Highlands keeps its fleet of seven Riblets safe; which two Highlands lifts received new haulropes last summer; whether Highlands plans to replace Valley, the world’s first triple chair; where we could see potential trail expansions; why The Highlands began glading trails in the ‘90s and where we may see future tree runs; reflections on four years of the Ikon Pass; the popularity of Boyne’s gold pass sister resort benefits with season passholders; the relationship between Nub’s Nob and The Highlands and whether the two have ever discussed a joint ski pass; why Highlands typically wraps its season up several weeks prior to sister resort Boyne Mountain; thoughts on ski season number three of dealing with Covid; and why Highlands hasn’t struggled with the labor shortage striking the rest of the ski industry.     

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

When The Highlands 2030 transformational journey plan dropped in December, I was a little disappointed. The only concrete ski-related move was a questionable resort name change and a pre-announced move to RFID lift tickets. I was hoping for another eight-pack to follow similar recent announcements at Boyne’s Sunday River and Boyne Mountain. Or maybe a terrain expansion, or at least some concrete initial steps to begin upgrading The Highlands’ 900-year-old Riblet lift fleet.

Instead there was a string of photos of spas and golf courses and hotel rooms. I understand that people like these things, but since I’m rather adamant about not being vacuumed into ski areas’ ancillary business ventures, I figured the best way to dig into the skiing parts of the plan was to get Mike on the phone and talk through it. It was the right move, and Chumbler – a golf guy in his heart – did a nice job outlining the resort’s snow-season lifts-and-turns future.

Why you should ski The Highlands at Harbor Springs

The Highlands is tucked into one of the most interesting corners of Michigan skiing. It sits less than eight miles off Lake Michigan, a bullseye in the hundreds-of-miles-long north-south snowbelt that cranks out an average of 140 inches per season. It’s the rare Michigan ski area that sits right next door to another Michigan ski area – independent and beloved Nub’s Nob. The resorts are not connected, but their proximity creates the sense of being part of a vast Midwest ski circus, a combined 18 chairlifts and 106 runs sprawling over 683 acres. If you want to understand Michigan skiing, spent a long weekend bouncing between these two. You’ll have a hard time having a bad time, and you’ll understand how a region that would seem to be naturally unsuited to host something so grandiose as a ski resort can do a pretty good job with it after all.

Thoughts on the name change

As soon as I noticed the parallel, I was obsessed. As a pre-internet teenager attempting to paste together the world of lift-served skiing via 10-year-old library books and tourism pamphlets and ski magazines and the White Book of Ski Areas, I discovered Aspen Mountain and Aspen Highlands, a pair of 3,000-plus footers puncturing the Colorado sky over that rough-and-tumble mining town. The whole thing was so evocative, so burnished with the patina of high adventure and bottomless snow in the American West, that I was desperate for some mirror in my Midwest-bound existence. I found it with Boyne Mountain and Boyne Highlands, the two Michigan big-timers whose names rhymed, spiritually, with those Western titans. Boyne is our Aspen, I thought. As a trick to promote the world around me into something it could never be, it actually worked fairly well. I would ski the Michigan big-time. And for years, that’s exactly how I framed it.

Eventually I did ski Aspen Mountain and Aspen Highlands, and yeah those are not the same thing as Boyne’s Michigan bumps. But I continued to like the Boyne names anyway, as a subtle but ever-present reminder that the company had played the unlikely trick of turning small into big. Vail started with Vail and eventually bought its Midwest bumps. Boyne channeled the success of its Michigan mountains (and its scenic chairlift in Gatlinburg, Tennessee), into the purchase of flagship mountains all over the United States, most prominently Big Sky. Vail doesn’t own this. Neither does Alterra or Powdr Corp. Boyne, Michigan proud and the name still dripping from the masthead, is the steward of one of North America’s most audacious ski hills.

Well that’s gone now, at least from The Highlands. “You’re reaching, Bro,” a reader might say, and I don’t disagree. Still, I liked the old name: Boyne Highlands. Simple and direct, an indication that you could expect the same quality as you’d find at Boyne Mountain, but with some differences that make Highlands its own unique brand. It was implied rather than said overtly, but in today’s stimuli-riddled landscape, perhaps that wasn’t enough.

So it’s gone. More irksome, though, is the long addendum, “at Harbor Springs.” It’s just so much for a ski area name.

“Where are you going skiing this weekend, Bro?”

“The Highlands at Harbor Springs.”

“Whoa dude, I asked where you were skiing, not for your life’s story.”

There are plenty of terrible names in skiing. Many of them evolve from this urge to meet at the nexus of brand and geography. Pennsylvania’s Ski Big Bear at Masthope Mountain is among the worst of these. Sierra-at-Tahoe is another. The similarly named Northstar-at-Tahoe thankfully changed its name to simply “Northstar” (thank Vail for that one), 10 years back.

Ski areas should have simple, evocative names. Jackson Hole. Alta. Snowbird. Vail. Stowe. Sugarbush. Ragged. Black. Thunder Ridge. Plattekill. Bristol. Powderhorn. Sunlight. The only three-word ski name I’ll allow is Mad River Glen because, well, it’s the legend, and it’s a damn good name.

Boyne should have stopped the renaming project at “The Highlands.” That’s short. It’s cool. It evokes pastures and adventure and exploration. I still dislike that they ejected “Boyne” from the name, but I can live with it. The “at Harbor Springs” needs to go. It sounds like a parody-movie mega-project proposed by the evil developer, Ratkin VonSwellington IV, who is using eminent domain to level the Goonies neighborhood and built an exclusive country club for his Faberge-egg collecting pals. Or it sounds like a neighborhood of McMansions in exurban Atlanta. Or like a yacht club where the membership dues are paid in the form of ivory.

Well, too late for all that. Changing out the name is going to be an obscenely involved project, and one Boyne is unlikely to backtrack on. Oh well, at least they’ll still have this bomber grooming:

More Highlands at Harbor Springs

* Lift Blog’s inventory of The Highlands at Harbor Springs lift fleet

* Historic Highlands at Harbor Springs trailmaps on skimap.org - they go as far back as 1963:

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Who

Scott Turlington, President of Tamarack Resort, Idaho

Recorded on

January 24, 2022

Why I interviewed him

Because this was almost one of the great busts of American skiing. After its improbable ribbon-cutting in 2004 – the first major U.S. ski resort to open since Beaver Creek in 1980 – Tamarack fell apart. Torched by the Great Recession and an over-emphasis on real estate, the ski area was shuttered by a court-appointed receiver in 2009 and stripped of its Wildwood Express lift in 2012. A group of locals managed to re-open the mountain in 2010, but it tottered along on life support for years. For a long time, Tamarack looked like it would never be anything more than a marginal ski area in a great ski state.

But slowly, and then suddenly, Tamarack stabilized: replacing its lost quad, returning to a full operating schedule, and joining the Indy Pass. The new owners seem committed to investing and expanding. The ski area had its busiest day ever over the Christmas holiday. Positioned just over two hours north of rapidly growing Boise and in the midst of a plan to double its size, Tamarack is poised to join the big-mountain big leagues.

What we talked about

Scott’s background in government and how that helps him navigate the complexities of managing a ski area; the importance of compromise and the absolutist state of politics; is state land the key to building more U.S. ski resorts?; how Tamarack finally opened in 2004 after decades of delays; the amazing capital outlays necessary to build a ski resort; the energy and excitement as the resort opened; the ski area’s sudden failure just five years later; the tragedy of the court-appointed receiver suddenly shuttering the resort; how Tamarack re-opened against enormous odds; the “brutal” moment when Bank of America repossessed the Wildwood Express and stripped it off the mountain; how Tamarack brought a new lift in to replace Wildwood; how the new ownership group differs from past owners; Tamarack’s updated master plan and a potential development timeline; the massive, 2,100-acre terrain expansion; the length and rise of Tamarack’s proposed gondola; the position of the gondola midstation; the Grouse Bowl lift and the importance of adding more black-diamond terrain; why the Banana Bowl terrain will now be hike-to, rather than lift-served, as an old draft of the master plan had proposed; the contained, mid-mountain blue and green pods around Poison Creek and what sorts of lifts will service them; how Tamarack laid out its new trails and lifts; what to expect out of the ski area’s new southern base area; what liftlines?; extending the Wildwood lift and when that could happen; Tamarack’s current snowmaking plant and its expansion vision; why it took so long to get the village open and how that center will evolve over time; the mountain’s ambitious and novel employee-housing complex; RFID and the huge data opportunity in skiing; why Tamarack joined Indy Pass and why the resort has no blackouts on the pass; why Tamarack keeps a limited number of reciprocal pass partnerships; why Tamarack gives free season passes to every kindergarten through 12th-grade student in its home county and one adjacent school district; and why the resort made its Discovery chairlift free for everyone.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because the past is past, and Tamarack, finally under stable ownership and chasing the momentum of the Covid-era outdoor boom, is moving ahead with a monster expansion plan. Here’s what Tamarack looks like now:

And here’s what it would look like at full build-out (current lifts are on the right; proposed lifts are on the left):

This will double the ski area’s size and blow out terrain for all abilities. As the population explodes in the American West and destination skiers increasingly descend, the region is desperate for more capacity. Tamarack’s expansion would be the equivalent of adding a whole new ski area.

But the terrain and lifts are just part of what’s driving Tamarack’s renaissance (as odd as it is to apply that word to a resort that’s not even 20 years old). The mountain recently, finally, opened its base village. It’s about to start construction on one of the largest and most interesting on-mountain employee-housing complexes in the country. And Tamarack this season launched one of the most aggressive youth-access programs in the United States, giving free season passes to every kindergarten-through-12th-grade student in its home county and in one adjacent school district. Skier capacity, employee housing, access, affordability – skiing as a whole is struggling with these issues, and seems to have few solutions. Tamarack, independent, agile, and freed, finally, from the financial anchors of its past, is moving boldly to solve these problems. It’s one of the best stories in Western skiing.

Why you should ski Tamarack

Idaho is an interesting ski state. While it’s home to a number of large, snow-hammered ski areas – Schweitzer, Silver, Brundage, Bogus Basin, Tamarack – the state remains off the national destination track (with the exception of Sun Valley). Of its 16 ski areas, only Sun Valley and Schweitzer are on the Epic or Ikon Passes (another five are Indy Pass partners). That means, well, it’s all yours. As the resorts along I-70, in the Wasatch, and around Tahoe continue to stretch capacity like over-inflated blow-up toys, it’s time to venture out yonder and see what you can find. Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia are filled with ski areas with big vert, big acreage, big snows, and no skiers. Or very few compared to the mainline resorts that have been designated as Epkon petri dishes. Tamarack, with nearly 3,000 feet of vert and a bomber lift fleet, is one of these. If you can’t kill a couple days here, then I don’t know what to tell you.

More Tamarack

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Tamarack’s lift fleet

* Historic Tamarack trailmaps on skimap.org

Support The Storm by shopping at our partners:

Patagonia | Helly Hansen | Rossignol | Salomon | Utah Skis | Berg’s Ski and Snowboard Shop | Peter Glenn | Kemper Snowboards | Gravity Coalition | Darn Tough | Skier's Peak | Hagan Ski Mountaineering | Moosejaw | Skis.com |The House | Telos Snowboards | Christy Sports | Evo | Hotels Combined | Black Diamond | Eastern Mountain Sports

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Spot and Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Support The Storm by shopping at our partners:

Patagonia | Helly Hansen | Rossignol | Salomon | Utah Skis | Berg’s Ski and Snowboard Shop | Peter Glenn | Kemper Snowboards | Gravity Coalition | Darn Tough | Skier's Peak | Hagan Ski Mountaineering | Moosejaw | Skis.com |The House | Telos Snowboards | Christy Sports | Evo | Hotels Combined | Black Diamond | Eastern Mountain Sports

Who

Jon Weisberg, Co-Founder, Publisher, and Editor of SeniorsSkiing.com

Recorded on

January 11, 2022

Why I interviewed him

Because when I started skiing as a teenager in Michigan, it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t a sport you aged out of. All the kids around me played pickup basketball and football or ran or hell even tossed a Frisbee. None of the adults I knew did any of these things, ever. I figured sports was something you did until age 30 (remember, I was 17, that sounded ancient), and then stopped.

Not skiing (and not a lot of those other things, either). With the help of gravity and forgiving gear, you can arc your way down 8 a.m. groomers for as long as your body and health hold up. Skiing is a bit of a time machine that way: as you lay one sideways and pop from turn to turn down the mountain, muscle memory engages, and you glide. It’s amazing. On dry land, people slow down, lose a step. They can’t run as fast or jump as high or jump at all. Skiing, somehow, transcends that.

That’s probably why, as Jon points out, 20 percent of U.S. skiers are over the age of 50. That’s 2 million people, and they are some of the most passionate skiers. Retirement, after all, is the great weed-out. Many folks pack up their cubicle and move to Florida, tired of the snow and the cold. God bless them, but I have no use for these people. Why flee the snow when you can move to Park City and ski 100-plus days per year? Retirees – many of them – are the ones among us with the money to afford it and the time to catch up on years of missed pow days because they couldn’t miss the 9 a.m. with Mr. MacGregor. This is why, at every ski area in America, you will find tables full of wisecracking 60-somethings booting up and sipping coffee at 8 a.m. They’re done with the b******t, and they’re going skiing.

What we talked about

Skiing in Utah this season: “These Vail Resorts crowds are insane”; growing up skiing the East; what you miss about Northeast skiing when you’re drowning in Utah pow; when and why Weisberg founded SeniorsSkiing.com; escaping Manhattan for Park City in retirement; the “phenomenon” of older skiers; the size and significance of the over-50 skier demographic; what ski areas and the ski industry get wrong about older skiers; why there isn’t seniors-specific ski gear and why that’s a missed opportunity for equipment manufacturers; how to get around the stigma of seniors-branded gear; the pride of defying popular perceptions as an older skier; skiing as a true lifelong pursuit; the difference between chronological and perceived age and how skiing skews that downward; the three technological advancements that have made life easier for older skiers; the 99-year-old legendary skier who finds it “much easier to ski than to walk”; why skiing matters as a generator of community and purpose; finding a ski buddy as your friends age out of the sport; the “vortex” of the spouse who wants to spend the winters in Mexico or Florida; the “lot-to-lift” commute; the quality of the toilets matters; thoughts on on-mountain collisions and safety; the problem of accident reporting; thoughts on the expensive-day-ticket-cheap-season-pass dynamic; the insanity of Park City crowds this season and the “downside of the inexpensive pass”; is a reckoning coming for Vail Resorts?; the Indy Pass and the trend toward independent ski areas; why Utah skiing is “too much of a good thing”; the surreal Salt Lake City boom; thoughts on the Little Cottonwood gondola or bus; and the abandoned mining railroads beneath the Wasatch and whether that could ever connect the existing ski resorts.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

The pandemic has disordered much of American life. Our routines, habits, sense of safety. And, in many cases, our social circles. People are moving. People are dying. People are freaking the hell out and staying inside. The consequences of this are vast and varied, but an overlooked one is that some people are left skiing alone.

One of the main missions of SeniorsSkiing.com is to mitigate that loneliness with an online community of like-minded skiers (the site, I should point out, long predates Covid). Here, they can find each other and, possibly, connect for a day of skiing. That social part of skiing is maybe as important as the act itself, right? Just to feel a part of something. In sprawling, car-centric, polarized, screen-obsessed America, it’s easy to feel alone. Ski resorts are like mini-cities, interesting and slightly chaotic gathering spaces for folks of all kinds. They are one of the best engines capitalism has created to unite people around a healthy activity.

There is this scary but very real phenomenon that we discuss in the podcast: many people, defined for decades by their work, die within a year of retiring. A simple Google search will reveal dozens of studies confirming this. Absent 40-plus hours of weekly TPS reports, people need something to do. What better thing is there than skiing? SeniorsSkiing.com is an important website that makes sure people who want to form a community on the snow can do it. Check it out.

Additional Reads

Weisberg mentions legendary ski journalist Lloyd Lambert in our interview - here’s a New York Times piece on him and senior skiers from 1982.

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Who

Tom Day, President and General Manager of Gunstock, New Hampshire

Recorded on

March 14, 2024

About Gunstock

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Belknap County, New Hampshire

Located in: Gilford, New Hampshire

Year founded: 1937

Pass affiliations: Unlimited access on New Hampshire College Pass (with Cannon, Cranmore, and Waterville Valley)

Closest neighboring ski areas: Abenaki (:34), Red Hill Ski Club (:35), Veterans Memorial (:43), Tenney (:52), Campton (:52), Ragged (:54), Proctor (:56), Powderhouse Hill (:58), McIntyre (1:00)

Base elevation: 904 feet

Summit elevation: 2,244 feet

Vertical drop: 1,340 feet

Skiable Acres: 227

Average annual snowfall: 120 inches

Trail count: 49 (2% double black, 31% black, 52% blue, 15% green)

Lift count: 8 (1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples, 3 carpets - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Gunstock’s lift fleet)

Why I interviewed him

In the roughly four-and-a-half years since I launched The Storm, I’ve written a lot more about some ski areas than others. I won’t claim that there’s no personal bias involved, because there are certain ski areas that, due to reputation, convenience, geography, or personal nostalgia, I’m drawn to. But Gunstock is not one of those ski areas. I was only vaguely aware of its existence when I launched this whole project. I’d been drawn, all of my East Coast life, to the larger ski areas in the state’s north and next door in Vermont and Maine. Gunstock, awkwardly located from my New York City base, was one of those places that maybe I’d get to someday, even if I wasn’t trying too hard to actually make that happen.

And yet, I’ve written more about Gunstock than just about any ski area in the country. That’s because, despite my affinity for certain ski areas, I try to follow the news around. And wow has there been news at this mid-sized New Hampshire bump. Nobody knew, going into the summer of 2022, that Gunstock would become the most talked-about ski area in America, until the lid blew off Mount Winnipesaukee in July of that year, when a shallow and ill-planned insurrection failed spectacularly at drawing the ski area into our idiotic and exhausting political wars.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can read more on the whole surreal episode in the Podcast Notes section below, or just listen to the podcast. But because of that weird summer, and because of an aspirational masterplan launched in 2021, I’ve given Gunstock outsized attention in this newsletter. And in the process, I’ve quite come to like the place, both as a ski area (where I’ve now actually skied), and as a community, and it has become, however improbably, a mountain I keep taking The Storm back to.

What we talked about

Retirement; “my theory is that 10 percent of people that come to a ski area can be a little bit of a problem”; Gunstock as a business in 2019 versus Gunstock today; skier visits surge; cash in the bank; the publicly owned ski area that is not publicly subsidized; Gunstock Nice; the last four years at Gunstock sure were an Asskicker, eh?; how the Gunstock Area Commission works and what went sideways in the summer of 2022; All-Summers Disease; preventing a GAC Meltdown repeat; the time bandits keep coming; should Gunstock be leased to a private operator?; qualities that the next general manager of Gunstock will need to run the place successfully; honesty, integrity, and respect; an updated look at the 2021 masterplan and what actually makes sense to build; could Gunstock ever have a hotel or summit lodge?; why a paved parking lot is a big deal in 2024; Maine skiing in the 1960s; 1970s lift lines; reflecting on the changes over 40-plus years of skiing; rear-wheel-drive Buicks as ski commuter car; competing against Epic and Ikon and why independent ski areas will always have a place in the market; will record skier-visit numbers persist?; a surprising stat about season passes; and how a payphone caused mass confusion in Park City.  

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

On January 19, Gunstock Marketing Director Bonnie MacPherson (long of Okemo and Bretton Woods), shot me a press release announcing that Day would retire at the conclusion of the 2023-24 ski season.

It was a little surprising. Day hadn’t been at Gunstock long. He’d arrived just a couple months before the March 2020 Covid shutdowns, almost four years to the day before he announced retirement. He was widely liked and respected on the mountain and in the community, a sentiment reinforced during the attempted Kook Coup of summer 2022, when a pair of fundamentalist nutjobs got flung out of the county via catapult after attempting to seize Gunstock from Day and his team.

But Gunstock was a bit of a passion project for Day, a skiing semi-lifer who’d spent three decades at Waterville Valley before fiddling with high-end odd-jobs of the consultancy and project-management sort for 10 years. In four years, he transformed county-owned Gunstock from a seasonal business that tapped bridge loans to survive each summer into a profitable year-round entertainment center with millions in the bank. And he did it all despite Covid, despite the arrival of vending-machine Epic and Ikon passes, despite a couple of imbeciles who’d never worked at a ski area thinking they could do a better job running a ski area than the person they paid $175,000 per year to run the ski area.  

I still don’t really get it. How it all worked out. How Gunstock has gotten better as everything about running a ski area has gotten harder and more expensive and more competitive. There’s nothing really special about the place statistically or terrain-wise. It’s not super snowy or extra tall or especially big. It has exactly one high-speed lift, a really nice lodge, and Awe Dag views of Lake Winnipesaukee. It’s nice but not exceptional, just another good mid-sized ski area in a state full of good mid-sized ski areas.  

And yet, Gunstock thrives. Day, like most ski area general managers, is allergic to credit, but I have to think he had a lot to do with the mountain’s late resilience. He’s an interesting guy, thoughtful and worldly and adventurous. Talking to him, I always get the sense that this is a person who’s comfortable with who he is, content with his life, a hardcore skier whose interests extend far beyond it. He’s colorful but also plainspoken, an optimist and a pragmatist, a bit of back-office executive and good ole’ boy wrencher melded into your archetype of a ski area manager. Someone who, disposition baked by experience, is perfectly suited to the absurd task of operating a ski area in New Hampshire. It’s too bad he’s leaving, but I guess eventually we all do. The least I could do was get his story one more time before he bounced.

Why you should ski Gunstock

Skiing Knife Fight, New Hampshire Edition, looks like this:

That’s 30 ski areas, the fifth-most of any state, in the fifth-smallest state in America. And oh by the way you’re also right next door to all of this:

And Vermont is barely bigger than New Hampshire. Together, the two states are approximately one-fifth the size of Colorado. “Fierce” as the kids (probably don’t) say.

So, what makes you choose Gunstock as your snowsportskiing destination when you have 56 other choices in a two-state region, plus another half-dozen large ski areas just east in Maine? Especially when you probably own an Indy, Epic, or Ikon pass, which, combined, deliver access to 28 upper New England ski areas, including most of the best ones?

Maybe that’s exactly why. We’ve been collectively enchanted by access, obsessed with driving down per-visit cost to beat inflated day-ticket prices that we simultaneously find absurd and delight in outsmarting. But boot up at any New England ski area with chairlifts, and you’re going to find a capable operation. No one survived this long in this dogfight without crafting an experience worth skiing.

It’s telling that Gunstock has only gotten busier since the Epic and Ikon passes smashed into New England a half dozen years ago. There’s something there, an extra thing worth pursuing. You don’t have to give up your SuperUltimoWinterSki Pass to make Gunstock part of your winter, but maybe work it in there anyway?

Podcast Notes

On Gunstock’s masterplan

Gunstock’s ambitious masterplan, rolled out in 2021, would have blown the ski area out on all sides, added a bunch of new lifts, and plopped a hotel and summit lodge on the property:

Most of it seems improbable now, as Day details in the podcast.

On the GAC conflict

Someone could write a book on the Gunstock Shenanigans of 2022. The best I can give you is a series of article I published as the whole ridiculous saga was unfolding:

* Band of Nitwits Highjacks Gunstock, Ski Area’s Future Uncertain - July 24, 2022

* Walkouts, Resignations, Wild Accusations: A Timeline of Gunstock’s Implosion - July 31, 2022

* Gunstock GM Tom Day & Team Return, Commissioner Ousted – 3 Ways to Protect the Mountain’s Future - Aug. 8, 2022

If nothing else, just watch this remarkable video of Day and his senior staff resigning en masse:

On the Caledonian Canal that “splits Scotland in half”

I’d never heard of the Caledonian Canal, but Day mentions sailing it and that it “splits Scotland in half.” That’s the sort of thing I go nuts for, so I looked it up. Per Wikipedia:

The Caledonian Canal connects the Scottish east coast at Inverness with the west coast at Corpach near Fort William in Scotland. The canal was constructed in the early nineteenth century by Scottish engineer Thomas Telford.

The canal runs some 60 miles (100 kilometres) from northeast to southwest and reaches 106 feet (32 metres) above sea level.[2] Only one third of the entire length is man-made, the rest being formed by Loch Dochfour, Loch Ness, Loch Oich, and Loch Lochy.[3] These lochs are located in the Great Glen, on a geological fault in the Earth's crust. There are 29 locks (including eight at Neptune's Staircase, Banavie), four aqueducts and 10 bridges in the course of the canal.

Here's its general location:

More detail:

On Day’s first appearance on the podcast

This was Day’s second appearance on the podcast. The first was way back in episode 34, recorded in January 2021:

On Hurricane Mountain, Maine

Day mentions skiing a long-gone ropetow bump named Hurricane Mountain, Maine as a child. While I couldn’t find any trailmaps, New England Lost Ski Areas Project houses a nice history from the founder’s daughter:

I am Charlene Manchester now Barton. My Dad started Hurricane Ski Slope with Al Ervin. I was in the second grade, I remember, when I used to go skiing there with him. He and Al did almost everything--cranked the rope tow motor up to get it going, directed traffic, and were the ski patrol. As was noted in your report, accommodations were across road at the Norton farm where we could go to use the rest room or get a cup of hot chocolate and a hamburger. Summers I would go with him and Al to the hill and play while they cleared brush and tried to improve the hill, even opened one small trail to the right of the main slope. I was in the 5th grade when I tore a ligament in my knee skiing there. Naturally, the ski patrol quickly appeared and my Dad carried me down the slope in his arms. I was in contact with Glenn Parkinson  who came to interview my mother , who at 96 is a very good source of information although actually, she was not much of a skier. The time I am referring to must have been around 1945 because I clearly recall discussing skiing with my second grade teacher Miss Booth, who skied at Hurricane. This was at DW Lunt School in Falmouth where I grew up. I was in the 5th grade when I hurt my leg.

My Dad, Charles Manchester , was one of the first skiers in the State, beginning on barrel staves in North Gorham where he grew up. He was a racer and skied the White Mountains . We have a picture of him at Tuckerman's when not many souls ventured up there to ski in the spring. As I understand it, the shortage of gas during WWII was a motivator as he had a passion for the sport, but no gas to get to the mountains in N.H. Two of his best ski buddies were Al Ervin, who started Hurricane with him, and Homer Haywood, who was in the ski troopers during WWII, I think. Another ski pal was Chase Thompson. These guys worked to ski--hiking up Cranmore when the lifts were closed due to the gas shortage caused by WWII. It finally got to be too much for my Dad to run Hurricane, as he was spending more time directing traffic for parking than skiing, which after all was why he and Al started the project.

I think my Dad and his ski buddies should be remembered for their love of the sport and their willingness to do whatever it took to ski. Also, they were perfect gentlemen, wonderful manners on the slope, graceful and handsomely dressed, often in neckties. Those were the good old days!

The ski area closed around 1973, according to NELSAP, in response to rising insurance rates.

On old-school Sunday River

I’ve documented the incredible evolution of Sunday River from anthill to Vesuvius many times. But here, to distill the drama of the transformation, is the now-titanic ski area’s 1961 trailmap:

This 60s-era Sunday River was a foundational playground for Day.

On the Epic and Ikon New England timeline

It’s easy to lose track of the fact that the Epic and Ikon Passes didn’t exist in New England until very recently. A brief timeline:

* 2017: Vail Resorts buys Stowe, its first New England property, and adds the mountain to the Epic Pass for the 2017-18 ski season.

* 2018: Vail Resorts buys Triple Peaks, owners of Mount Sunapee and Okemo, and adds them to the Epic Pass for the 2018-19 ski season.

* 2018: The Ikon Pass debuts with five or seven days at five New England destinations for the 2018-19 ski season: Killington/Pico, Sugarbush, and Boyne-owned Loon, Sunday River, and Sugarloaf. Alterra-owned Stratton is unlimited on the Ikon Pass and offers five days on the Ikon Base Pass.

* 2019: Vail buys the 17-mountain Peak Resorts portfolio, which includes four more New England ski areas: Mount Snow in Vermont and Crotched, Wildcat, and Attitash in New Hampshire. All join the Epic Pass for the 2019-20 ski season, bumping the number of New England ski areas on the coalition up to seven.

* 2019: Alterra buys Sugarbush. Amps up the mountain’s Ikon Pass access to unlimited with blackouts on the Ikon Base and unlimited on the full Ikon for the 2020-21 ski season. Alterra also ramps up Stratton Ikon Base access from five days to unlimited with blackouts for the 2020-21 winter.

* 2020: Vail introduces New England-specific Epic Passes. At just $599, the Northeast Value Pass delivers unlimited access to Vail’s four New Hampshire mountains, holiday-restricted unlimited access to Mount Snow and Okemo, and 10 non-holiday days at Stowe. Vail also rolls out a midweek version for just $429.

* 2021: Vail unexpectedly cuts the price of Epic Passes by 20 percent, reducing the cost of the Northeast Value Pass to just $479 and the midweek version to $359. The Epic Local Pass plummets to $583, and even the full Epic Pass is just $783.

All of which is background to our conversation, in which I ask Day a pretty interesting question: how the hell have you grown Gunstock’s business amidst this incredibly challenging competitive marketplace?

The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.

The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 30/100 in 2024, and number 530 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019.

Who

Rob Katz, Vail Resorts Executive Chairperson of the Board

Recorded on

January 24, 2022

Why I interviewed him

As I wrote last month:

Rob Katz changed skiing. Under his leadership, Vail demystified the season pass, transforming it from a rarified token for locals to an accessible and affordable product for casual skiers. An industry reliant for decades on bubble-prone real estate development had the grand realization that the skiing itself was its main product, and that the simple maneuver of bundling resorts onto a single pass, cutting prices, and moving the pass sales period to the offseason could stabilize a temperamental business reliant on weather.

The Epic Pass spawned competitors. Vail’s consolidation of large resorts drove the consolidation of other large resorts. Today, 145 of the 462 active U.S. ski areas are on the Epic, Ikon, Indy, or Power passes. Just four companies own 67 of these mountains. Vail owns 33 (it will soon own 36 if regulators approve its sale of Seven Springs, Laurel, and Hidden Valley in Pennsylvania). Alterra – which did not exist in 2006 – owns 13. Powdr Corp owns 10, Boyne Resorts, nine; and Mountain Capital Partners, seven. But the combined might of three of those four conglomerates is on the Ikon Pass, matched against Vail and the Epic Pass.

“Vail is the powerhouse of the industry,” said Alterra CEO Rusty Gregory in an interview with The Storm Skiing Journal. “There's no question about that. And Rob is the guy who led them to that success.”

The ski industry today resembles the ski industry of 2006 as much as shopping or entertainment in 2021 resembles its ancestors from that time. But unlike big-box shopping, disrupted by upstart Amazon, or carefully programmed linear television, undone by Netflix, skiing was disrupted from within, by an established player with a visionary CEO. As Katz transitions to executive chairperson of the board and hands the keys to the CEO suite off to Vail veteran Kirsten Lynch, he has solidified his place as the most transformational figure in the history of lift-served skiing.

“Rob changed a company, changed a business practice, added a product, he changed an entire business model, and an industry along with it,” said Shaun Kelly, managing director and senior research analyst at Bank of America who specializes in gaming, lodging, and leisure equity research. “I cover hotels, I cover casinos, and the businesses themselves are remarkably similar to what they were 10 or 15 years ago. You think about taking a stock from $30 to $300. In the stock market, you don't get multiples of your money unless you get both significant growth of your core business, but also a change in perception of how people value the cashflow or the business itself. And Vail got both.”

No one has set the narrative around lift-served skiing over the past two decades more than Rob Katz, and hearing that story first-hand was an opportunity I was very happy to have.

What we talked about

Where Katz grew up skiing; crushing Hunter in jeans; how Katz began working with Vail in the early ‘90s and what the company looked like at the time; when Katz realized Vail could become Vail Resorts; the genesis of the Epic Pass; selling the idea of the Epic Pass both to the company’s board of directors and to the individual resorts themselves; how the world reacted to the Epic Pass’ launch; thoughts on the shift of the season pass from a rarified locals product to an everyman’s product; Vail’s move into California; how Kirkwood and Heavenly became part of the same portfolio and why that makes sense; why every Vail acquisition becomes unlimited on the Epic Pass; the story behind the Park City acquisition; why Vail needs Whistler and Whistler needs Vail; why and how Vail entered Australia; Vail’s Midwestern bumps and how they fed the empire; the importance of small ski areas; why Vail barnstormed the East; how the company will fix up its less-evolved resorts; is owning eight of the 22 public ski areas in Pennsylvania too much?; thoughts on $200-plus lift tickets; Vail’s Turn in Your Ticket program; what’s gone right for Vail in the 2021-22 ski season; the ongoing threat of Covid; how Vail will ensure that the meltdown at Stevens Pass does not repeat in future seasons; thoughts on Vail’s curtailed Midwestern operating hours this season; Vail’s crowd-management efforts; an update on Vail’s racial and gender-equity efforts; Jerry of the Day; and Vail’s enormous investments in employee housing and the challenges around that.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

In November, Katz stepped into Vail’s executive chairperson of the board role, leaving the CEO seat he had occupied for 15 years. Raise your hand if, in January 2006, you thought we’d one day have a ski pass that bundled Vail, Park City, Heavenly, and Whistler with Mount Brighton, Michigan and Hunter Mountain. Vail’s rise to the top of skiing has been unpredictable, surprising, rapid, and amazing to witness. For frequent skiers, the sport has never been more affordable, their choices more varied.

But the rise of Vail and the Epic Pass have not been seamless. Again, as I wrote last month:

Stability, affordability, modernization: all of this benefitted skiers, especially frequent skiers. But Vail’s ascent to the top of the skiing food chain has catalyzed or coincided with profound changes to the lift-served skiing ecosystem and the mountain towns that surround them, especially in the West. Worker housing, long problematic, has reached crisis levels. Colorado’s Interstate 70, Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon (where Vail does not own a resort), and other mountain-transportation corridors have become synonymous with apocalyptic traffic. Resort consolidation has drawn charges of homogenization, mountain crowding, and day-ticket prices that make big-mountain skiing unaffordable for many Americans.

This season, Vail has suffered from Covid-related staffing shortages and other issues that have prevented the company from fully opening Stevens Pass, Wildcat, and Attitash. Several of Vail’s smaller ski areas have slashed operating hours from previous seasons. Warm temperatures throughout much of the country through the first half of December didn’t help.

This seemed like a good time to reflect on Katz’s legacy while sorting through the messy present and how Vail plans to move ahead.

Questions I wish I’d asked

There was just no way to cover everything. As Katz said before we started the interview, we could have spent an hour on any single question. I would have loved to have gotten more into Vail’s enormous investment in chairlifts, the impacts of the company’s vaccine mandate and the federal government’s worker-visa limits on staffing, mountain-town traffic, Katz’s enormous personal donations to charity, and the odd discrepancy between flat skier-visit numbers and what feels like ever-more crowded resorts. Next time.

More Vail

* Here’s a pretty good timeline of Vail Resorts’ acquisitions (does not include Seven Springs)

* Previous Vail Resorts episodes of The Storm Skiing Podcast: East Region COO Tim Baker and Mount Snow GM Tracy Bartels

* Thoughts on Vail’s enormous coming lift upgrades

* A look at some of Vail’s struggles this season

Who

Jeff Kohnstamm, President and Area Operator of Timberline Lodge, Oregon

Recorded on

January 11, 2022

Why I interviewed him

Because the big, family-owned ski area is increasingly an anachronism, a thing unlikely and surprising and kind of amazing. Ski areas are so expensive, so complicated, so capital intensive, and so all-consuming that it’s a rare individual who can command the whole enterprise. The industrial-corporate model of ski-area domination makes sense for a lot of reasons – scale, access to capital, and geographic breadth that helps to mitigate bad weather. But something is lost with that, too. Timberline, family-owned since Kohnstamm’s father showed up to a swath of rustic and remote slopes carved out of the Oregon wilderness in 1955, retains that “something” – a coziness that includes a pair of St. Bernard mascots, a lodge spectacular and Transylvanian, and a shared pass with the local night-skiing bump down the road.

Still, this is big-time skiing, with a season that spans most of the calendar, a vertical drop that looks down on Jackson Hole, and a high-speed lift fleet shooting all over the mountain. Over the summer, Timberline finally connected the lower slopes of the main mountain with the beginner terrain at Summit Pass, giving it the longest contiguous vertical drop in the country. Even if it’s patched together through a series of shuttlebuses, lifts, and Cat rides, that’s a big deal. And it’s just the first step in the grand evolution of this snow-bombed volcanic ski area, a showcase of how a family-run mountain can operate on a grand scale.

What we talked about

The wild start to the 2021-22 ski season; building the spectacular Timberline Lodge during the Great Depression; the intricate process behind keeping the national historic landmark and its décor up-to-date; how Kohnstamm’s father acquired the ski area in the 1950s and what it looked like when he arrived; the decades-long evolution of Timberline from a backwater into a modern ski area; the evolution of the ski area’s original chairlift, Magic Mile, from a single to a double to a high-speed quad; how Timberline keeps its above-treeline chairs from icing overnight; the evolution of the Palmer chair, the immense ongoing challenges of operating it, and why it doesn’t run in the winter; growing up at Timberline; Kohnstamm’s early years working at the ski area and how he ended up running it; the sense of duty behind being steward of the family legacy; how Kohnstamm’s father saved the lodge from demolition back in the ‘50s; why Timberline bought the smaller Summit ski area down the mountain; how and why they connected the two ski areas; the incredible European-esque journey from bottom-to-top and top-to-bottom; the history of the trails connecting Timberline and Summit; how Kohnstamm envisions Summit evolving; the expansive Euro-esque experience of skiing top-to-bottom on Timberline’s full 4,540-foot vertical drop; an update on the scope and timing of the ski area’s master plan; the proposed alignment, size, type, and length of the coming Timberline gondola; the future of the Summit chairlift; the maintenance advantages of old chairlifts; the future of Bruno’s and the beginner area at Timberline; potential future lift upgrades on the current fleet of high-speed quads; whether we could ever see a six-pack at Timberline; the future of parking and transportation at the ski area and how the gondola could help; summer skiing on Mt. Hood; the great meltdown of summer 2021; why Timberline “will be the last ski area standing”; why Timberline created the Fusion Pass with Mt. Hood Ski Bowl; and the Powder Alliance.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

This is a ski area that never stops trying to become the best version of itself. The lightspeed lift fleet, the summer skiing, the high-altitude camps, the engineering miracle of the Palmer lift, the jury-rigged biggest-in-the-country vertical, the amped-up shuttle and Cat service to actualize that, the modernization of that wonderful lodge – this is a place that’s easy to admire.

But nearly 70 years into family ownership, the resort is still evolving, and in a big-time, visionary way. The proposed gondola would knit together Government Camp and the ski area with a city-to-mountain connection that is rare in American skiing. It would detangle some of Timberline’s high-altitude parking issues and take cars off the road, and it would create a fabulous, expansive ski experience reminiscent of the Alps, with its above-treeline access and tiered ski experiences. The plan is with the Forest Service for review, and we are a ways from seeing gondy towers rise off the mountain, but this seemed like a great time to check in on the overall vision and progress.

I also wanted more insight into this: Timberline is one of the largest ski areas in the country that has not yet partnered with the Epic, Ikon, or Indy passes. I imagine it would have an open invitation from any of them, especially Vail, which has no presence in Oregon and never met a high-speed lift it didn’t like. The ski area is part of the reciprocal Powder Alliance – granting its passholders three days each at more than a dozen other ski areas of similar size – and it has the Fusion pass in conjunction with Mt. Hood Ski Bowl, but it has resisted the greater urge to consolidate. How, and why? The only thing more interesting than the trend toward megapass skiing is those who buck the trend.

Questions I wish I’d asked

I would have liked to have discussed whether Timberline had ever considered a joint pass with Mt. Hood Meadows, which is right next door.

What I got wrong

I referred to the Palmer Snowfield as the “Palmer Glacier.”

Why you should ski Timberline

Well where else can you ski in August in the United States, first of all? I mean outside, and with a chairlift, and alongside some of the best skiers in the world. I spent a September afternoon lapping the Palmer lift, and the sort of flip-doodle springy amazingness I witnessed was something out of P.T. Barnum. It was like seeing LeBron and K.D. roll up on your local court and start blitzing fools.

But that’s just a small part of Timberline, both the ski area and the culture. The rest of the year, it’s a workaday place, a big-but-not-too-big joint with manageable terrain, a terrific lift system, and a dab of novelty and adventure in the big ski down to Summit. Plus it gets pounded with snow and it’s fairly easy to get to in this access-road-as-Armageddon ski-commute era we’ve entered. Put this one on your PNW ski swing, whether it’s on your big pass or not.

More Timberline Lodge

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Timberline Lodge’s lift fleet

* Historic Timberline Lodge trailmaps on skimap.org

* More on Timberline’s master development plan

* Some history on Timberline Lodge:

More Kohnstamm:

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Who

David Cronheim, President of the Shareholders Corporation for Hickory Ski Center, New York

Recorded on

January 5, 2022

Why I interviewed him

Because these places… gone. Once-spectacular ski areas towering out of the wilderness, lifts and trails and little shacks arrayed along the base and splendid people standing about bareheaded in sweaters, unbothered, as though the jacket and hat were inventions of weak-willed generations to come. New York is littered with their ghosts. Dutchess, poised spectacularly on the Hudson, rising a thousand feet over the town of Beacon. Wing Hollow, site of a still-unsolved double-murder, 800 feet funneling off two peaks in the state’s Western snowbelt. Scotch Valley, a spiderweb of trails cascading down a Catskills ridge. The trails are still visible on Google Maps. The lifts remain. But the ski area as an operating concern is long gone.

Most of these ski areas are never coming back. But Hickory and its 1,200 vertical feet of all-natural terrain, narrow trails and glades, and shoulder-jerking Pomas lifted from our black-and-white past, could be. This is the most important story in New York skiing right now, and I had to hear more.

What we talked about

Hickory’s founding by 10th Mountain Division veterans returning from World War II; the history of the ski area’s unique lift system; Hickory ownership over the years; why Hickory closed in 2005 and again in 2015 after decades of continuous operation; the incredible costs of maintaining even a basic ski area; skiing on a one-inch snow base; how snowmaking would transform Hickory into “a steeper West Mountain” and why the ski area won’t do that; the thrill and challenge of riding the antique Pomas; why Hickory’s upper mountain can only accommodate 200 skiers per day; the novel license and pass model that will “harness the enthusiasm” that surrounds Hickory and bring the ski area back in a sustainable way; why “there’s nothing about Hickory that makes economic sense”; Hickory’s distinct upper and lower mountains and why the ski area is creating different access tiers for each of them; why the mountain won’t be selling upper-mountain lift tickets; how non-license-holders will be able to access the upper mountain; why the future of Hickory relies on “sharing the risk of a bad winter”; charging for uphill access; the gnarly gorgeous terrain of the Three Sisters Range and whether the ski area could ever expand onto its neighboring mountains; the intense physical experience of skiing Hickory and how that colors the social experience; finding parts for decades-old lifts; the hassle of certifying ancient lifts in New York State; the inevitable comparisons to Mad River Glen; why the Pomas will likely last as long as Hickory does; how the lower-mountain lift system could eventually evolve; whether the lower mountain could ever see snowmaking or night-skiing lights; the condition of Hickory’s spectacular lodge; what a successful season would look like; and what the ski area’s operating schedule might look like.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

It’s not fair to say that Hickory ever really died. The owner never said, “I give up,” as the folks at Ski Blandford and Granite Gorge and Toggenburg have done in recent years. Rumors and reports proliferated since the last time Poma 1 and 2 carried skiers to the mountain’s summit seven or eight years ago. But winter after winter the place sat idle. There was no obvious way to revive it: the place has no snowmaking, grooming technology from the Nixon administration, low-capacity surface lifts that are too aggressive for 90 percent of the skiing public. Maintenance costs were high, revenue low. What could be done?

Saving Hickory would take some creativity and shared sacrifice, a critical mass of skiers willing to invest in a ski area that may go all winter long without opening. An all-natural-snow mountain in New York is a strange enough conceit. This isn’t Utah, after all. But an all-natural-snow mountain in 2022 New York, with its erratic snowfalls, is puzzling. Add in the fact that the ski area is right down the road from Gore, with its 14 lifts and 110 trails and 2,500-foot vertical drop and state-funded gazillion-gallon snowmaking system, and the notion of a sustainable Hickory may seem downright insane.

But completely sane people rarely accomplish anything interesting or novel. It turned out that there was (probably) a way to bring Hickory back to the surface. A way to ride again. It’s creative and compelling, modest in scope but valiant in its ambition. Skiers invested in preserving old-school skiing and motivated to lock-in Poma access on those rare New York snow days will each have to chip in $300 per year to cover those basic operations. When it snows, these so-called license holders will have to pay for an upper-mountain lift ticket. No one else other than guests of a license-holder will be able to get them. There are other elements to the plan: opening lower-mountain access to the general public, bringing in school groups, and charging uphillers to access the ski area at will. New York Ski Blog lays the whole pricing structure out here.

Will the plan work? I don’t know. I think it will. I hope it does. The folks who love Hickory do too. Listen to this conversation and you will become one of them pretty quick. Hope to see you out there.

Why you should ski Hickory

There is a certain breed of insufferable Big-Mountain Bro who spends approximately 85 percent of his waking hours trolling social media for ski posts portraying anything other than four feet of powder dumping off a Valdez spine. “Where’s the snow?” says this idiot, when looking at a picture filled with snow. Big-Mountain Bro will never let the world forget that he spent five days heli-skiing in 2003 and that anything else is now beneath him.

While that guy is busy updating his will to make sure this fact is etched on his tombstone, the rest of us are skiing anything we can, whenever we can. Some days, this means zooming around a ski area sprawling over five peaks interlaced with chairlifts fast enough to break the sound barrier. Other days it means dragging kids around a flat beside a Magic Carpet. But Hickory gives us something else: raw, throwback skiing. The best of nature crossed with the best technology 1965 could produce. It’s rough and improvisational and steep and way more than most of the skiing public could handle. But for those who can handle it and for those that can get there, Hickory will give you a ski experience unmatched and unforgettable.

For everyone else, for kids, for beginners, for the curious or the anxious, there’s the lower mountain, Hickory’s pony-tow and T-bar learners area. Together they’re pretty cool – like two ski areas stacked atop each other. Big-Mountain Bro scoffs. The rest of us can marvel that such a thing still exists, that someone came up with a way to make it work, and that it does. It’s a story worth being part of.

Plus, well, this could be you:

Hickory Ski Center Trailmaps

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Leah Muirhead MacDonald, CEO of Inter-Mtn. Enterprises Inc.

Recorded on

December 20, 2021

Why I interviewed her

We take it all for granted: the enormous volume of fixtures, signage, and furniture that attends our lift-served ski day. Everyone notices the lifts, of course, the lodges and the various buildings dotting the landscape. Those are the hero items, the sorts of things that become part of a ski area’s identity and mythology. No one writes a press release announcing their purchase of new ski racks or lift-tower padding or trailsigns. But we need these things and in some cases governments require them. Enter Inter-Mtn. and its kin, skiing’s equivalent of Staples, churning out all the stuff everyone needs but no one thinks about. It’s a sprawling, interesting world, and one I’d always been mildly curious about.

But there is one extra dimension to Inter Mtn. that made it a particularly captivating subject: the company has been hand-painting ski-area trailmaps for the past two decades, an intricate and elaborate undertaking that has few true masters. It was this element that drew me to the company, especially once I learned they were the outfit behind this gorgeous trailmap for Berkshire East:

From the moment this map by Inter-Mtn. artist Eric Oyen debuted in 2018, I was captivated by it. It’s modern and familiar, yet distinct in style from the prolific James Niehues. I like the detail, the geography, the way it captures and distills the rambling essence of Berkshire’s gladed incline. This is a beloved mountain, a long-time locals’ favorite, a Vermont-ish slice of terrain with an unlikely Massachusetts address. It’s often very good and often empty, with more snow and more atmosphere than you’d expect. The map packages that for us, with the half-empty lot and the snowy landscape tapering down into the river and the humble lodge buildings peaking up the steep front slopes. Squeezing all that into a painting that also has to act as a practical guide is unlikely and unexpected, (and maybe I’m projecting a bit here), but Oyen crushed it. I wanted to find out how the company pulled this off, and find out which other ski areas they’d profiled in paint.

What we talked about

Inter-Mtn.’s origin story; the difference between destructive and non-destructive testing; how ski area’s find damage in chairlift haul ropes; where all those chairlift safety signs come from; how Covid re-arranged the sign game; deciding to join the family business and eventually buying it; the internet is a fad; how a BC native stays humble cold-calling Ontario bumps; “you don’t need vertical to make money”; helping the ski industry improve its opportunities for women; the company’s Creator of Stupid Ideas; what Inter Mtn. makes besides trailmaps; [burbling from my 5-year-old playing with a cat in the background]; the company’s territory; how a day skiing at Whistler birthed Inter-Mtn.’s Rake Advisory Committee; how the company creates new products; how ski-resort signs are like fast fashion and how to avoid that; selling quality and durability in a disposable world; passing the high-heel test; the company’s most-popular products; attempted product lines that didn’t work out; the size and scope of Inter-Mtn.’s industry; where the company makes its products; how the company organizes a factory that makes wildly diverse products; the most labor-intensive products; how natural disasters and general supply-chain issues have disrupted the company’s business; how the company broke into the trailmap game, with a design for Apex Mountain; the art and intricacy of creating a trailmap; why Berkshire East was a perfect philosophical fit for an Inter-Mtn. trailmap; the process of creating a trailmap, and how long it takes and how much it will cost you; capturing a ski-area’s essence in a painting; the visual tricks that bend a mountain so that it still resembles reality while being comprehensible to skiers; creating maps with future expansions in mind; thoughts of the slow decline of paper trailmaps; and thoughts on James Niehues stepping back from trailmap creation.     

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

As soon as I saw Bousquet’s new trailmap, I posted it to Twitter and Instagram:

Inter-Mtn. took notice of one of these posts and reached out to see if I’d be interested in interviewing Leah. And yes, I was – this is the best trailmap the Massachusetts bump has ever had – and it’s been in business since 1932 (it’s the eighth-oldest ski area in the country).

This is how the podcast often works – I do take pitches. I can’t interview everyone, but if it’s a good fit for my audience – meaning the subject matter is primarily about the world of lift-served skiing – I’ll gladly set up the conversation. If you’re reading this and you run a ski area of any size, anywhere, and you’d like to join me on the podcast, please reach out and we’ll make it happen.

What I got wrong

Well I started by mispronouncing my guest’s first and last names. I also said “paint of coat” instead of “coat of paint,” which is not important for any reason but is kind of hilarious.

References

* During the interview, I referenced a Lift Blog story about a (possible) bullet striking a haul rope on a Vail Mountain lift. You can see the photos here.

* I also promised listeners that I would post Inter-Mtn.’s old and new logos, so that they could help me search for them on the mountain:

A partial history of Inter-Mtn. trailmaps

Devil's Glen Country Club - Ontario - 2013

Mt. Timothy – British Columbia - 2015

Craigleith Ski Club - Ontario - 2016

Mansfield Ski Club - Ontario - 2016

Trollhaugen – Wisconsin - 2017

Hidden Valley Ski Resort - Alberta - 2017

Hodadon Basin - Wyoming - 2017

Fairmont Hot Springs - British Columbia - 2018

Who

Roger Arsenault, Chairman of the Board of Directors, and Deanna Kersey, Marketing Manager, Black Mountain of Maine

Recorded on

December 13, 2021

Why I interviewed them

There may be no ski area in America that better tells its story through trailmaps than Black Mountain of Maine. The humble 470-foot bump, T-bar climbing up the incline, circa 1980:

It didn’t look much different 22 years later:

But prior to the 2004 season, Black finally strung a triple chair to the summit. The T-bar stayed, but the mountain ran a new clutch of trails down a full 1,136 vertical feet:

By 2011, the mountain had expanded skier’s right:

Then onto hike-to terrain skier’s left, taking the full skiable vertical drop to 1,380 feet:

Then Black Mountain began acknowledging the voracious work of the Angry Beavers, which had quickly become the most legendary glading corps in New England:

And here it is today:

Has any other ski area in New England transformed its footprint so dramatically in the past two decades? Maybe Saddleback, which undertook a similar clandestine re-ordering under the Berry family. But that was an already-big ski area trimming its edges. Black was a tiny mountain that morphed into a mid-sized one, and like leaves filling out the forest in springtime, no one even noticed until it was there. Hell, no one has noticed yet. How did Black do it, and what was next? I had to find out.

What we talked about

Who owns and operates non-profit Black Mountain of Maine and how it raises funds; how to give back with nothing but time; snowmobile races; surveying the Maine ski scene; how the Maine Winter Sports Center saved the ski area; how the ski area transformed from a 400-foot-bump at the turn of the century to a mid-sized ski area with three times the vertical drop and an ever-expanding trail-and-glade network; transforming the public narrative around Black Mountain; how megapasses are driving skiers to smaller ski areas; how the local skiers responded when the town suspended the ski area’s funds one year; the Angry Beavers and the ski area’s astonishing glade network; the logic of green-circle glades; Black’s unique trailmap; the gradual and understated expansion of Black’s trail network; whether we could see more trails cut off Bagaduce; Black’s unique Osekare uphill trail; possible future expansion; what a Bagaduce chairlift could look like; why the ski area is rarely crowded even when the parking lots are full; potential enhancements to the current summit chairlift; why Black doesn’t have a beginner carpet and is unlikely to get one; why the ski area only offers public night skiing a handful of days per year; $15 Thursday lift tickets and $25 Friday lift tickets sponsored by L.L. Bean; why Black’s season passes remain so cheap; Indy Pass and potential reciprocal partnerships; private mountain rentals Monday through Wednesday and how much they cost; and how 2021-22 Covid protocols will differ from last season and what will be the same.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

At this point, I think we’re all a little fried: $269 lift tickets, 900-resort Epimegas, liftlines wrapped around the planet. It’s fun to complain about, but not that much fun to do. And you don’t have to. The NSAA says there are 462 U.S. ski areas. Seventy-two are on the Epkon passes. Ninety percent of the rest of them have chairlifts flapping in the breeze. Maine is a big ski state without a lot of big ski areas. Sunday River, Sugarloaf, Saddleback – all excellent. But they’re not everything. Abram and Shawnee Peak are there too, and then there’s Black, which has quietly become the fourth-largest ski area in the state. And no one talks about it, no one knows about it. This is your release valve. You’re welcome.

Why you should ski Black Mountain of Maine

Here it is: the mountain we all say we want to ski: out of the way, unknown, funky, independent, cheap, rowdy, unforgiving, made for and by skiers. Thursday lift tickets are $15. Fridays are $25. A season pass is approximately the cost of a Burrito Supreme. This is Europe in the 1970s. Costa Rica 15 years ago. A bargain now but bound to blow up because how can it not? It’s half an hour down the road from Sunday River, a natural overflow point, the place you go when you’ve had enough and you just say “goddamnit.” What more could a skier want? The answer is nothing. A mountaintop triple chair at the end of the road, in the back of the woods, like you turned left off US 2 into 1964. And you know what? Maybe you did.

More Black Mountain of Maine

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Black Mountain of Maine’s lift fleet

* Historic Black Mountain of Maine trailmaps on skimap.org

* More about the Libra Foundation, which oversees Black Mountain of Maine

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions.

Who

Rob Perlman, President and Chief Operating Officer of Steamboat Resort, and Regional Chief Operating Officer for Alterra Mountain Company’s Central Region

Recorded on

Dec. 6, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because there aren’t many like this: big, snowy, sprawling, accessible, parked above an actual downtown-centered town still animated by its cowboy past. Like Telluride or Crested Butte, Steamboat is a major resort tucked away from the interstate, giving it a different vibe from its I-70 cousins. That’s not to say it can’t get crowded, tracked out, or backed up – it’s an Ikon Pass headliner after all, a true destination. But it’s an extra step past everything, Denver and Summit County and Vail and Beaver Creek and Winter Park. You have to understand why it’s worth it. And that brings a different crowd, somehow. Not better or worse – just slightly more self-aware and humble. And the skiing itself is everything that most of us could want skiing to be. Big and approachable and varied and interesting and just confusing enough to feel like an immersive videogame, an RPG in which you ride three boats and take a horse over the pass and suddenly you’re in a very exotic land from which you must somehow extract yourself. And in the midst of this vastness you can shuck the crowds and be, somehow, alone in a forest in the mountains. It’s amazing and it happens every time I’m there. Bursting lines, the rat-a-tat energy of the base, the hypersonic chairlifts, and then quiet. Absolutely no one. Bird chirps and snowmelt dripping off the pines. And I just stop and sit with that, on a mountain in Colorado, pretty happy at that moment with all that there is.

What we talked about

Perlman’s new role overseeing Alterra’s Utah and Colorado resorts; thoughts on who may be the next leader at Deer Valley; why the Ikon Pass is not Alterra-owned Deer Valley’s season pass; working under industry legend and now-author Chris Diamond; the power of positivity; lots of Alterra stoke; Steamboat’s massive and transformative master plan; the titanic effort of moving the Steamboat gondola last summer; the wild line over lifts and glade terrain that the multi-station, 3.1-mile-long Wild Blue gondola will take up the mountain; the new mid-mountain “Greenhorn Ranch” beginner area; the logic of terminating the second gondola on Sunshine Peak; 650 acres of new expert and advanced gladed terrain on Pioneer Ridge and what kind of lift may serve it; why it was time to remove the Priest Creek double chair; the fate of the chairs and Steamboat’s philanthropic spirit; thoughts on eventual replacements for the Storm Peak, Sunshine, and Thunderhead lifts; could we see an eight-pack at Steamboat?; a potential gondola connection between the resort and the town; the eventual Sunshine II pod skier’s left of the current Sunshine trails; how we got to $269 walk-up day tickets; drawing a better line between walk-up prices and Ikon Passes; how the Ikon and Epic Passes have re-energized the skier market; what the extra skier traffic means for Steamboat; why Steamboat has always been limited to five days on the Ikon Base Pass; Steamboat’s partnership with Wyoming’s Snowy Range ski area; Howelsen Hill; the resort’s relationship with the town it sits above; and how the housing shortage is playing out in Steamboat and what the resort is doing to address it.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Steamboat spent the summer, as Perlman said, “liberating” their central plaza by demolishing the massive gondola terminal and moving the lift’s base onto the slopes. That’s step one. What comes next is the aggressive and dizzyingly expensive Full Steam Ahead project, a $200 million subset of the resort’s long-term master plan that will transform Steamboat into the second-largest ski area in Colorado. That new terrain – a 650-acre gladed wilderness of advanced and expert runs – will drop 2,000 vertical feet of feisty white-knucklers onto a resort that largely lacks them. But the centerpiece of the project is a megalift serving the existing terrain: the 3.16-mile, 10-passenger, two-stage Wild Blue gondola, which shifts the beginner center to mid-mountain à la Jackson Hole and skips the long terrestrial commute over to Sunshine Peak in favor of a direct flight. It’s one of the most aggressive reorientations of skier traffic any U.S. resort has attempted in a long time, and it underscores Alterra’s commitment to modernizing and turbocharging its resort portfolio. Full steam ahead.

What I got wrong

I referred to the Wildhorse Gondola as a line between the parking lot and the resort base, when it in fact transports skiers up from down-mountain housing units.

Why you should ski Steamboat

Because no matter who you are, you can. Seriously. It’s one of the most approachable big mountains in North America. The snow is plentiful and light. The greens are long and winding. The blues are unintimidating. The blacks are manageable, and once you need more than manageable, Steamboat leaves bumps everywhere. Beyond that are the glades, often touted as the best in the country. I won’t claim that for certain, but I will say that if you’re trying to amp up your glade game, this is the spot to do it. Nicely pitched, well-spaced trees, not much competition (good as the glades are, 95 percent of the skiers never leave the piste here, just like anywhere else). Meander over to Sundown Express, lap the Closets and Shadows all day long. You’ll come out a different skier. And that’s just the start. Almost the whole joint is skiable, the trees tighter as they shed official trail names. Get lost. Have fun. Then go down to town and live the night. There are plenty of good ski towns in America, and a few great ones. This is one of the great ones. Go.

More Steamboat

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Steamboat’s lift fleet

* Historic Steamboat trailmaps on skimap.org

* More on Full Steam Ahead:

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The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Jeff Crowley, President of Wachusett Mountain, Massachusetts

Recorded on

November 29, 2021

Why I interviewed him

When the Crowleys showed up at “Mt. Wachusett Ski Area” in 1969, the place looked like any of the hundred-plus rinky-dink operations dotting the state at the time:

Like subsistence farmers coaxing shoots from cracked earth in some pre-industrial past, Wachusett and its kin eked out a seasonal living. Simple operations powered by simple machines and whatever fell from the sky. Most failed. Wachusett thrived. Today, it looks like this:

As I’ve written about other regionally beloved ski areas that persisted as their neighbors disappeared into the wilderness - Plattekill, Jiminy Peak - there was nothing inevitable about this. The Crowleys made it happen. Wachusett is not merely a survivor. It is one of the most successful ski areas in the country. Beloved and profitable, it hosts more than 400,000 annual skier visits on 130-ish acres. That’s only 50,000 fewer than 3,000-acre Whitefish. And yet, it works. The place is an absolute machine, every part of the experience optimized and streamlined, the relentless focus on one thing: to get as many people as possible skiing as much as possible.

What we talked about

Wachusett ranked ahead of Stowe on Ski’s reader poll; opening weekend 2021; how a Massachusetts ski area beats so many larger, farther-north ski areas to open year after year; “we’re all crazy” at Wachusett; what the mountain looked like when the Crowleys showed up in 1969; the ski area’s Civilian Conservation Corps legacy; the oldest trail on the mountain; how Wachusett thrived as so many other Massachusetts ski areas failed; how a day skiing at Mount Snow inspired Ralph Crowley to buy Wachusett; how it feels when your dad buys a ski area; a cross-country adventure in lift installation; why Wachusett is likely to be a family-run operation for the foreseeable future; the Wachusett diaspora; the origins of Wa-Wa-Wachusett:

…400,000-plus skier visits on a 130-acre ski area and the Wachusett MACHINE; climate-proofing the ski area; the irrepressible Worcester ski culture; the Wachusett you encounter will depend upon the time of day you show up; the importance of local ski journalism and what we lose when it fades; the vertical-drop and French fry battles between Berkshire East and Wachusett; how turmoil over old-growth forest near the mountain’s summit set the ski area’s modern footprint; why Wachusett doesn’t have marked glades; whether the ski area could ever lose its lease; what the ski area is considering as a replacement for its summit lift; sponsored chairlifts; why Wachusett installed a 300-vertical-foot high-speed quad; where the old Monadnock lift went; the Vickery Bowl expansion; whether the ski area could ever expand again; how Wachusett helps preserve land all over the state; why the mountain grooms twice per day; why the ski area will continue making snow into the end of March; beating Killington to open in 2020; that one time you could ski in May in Massachusetts; why the mountain continued to limit season pass sales and cut the ski day into sessions for 2021-22, and whether those changes will persist; keeping lift-ticket prices low; reciprocal season-pass partners; why Wachusett didn’t migrate from the MAX Pass to the Ikon Pass; whether the mountain could ever join another multi-mountain pass; reaction to the advent of the Epkon passes in New England; why Wachusett pass sales persist in this environment; you won’t believe the ski area that Wachusett bid on last year; and why Crowley thinks I should buy a ski area and why I probably never will.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because from my seat, it doesn’t make sense: the Epkon passes keep getting more affordable, their kingdoms spreading like videogame emperors, and Wachusett doesn’t flinch. It was on a megapass and the megapass disappeared and the mountain didn’t join another one. They’re just like, “nah we’re good.” But in an accent impossible to imitate and designed to make me look ridiculous if I tried. Wachusett just keeps going. A third-grade bubblegum-wrapper detective could figure out why: great location, good managers, rabid local skiers. Fine. It’s still surrounded by abandoned ski areas. What makes this place special, a true independent independent in an era of consolidation and backed-into-a-corner coalition building? Listen to Crowley and you’ll get it pretty quick. I sure did.

What I got wrong

I said on the podcast that Jiminy Peak and Pats Peak had lift-ticket prices exceeding $100. This is incorrect. Jiminy Peak’s top rate for the 2021-22 ski season is $99. Pats Peak tops out at $89. I also referred to Connecticut’s Woodbury ski area as “Middlebury,” making my second ridiculous yeah-I’m-not-from-New-England mistake in as many weeks.

Why you should ski Wachusett

Well, if you live in eastern Massachusetts, the answer is pretty straightforward: because it’s right there, a thousand-footer parked in your backyard. High-speed lifts and twice-a-day grooming and ticket/pass prices that are entirely reasonable. No well-I-guess-I-don’t-really-need-my-kidney-medication sticker-shock here. Even the cafeteria is affordable. It’s the same reason I ski Mountain Creek from my perch in New York City – there’s no reason not to.

If you’re anyone else, from anywhere else, there are infinite other reasons why Wachusett may appeal to you: to support a family-owned business, to be part of the mania, to witness The MACHINE. I don’t know. I figured out a while ago that I could spend the rest of my lift skiing the same six ski areas in Vermont that everyone else did, or I could explore a little. I’m having a lot more fun since I decided on the latter path. Five Star Recommend. Just go.

Additional reading/videos

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Wachusett’s lift fleet

* Historic Wachusett trailmaps on skimap.org

* Wachusett perennially appears among the top 20 resorts on Ski magazine’s Eastern resort rankings - it nabbed the No. 15 spot this year

* Longtime Worcester Telegram & Gazette snowsports columnist Shaun Sutner appeared on the podcast last week, and we discussed Wachusett and Worcester at length. His first column this season focuses on the next-generation of family managers set to guide the ski area into the future.

* Crowley and I discussed: what is the real vertical drop of Berkshire East (1,180 feet advertised), and Wachusett (1,000 feet advertised)?

Support The Storm by shopping at our partners:

Patagonia | Helly Hansen | Rossignol | Salomon | Utah Skis | Berg’s Ski and Snowboard Shop | Peter Glenn | Kemper Snowboards | Gravity Coalition | Darn Tough | Skier's Peak | Hagan Ski Mountaineering | Moosejaw | Skis.com |The House | Telos Snowboards | Christy Sports | Evo | Hotels Combined | Black Diamond | Eastern Mountain Sports

Who

Shaun Sutner, snowsports columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Telegram.com

Recorded on

November 22, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because for skiing to thrive, it needs ski media to help tell its story. And I mean actual reporting-based journalism. Yes, it needs the hype – the cliff drops, the pow shots, the flippidy-doodle park brahs, this:

But it also needs writers who can tell the story of the more approachable lift-served skiing world in which most of us dwell. Writers who know the local markets and local owners and local skiers and local idiosyncrasies. In the great ski media wipeout that swept away the bulk of our U.S. magazines, we also lost a lot of local ski beats. This matters. Good journalism, grounded in relationships and research, can counterbalance the noisy and atrocious swirl of social-media garbage that has become many skier’s primary information source about the sport.

Sutner provides this corrective. In a snowsports column he has written for nearly two decades, he explores the world of New England skiing from his Worcester, Massachusetts base. He knows the people who run the ski areas, understands the market dynamics driving the sport’s evolution, and skis 80 days a year on the mountains he writes about. He knows the uphill and the downhill, the groomers and the backcountry, the people who can show him the stashes in all of them. There is nobody better equipped to help us understand what New England skiing is, how it became that, and what it might be in the future.

What we talked about

I can’t pronounce “Worcester”; the appeal of New England skiing; Southeast and Mid-Atlantic ski culture; Sutner’s long-running Telegram snowsports column; it’s beef time, snowshoers; what skiing loses when local journalism shrivels; the amazing snowy ski town that is Worcester; the slick operation at Wachusett; journalism’s rough transition to digital; newspaper paywalls; how to ski 80 days a year with a full-time job; surveying the Massachusetts ski landscape; the rise of Berkshire East; the renaissance at Catamount; the art of dodging large crowds at Stowe, Mount Snow, Loon, Cannon, and other busy mountains; regional ski passes; the Berkshire East-Wachusett French fry beef; you won’t believe which Massachusetts ski area has the highest base elevation in the state; thoughts on the state’s lost ski areas – Mount Tom, Pine Ridge, Brodie, Blandford, Mt. Watatic; the most endangered ski area in Massachusetts; the resilience of the Connecticut ski scene; Worcester’s cross-country ski park; the fate of Worcester’s once-thriving network of ropetow bumps; how Ski Ward endures; the distinct ski areas of North Conway; the explosion of the Mount Washington backcountry ski scene; the North Conway-Worcester connection; the appeal and frustrations of Attitash; brainstorming solutions for the atrocious summit triple; Vail Resorts’ evolving uphill policies; the odds that currently proposed expansions at Gunstock, Ragged, Sunapee, and Waterville Valley succeed; the buzz around Ragged; thoughts on Loon’s new eight-pack; the right balance between uphill and downhill capacity; Loon’s undersized gondola; the twisted history and fate of Tenney; whether Les Otten’s huge ski area development at The Balsams could succeed; the secret behind Magic’s comeback; beef with Mad River Glen; thoughts on the evolution of Stowe under Vail; how the Indy, Epic, and Ikon passes have changed New England skiing for the better; whether Vail’s crowd-management efforts will be enough to offset exploding Epic Pass sales; why the success of Hermitage Club matters to the average skier; whether the club will succeed this time; Boyne’s purchase of Shawnee Peak; the revitalizations of Saddleback and Bosquet under socially conscious investment groups; and Vail Mountain versus Beaver Creek

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because Sutner’s column begins every year on Thanksgiving week, just as the Northeast ski season (typically) ramps up in earnest. It seemed like a good time to survey the happenings of New England skiing, from the concussive impacts of the Epic and Ikon Passes to New Hampshire resort expansions to the diligent multi-generational families running Massachusetts ski areas. And I wanted to help promote his column, a fine piece of weekly journalism that will make your ski season better.

What I got wrong

During the interview, I estimated the number of ski areas in New England to be “80 or 90 or maybe more.” The correct number is 90, according to the National Ski Areas Association.

Why you should read Sutner’s column

Because it’s focused, intelligent, researched, fact-checked, spell-checked, and generally just the sort of professional-level writing that is increasingly subsumed by the LOLing babble of the emojisphere. That’s fine – everyone is lost in the scroll. But as the pillars of ski journalism burn and topple around us, it’s worth supporting whatever’s left. Gannett, the parent company of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, has imposed fairly stringent paywalls on his work. While I think these local papers are best served by offering a handful of free articles per month, the paper is worth supporting if it’s your local – in the same way you might buy a local ski pass to complement your Epkon Pass. Good, consistent writing is not so easy to find. Sutner delivers. Support his craft.

Where you can read Sutner’s column

Sutner’s column kicks off Thanksgiving week each year and runs until April. This season’s inaugural edition, released yesterday, starts, as usual, close to his home base of Worcester. A preview:

The last time I checked in with Chris Stimpson in this column he was a University of Vermont student on a barnstorming van tour of Western ski areas with a band of fellow collegiate free skiers.

Stimpson, now 28, is the new media spokesman and public relations manager for Wachusett Mountain Ski Area as of this season, and also serves as the ski area’s terrain park manager. He’s part of a group of third-generation Crowley family members who occupy key roles at the thriving family business founded by their grandfather, Ralph Crowley, in 1969.

Stimpson’s cousin David Crowley Jr. is the operations manager, and cousin Courtney Crowley is the new head of group sales. …

What this generational shift in the making means for Wachusett customers is that the independent ski area is in solid, experienced family hands for the future and is not likely to ever be sold off to a big corporate chain.

Read more…

A few of Sutner’s past columns:

* Earliest Ski-Area Opening in Northeast Goes to Wachusett (Nov. 27, 2020)

* Winchester a Fresh Voice on Northeast Ski Scene (Dec. 9, 2020)

* New Hampshire’s Black Mountain ‘Is Like a Trip into the Past’ (Feb. 17, 2021)

* Ski Industry Makes Strides Toward Inclusion (March 31, 2021)

Follow up on stuff we talked about in the interview

* Follow Shaun on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

* Shaun and I discussed this lost ski area in Van Cortland Park in The Bronx. A ropetow operation may have also briefly existed in Queens.

* We also talked about the story I had yet to write about a new owner buying Woodbury ski area in Connecticut – that story is here.

* Shaun talked about the lost Mt. Atatic Ski area - it looks like a cool little operation. Here’s a great write-up about the backcountry scene there on Lift Line Blog.

* Shaun references the Wa-Wa-Wachusett theme song in our interview. Here you go:

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Who

Bill Stritzler, Owner of Smugglers’ Notch, Vermont

Recorded on

November 16, 2021

Why I interviewed him

No matter who owned it, Smugglers’ Notch would be a notable ski area. It’s big, snowy, tough, and storied. As New England as Plymouth Rock. The terrain is varied, balanced, and interesting. It’s one of the best things the Eastern ski scene has going.

But ownership does matter, because Smuggs has some things that almost no other large Vermont ski area has: stable management reaching back decades, a legitimate on-mountain base village, independence. That makes it one of the most self-assured ski areas in a state with no shortage of them, including the chest-thumping Beast and to-Hell-with-everything Mad River Glen. Smuggs doesn’t give a damn what you think about its 1960s lift system, or that it’s halfway past the ass-end of nowhere, or that it’s not part of the 500-mountain Riptacular Pass. Smuggs is just gonna sit there and kick ass, no matter how you feel about the set of circumstances surrounding that. And you know what? That’s pretty goddamn awesome.

What we talked about

How Smuggs has and hasn’t changed since Stritzler showed up to run the place in 1987; leaving the corporate world after a successful multi-decade career to run a ski resort in northern Vermont; why and how Smuggs became one of the best family ski resorts in the country; why Bill bought the resort in the mid-90s after running it for nearly a decade; the handshake, lawyers-stand-down way that Stritzler ended up with the mountain; whether the era of large independent ski areas is drawing to an end; Stowe-Smuggs combination talks over the years; whether Vail has ever tried to buy Smuggs; thoughts on Stowe under Vail ownership; the history of the Smuggs-Stowe interconnect and why maintenance of it ended; whether you can still ski between the two ski areas; the importance (or not), of large independent ski areas; the upside of the Epic and Ikon passes; why Smuggs season pass prices have stayed low and what that means in an era of bargain-basement Epic Passes; whether Smuggs would ever join the Ikon or Indy passes; the Bash Badge program that allows skiers to ride for $30 per day; the calculator in the ski market’s head; thoughts on the skyrocketing prices of walk-up day tickets and why Smuggs hasn’t followed that model; Smuggs’ amazing antique lift system and why the mountain won’t upgrade it any time soon; the importance of on-trail skier density; what would make Smuggs consider replacing a lift; how you maintain lifts manufactured by a company that no longer exits; thoughts on the atmospheric importance of slow, old lifts; why Madonna won’t get a high-speed quad; prioritizing the ride down the mountain versus the ride up; detachable doubles?; the immense pride in running the longest remaining Hall chairlifts in the world; the advantage of staying debt-free; how Smuggs supercharged its snowmaking system and why that system is likely at its limit terrain-wise; the perfect green-blue-black terrain division between Smuggs’ three mountains; endless glades; whether we could see additions to Smuggs’ trail network; the Birthday Bowls; the Black Hole, the Northeast’s only triple-black diamond trail; the 2020-21 ski season at Smuggs; Covid innovations that are going to stay; and the village FUN ZONE!

Why I thought now was a good time for this interview

Six years ago, there were nearly as many Vermont ski-area owners as there were Vermont ski areas. AIG owned Stowe. Win Smith owned Sugarbush. Triple Peaks owned Okemo. Peak Resorts owned Mount Snow. Intrawest owned Stratton. Ariel Quiros owned Jay Peak and Burke. Vail was a company out West. Alterra didn’t exist. “I’ll take ‘Owners of Vermont ski areas’ for $1,000, Alex.”

It’s a different game today. Vail, in a series of mammoth acquisitions, swept up Stowe, Okemo, and Mount Snow. Alterra absorbed Intrawest, and with it, Stratton, and a year later bought Sugarbush. The federal government helped itself to Jay and Burke after Quiros turned out to be a buffoonish cartoon villain.

And yet, there’s Bill Stritzler, kicking it around his giant trio of mountains beside Stowe, same as he’s been doing since the Berlin Wall was still a thing. Smugglers’ Notch is the largest remaining independent U.S. ski area east of Loveland. It’s part of no pass coalition, no reciprocal ticket partnerships. That matters. It matters because what used to be the only model – one person owns one ski area – is now a novelty, and, perhaps, an anachronism.

But maybe not: Smuggs, despite its antique lift fleet, its impossible location, its fierce climate, is beloved. It earned the East’s top slot in Ski’s most recent reader rankings and third place on Z Rankings’ more data-driven Eastern list. Why? Yes, it gets a lot of snow, but so does every ski area along Vermont’s spine from Jay down to Sugarbush. Yes, its Madonna pod is striped with some of the nastiest terrain in New England, but so is Stowe’s FourRunner Quad, right next door. Yes, it’s affordable and quaintly throwback, but so is Mad River Glen. So there’s something else that makes the place special. But what? That’s why me and Bill had to talk.

Why you should ski Smugglers’ Notch

There’s a magic to Northern Vermont. It’s not like anything else in the Northeast. Three-hundred-plus inches of snow? Those are Western numbers, but they happen all the time along the Spine. The rest of New England is lucky to get half what Jay, Smuggs, Stowe, Bolton Valley, Mad River Glen, and Sugarbush rack up year after year. It’s cold enough that the snow keeps, too. Sure, they get freeze-thaws and rain, like anywhere else in the low-elevation East, but not nearly as much as, say, Mount Snow or Magic.

Even among this ripsaw lineup, Smuggs is special. Its three peaks are nearly perfectly divided by ability. It has a real on-mountain base village. It has an almost maniacal focus on families. The fact that it has no high-speed lifts means you have the place practically to yourself on the way down. It’s a beautiful ski area, a true destination tucked away from the world. And after listening to Stritzler talk about the resort, you’re gonna have a hard time not going, not wanting to support the idea that something like Smugglers’ Notch could still exist in the conglomerating ski world of 2021. How long it will persist is impossible to say. Go while it does.

More on Smugglers’ Notch

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Smuggs’ lift fleet

* Historic Smugglers’ Notch trailmaps on skimap.org

* This (very good) Ski article from a few years back turbocharged a Vail-to-buy-Smuggs rumor that just won’t quit.

* Yes, you can ski between Smuggs and Stowe. It used to be an official thing.

* Thoughts on the difference between the two resorts

* More from Ski on what makes Smuggs so good

* The Fun Zone!

* Madonna is the longest Hall double chair in the world (as confirmed by Lift Blog). How long? See for yourself:

Some cool aerial shots, though I wish this didn’t jump around so much:

Previous Vermont-focused Storm Skiing Podcast episodes:

Killington/Pico | Magic | Burke | Sugarbush (Win Smith) | Mad River Glen | Jay Peak | Sugarbush (John Hammond) | Mount Snow | Hermitage Club | Bolton Valley | Ski Vermont | Vail Resorts Eastern Region | Vermont Ski + Ride

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Who

Mary Kate Buckley, President of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort

Recorded on

November 15, 2021

Why I interviewed her

In a nation machine-stamped with endless copies of Burger Kings and Sunoco stations and cut-out-of-a-cornfield housing developments, very few things truly stand out. Your buddy gives you a house tour and you’re like, “Wow Seth five bathrooms that’s so many more bathrooms than I expected you would ever have when we used to throw stale donuts at backyard racoons for sport.” But really do you care about Seth’s bathroom inventory? You don’t care.

I don’t know how many bathrooms Jackson Hole has. And neither do you. And neither does anyone else, because no one has ever counted them. Because the point of Jackson is not boujee American materialism but the tram blowing 4,000-plus feet up the mountain and the rowdy endless kingdom of snowy lines beneath it. This is a place that stands out. In any context. It is the peak of U.S. skiing. It has biggers but no betters. A few peers, maybe. Alta-Snowbird. Palisades Tahoe. Big Sky. What else? For raw terrain, no one. Not in this country. It may be – it probably is – our greatest ski resort. If the aliens arrived and said “Hey you’ve got 24 hours to evacuate before we blow up your planet and I’m sorry but you’re only allowed to bring one ski area per country,” I have little doubt that U.S. Americans would choose Jackson Hole to load aboard the space ark. Lines are gonna be long though because I heard the aliens floated by Costco and picked up a few crates of Ikon Passes on their way off the planet. Sorry bros.

What we talked about

Mary Kate’s globe-trotting decades with Disney and Nike at the dawn of ecommerce; running a vineyard in Tuscany and how that connected back to skiing; settling down in Jackson Hole after living and skiing all over the world; why she joined the ski area’s board of directors and eventually accepted an offer to become the resort’s president; how much the head of Jackson Hole gets to ski; taming the beast to open pieces of Jackson’s vast terrain to beginners and families; the mountain’s fierce terrain; how to prepare to drop into Corbet’s Couloir; whether Jackson Hole could ever expand its managed footprint out onto the gated terrain that surrounds it; where the ski area thinned glades over the summer; why the Jackson Hole Tram is the true alpha lift of American skiing; whether the mountain would ever install a redundant lift to the summit; the benefits of limiting uphill capacity; details on coming replacements for Thunder and Sublette; where the mountain could install an all-new lift; whether we could ever see a lift on the Hobacks; whether we could see a six- or eight-pack on Jackson Hole; how and why the resort limits the number of skiers on the mountain; where the mountain widened trails over the summer; why Jackson Hole closes down in early April despite a healthy snowbase remaining on the mountain; the mountain’s growing reliance on and commitment to renewable energy; the Ikon Pass lands like an asteroid; the persistence of anti-Ikon sentiment; why the resort can’t share Ikon Pass visit numbers and why it wishes it could; why Jackson Hole moved off of the Ikon Base Pass and how that decision turned out; how Jackson Hole season passholders reacted to the inclusion of an Ikon Base Pass with their JHMR season pass; whether the ski area would ever leave the Ikon Pass; how JHMR locals and tourists can get along; why Jackson Hole has stayed on the Mountain Collective Pass even as the Ikon has taken root; the impossible puzzle of mountain-town housing amid the short-term rental phenomenon and Covid-era remote-worker relocations; staffing challenges as ski season closes in; thoughts on diversifying Jackson Hole’s workforce and clientele; developing more opportunities for women to run a ski resort; reflections on the 2020-21 ski season versus expectations over the uncertain summer of 2020; looking forward to fully loading lifts this season; Covid-era adaptations that will stick and those that will fade; and thoughts on Jackson Hole owner Jay Kemmerer’s political activities and their fallout.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because there seems to be few issues inside or outside of skiing that Jackson Hole is not sitting dead in the middle of. It is a ski area too grand not to visit, irresistible to the resort-hopping megapass set who blow into town on the ever-improving transit routes, which have transformed a once-semi-hidden ski-bum paradise into skiing’s Times Square. It’s the archetype of the broken mountain town, its housing model shattered by short-term rentals and cityfolk Covid refugees, a place struggling to keep its sense of place. On the hill, it’s a living experiment in skiing’s ongoing calibration between uphill capacity and overall capacity. It’s the flagship resort for a white-majority sport in an increasingly diversifying nation; an enormous, energy-intensive operation reliant on historical weather patterns to survive; and a woman-led institution in a sport whose gender-diversity efforts have been, historically, poor. It’s seated in a state determined to have it out with the federal government over vaccine mandates, owned by a rich benefactor to Qanon conspiracists, turned upside down by the Covid disruption that’s undone us all to some degree. Name a modern controversy, and it’s unfolding in some form or another beneath this amazing mountain, a place as complex and labyrinthian and nuanced as the nation it’s stationed in.

Why you should ski Jackson Hole

I mean do I really need to include this section? For Jackson Hole?

OK fine. First, some historical perspective, from the 1966 edition of America’s Ski Book:

Just below the Aspen-Vail-Sun Valley quality are a series of resorts of more specialized appeal. At Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a massive complex is taking shape offering the longest vertical drop in the United States – 4,135 vertical feet. It is too early to tell what role Jackson will play in the Rocky Mountain scheme of things, but it is bound to loom large.

Then this, from Jeremy Evans’ In Search of Powder:

…Jackson Hole opened in 1965 with minimal success, totaling about 19,000 skier visits that season. … Jackson Hole had some built-in disadvantages in its quest to become a major player in American skiing. It had a visionary owner, sure, but Paul [McCollister] wasn’t very realistic. Jackson was more isolated than Aspen and Vail, which were within five hours of Denver, and to a lesser degree Sun Valley. All three were considered the finest places to ski in the country. … After numerous complications involving funding, weather, and construction, the Jackson Hole Aerial Tram opened in 1966, and the resort experienced low visits that season as well. … [But] regardless of who owned the resort or how many hotels, shops, and restaurants were in Teton Village, Jackson Hole had a problem no amount of infrastructure could solve: nobody was good enough to ski it.

Well I am happy to report from the future that Jackson Hole turned out just fine. Gear got better, skiers got better, access got easier, and here we are. Jackson Hole is it. For U.S. Americans, it’s the closest thing we have to a skier’s pilgrimage. You have to do it. Lap the tram, peer over the edge of Corbet’s, go for it or don’t. Meander back down or race the tram. Repeat as long as you can take it.

What I got wrong

Several times, I referred to Mary Kate’s job as resort “CEO,” when she is in fact resort president. 

More Jackson Hole

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Jackson Hole’s lift fleet

* Historic Jackson Hole trailmaps on skimap.org

* Mary Kate is a cofounder and co-owner of Urlari wines.

* A note on my claim in the intro that Jackson Hole has the largest contiguous lift-served vertical drop in America: yes, Timberline now claims more vert, at 4,540 feet. But it’s a convoluted route available only when the upper mountain is open and roads between the core Timberline ski area and tiny Summit Pass are snow-covered. The return trip to the top takes a shuttle, a chairlift, a hot-air balloon ride, a rope bridge across a chasm, a swim through an alligator-infested swamp, an the A-Team-style assembly of a combat vehicle from a barn full of old parts near the summit. So yeah not the same thing as just taking a tram to the top.

* More on Big Red:

Some basic stoke:

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Who

Dan Egan, General Manager of Tenney Mountain, New Hampshire

Recorded on

March 14, 2024

About Tenney Mountain

Owned by: North Country Development Group

Located in: Plymouth, New Hampshire

Year founded: 1960 (closed several times; re-opened most recently in 2023)

Pass affiliations:

* No Boundaries Pass: 1-3 days, no blackouts

Closest neighboring ski areas: Campton (:24), Kanc Recreation Area (:33), Loon (:34), Ragged (:34), Waterville Valley (:35), Veteran’s Memorial (:39), Red Hill Ski Club (:42), Cannon (:44), Proctor (:44), Mt. Eustis (:50), Gunstock (:52), Dartmouth Skiway (:54), Whaleback (:55), Storrs (:57), Bretton Woods (:59)

Base elevation: 749 feet

Summit elevation: 2,149 feet

Vertical drop: 1,400 feet

Skiable Acres: 110 acres

Average annual snowfall: 140 inches

Trail count: 47 (14 advanced, 27 intermediate, 6 beginner) + 1 terrain park

Lift count: 3 (1 triple, 1 double, 1 platter - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Tenney’s lift fleet)

View historic Tenney Mountain trailmaps on skimap.org.

Why I interviewed him

Dan Egan is an interesting guy. He seems to have 10 jobs all at once. He’s at Big Sky and he’s at Val-d’Isère and he’s writing books and he’s giving speeches and he’s running Tenney Mountain. He’s a legendary freeskier who didn’t die young and who’s stayed glued to the sport. He loves skiing and it is his whole life and that’s clear in talking to him for 30 seconds.

So he would have been a great and compelling interview even outside of the context of Tenney. But I’m always drawn to people who do particular, peculiar things when they could do anything. There’s no reason that Dan Egan has to bother with Tenney, a mid-sized mountain in a mid-sized ski state far from the ski poles of the Alps and the Rockies. It would be a little like Barack Obama running for drain commissioner of Gladwin County, Michigan. He’d probably do a good job, but why would he bother, when he could do just about anything else in the world?

I don’t know. It’s funny. But Egan is drawn to this place. It’s his second time running Tenney. The guy is Boston-core, his New England roots clear and proud. It makes sense that he would rep the region. But there are New England ski areas that stand up to the West in scope and scale of terrain, and even, in Northern Vermont, snow volume and quality (if not consistency). But Tenney isn’t one of them. It’s like the 50th best ski area in the Northeast, not because it couldn’t be better, but because it’s never been able to figure out how to become the best version of itself.

Egan – who, it’s important to note, will move into an advisory or consultant role for Tenney next winter – seems to know exactly who he is, and that helps. He understands skiing and he understands skiers and he understands where this quirky little mountain could fit into the wide world of skiing. This is exactly what the ski area needs as it chugs into the most recent version of itself, one that, we hope, can defy its own legacy and land, like Egan always seems to, on its skis.

What we talked about

A vision for Tenney; what happened when Egan went skiing in jeans all over New Hampshire; the second comeback season was stronger than the first; where Tenney can fit in a jam-packed New Hampshire ski scene; why this time is different at Tenney; the crazy gene; running a ski area with an extreme skier’s mindset; expansion potential; what’s lost with better snowmaking and grooming and wider trails; why New England breeds kick-ass skiers; Tenney’s quiet renovation; can Tenney thrive long-term with a double chair as its summit lift?; what’s the worst thing about a six-person chair?; where Tenney could build more beginner terrain; expansion opportunities; the future of the triple chair; an endorsement for surface lifts; the potential for night skiing; the difference between running Tenney in 2002 and 2024; the slow death of learn-to-ski; why is skiing discounting to its most avid fans?; the down side of online ticket discounts; warm-weather snowmaking; Tenney’s snowmaking evolution; the best snowmaking system in New Hampshire; “any ski area that’s charging more than $100 for skiing and then asking you to put your boots in a cubby outside in the freezing cold … to me, that’s an insult”; the importance of base lodges; “brown-baggers, please, you’re welcome at Tenney”; potential real estate development and the importance of community; New England ski culture – “It means something to be from the East”; “why aren’t more ski area operators skiing?”; skiing as confidence-builder; the No Boundaries Pass; the Indy Pass; Tenney season pass pricing; and Ragged’s Mission: Affordable pass.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

In late 2022, as Tenney’s social media feeds filled with hyperactive projects to re-open the ski area, I asked a veteran operator – I won’t say which one – what they thought of the ski area’s comeback potential.

“No chance,” they’d said, pointing to lack of water, strained and dated infrastructure, and a mature and modern competitive marketplace. “They’re insane.”

And yet, here we are. Tenney lives.

The longer I do this, the less the project of operating a ski area makes sense to me. Ski areas, in my head, have always been Mount Bohemia: string a lift up the mountain and let the skiers ride. But that model can only work in like four places on the continent, and sometimes, like this year, it barely works there. The capital and labor requirements of running even a modest operation in schizophrenic New England weather are, by themselves, shocking. Add in a summit lift built six decades ago by a defunct company in an analogue world, an already overcrowded New Hampshire ski market, and a decades-long legacy of failure, and you have an impossible-seeming project.

But they’re doing it. For two consecutive winters, lift-served snowskiing has happened at Tenney. The model here echoes the strategy that has worked at Titus and Holiday Mountain and Montage: find an owner who runs other successful, non-ski businesses and let those businesses subsidize the ski area until it can function independently. That could take a while. But Steven Kelly, whose Timberline Construction Company is big-timing it all over New England, seems committed.

Some parts of the country, like Washington, need more ski areas. Others, like New Hampshire, probably have too many. That can be great for skiers: access road death matches are not really a thing out here, and there’s always some uncrowded bump to escape to on peak days. Operators competing for skiers, however, have a tricky story to tell. In Tenney’s case, the puzzle is this: how does a fixed-grip 1,400-footer compete in a crowded ski corridor in a crowded ski state with five-dollar Epic Passes raining from the skies and Octopus lifts rising right outside of town and skiers following habits and rituals formed in childhood? Tenney’s operators have ideas. And some pretty good ones, as it turns out.

Questions I wish I’d asked

I know some of you will be disappointed that I didn’t get into Egan’s career as a pro skier. But this interview could have been nine hours long and we wouldn’t have dented the life of what is a very interesting dude. Anyway here’s Egan skiing and talking about skiing if you were missing that:

What I got wrong

We recorded this before 2024-25 Tenney season passes dropped. Egan teased that they would cost less than 2023-24 passes, and they ended up debuting for $399 adult, down from $449 for this past winter.

When describing the benefits of nearby Ragged Mountain’s $429 season pass, I mention the ski area’s high-speed lifts and extensive glades, but I neglected to mention one very important benefit: the pass comes loaded with five lift tickets to Jay freaking Peak.

Why you should ski Tenney

Before high-speed lifts and Colorado-based owners and Extreme Ultimo Megapasses, there was a lot more weird in New England skiing. There was the Cranmore Skimobile:

And these oil-dripping bubble doubles and rocket-ship tram at Mount Snow:

And whatever the hell is going on here at now-defunct King Ridge, New Hampshire:

I don’t really know if all this was roadside carnival schtick or regional quirk or just a reflection of the contemporary world, but it’s all mostly gone now, a casualty of an industry that’s figured itself out.

Which is why it’s so jarring, but also so novel and so right, to pull into Tenney and to see this:

I don’t really know the story here, and I didn’t ask Egan about it. They call it the Witch’s Hat. It’s Tenney’s ticket office. Perhaps its peculiar shape is a coincidence, the product of some long-gone foreman’s idiosyncratic imagination. I don’t even know why a ski area with a base lodge the size of Rhode Island bothers to maintain a separate building just for selling lift tickets. But they do. And it’s wonderful.

The whole experience of skiing Tenney evokes this kind of time-machine dislocation. There’s the lattice-towered Hornet double, a plodding 60-year-old machine that moves uphill at the pace of a pack mule:

There’s the narrow, twisty trails of Ye Old New England:

And the handmade trail signs:

Of course, modernity intrudes. Tenney now has RFID, trim grooming, a spacious pub with good food. And, as you’ll learn in the podcast, plans to step into the 2020s. The blueprint here is not Mad River Glen redux, or even fixed-grip 4EVA Magic Mountain. It’s transformation into something that can compete in ski area-dense and rapidly evolving New Hampshire. The vision, as Egan lays it out, is compelling. But there will be a cost to it, including, most likely, the old Hornet. That Tenney will be a Tenney worth skiing, but so is this one, and better to see it before it’s gone.

Podcast Notes

On 30 Years in a White Haze

I mentioned Egan’s book, 30 Years In A White Haze, in the intro. I dedicated an entire podcast with his co-author, Eric Wilbur, to this book back in 2021:

On Jackson Hole’s jeans-skiing day

So this happened in December:

On the December washout

Egan references the “December washout” – this is the same storm I went deep on with Sunday River GM Brian Heon recently. Listen here.

On “what I did 20 years ago” and warm-weather snowmaking

This was Egan’s second run as Tenney general manager. His first tenure, near the turn of the century, overlapped with the ski area’s experiments in warm-weather snowmaking. New England Ski History summarizes:

In October of 2002, Tenney was purchased by SnowMagic, a company seeking to showcase its snowmaking technology. The company's origins dated back to the late 1980s, when Japanese skier Yoshio Hirokane developed an idea to make snow in warmer temperatures, called Infinite Crystal Snowmaking. Hirokane later joined forces with Albert Bronander to found the New Jersey-based SnowMagic company. A significant investment was planned at Tenney, rumored to be a choice of either replacing the 1964 Stadeli double chairlift with a high speed detachable quad or installing the high-tech snowmaking system.

In advance of the 2002-2003 ski season, the investment in a SnowMagic system was announced. The system, rumored to cost $1,000,000, would allow the ski area to stay open year round. There was some speculation that the runaway success of this new system would allow for the purchase of a high speed quad shortly thereafter. Famous skier Dan Egan served as General Manager when the area reopened in December 2002.

After dealing with equipment shipping delays reportedly caused by a longshoreman's strike, Tenney was able to open during the summer and fall of 2003 thanks to the system. Numbers were disappointing and costs were high, especially considering it was only covering a small slope. Summer snowmaking operations were cancelled in 2004 and the snowmaking system was sent to Alabama. While summertime snowmaking was expected to return to Tenney in 2005, it was all but forgotten, as the company determined the systems yielded better revenue in warmer climates.

The most recent headline-making experiment in warm-weather snowmaking landed last October, when Ski Ward, Massachusetts beat everyone to open for the 2023-24 ski season with an assist from an expensive but powerful piece of technology:

It cost $600,000. It’s the size of a shipping container. In an August test run, it cranked out a six-foot-tall pile of snow in 83-degree weather.

It’s the L60 snowmaking machine from Quebec-based Latitude 90. And it just helped Ski Ward, Massachusetts beat every other ski area in North America to open for the 2023-24 ski season.

The skiing wasn’t much. A few feet of base a few hundred feet long, served by a carpet lift. Ski Ward stapled the novelty to its fall festival, a kitschy New England kiddie-fest with “a petting zoo, pony rides, kids crafts, pumpkin painting, summer tubing, bounce houses … and more.” Lift tickets cost $5.

On potential Tenney expansions

We discuss several expansion opportunities for Tenney, including a proposed-but-abandoned upper-mountain beginner area. This 1988 trailmap shows where the potential new lift and trails could sit:

On the evolution of Loon

Loon, in recent years, has leapt ahead of its New Hampshire competitors with a series of snowmaking and lift upgrades that are the most sophisticated in the state (Waterville Valley might argue with me on that). I’ve profiled this evolution extensively, including in a conversation with the ski area’s current GM, Brian Norton, in 2022 - listen here.

On Waterville Valley’s summit T-bar

One of the most underrated lifts in New England is Waterville Valley’s summit T-bar. The story behind it is instructive, though I’m not sure if anyone’s paying attention to the lesson. Here’s the background – in 1988, the ski area installed the state’s first high-speed quad, a base-to-summit machine then known as High Country Express (the ski area later changed the name to “White Peaks Express”:

But detachable lifts were new in the ‘80s, and no one really understood that stringing one to the top of White Peak would prove problematic. Wind holds were a constant problem. So, in 1996, Waterville took the extraordinary step of shortening the lift by approximately 400 vertical feet. Skiers could still travel to the summit on the High Country double chair, a Stadeli machine left over from the 1960s:

But that lift was still prone to wind holds. So, in 2018, Waterville GM Tim Smith tried something both simple and brilliant: replacing the double chair with a brand-new T-bar, which cost all of $750,000 and is practically immune from wind holds:

The result is a better ski experience enabled by a lost-cost, low-tech lift. The ski area continued to invest heavily in the rest of the mountain, throwing down $12 million on the Tecumseh Express bubble six-pack – which replaced the old White Peaks Express – in 2022.

Video by Stuart Winchester.

On JP Auclair

Egan mentions JP Auclair, a Canadian freeskier who died in an avalanche in 2014. Here’s a nice tribute to JP from Chris O’Connell, who cofounded Armada Skis with Auclair:

There are a million things that can be said about JP as a skier—how he pioneered and transcended genres, and the indelible mark he has made on the sport. But there is so much more: he was a genuinely good human; he was my favorite person to be around because he was hilarious and because he was kind.

In the summer of 1997 I watched a VHS tape of JP Auclair and JF Cusson skiing the park at Mt. Hood. It was a time when snowboarding was peaking and, in many places, skiers weren’t even allowed in the park. Skiers certainly weren’t doing tricks that rivaled snowboarders—in difficulty or in style. To see JP and JF doing cork 720s blew my mind, and, as a snow sports photographer, I wanted to meet them. At the time, I was a senior photographer at Snowboarder Magazine and I had begun contributing with a start-up ski magazine called Freeze. The following spring the photo editor of Freeze blew out his knee and in his place, I was sent to the Nordic jib land, Riksgransen, Sweden to meet these guys.

JP and I hit it off and that’s how it began – 16 years of traveling and shooting with him. Often, those travels were the kind which involved appearances, autograph sessions and less than ideal ski situations. He would put on a smile and give it 100 percent at an awkward press conference in China when we knew Interior BC was getting hammered. He would shred the icy slopes of Quebec when duty called, or log long hours in the Armada office to slam out a product video. JP was a champion no matter how adverse or inane. That was part of what made him so good.

Ironically, JP and I had a shared sense that what we were doing, while fulfilling in context, at times seemed frivolous. We spent our lives traveling to the far ends of the earth, and we weren’t doing it to build bridges or irrigations systems or to help people have clean drinking water. Instead, we were doing it for skiing. Read the rest…

On Crotched and Peak Resorts

Egan is right, Crotched is often overlooked and under-appreciated in New England skiing. While much of the region fell behind the West, from a technology point of view, in the 2000s, Peak Resorts rebuilt Crotched almost from scratch in 2003, relocating three lifts from Virginia and installing a new snowmaking system. Per New England Ski History:

At the turn of the millennium, Midwestern ski operator Peak Resorts started looking into either acquiring an operational mid-sized area or reopening a defunct area in New England. Though Temple Mountain was heavily considered, Peak Resorts opted to invest in defunct Crotched Mountain. According to Peak Resorts' Margrit Wurmli-Kagi, "It's the kind of small area that we specialize in, but it skis like a larger mountain. It has some nice glades and some nice steeps, but also some outlying areas that are perfect for the beginners."In September 2002, Peak Resorts formed S N H Development, Inc. as a New Hampshire corporation to begin rebuilding the former western side of the ski area. In terms of vertical feet, the prospective ski area was three times larger than any of Peak Resorts' current portfolio. After a 50 year lease of the property was procured in May 2003, a massive reconstruction project subsequently took place, including reclearing the trails, constructing a new snowmaking system, building a new base lodge, and installing rebuilt lifts from Ski Cherokee, Virginia. A reported ten million dollars later, Crotched Mountain reopened as essentially a new ski area on December 20, 2003. Though most of the terrain followed the former western footprint, the trails were given a new science fiction naming scheme.While the reopened ski area initially did not climb to the top of the former quad chairlift, additional trails were reclaimed in subsequent years. In February of 2012, it was announced that Crotched would be acquiring Ascutney's detachable quad, reopening the upper mountain area. The lift, dubbed the Crotched Rocket, opened on December 1, 2012.

On “Rusty” in the hall of fame

Egan refers to “Rusty’s” U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame induction speech. He was referring to Rusty Gregory, former CEO of Alterra Mountain Company and three-time Storm Skiing Podcast guest. Here’s the speech (with an intro by Egan):

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Who

Nick Fredericks, President, CEO, and part-owner of Shawnee Mountain, Pennsylvania

Recorded on

November 9, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because little Shawnee, hanging off the edge of the temperamental Poconos, is feisty enough to stand among its larger neighbors and welcoming enough that beginners swarm the place. Fifty-five percent of Shawnee’s skiers rented gear last season. That’s an enormous stat, and an incredible testament to what Shawnee is: one of the best top-to-bottom learning centers in the region, if not the entire country. The greens here are not the zigzagging catwalks cutting across double-blacks or 50-vertical-foot meadows tucked behind the baselodge (thought they have those too). They’re real trails, running from the summit back to the base, a nice 700 feet of vertical that feels like forever.

From a ski-history point of view, Shawnee is a compelling story. Pennsylvania kept building ski areas long after the rest of the Northeast abandoned the exercise, and Shawnee is relatively new, coming online in 1975. It takes a certain swashbuckling energy and attitude to cut a ski area out of the raw earth, and most of the folks who founded our great ski areas are long gone. While Fredericks did not found Shawnee from an ownership point of view, he was there from day one, cutting trees to clear the trails and pounding nails to raise the summit lodge. That means he’s a treasure chest of institutional knowledge, a one-man encyclopedia devoted to all things Shawnee. He was there when the first skiers puttered their way to the top of the hill in their rear-wheel drive 1970s gashogs, and he was there when the resort pulled one of the great switcheroos in Pennsylvania skiing history, dropping the parking lots from the top of the hill to the bottom and reorienting the whole resort experience. He was there through the bankruptcies and the larger economic busts, the acquisition of Shawnee Peak in Maine and the dissolution of that ownership group, bank takeovers and uncertainty, until he finally got the keys to the place. It’s an awesome story, and I wanted to hear it from the man who’d lived it.

What we talked about

Why Shawnee was designed as an upside-down ski area; the rustic Poconos of the 1970s; the resort’s early Wild West days; reminiscing on New York’s now-defunct Dutchess Ski Area; the longevity of Shawnee employees; why the ski area flipped from an upside-down layout to a lodge-at-the-bottom arrangement and how much time and effort it took to do that; what the ski area did with the facilities at the top of the mountain; Shawnee’s wild access road; the mountain’s year-by-year evolution into a larger ski area; the real-estate crash that drove the ski area into bank ownership; how Nick and his partners finally purchased the ski area in the mid-90s and who they had to outbid to buy it; the wild beavers who ruled Shawnee’s bottom; what happened to the old stone farm walls threaded throughout the base of Shawnee; the history of the ski area’s entry bridge; why the ski area’s setup works so well to foil would-be ski thieves; why Shawnee bought Pleasant Mountain, Maine, and changed the name to Shawnee Peak; how Nick helped drive the Maine ski area from 25,000 skier visits to 90,000 in one season; what eventually separated the mountains; thoughts on Boyne Resorts buying Shawnee; trail expansion opportunities; Shawnee’s master plan and how it will transform the resort, especially its bedbase; why the ski area eschews expert terrain; the mountain’s sophisticated snowmaking system and modern grooming fleet; how the ski area rethought its food service options; rethinking employee housing; possible new summer operations; the massive percentage of Shawnee skiers that rent gear; whether the mountain would ever bring back a lift along Country Club to allow park skiers to lap that section; Shawnee’s terrific natural glades; why the ski area doesn’t groom or open select chunks of the mountain after large snowfalls; Shawnee’s incredible beginner terrain; potential future lift improvements, including the possible fate of the double-double and F lift; how staffing shortages affected Shawnee last season; the logic of the affordable season pass; the positive impact of Covid on business; why the ski area joined the Indy Pass and why Shawnee will have blackouts on the pass for the first time this season; and why Shawnee started forging reciprocal pass partnerships with ski areas across the country.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because Shawnee is an increasingly interesting player in the evolving pass wars that have displaced skiing’s tired business model of expensive single-mountain season passes. It was an early member of the Indy Pass. This season, Shawnee, for the first time, struck reciprocal pass partnerships with Seven Springs/Laurel/Hidden Valley, on the west side of the state; Mont du Lac, Wisconsin; and the king of the reciprocal lift ticket, Ski Cooper, Colorado. With Vail now in control of Jack Frost and Big Boulder, just down the road, and Shawnee’s two biggest competitors, Blue Mountain and Camelback, now under common ownership and likely to join their passes (and eventually join the Ikon Pass), Shawnee will need to keep getting creative. Turns out they have big plans – Fredericks’ commitment to constant improvement is reflected in Shawnee’s steady evolution over the decades, and he makes it clear in this interview that the mountain is nowhere near a finished product.

Questions I wish I’d asked

When Fredericks said Shawnee would consider turning Lift C – the high-speed quad – so that it could access Bushkill, I was a little confused as to where that lift would land. I followed up with Shawnee, and here’s what they said:

“The one thought would be to remove F lift completely and move it so that when you got off the high-speed quad you could then take that lift across the summit (horizontally if you would) over to Bushkill, where F lift used to unload. We would be able to basically cut that lift in half.”

So I’m reading that as saying that the quad would still terminate where it does now. Again, all this is just talk at the moment, but keep an eye out for the ski area’s master plan.

Why you should ski Shawnee

Have kids? Go there. Have an Indy Pass? Go. Want a low-key park to sharpen up your game? Go. Live in NYC? Go – it’s only 90 minutes away. Check your expectations: this is Pennsylvania skiing – there will be crowds, there will be a 50:1 beginner-to-expert ratio, there will be lift-loading shenanigans. It’s all part of the experience. Like most Pennsylvania ski areas, the snowmaking is good and consistent, the lifts are plentiful, and the trail network is cut in such a way as to make the mountain ski much larger than it is. Shawnee is easy to get to and easy to like. Plus, walking across the pond on the wooden footbridge is one of the great resort entrances in Northeast skiing. If you talk the game about supporting family-owned ski areas, this is a great place to turn your words into something tangible.

Additional resources

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Shawnee chairlifts

* Historic Shawnee trailmaps – sadly, I can’t find one with the parking lots on top. If anyone has one, please email me a picture.

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Tim Baker, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Vail Resorts’ Eastern Region. His territory includes Wildcat, Attitash, Mount Sunapee, and Crotched in New Hampshire; Stowe, Okemo, and Mount Snow in Vermont; Hunter Mountain in New York; Jack Frost, Big Boulder, Liberty, Roundtop, and Whitetail in Pennsylvania; Mad River, Alpine Valley, Boston Mills, and Brandywine in Ohio; Mount Brighton in Michigan; Paoli Peaks in Indiana; Wilmot in Wisconsin; Afton Alps in Minnesota; and Hidden Valley and Snow Creek in Missouri.

Recorded on

November 1, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because Vail, suddenly and indisputably, is the new king of Northeast skiing. In three surprise acquisitions between February 2017 and July 2019, the Colorado-based company vacuumed up four ski areas in New Hampshire, three in Vermont, one in New York, and five in Pennsylvania. It changed everything. Immediately. A ski region puttering along on the decades-old model of $1,500 single-mountain season passes found itself in a cage match with the feisty Epic Pass – Vail instantly dropped Stowe’s season pass price from just over $2,300 to around $800. The ink wasn’t dry on the contract before Sugarbush dropped its pass price by 30 percent. At least seven other Vermont ski areas followed, to varying degrees. Former Sugarbush owner Win Smith cited Vail’s purchase of the 17-mountain Peak Resorts portfolio, just over two years later, as one of his primary motivations for selling the mountain to Alterra. Empire established, Vail popped open the nuclear suitcase with a pair of Northeast-specific Epic Passes that undercut even most family-owned single-lifters. For skiers, the direct and indirect impacts of this takeover are widespread and mostly positive. Northeast season passes haven’t been this affordable in decades. Almost any resort of size or note that didn’t get swept up by Vail joined the Ikon or Indy passes, meaning skiers can now access 26 of New England’s best ski areas on just three passes. A savvy early-season shopper who grabbed a $359 Northeast Epic Midweek pass, a $729 Ikon Base Pass, and a $279 Indy Pass can resort-hop the Northeast all season – and tack on a Western trip or two – for just $1,367. In 2016, a season pass to Stratton – just Stratton – was $1,199. Okemo, which likely included some level of Mount Sunapee access – was $1,619. Imagine? A month’s mortgage payment for nothing more than 8,000 miles of Okemo groomers. No more. Frequent skiers who think ahead have never had more options across a broader spectrum of the ski landscape. They have Vail to thank for that, whether they like it or not.

What we talked about

Life in the National Football League; growing up as a skier in West Texas; Vail Resorts in its real estate development days; the value of candid feedback; the special challenges of working at Beaver Creek and Crested Butte; how do deal with the great migration to the mountains over the long term; Vail’s institutional enthusiasm for its Eastern expansion; the “intense love” of Midwestern and Northeastern skiers and riders; how the different sorts of resorts in Vail’s vast portfolio works together; whether Vail is open to more acquisitions in the Northeast or Midwest; if they’re bidding for Jay Peak; what Vail looks for in a new mountain; whether the Epic Pass could add partners – à la Telluride or Sun Valley in the West – in the East; integrating Vail’s Eastern resorts within the company’s culture; adapting to Eastern weather; why Vail offers Northeast-specific Epic Passes; a brief history of the Epic Pass from someone who saw it emerge first-hand; broadening the season pass beyond the interests of a small group of locals; how the Epic Pass and its early deadlines helped stabilize a traditionally fickle industry; why Vail isn’t concerned about crowding even after the 20 percent price drop and booming Epic Pass sales; why Vail is still selling expensive day tickets even as its Epic Day Pass product offers the same access for a fraction of the cost; why Vail discarded the reservation system that it developed for the 2020-21 ski season; the transformative lift upgrade in progress at Okemo; why Vail isn’t worried about overcrowding with a half-dozen high-speed lifts now at the ski area; the new six-packs coming to Mount Snow and Stowe; the status of the Mount Sunapee expansion; why Vail prioritized upgrading the beginner double-double and whether they’re considering an upgrade to the summit triple; details on the Wildcat Express upgrade; whether Wildcat will return to its former commitment to the long season; why Vail is replacing the double-triple at Jack Frost with a quad and how that will increase uphill capacity; determining what to replace on a small hill with a dozen or more antique lifts; and Afton Alps’ mammoth, antique lift fleet and why Vail has no intentions to upgrade it anytime soon.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because if we thought Vail went nuclear with Northeast-specific Epic Passes, it went – what’s after nuclear? Super nuclear? It went super nuclear with 20 percent Epic Pass price drops last spring. While Vail’s competitors, flush from a Covid-charged burst in season pass sales, did not respond with price drops of their own (yet), the surprise move did hit big. First, Epic Pass sales exploded 67 percent compared to last year. It’s impossible to say, at this point, whether those sales came at the expense of other ski area operators’ pass sales, or if, as Vail claims, a large chunk of those are skiers who used to buy lift tickets switching to Epic Day Passes. Either way, Vail’s huge price drops, combined with its decision last spring to ditch its pandemic-era reservation system, have catalyzed concerns about overcrowding once the lifts start spinning.

At the same time, Vail is launching the first phases of a gut renovation of its Northeast properties, starting with a monster lift project that will drop new six-packs on Stowe and Mount Snow and materially change the ski-day experience at many of its mountains across the region. Okemo will have a massive lift overhaul in place for this season. Nearly five years after kicking the Northeast door down with the Stowe purchase, Vail is settling into the the region and sending the very clear message that the East is a huge and growing priority for the company. I wanted to get Tim’s insight into how Vail planned to manage crowds, why the company focused investment where it did, and what may be next for the ever-growing king of lift-served skiing.

Questions I wish I’d asked

I had planned to ask about longer-term plans for upgrading Wildcat’s fleet of aging triples, any plans for Hunter mountain, why Vail isn’t taking a Mount Brighton-style demolition derby approach to its antique Ohio and Pennsylvania mountains, Vail’s vaccine mandate, Powdr’s Fast Tracks program, and a few other items, but we squeezed as much as we could into an hour. Considering the size of Tim’s realm, I think we covered quite a bit of the most important things.

Why you should ski Vail East

Let me start with this: having the largest collection of ski areas in the East is not the same as having the best collection of ski areas in the East. The Ikon Pass’ seven New England ski areas – Sugarbush, Killington, Pico, Stratton, Loon, Sugarloaf, and Sunday River – are a far more interesting set of mountains than Vail’s: Stowe, Okemo, Mount Snow, Wildcat, Attitash, Mount Sunapee, and Crotched. The reason is simple: these particular Ikon mountains, in general, do a far better job of curating a balanced skier experience than the New England Epic mountains (they also tend to stay open later, with Sugarbush, Sugarloaf, and Sunday River aiming for May closings, and Killington typically shooting for June). Stowe is, without question, outstanding, as good a mountain as you’ll find in the Northeast, nearly without peer. Okemo and Mount Snow, however, are deeply flawed operations – they likely have the highest grooming-to-total-terrain ratio of any large mountains in North America. This serves their demographic of big-city-intermediates-who-think-they’re-experts well. The rest of us are left begging for more terrain variety, a bit less grooming, a lot more glading. Again, Vail inherited these mountains, and my expectation is that the company will eventually nudge them into a 21st century terrain philosophy (which all of their Western mountains follow). For now, the expert Epic skier really has little compelling terrain beyond Stowe and Wildcat, with a little Attitash and Sunapee when conditions are good. If Vail has an opportunity to buy Jay Peak, Smugglers’ Notch, or, eventually, Saddleback, they should do it, as adding any of these would help immensely in correcting this imbalance.

All that said, most skiers are not experts and do not care about my preoccupation with a balanced mountain. For those folks, for families, for explorers, for the midweek cruisers or the early-morning corduroy-chasers, Vail’s sprawling empire is almost too good to be believed. The Midwest and Pennsylvania mountains give desk-chained cityfolk a way to make midweek turns. Hunter is one of the largest ski areas in New York State and just over two hours from Manhattan. Mount Snow has probably the best terrain park in the East, and one of the best in the entire country. Okemo – the second-busiest ski area in the Northeast, behind only Killington – is absolutely huge (all the more reason they can probably let a bit of it stay wild). Crotched has one of the wildest night-skiing scenes in the region.

All of which, when combined with the Western access included on an Epic or Epic Local Pass, makes it almost impossible not to buy some version of this pass if you live anywhere from Philadelphia north.

Additional Resources

* Vail buys Stowe (Feb. 22, 2017)

* Vail buys Triple Peaks (June 4, 2018)

* Vail buys Peak Resorts (July 22, 2019)

* Vail buys Wilmot (Jan. 19, 2016)

* Vail buys Mount Brighton (Dec. 12, 2012)

* Reflections on Vail buying Afton Alps

* Lift Blog’s lift inventory for:

Vermont

* Stowe

* Okemo

* Mount Snow

New Hampshire

* Wildcat

* Attitash

* Mount Sunapee

* Crotched

New York

* Hunter

Pennsylvania

* Jack Frost

* Big Boulder

* Whitetail

* Roundtop

* Liberty

Ohio

* Boston Mills

* Brandywine

* Alpine Valley

* Mad River

Indiana

* Paoli Peaks

Michigan

* Mount Brighton

Wisconsin

* Wilmot

Minnesota

* Afton Alps

Missouri

* Hidden Valley

* Snow Creek is one of the very few U.S. ski areas the site has not inventoried yet

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Dan Torsell, President and General Manager of Ski Cooper, Colorado

Recorded on

October 18, 2021

Why I interviewed him

We’ve all seen the signs, westbound on I-70. Ski Cooper this way. Copper Mountain that way. And many of us have probably thought some version of “that’s funny, I wonder how many European tourists mix them up and show up at Ski Cooper with their Ikon Pass? Anyway, which way to the free lots at Copper?” And that’s as much as most of us have probably thought about the place.

It’s easy to overlook. Lost between the world-famous monsters of Summit and Eagle counties, Ski Cooper is mostly a locals refuge. Most people reading this have probably skied some combination of Vail, Beaver Creek, Copper Mountain, Breckenridge, Keystone, and Arapahoe Basin, all Epic- or Ikon-aligned mountains, the smallest of them more than three times Cooper’s 500-ish acres. And yet, Cooper persists. It is, according to the NSAA, the fifth oldest ski area in Colorado, founded in 1942 as a training site for the legendary 10th Mountain Division, whose alumni would go on to found at least 64 ski areas throughout the United States. Any place with that kind of history and grit was, I figured, worth learning more about.

What we talked about

Pennsylvania ski culture; turning skiing from passion to career; moving from snow-draped Utah to gritty Tussey Pennsylvania to frantic Killington; the dramatic technological advancements and swashbuckling energy of the late ‘80s-to-early-‘90s ski industry; applying the lessons of monster ski areas to community bumps; why Dan left the ski industry and what drew him back in; why small ski areas matter; the intensity of running a night-skiing operation with a short season; the thrill and challenge of running big parts of Sugarbush; working under Win Smith as he revitalized the resort; the story behind Sugarbush’s cabin Cat; first impressions of top-of-the-world Cooper; leaving an East Coast ski career to manage Ski Cooper; transitioning from one of the Northeast’s top dogs to one of Colorado’s underdogs; the enormous terrain expansion opportunities at Cooper; how the Tennessee Creek Basin expansion has transformed the mountain; why the ski area went with a T-bar for that terrain; running Cooper debt-free; snow distribution across the three sides of the ski area; avalanche mitigation; Cooper’s minimalist grooming philosophy; U.S. America’s culture of over-grooming; the scale of Chicago Ridge Cat Skiing and whether it will return this year; whether portions of the Cat-skiing terrain could ever be folded into the lift-served side of Ski Cooper; the potential to increase the ski area’s vertical drop; potential lift additions and upgrades; timelines for improvements; why the frontside double is likely to stay intact even if the mountain adds another lift; the beautiful simplicity of running a ski are with no snowmaking; why Ski Cooper doesn’t play the stay-open-as-late-as-possible game with A-Basin even though they have the coverage to ski until June; Ski Cooper’s bargain season pass and its incredible coalition of coast-to-coast reciprocal partnerships; how the mountain managed to mostly eliminate partner blackouts; how many passes it sells; why reciprocal partnerships are proving resilient even with the advent of the Indy Pass; why Ski Cooper raised its minimum wage to $15.25 per hour; whether the mountain will institute a worker vaccine mandate; and how Ski Cooper will build off its record 2020-21 ski season.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

As anyone who reads this newsletter on a regular basis knows, I’m obsessed with the evolving U.S. season pass landscape. In particular, the evolution of the multi-mountain pass under the giant ski conglomerates, and how independent ski areas are responding to that. Some are joining the Indy Pass. Others are banding together to form reciprocal coalitions for their passholders. Cooper is a master of the latter strategy, building a partner network so vast that the mountain’s season pass is a de facto national megapass. And a cheap one.

I first connected with Torsell and the pass’ conductor, Dana Johnson, over the summer. It was supposed to be a quick-hit interview, but I was impressed by the whole operation. Ski Cooper is the definition of composure in the maw of impossible competition. Would you open a ski area next door to Vail? Would you be able to keep one open if it was one-tenth the size and one one-millionth as famous? It takes resilience, patience, and some kind of brilliance to make it as a ski area in ruthless Colorado, ground zero of the modern skiglomerate. With a big expansion behind them and vast potential ahead, I knew Ski Cooper was a story worth following.

Questions I wish I’d asked

It occurred to me while I was editing this that I had no idea who owned Ski Cooper. As you’ll see in our conversation, however, the mountain has plenty of big things ahead, and something tells me that Dan will be back on the podcast at some point to talk about those developments, and I’ll save the ownership question for then. In the meantime, this article by The Colorado Sun’s Jason Blevins details the whole ownership structure. I’d also like to have talked a bit more about the mountain’s founding as a training ground for the 10th Mountain Division.

Why you should ski Cooper

Because why not? When a lift ticket at its six closest neighbors is roughly the price of a new Cadillac, the compromises you make on sheer vertical drop and skiable acreage to hit Cooper seem acceptable. With no crowds and a magnificently affordable season pass, this is an entirely reasonable supplement to Epic and Ikon passholders looking for a weekend and holiday refuge. And while Cooper has traditionally been an intermediates mountain with very little terrain for the freight train skiers, the Tennessee Creek Basin expansion – opened just before the Covid shutdown – adds a rambling pod of full-throttle double-blacks. Yes, the runs are short – the T-bar rises just around 700 feet – but that’s roughly the same vertical drop you get on The Dumps at Aspen, and no one’s filling up the complaint box about those elevator shafts. Add in a minimalist grooming philosophy and all-natural snow, and you have a damn fine ski experience if you go in accepting what the place is, rather than obsessing over what it’s not.

About that incredible season pass

In July, I wrote an extended analysis of Ski Cooper’s amazing $299 (now $499) season pass, which acts as a de-facto alternate Indy Pass/megapass. I called it “America’s Hidden Mega Ski Pass:

Ski Cooper’s sprawling season pass access is also the logical end state of a lift-served skiing universe increasingly defined by the Epic and Ikon passes, with their dazzling collections of poke-through-the-clouds resorts, relentless marketing, and fantastically achievable price points. Small ski areas, sitting alone, have a harder story to tell and far fewer resources to do it. Band together, and the story gets more interesting. And Ski Cooper is telling one of the best stories in skiing.

Since I wrote that article, the ski area has added several new partners, including Lookout Pass, which sits on the Idaho-Montana border but does not appear on this map:

Additional resources

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Ski Cooper lifts

* Historic Ski Cooper trailmaps

* Ski Cooper today:

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Frank DeBerry, President and CEO of Crystal Mountain, Washington

Recorded on

October 18, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because Crystal is one of the under-appreciated giants of North American skiing. It has more inbounds skiable terrain than Jackson Hole and gets more snow than any ski area in Colorado. It’s not overlooked nationally because it’s hidden. It’s owned by Alterra, is the Pacific Northwest star on the Ikon Pass, and is seated in the shadow of Mt. Rainier, just two hours from downtown Seattle. But Crystal lacks the substantial bed base that would promote it from ski area to ski resort, that would make someone from New York or LA line it up beside the Wasatch or Tahoe or the I-70 corridor as a vacation option. So it’s mostly a local. A damn big one, with lights-out skiing and a voracious skier base. Maybe too voracious, judging from the recent pow-day traffic jams dozens of miles long. This is a big mountain with big plans, and I wanted to talk to the conductor of all this madness to find out exactly where it was headed.

What we talked about

Working at Mountain Creek when Intrawest bought the place and replaced the entire lift system in one summer; “it’s almost impossible to run Mountain Creek”; why Intrawest sold the mountain and others, including Whistler; West Virginia skiing and why you need to hit Snowshoe; Crystal’s “extraordinary” terrain and enormous snowfall; the culture shock of moving from the snow-starved East to the snow-choked West; why Mountain Creek and Crystal are “not that dissimilar”; avalanche mitigation; the “rabid” Pacific Northwest ski culture; why Crystal went from perennial hidden gem to one battling chronic overcrowding; whether the ski area could ever build up a larger bed base; the enormous challenge of Crystal’s endless two-lane, un-expandable access road; why Crystal was initially unlimited on the Ikon Base Pass and why that proved to be unsustainable; what happened to passholder numbers when Alterra moved unlimited Crystal access to the full Ikon Pass; why the mountain had to stop selling day tickets in early 2020; why you may want to ski holidays at Crystal; why Crystal is moving to paid parking and how that will fund a mass transit system from Enumclaw; the amazing number of parking spaces Crystal loses to snowbanks each season; operating buses amid Covid; what might replace the Rainier Express; the difference between out-of-base lift capacity and overall lift capacity; a bold proposal to move the current gondola and add another; potential expansion up Bullion Basin; why Crystal abandoned that terrain several decades ago; whether the second base area or the Kelly’s Gap high-speed quad proposed on the 2004 master plan could still happen; why we may see groomed terrain in Northway; whether Crystal would ever upgrade capacity on the Northway or Chair 6 doubles; why we’re unlikely to see a chair up Silver King; which terrain could be included in a night-skiing expansion and what it would take to make it happen; and the tradition of the long season at Crystal and why that’s in no danger of ending.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

“Crystal Mountain Resort is the sleeping giant of the Northwest.” – Peak Ski Guide & Travel Planner, 1994

“Outside of Seattle, Crystal Mountain remains largely unknown. Too bad, because Crystal is 2,300 acres and 3,100 vertical feet of romping grounds.” – Skiing, October 1995

“The region gets little press, is ridden almost exclusively by locals, and received biblical precipitation. … One of my guides claims it takes a few days to tear up Crystal after a big dump.” – Skiing, October 1999

Welp, things have changed. The 1990s version of Crystal was, according to Lift Blog, a time machine owned by a ski cooperative. Boyne bought the joint, fixed it up, and, after a brief stint as an indie, Crystal ended up in Alterra’s quiver. So: a modern ski area, on the Ikon Pass, in the shadow of an increasingly affluent metro Seattle population that has exploded from around 2.5 million to nearly 4 million in the past 25 years, 100 percent of whom access the ski area via an endless two-laner.

It’s quite a mess. This offseason, Crystal made two huge moves to address the chronic overcrowding that’s now as predictable as the mountain’s monster snowstorms: significantly reduce Ikon Base Pass access and implement a paid parking program. These short-term moves are the first steps in an evolving master plan that should address parking shortages, increase out-of-base lift capacity, and improve the overall ski experience. Crystal has huge plans, especially around its lift fleet, and I wanted to give frustrated skiers a window into how their current ski-day woes may eventually subside.

Questions I wish I’d asked

In August, I rode the Crystal gondola to the summit with my family. Base area signs warned of limited visibility, but we had driven all the way out there already and I like riding lifts anyway and so up we went. Wildfire smoke, everywhere erasing the horizon. Rainier, normally looming epochally over the ski area’s summit, was invisible. With Sierra-at-Tahoe facing a limited season after extensive wildfire damage and Heavenly and Kirkwood facing down fire threats, the ski industry is reckoning with climate change as an all-seasons threat. I would have loved to have gotten DeBerry’s take on what this means, both for Crystal and for the industry at large.

Why you should ski Crystal

I mean, well, just look at the place:

When ski writers talk about a “skier’s mountain,” this is what they mean. Vast dominions of raging terrain dumping thousands of feet off the summit. Very little grooming. Buckets of snow. This is trailblazing skiing – pick your own route, any route, do your best not to die. And why not? They don’t have 5,000 tourists at the base area to keep happy. Let the other mountains string traverses across the fall line to zigzag green circle boulevards from the summit. Crystal is a mega-mountain that still feels primarily like a ski area for skiers. It’s a must-hit.

Just go, you know, on a weekday.

Additional reading/videos

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Crystal Mountain lifts

* Archival Crystal trailmaps

* DeBerry refers to “John” frequently throughout our interview. He’s referencing John Kircher, former owner of Crystal Mountain and brother of Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher. Here’s a really good overview of why he sold the mountain to Alterra shortly after Vail bought Stevens.

* More on the great powder-day fiasco of 2020 that forced huge changes in how Crystal manages skiers and traffic.

* Gregory Scruggs wrote an outstanding compare-and-contrast of the trajectories of Crystal under Alterra and Stevens Pass under Vail:

The two biggest rival corporations in ski resort management staked their claims in Washington state in 2018 by purchasing two of the Central Cascades’ most beloved ski areas.

Vail Resorts, based in Broomfield, Colorado, bought Stevens Pass, the lovably crusty ski area on one of the continent’s snowiest mountain passes reachable by road; meanwhile, Denver-based Alterra Mountain Company snapped up Crystal Mountain, a resort founded by Seattle ski bums at the edge of Mount Rainier National Park.

…

Numerous interviews with season pass holders from both resorts show that Crystal Mountain provided customers with a premier experience amid tough pandemic conditions — though this comes at a premier price. Meanwhile, Stevens Pass slashed the price of its Epic Pass last month in an attempt to make skiing more affordable after a season in which its operational struggles frustrated many longtime pass holders.

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Ed Grice, General Manager of Boyne Mountain, Michigan and Kari Roder, the ski area’s Director of Marketing

Recorded on

October 12, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Context is everything in skiing. In much of America’s sprawling ski kingdom, Boyne Mountain would hardly register. In Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, it soars. And not just in the physical sense of its vertical drop and 60 trails. Culturally, it stands in for skiing itself, the place that non-skiers think of when they think of skiing. Up North, as everyone in Michigan calls it, is where you go to camp, to boat, to hunt, to canoe, to fish, to snowmobile, to ski. Growing up as a non-skier in a non-skiing family, I didn’t realize until I picked the sport up as a teenager that the state had any other ski areas at all, so ubiquitous were references to “goin’ to ski Boyne.”

Once I did start skiing, I saved Boyne Mountain for last. It didn’t feel approachable in the way that Caberfae, Shanty Creek, and Sugarloaf did. It didn’t feel like a place you started. It felt like a place you arrived. Only when you were ready.

I probably wasn’t ready the first time I skied Boyne, a mashed-potatoes sunny St. Patrick’s Day with rowdy drunken parties bursting from overloaded warming huts. I must have taken 100 runs off the Victor lift that day and fallen as many times, so stupefying were the springtime insta-moguls for a beginner on Elan skinny skis. But I kept coming back. The place doesn’t have the most interesting trail network and it’s typically the most expensive ski area in Michigan, but it has the intangibles of atmosphere and energy, and a commitment to push the season into May whenever the snowpack allows. Some of my most cherished ski memories are May afternoons at an empty Boyne, lapping the Mountain Express and winding down the bumps of Idiot’s Delight. Over and over in the endless 70-degree afternoon. It’s a place that means a lot to me, and it’s been at the top of my list for an interview since I launched The Storm two years ago. It was time to make it happen.

What we talked about

Starting out as a busboy at Boyne Mountain in the 1970s; learning to ski on a steep mountain in ill-fitting gear; working under Boyne Resorts’ legendary founder, Everett Kircher; the long road to general manager and getting fired multiple times along the way; working at family-owned Boyne; the mountain’s relaxed atmosphere; when and why the ski area began developing glades; new areas Boyne Mountain has been glading over the past summer; creating the Disciples Ridge expansion and how that changed Boyne Mountain; the ski area’s amazing collection of historically significant lifts, including the remains of the first chairlift in the world; how banana boats helped inspire the invention of the chairlift; the future of the Hemlock chair; what happened to the original Meadows chair, the world’s first quad, when the ski area replaced it in 2008; the backstory behind installing the Mountain Express, America’s first six-pack chair; the mountain’s legendary snowmaking capabilities; Boyne’s tradition of the long season; the ski area’s competition with Mount Bohemia to see who can stay open the latest; winning the race to open against Mount Holly; the mid-90s debauchery of St. Patrick’s Day on the mountain; Boyne 2030; RFID gates coming this season; the Midwest’s first eight-person chairlift; the fate of the existing Disciples triples; what may replace the Mountain Express, Victor, and Boyneland; where the current Meadows lift may move and what might replace it; the size and scale of the Skybridge and how people will access it; the Ikon Pass; and Boyne’s build-your-own-pass product and night and spring passes.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Boyne 2030 is going to launch that place into a technological sphere that no other ski area in Michigan can touch (except, perhaps, sister resort Boyne Highlands, whose 2030 plan is on the horizon). Yes, there will be building upgrades, airport enhancements, golf course stuff, a giant pedestrian bridge/tourist attraction. But that’s the garnish on the plate, and we’re here to talk about the meat: RFID, snowmaking, and, crucially, an almost-complete modernization of the lift system. A final-state Boyne Mountain could host at least five modern high-speed Doppelmayr D-Line lifts: two eight-packs, a six-pack, and two quads. That would give the mountain one of the most updated lift fleets not just in the Midwest, but in America. When I skied Boyne Mountain two seasons ago, it still broiled with that old attitude and energy, but the infrastructure was starting to feel antique. Other than the high-speed sixer and the carpet-loaded Meadows lift, the place felt like a Riblet museum, one lift after the next poking up the incline. Not for long. This joint is being retrofitted for rocket fuel. Filler up and get the hell out of the way.

Why you should ski Boyne Mountain

At first glance, it doesn’t look like much. A big ridge, mostly clear-cut, chairlifts stacked south to north along US 131. But it’s quite the mountain. It’s steep, first of all. Only 500 feet, sure – but that doesn’t make the pitch any less intimidating. You can spend hours skiing from one end of the ridge to the other and back. The mountain has thinned glades and added some other little byways to vary the experience. And then, tucked away, tree-lined and meandering, is the Disciples Ridge section, a spiderweb of greens and blues that may be the most extensive and inviting beginner terrain in the state of Michigan. Before the ski area began building this pod in the late ‘90s, Boyne Mountain was a tough sell for families. Now it’s one of the most balanced and inviting ski areas in the region. The grooming is astonishingly good – Boyne may own Big Sky and Brighton, but this is ground zero of the company’s sprawling empire, and it’s the place where they mastered the arts of snowmaking and snow-care that they export to their other resorts.

And you know what? It’s just a damn fun place to spend a day. If you ever find yourself in Michigan in the wintertime, hit this one up. Plus, they have some knockout terrain parks:

Additional reading/videos

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Boyne Mountain chairlifts

* Historic Boyne Mountain trailmaps

* More on Boyne 2030 (personally, I would have put the lift first, but they are very excited about this bridge):

A little more about Boyne Mountain:

Who

Laurie Blampied, General Manager of Mt. Buller, Australia

Recorded on

Oct. 4, 2021 in New York City; Oct. 5, 2021 at Mt. Buller, Australia – weird, right?

Why I interviewed him

One of the quirks of living on planet Earth is the fact of its tilted axis. Because of this, we not only have seasons, but different seasons in different places at the same time. There’s a multiverse feeling to all this. Landing in Australia is not unlike stepping through a time ripple into a weird alt-America, one where cars drive on the left and the deer have been replaced by giant bouncing rabbity creatures carrying babies in their pockets. And it’s winter in June. If Australia didn’t exist and Luke Skywalker and his motley band of space warriors landed on a planet outfitted with koala bears and vast deserts and deadly animals of every variety we’d all be like, “yes that looks like the kind of crazy planet I’d expect to find on the remote fringes of space.”

But it’s real. And there’s skiing. Less, it turns out, than I’d figured: the whole country has just a handful of ski areas. This seems to be mostly a matter of geography: the treeline is low and the snowline is high. Running a ski area in such conditions is a challenge. No matter: Australia is home to an ebullient ski culture. The five largest – Buller, Thredbo, Perisher, Falls Creek, and Hotham – are aligned with the Ikon or Epic passes. This makes sense. Try taking five lift rides at any Western U.S. or Canadian mountain and not running into an Aussie on a five-week holiday bouncing from one resort to the next on their American megapass. These people ski, travel, live. I wanted to know more.

What we talked about

Reflections on retiring after nearly three decades in the ski business; The emerging Chinese ski scene; how a decade and a half as a civil engineer led to a career running ski resorts; raising kids at a ski resort; the evolution of the Australian ski industry from the early ‘90s to today; the surprisingly small number of ski areas in Australia and how they’ve consolidated over time; pioneering snowguns-as-firefighting-gear while under siege by wildfire for 38 days; the family that owns Mt. Buller; Vail’s entrance into Australia; who will replace Blampied after retirement; how Mt. Buller finally solved its snowmaking problem; how the Australian ski model compares to the North American and European models; Australia’s unique geography and how that shapes its ski areas; snow gums!; Buller’s origins as a single ski area served by two separate lift companies, requiring two separate lift tickets; Australia’s history as a center of lift innovation and experimentation; the evolution of Buller’s modern lift system; high-speed lifts on low-rise terrain; why the resort removed the Boggy Creek T-bar and what may replace it; shout out to SMI in Midland Michigan represent; the amazing gondola proposal that could knit the entire resort together; average snowfall at Mt. Buller; how snowmaking and snow preservation works above treeline; the art and science of snowmaking in Australia’s marginal temperatures; Buller’s Olympic and World Cup legacy; why the mountain joined the Mountain Collective and Ikon passes and what it took to make that happen; whether Buller passholders may get an option to add on an Ikon Pass, as many U.S. partner mountain passholders now can; Australians know how to live; Mt. Buller’s ISO certification; how Australia reacted to Covid and what that’s meant for the ski industry; and the earthquake that hit Buller last month:

Why I thought now was a good time for this interview

I hadn’t thought to proactively reach out to an Australian resort for an interview. I’ve never skied there, and I just expanded the scope of the podcast from the Northeast to the rest of America – that seemed like quite enough terrain to cover for the moment. But Mt. Buller reached out, and this seemed like an excellent chance to learn about a part of the ski world I was more or less ignorant of. Laurie was retiring after a long career and had a unique perspective on how the Australian ski industry had evolved in tandem with and outside of the global ski machine. The story of Mt. Buller itself was compelling – a family-owned mountain latching onto North American megapasses and aggressively upgrading its infrastructure to stay relevant in a whacky, warming world. There was no way I was turning down the opportunity to learn more.

It’s a big, big world, and there’s an awful lot of skiing out there. My focus, for now, is the United States, and that’s where I’ll continue to do my deliberate resort outreach. However – if you run a ski resort anywhere in the world, and you want to come on the podcast and talk about it, get in touch with me and we’ll make it happen. What I love about the world of lift-served skiing is the wild and unpredictable variety of it, the way different versions of the same thing can manifest themselves across vastly different cultures and environments. There is no part of this universe that doesn’t interest me, and in an internet-connected world, there are no boundaries we can’t step across to explore.

Why you should ski Mt. Buller

Like a lot of Australian ski resorts, Mt. Buller seems to be Europe from the waist up, and America from the belt down:

I asked Laurie which version of skiing Australia hewed closest to: the yee-haw off-piste American style, or the skinny-skis groomer swishy Euro style? Neither, he said. It’s a thing all its own.

And it’s a thing I’d like to explore one day. It’s gonna take me a while. As much as I love skiing, I also love summer, and we don’t get much of it here in the Northeast. And you have to miss a lot of summer to go to Australia. It takes like a week to fly there and a week to fly back and by then you’ve missed two years of work because they’re already in like 2032 over there. And even if you do want to forfeit summer for some skiing, you - like most U.S. Americans - probably only get two to three hours of vacation time per year and it’s not to be taken consecutively, you know, which is not quite enough time to get to Australia and back. Until teleportation is invented. Which it probably already has been in Australia since they are already living in the 23rd century.

Extra credit

One of the quirks of Mt. Buller’s history is that two separate lift systems, run by two separate companies, once served the same mountain. That meant you needed two lift tickets to ski the whole area:

Over time, the two systems united, but the mountain was left with a ton of redundancy – here’s what the unified lift system looked like in 1992, shortly before Laurie took over:

Today, the place is slick and modern, with high-speed burners and big plans for a bomber gondola. With no room left to expand, Mt. Buller is wholly focused on improving the on-mountain experience.

A few more items of interest:

* More historic trailmaps of Mt. Buller

* A complete historical inventory of Mt. Buller’s chairlifts

* Mt. Buller’s Legends and Personalities Wall (referenced in the podcast)

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Tim Cohee, Managing Partner, CEO, and General Manager of China Peak Mountain Resort, California

Recorded on

September 28, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because China Peak, an independent operation situated on the Southwest side of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, sits at the bullseye of multiple issues shaping the modern lift-served skiing landscape. Climate change is descending in all seasons: seven winter snow droughts in the past 10 years; wildfire scraping the resort’s edges and damaging buildings in 2020. The mega-resorts with their super-cheap megapasses beckon the local Fresno skiers that are China Peak’s core constituency. And not just California’s many Epic and Ikon gems – Palisades Tahoe, Kirkwood, Heavenly, Northstar – but the resorts dotted all around the West – it takes the same amount of time to fly to Salt Lake City from Fresno as it does to drive to China Peak. But, like most mid-sized ski areas around the country, China Peak is stamping out a model to survive and hopefully thrive in this era of consolidation, cheap travel, and climate catastrophe: banding together with other independent mountains on the Indy Pass and Powder Alliance, and investing in a powerful New England-style snowmaking system capable of burying the place and (hopefully) fending off fires. And if you’re going to initiate such massive and dramatic change, it helps to have a charismatic leader with more than 40 years of experience dealing with every possible circumstance a snowy mountain can churn out. Skiing needs the China Peaks to thrive if skiing itself is to survive long-term, and I wanted to see how Cohee planned to do that.

What we talked about

The Southern California ski scene in the 1970s; the Cohee family ski diaspora and their potential future at China Peak; the 1970s vacuum in ski-area marketing; the surreal reality of Southern California skiing; when the massive city below doesn’t know about the abundant skiing in the mountains above; what it took to get same-day snow conditions video from the mountain to the local news station 40 years ago; working for Bill Killebrew at Heavenly; the smartest guy in the history of skiing; quadrupling skier visits at Bear Mountain né Goldmine; how “skiing’s dream team” emerged from a 1990s version of Bear Mountain to run some of the largest ski areas in the country; moving east and working under Les Otten in the heyday of the American Skiing Company; reviving a declining Kirkwood; leaving the ski area after 17 years to buy China Peak (known at the time as Sierra Summit); what happens when a ski area ignores the customer; How and why China Peak overhauled its snowmaking system and how that’s going to change the resort; and what happens when your snowmaking manager quits over Christmas break.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

For most of its first two years, The Storm Skiing Podcast focused mostly on the Northeast. In order to capture the true breadth and spirit of the region, it was important to me to maintain a balance between monster, conglomerate-owned ski areas and the-owner-drives-the-Snowcat family-owned hills. So episodes featuring Killington, Sunday River, Sugarbush, Sugarloaf, Loon, and Mount Snow lived alongside interviews with the folks running Plattekill, Berkshire East, Bolton Valley, Titus, Whaleback, Mad River Glen, and Lonesome Pine. The ski world is big and messy, and the podcast had to reflect that.

As I expand the pod’s focus from the Northeast to the entire country, I will deliberately follow that same template. My first two western interviews – Taos and Aspen – are ski-world A-listers, checkbox items for the Ikon set, places with deep resonance and meaning for generations of locals and tourists. China Peak is something different. Once knowns as Sierra Summit, it’s a local bump that no one’s flying across the country to ski. But that’s exactly why I’m here: what the hell is this place, this mysterious Indy Pass partner wading in a purgatory south of the Sierra badboys? It’s been there for 63 years and no one outside of Fresno has ever heard of it. But like all ski areas, it means a tremendous amount to a lot of people out there, and it’s an important part of this American ski story that I’m trying to tell.

Questions I wish I’d asked

For a typical Storm Skiing Podcast interview, I’ll write 25 to 30 questions and manage to get to around 80 percent of them. This time, I got through six. Cohee’s 40-plus-year journey through the ski industry during its decades of explosive change was so compelling that we didn’t even get to China Peak until we were nearly out of time. So all of my normal questions about chairlifts, trail networks, local markets, snowfall, fire danger, the Indy Pass, the Powder Alliance, and the wild world of Covid will just have to wait until next time – and you will want there to be a next time after you hear this.

Why you should ski China Peak

China Peak is an interesting place. It’s more or less at the end of the road, on the way to nowhere, close to nothing at all. Mammoth, 30-ish miles away as the crow flies, is a five-hour drive. Because it’s not big enough to merit destination status in a state overloaded with alpha ski resorts, it’s mostly a day tripper’s hill for Fresno, an hour-and-a-half southwest. But there’s no rule that it has to be. An Indy Pass and Powder Alliance member, China Peak is a walk-up proposition for many skiers on their existing passes. The trail map looks fun, especially after a big snow, but the mountain’s new megahose snowmaking system ought to guarantee more stable conditions even when the snow fails to materialize. This would make a nice stop on any California ski tour.

Additional reading/videos

* Lift Blog’s China Peak lift inventory

* Historic China Peak/Sierra Summit trailmaps

* Some Slopefillers love for Cohee

* SAM($) profiles China Peak’s new snowmaking system

* Fires approaching China Peak last September:

* Cohee on video:

Who

Mike Kaplan, CEO of Aspen Skiing Company

Recorded on

Sept. 24, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Vail may rule the American skiing economy, but Aspen remains king of the nation’s popular skiing imagination. From Aspen Extreme to Dumb and Dumber, the town and its mountains serve as the stand-in for big-mountain Western skiing as a whole, one word that communicates to skiers and non-skiers the essence of the sport. And there is something spectacular about it. This city at the end of the road, hovering just past the gravitational pull of Denver and the I-70 disaster seeping beyond it. Those narrow expert mountains with their unrelenting fall lines and absence of greens. Buttermilk with its lazy empty groomers and lost-in-plain-site underdog patina. The wild labyrinthian variety of burly Snowmass. The city itself, bleeding as one into Aspen Mountain, some invigorating mashup of town and city, luxe and lowbrow, skibum and jetset. Aspen doesn’t have the wildest terrain. It doesn’t get the most snow. It doesn’t have the most vertical or the most skiable acres. But it may just be the best total ski experience America offers.

What we talked about

Arriving in Aspen in 1993; how the city has changed over the past three decades; going from ski school instructor to CEO of one of America’s great ski companies; celebrating 75 years of skiing at Aspen; the significance of Aspen’s original Lift 1, the present-day Shadow Mountain lift, and what may replace it and when; the return of Ruthie’s restaurant; the scope and status of the proposed Pandora expansion off Aspen Mountain’s summit; what could be developed on that land if the county denies the expansion permit; what the expansion could mean for the Gent’s Ridge quad and the rest of Aspen’s lift fleet; Snowmass lifts: the new high-speed six-pack on Big Burn, a timeline to replace Coney Glade, the latest thinking on a possible Burnt Mountain lift; whether we could ever see a lift up Highland Bowl at Aspen Highlands; whether the Bowl Cat will return for the 2021-22 ski season; where we could see future expansion at Highlands; how the Deep Temerity expansion at Highlands could inform the Pandora expansion at Aspen; the status of the Golden Horn surface lift at Highlands; a different point of view on Buttermilk; the interplay of the four mountains to create a distinctive Aspen experience; why Aspen didn’t become part of Alterra; the Mountain Collective Pass and Ikon Pass origin stories; why Aspen pulled off the Ikon Base Pass and how the move to the “plus” tier has worked out; the future of the Mountain Collective; what happened with the $2 million that Liftopia owed Aspen for Mountain Collective Passes; Aspen’s plan to “stay in business forever” amid a changing climate; why Aspen is requiring all employees to get vaccinated against Covid-19 prior to the start of the 2021-22 ski season; and the tangle of problems Covid brought along with it last season.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Aspen, under Kaplan, has evolved. It is: a leader in the fight against climate change, a model for implementing creative employee housing solutions in the modern mountain town, a crown-jewel of two transcontinental ski pass products, a voice in skiing’s struggles to diversify, and an uncompromising partner in the battle against Covid. There was nothing inevitable about any of this. Fifteen years ago, Aspen was a fun town with a pack of fun ski hills. The Epic Pass didn’t exist and issues of diversity, equality, and environmental catastrophe were minimized or ignored. Aspen could have just kept being Aspen and that would have probably been good enough to keep on existing. But Kaplan had other ideas. Lots of ideas. And while a phalanx of market and social forces, innovators, and disruptors would likely have forced the company into some version of its 2021 self, Kaplan no doubt accelerated the change. Aspen Mountain, by skiable acres, is only the 20th largest ski area in Colorado – smaller than Monarch, Sunlight, Eldora, Wolf Creek, Powderhorn, A-Basin, Purgatory, and Loveland. Yet in its purpose and its presence it is bigger than all of them. Now seemed as good a time as ever to find out why that continues to be true.

Questions I wish I’d asked

I had wanted to discuss the origin and influence of the X-Games at Buttermilk, whether the locals backlash against the Ikon Pass has subsided as Aspen changed access levels and started giving out a Base Pass with an Aspen season pass, whether Aspen would continue rationing season passes, how the company’s various diversity initiatives are evolving, whether post-Covid employee benefit cuts had been restored, how short-term rentals and urban Covid refugees were impacting the local housing market, Aspen’s employee housing initiatives, how the Covid fallout compared to the aftermath of The Great Recession, whether the company expected last year’s skier visit declines to continue, and which Covid-era operating changes were most likely to hang around. We ran out of time. Next time.

Why you should ski Aspen

Because Aspen will give you the best total ski week in America. The skiing, yes: the mountains, teetering above the valley, four poles balancing one another like a perfectly assembled sports team. The steeps that are not too steep to manage and the greens that are not too flat to lean into. The lost-in-time-and-space feeling of the Hanging Valley Glades or Deep Temerity or Bingo Glades. But it’s everything else, too. The free and frequent shuttlebus connecting town and mountains. The incredible variety of lodging options that make the place more affordable than you’d think. And the city itself, a pedestrian-friendly human-scaled relic salvaged from Colorado’s Wild West ancestry and outfitted with T-shirt shops, celebrity-chef eateries, weed emporiums, surly bars, grocery stores, Prada shops, and antique stores, like the most bizarre Lego set ever invented. And you go because you have to. It’s just one of those places. If you’re a skier you must ski Aspen because it’s Aspen. I really don’t know how else to say it. Just go.

More Aspen

Lift Blog’s lift inventories for:

* Aspen Mountain

* Aspen Highlands

* Buttermilk

* Snowmass

Historic trailmaps for:

* Aspen Mountain

* Aspen Highlands

* Buttermilk

* Snowmass

Archival footage of Lift 1, the single chair that stood from 1947 to 1971 and took 40 minutes to rise from town to the Aspen Mountain summit:

Get stoked on Aspen Extreme:

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

David Norden, CEO of Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico

Recorded on

Sept. 13, 2021

Why I interviewed him

It’s a map dot perched improbably in the nation’s southwest pocket, in a state that evokes and largely is scrubland and desert. Seated at roughly the same latitude as Nashville, Tulsa, and Las Vegas, it seems impossible that there could be skiing there. But there’s skiing there. And not in the technology-overwhelming-nature way that there’s skiing in Maryland or New Jersey or Tennessee; this is big-mountain, serious stuff. Taos is one of the best ski areas in the country, floating 9,200 feet above sea level – at its base. The skiing is wild and intense, deep and meandering when the snow allows. Much of it requires hiking. It’s a bit remote, but that’s an asset – no I-70 approach-road messiness, no liftlines backed up to Utah. It’s also a place that, for much of the past three decades, seemed determined to stay frozen in time. Skier visits plunged from 350,000 in the 1990s to 160,000 by the 2005-06 season. That began changing in 2014, when billionaire Louis Bacon bought the joint and started emptying his money bin into new lifts, stringing a controversial triple up Kachina Peak and upgrading the legendary Lift 1 with the resort’s first high-speed detachable. Taos also became North America’s first ski resort to earn the coveted B-Corporation environmental ranking, and has been a leader in forest fire mitigation through a partnership with the Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Forest Service. But the renaissance is just getting moving: the mountain recently released a master plan that would modernize its entire lift fleet while preserving its existing trail footprint. I wanted to get a sense of where the mountain was headed and how it planned to get there, and the man running the show seemed like the best place to start.

What we talked about

How the mighty Taos of the 1990s lost its swagger; the legacy of mountain founder Ernie Blake and his family; why they finally sold the resort in 2014 and why they chose Louis Bacon as the buyer; Taos’ environmental focus and B-Corporation status; the initial controversy over the Kachina triple and how sentiment has evolved over time; how the resort manages that intense high-altitude terrain; subtle tricks to keep the blue-square crowd off that lift; reaction to replacing Lift 1 with a high-speed detach, the mountain’s first; managing crowding over the long-term; why the resort overhauled its beginner area with new lifts and progressive terrain; easing the trauma of ski-school drop-off; what Taos’ extensive glading efforts have to do with fire mitigation and water quality; where those efforts have been focused this summer; Taos’ master development plan; where the resort wants to put a gondola and how that would transform the resort; creating a clean-energy transportation system from the town of Taos up to the resort; whether lifts 2 and 4 will be replaced with high-speed lifts; potential upgrades for lift 7 and why lift 7A may stay exactly as it is; potential upgrades for lift 8; when we could start seeing some of these new lifts in a best-case scenario; why local support is so key to resort upgrades; the fate of the once-proposed West Basin lift; the future of snowmaking at Taos; the high, dry, north-facing snow-retention miracle that is Taos Ski Valley; why Taos joined the Ikon Pass and why the locals haven’t pushed back as they have at other Western destinations; why the mountain never intends to return to its mid-90s heyday of 350,000 annual skier visits; the 2019 inbounds avalanche and how the mountain is moving ahead from that incident; how Taos honored the two skiers killed that day; prepping for another potential season in the midst of Covid; and working with the state to forestall a return to on-mountain capacity and 14-day quarantines.  

Why I thought now was a good time for this interview

Taos is deep enough into its turnaround to know that it’s working, but has enough ambition ahead that it hasn’t yet fully become what it will be. And what it will be is a pacesetter for how a major ski resort will need to operate in a world that is increasingly conservation-oriented, environmentally attuned, and gun-shy on development. And in a West now-annually scorched by massive wildfires, Taos is also modeling how to fortify all that expensive infrastructure against a rogue inferno. In the end, Taos will be about as close to a model modern ski resort as you’re going to find in America. With momentum behind the master plan and no question about whether funds will be available to make it happen, this seemed like a good time to take stock before the work really accelerates.

Questions I wish I’d asked

Taos, interestingly, was the last ski area in the United States that lifted its snowboard ban (three, of course, still ban snowboards). That happened in 2007, before Bacon bought it and before Norden’s time, but it still would have been an interesting discussion point. Norden also brought up a really cool concept for a clean-transportation energy system starting with electric buses departing from the town of Taos and leading all the way up the mountain, and I would have liked to have gotten into that a bit more. I also wanted to ask about Taos Air, the only commercial airline, as far as I’m aware, that’s run by a ski resort. Next time.

Why you should ski Taos

Well it’s on the Ikon Pass, first of all, and if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you already have one. Facebook posts soliciting destination suggestions often read something like, “Hey me and my nine friends are taking a trip in December and we’re looking for a place that gets nine feet of powder per week and where you can stay slopeside for less than $4 per day, and we want to fall out of the back of the plane and land on the chairlift.” The comments section inevitably leads these bargain hunters to Utah, Colorado, or Tahoe. No one ever mentions poor Taos. Good. This is one of the last uncluttered alpha dogs in American skiing, a place with all the mystique of Jackson or Little Cottonwood Canyon, but very little of the boozy chaos. And with the overhauled beginner zone hard by the base area, Taos now caters to families in a way it wasn’t able to in the past. Go out of your way for this one. It’s worth it.

Additional Resources

* This New York Times article is an excellent overview of Taos’ evolution under Bacon.

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Taos lifts

* Historic Taos trailmaps

2019 avalanche

* An analysis by veteran ski writer Marc Peruzzi of the 2019 inbounds avalanche at Taos that killed two skiers.

* The families of each of those skiers has set up foundations in their honor. Click through below to donate to each:

* Live Like Z, set up in honor of 26-year-old Matthew Zonghetti, provides scholarships to graduates of Mansfield Massachusetts High School.

* Corey’s Foundation, set up in honor of 22-year-old Corey Borg Massanari, provides outdoor safety gear and training for schools, nonprofits, and ski resorts.

* This video of Borg Massanari’s Organ Donors Walk of Honor through the halls of the University of New Mexico Hospital is both devastatingly sad and uplifting.

* Taos named runs after each of the deceased skiers – the only inbounds avalanche victims in the resort’s history. The runs – “She Gone” for Borg Massanari and “Z-Chute” for Zonghetti, run off Highline Ridge and are listed on the resort’s trail-status page, but do not appear on the most recent trailmap.

Who

Charles Skinner, Co-President and co-owner of Lutsen Mountains, Minnesota; and President and owner of Granite Peak, Wisconsin

Recorded on

August 30, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because my God, these mountains:

They are improbable enough in the Midwest that few have had the audacity to even imagine ski areas of this size and variety. Enormous and interesting places, cut with endless glades and high-speed lift systems sparkling like some Sim City fantasy of what a built-from-scratch ski area could be.

But Lutsen and Granite Peak are not what could be. They are what is: two of the best ski resorts in the Midwest. And there was nothing inevitable about that. This is what Granite Peak looked like in 1996, four years before Skinner took over:

The ski area was “tired and old,” Skinner told me in the podcast. “It was like starting a whole new ski area.” Indeed, driven by his willingness to invest and his commitment to crafting mountains that are actually interesting to ski, Granite Peak is now one of the most up-to-date ski areas in the country.

Skinner has vision. Many people do. But what makes him special is the tenacity, creativity, and organization to actually construct something tangible. Big, wild ski areas where they have no business being. I wanted to understand how he did it and what was happening next.

What we talked about

The legacy of Skinner’s late father, Charles Skinner III, the founder of Sugar Hills, Minnesota and onetime GM of Sugarloaf and owner of Lutsen; skiing Minnesota as a child in the ‘60s; Lutsen in 1980; why the ski area installed the Midwest’s only gondola and why it makes sense even though it only rises 300 vertical feet; where that original gondola came from; what happened to Sugar Hills; how Skinner acquired the ski area from his father in the early ‘90s; how glades finally landed in the Midwest and the importance of a balanced mountain; bringing Mystery Mountain back from the dead; why Lutsen expanded onto the North Face; why Lutsen advertises a 1,088-foot vertical drop but only an 825-foot lift-served vertical drop; the gondola and Moose Mountain six-pack upgrades; which Lutsen lifts may be next in line for upgrades and what kind of lifts we may see; Lutsen’s mammoth expansion plan; what to expect out of the mass of new trails, glades, and lifts on Moose Mountain; creating an expansive beginner pod off of Eagle Mountain; the virtues of green-circle glades; how new baselodges would fix the mountain’s remote-parking problem; the advantages of drawing your snowmaking water from the largest body of fresh water on planet Earth; a potential timeline for the expansion and which parts of the project they would build first; why Skinner passed on Granite Peak the first time it came up for sale and what finally sold him on it; the “tired” and run-down Granite Peak of 2000 and how the ski area evolved into one of the Midwest’s largest and best ski complexes; Granite Peak’s huge expansion ambitions, including visions for new trails, chairs, and lodges; what may replace the Blitzen lift; why the mountain may build a mountain bike-only pod; why this expansion proposal is different from the one that fizzled half a decade ago; a potential expansion timeline and what may come first; the joint Lutsen-Granite Peak pass; why the two mountains joined the Indy Pass and why they added so many blackouts this season; the M.A.X. Pass and why Granite Peak and Lutsen didn’t join the Ikon Pass; why no one understands the Midwest; why Skinner considers his true competition to be Western destination resorts; whether he would ever buy another ski area; and whether the mountains will continue to be family-owned.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because as big and built-out as they are, neither ski area is even close to finished. Both Granite Peak and Lutsen are working on expansion plans that would essentially double their trail footprints. Granite Peak would add four new pods of much-needed beginner and intermediate terrain to the east and west sides of existing trails. Most of the new lifts, Skinner told me, would be detachables:

Lutsen would cut trails and glades along the rest of Moose Mountain and drop a large beginner pod off the back of Eagle Mountain. Lutsen’s lift network isn’t the Jetsonian marvel that Granite Peak’s is, but it would see substantial upgrades:

These are two of the most transformative expansion projects underway in American skiing – and they are happening at what are already some of the most well-cared-for and thoughtfully developed and updated mountains in the Midwest. I wanted to see where Skinner was in these projects, when we could see the trails start to materialize out of the wilderness, and what it would take to nudge these plans into existence.

What I got wrong

In the intro, I identified Skinner as the chairman of the board of the Minnesota Ski Areas Association, a position he’s since resigned from. When we discussed Lutsen’s expansion, I was looking at an old version of the expansion plan – the current one, and the one Skinner refers to in the podcast, is embedded above. In prepping for this interview, I’d studied old trailmaps and concluded that Skinner had added Mystery Mountain shortly after taking ownership, but what he actually did was revive it from its grave – the pod had been taken off the trailmap for several years for the simple reason that the lift serving it was broken. A close inspection of archived maps reveals that Lutsen simple de-emphasized Mystery Mountain the 1993 trailmap (left), and, once they installed a new lift in 1994 (right), the peak reappeared:

Why you should ski there

Because these may be the best ski areas between Whiteface and Winter Park. Set the singular Mount Bohemia aside here – most people couldn’t ski that wild and remote slice of gladed freefall if they tried. Granite Peak and Lutsen are true everyone mountains. Families like them. Radbrahs like them. People who wish they were skiing out West like them. In a Midwest where half the ski areas are clear-cut hillsides with 18 lifts climbing 250 vertical feet on a 10-acre footprint, these feel like something transplanted from another region, sprawling and tree-lined, with lifts that (mostly) don’t feel like they were stapled together A-Team style from a World War II scrapyard. The Upper Midwest is one of the world’s great ski centers, cold and snowy and filled with the hearty and the adventurous. It deserves ski areas like Granite Peak and Lutsen, and if you’re anywhere near them, they need to be on your list.

Additional resources

Lutsen

* Lift Blog’s Lutsen lift inventory - the gondola pics are especially good

* An archive of Lutsen trailmaps

* The Star Tribune obituary for Skinner’s father, Charles Skinner III, who once owned Lutsen and passed away earlier this year.

Granite Peak

* Lift Blog’s Granite Peak lift inventory

* An archive of Granite Peak trailmaps

* Granite Peak GM and Marketing Director Greg Fisher on The Storm Skiing Podcast

* This Ski article from 2002 captures the rapid-fire pace of Granite Peak’s transformation

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Who

Bruce Schmidt, Vice President and General Manager at Okemo Mountain Resort, Vermont

Recorded on

Feb. 27, 2024 (apologies for the delay)

About Okemo

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: Vail Resorts

Located in: Ludlow, Vermont

Year founded: 1956

Pass affiliations:

* Epic Pass: unlimited access

* Epic Local Pass: unlimited access

* Epic Northeast Value Pass: unlimited access with holiday blackouts

* Epic Northeast Midweek Pass: unlimited weekday access with holiday blackouts

* Epic Day Pass: access on “all resorts” and “32 resorts” tiers

Closest neighboring ski areas: Killington (:22), Magic (:26), Bromley (:31), Pico (:32), Ascutney (:33), Bellows Falls (:37), Stratton (:41), Saskadena Six (:44), Ski Quechee (:48), Storrs Hill (:52), Whaleback (:56), Mount Snow (1:04), Hermitage Club (1:10)

Base elevation: 1,144 feet

Summit elevation: 3,344 feet

Vertical drop: 2,200 feet

Skiable Acres: 632

Average annual snowfall: 120 inches per On The Snow; Vail claims 200.

Trail count: 121 (30% advanced, 37% intermediate, 33% beginner) + 6 terrain parks

Lift count: 20 (2 six-packs, 4 high-speed quads, 5 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples, 1 platter, 6 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Okemo’s lift fleet)

View historic Okemo trailmaps on skimap.org.

Why I interviewed him

Whether by plan or by happenstance, Vail ended up with a nearly perfect mix of Vermont ski areas. Stowe is the beater, with the big snows and the nasty trails and the amazing skiers and the Uphill Bros and the glades and the Front Four. Mount Snow is the sixth borough of New York City (but so is Florida and so is Stratton), big and loud and busy and bursting and messy, with a whole mountain carved out for a terrain park and big-drinking, good-timing crowds, as many skiers at the après, it can seem, as on the mountain. And Okemo is something that’s kind of in-between and kind of totally different, at once tame and lively, a placid family redoubt that still bursts with that frantic Northeast energy.

It's a hard place to define, and statistics won’t do it. Line up Vermont’s ski areas on a table, and Okemo looks bigger and better than Sugarbush or Stowe or Jay Peak. It isn’t, of course, as anyone in the region will tell you. The place doesn’t require the guts that its northern neighbors demand. It’s big but not bossy. More of a stroll than a run, a good-timer cruising the Friday night streets in a drop-top low-rider, in no hurry at all to do anything other than this. It’s like skiing Vermont without having to tangle with Vermont, like boating on a lake with no waves.

Because of this unusual profile, New England skiers either adore Okemo or won’t go anywhere near it. It is a singular place in a dense ski state that is the heart of a dense ski region. Okemo isn’t particularly convenient to get to, isn’t particularly snowy by Vermont standards, and isn’t particularly interesting from a terrain point of view. And yet, it is, historically, the second-busiest ski area in the Northeast (after Killington). There is something there that works. Or at least, that has worked historically, as the place budded and flourished in the Mueller family’s 36-year reign.

But it’s Vail’s mountain now, an Epic Pass anchor that’s shuffling and adding lifts for the crowds that that membership brings. While the season pass price has dropped, skier expectations have ramped up at Okemo, as they have everywhere in the social-media epoch. The grace that passholders granted the growing family-owned mountain has evaporated. Everyone’s pulling the pins on their hand grenades and flinging them toward Broomfield every time a Saturday liftline materializes. It’s not really fair, but it’s how the world is right now. The least I can do is get their side of it.

What we talked about

Summer storm damage to Ludlow and Okemo; the resort helping the town; Vermont’s select boards; New England resilience; Vail’s My Epic Promise fund and how it helped employees post-storm; reminiscing on old-school Okemo and its Poma forest; the Muellers arrive; the impact of Jackson-Gore; how and why Okemo grew from inconsequential local bump to major New England ski hill; how Okemo expanded within the confines of Vermont’s Act 250; Vail buys the mountain, along with Sunapee and Crested Butte; the Muellers’ legacy; a Sunapee interlude; Vail adjusting to New England operations; mythbusters: snowmaking edition; the Great Chairlift Switcheroo of 2021; why Okemo didn’t place bubbles on the Quantum 6; why Okemo’s lift fleet is entirely made up of Poma machines; where Okemo could add a lift to the existing trail network; expansion potential; does Okemo groom too much?; glade expansion?; that baller snowmaking system; what happened when Okemo’s season pass price dropped by more than $1,000; is Epic Pass access too loose at Okemo?; how to crowd-dodge; the Epic Northeast Midweek Pass; limiting lift ticket sales; and skyrocketing lift ticket prices.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Bruce Schmidt first collected a paycheck from Okemo in the late 1970s. That was a different mountain, a different ski industry, a different world. Pomas and double chairs and primitive snowmaking and mountain-man gear and no internet. It was grittier and colder, in the sense that snowpants and ski coats and heated gloves and socks were not so ubiquitous and affordable and high-quality as they are today. Skiing, particularly in New England, required a hardiness, a tolerance for cold and subtle pain that modernity has slowly shuffled out of the skier profile.

Different as it was, that age of 210s and rear-wheel drive rigs was not that long ago, and Schmidt has experienced it as one continuous story. That sort of institutional and epochal tenure is rare, especially at one ski area, especially at one that has evolved as much as Okemo. Imagine if you showed up at surface-lift Hickory and watched it transform, over four decades, into sprawling Gore. That’s essentially what Schmidt lived – and helped drive – at Okemo.

That hardly ever happens. Small ski areas tend to stay small. Expansion is hard and expensive and, in Vermont especially, bureaucratically challenging. And yet little Okemo, wriggling in Killington’s shadow, lodged between the state’s southern and northern snow pockets, up past Mount Snow and Stratton but not so far from might-as-well-keep-driving Sugarbush and Mad River Glen, became, somehow, the fourth-largest ski area in America’s fourth-largest ski state by skier visits (after Colorado, California, and Utah, typically).

The Mueller family, which owned the ski area from 1982 until they sold it to Vail Resorts in 2018, were, of course, the visionaries and financiers behind that growth, the likes of which we will probably never witness in New England again. But as Vail’s roots grow deeper and they make these mountains their own, that legacy will fade, if not necessarily dim. It was important, then, to download that part of Schmidt’s brain to the internet, to make sure that story survived the big groom of time.

What I got wrong

I said in the intro that Bruce started at Okemo in 1987. He actually started in the late ‘70s and worked there on and off for several years, as he explains in the conversation.

I said that Okemo’s lift fleet was “100 percent Poma.” This is not exactly right, as some of the lifts are officially branded Leitner-Poma. I’m also not certain of the make of Okemo’s carpets.

I noted in the intro that Okemo was Vail’s second-largest eastern mountain. It is actually their largest by skiable acreage (though Stowe feels larger to me, given the expansive unmarked but very skiable glades stuffed between nearly every trail). Here’s a snapshot of Vail’s entire portfolio for reference:

Why you should ski Okemo

The first time I skied Okemo was 2007. I rode a 3:45 a.m. ski bus north from Manhattan. I remember thinking three things: 1) wow, this place is big; 2) wow, there are a lot of kids here; and 3) do they seriously groom every goddamn trail every single night?

This was at the height of my off-piste mania. I’m not a great carver, especially after the cord gets chopped up and scratchy sublayers emerge. I prefer to maneuver, at a moderate pace, over terrain, meaning bumps or glades (which are basically bumps in the trees, at least on a typical Vermont day). It’s more fun and interesting than blasting down wide-open, beaten-up groomers filled with New Yorkers.

But wide-open, beaten-up groomers filled with New Yorkers is what Okemo is. At the time, I had no understanding of freeze-thaw cycles, of subtle snowfall differentials between nearby ski areas, of the demographic profile that drove such tight slope management (read: mediocre big-city skiers with no interest in anything other than getting to the bottom still breathing). All I knew was that for me, at the time, this wasn’t what I was looking for.

But what you want as a skier evolves over time. I still like terrain, and Okemo still doesn’t have as much as I’d like. If that’s what you need, take your Epic Pass to Stowe – they have plenty. But what I also like is skiing with my kids, skiing with my wife, morning cord laps off fast lifts, long meandering scenic routes to rest up between bumpers, exploring mountains border to border, getting a little lost among multiple base areas, big views, moderate pitches, and less-aggressive skiers (ride the K1 gondy or Superstar chair at Killington and then take the Sunburst Six at Okemo; the toning down of energy and attitude is palpable).

Okemo not only has all that – it is all that. If that makes sense. This is one of the best family ski areas in the country. It feels like – it is – a supersized version of the busy ski areas in Massachusetts or Connecticut, a giant Wachusett or Catamount or Mohawk Mountain: unintimidating, wide-open, freewheeling, and quirky in its own overgroomed, overbusy way.

If you hit it right, Okemo will give you bumps and glades and even, on a weekday, wide-open trails all to yourself. But that’s not the typical Okemo experience, and it’s not the point of the place. This is New England’s friendly giant, a meandering mass of humanity, grinning and gripping and slightly frazzled, a disjointed but united-by-snow collective that, together, define Okemo as much as the mountain itself.

Okemo on a stormy day in November 2021. Video by Stuart Winchester.

Podcast Notes

On last summer’s flooding in Okemo and Ludlow

I mean yowza:

I hate to keep harping on New Englander’s work ethic, but…

I reset the same “dang New England you’re badass” narrative that I brought up with Sunday River GM Brian Heon on the podcast a few weeks ago. I’m not from New England and I’ve never even lived there, and I’m from a region with the same sort of get-after-it problem-solver mentality and work ethic. But I’m still amazed at how every time New England gets smashed over the head with a frying pan, they just look annoyed for five minutes, put on a Band-Aid, and keep moving.

On the fate of Plymouth, Bromley, Ascutney, and Plymouth/Roundtop

Schmidt and I discuss several Vermont ski areas whose circa-1980s size rivaled that of Okemo’s at the time. Here, for context, was Okemo before the Muellers arrived in 1982:

It’s hard to tell from the trailmap, but only four of the 10 or so lifts shown above were chairlifts. Today, Okemo has grown into Vermont’s fourth-largest ski area by skiable acres (though I have reason to doubt the accuracy of the ski resort’s self-reported tallies; Stowe, Sugarbush, and Jay all ski at least as big as Okemo, but officially report fewer skiable acres).

Anyway, in the early ‘80s, Magic, Bromley, Ascutney, and Plymouth/Roundtop were approximate peers to Okemo.

Bromley ran mostly chairlifts, and has evolved the most of this group, but it is far smaller than Okemo today.

The mountain has always been well-managed, so it wasn’t entirely fair to stick it in with this group, but the context is important here: Bromley today is roughly the same size that it was 40 years ago:

Ascutney sold a 1,400-plus-foot vertical drop and a thick trail network in this 1982 trailmap. But the place went bust and sold its high-speed quad in 2012 (it’s now the main lift at Vail-owned Crotched).

Today, Ascutney consists of a lower-mountain ropetow and T-bar that rises just 450 vertical feet (you can still skin or hike the upper mountain trails).

Magic, in the early ‘80s, was basically the same size it is today:

A merger with now-private and liftless (but still skiable from Magic), Timber Ridge briefly supersized the place before it went out of business for a large part of the ‘90s:

When Magic recovered from its long shutdown, it reverted to its historic footprint (with extensive glade skiing that either didn’t exist or went unmarked in the ‘80s):

And then there was Round Top, a 1,300-foot sometime private ski area also known as Bear Creek and Plymouth Notch. The area has sat idle since 2018, though the chairlifts are, last I checked, intact, and it can be yours for $6.5 million.

Seriously you can buy it:

On Okemo’s expansion progression

The Muellers’ improbable transformation of Okemo into a New England Major happened in big chunks. First, they opened the Solitude area for the 1987-88 ski season:

In 1994, South Face, far looker’s left, opened a new pod of steeper runs toward the summit:

The small Morningstar pod, located in the lower-right-hand corner of the trailmap, opened in 1995, mostly to serve a real estate development:

The most dramatic change came in 2003, when Okemo opened the sprawling Jackson Gore complex:

On Vermont Act 250

It’s nearly impossible to discuss Vermont skiing without referencing the infamous Act 250, which is, according to the official state website:

…Vermont’s land use and development law, enacted in 1970 at a time when Vermont was undergoing significant development pressure. The law provides a public, quasi-judicial process for reviewing and managing the environmental, social and fiscal consequences of major subdivisions and developments in Vermont. It assures that larger developments complement Vermont’s unique landscape, economy and community needs. One of the strengths of Act 250 is the access it provides to neighbors and other interested parties to participate in the development review process. Applicants often work with neighbors, municipalities, state agencies and other interested groups to address concerns raised by a proposed development, resolving issues and mitigating impacts before a permit application is filed.

As onerous as navigating Act 250 can seem, there is significantly more slopeside development in Vermont than in any other Northeastern state, and its large resorts are certainly more developed than anything in build-nothing New York.

On the CNL lease structure

Schmidt refers to “the CNL lease structure.” Here’s what he was talking about: a company called CNL Lifestyle Properties once had a slick sideline in purchasing ski areas and leasing them back to the former owners. New England Ski History explains the historical context:

As the banking crisis unfolded, many ski areas across the country transferred their debt into Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). On December 5, 2008, Triple Peaks transferred its privately held Mt. Sunapee assets to CNL Lifestyle Properties, Inc.. Triple Peaks then entered into a long agreement with CNL to maintain operational control.

The site put together a timeline of the various resorts CNL once owned, including, from 2008 to ’17, Okemo:

On the proximity of Okemo to Mount Sunapee 

Though Okemo and Sunapee sit in different states, they’re only an hour apart:

I snapped this pic of Okemo from the Sunapee summit a couple years ago (super zoomed in):

On Mount Sunapee’s ownership

The State of New Hampshire owns two ski areas: Cannon Mountain and Mount Sunapee. In 1998, after decades of debate on the subject, the state leased the latter to the Muellers. When Vail acquired Triple Peaks (Okemo, Sunapee, and Crested Butte), in 2019, they either inherited or renegotiated the lease. For whatever reason, the state continues to manage Cannon as part of Franconia Notch State Park. A portion of the lease revenue that Vail pays the state each year is earmarked for capital improvements at Cannon.

On glades at Stratton and Killington

Okemo’s trail footprint is light on glades compared to many of the large Vermont ski areas. I point to Killington and Stratton, in particular, in the podcast, mostly due to their proximity to Okemo (every Vermont ski area from Sugarbush on north has a vast glade network). Though it’s just 20 minutes away, Killington rakes in around double Okemo’s snowfall in an average winter, and the ski area maintains glades all over the mountain:

Stratton, 40 minutes south, also averages more snow than Okemo and is a sneaky good glade mountain. It’s easy to spend all day in the trees there when the snow’s deep (and it’s deep more often than you might think):

On Okemo’s historic pass prices

We can have mountain-to-mountain debates over the impact Vail Resorts has on the resorts it purchases, but one thing that’s inarguable: season pass prices typically plummet when the company acquires ski areas. Check out New England Ski History’s itemization of Okemo pass prices over the years – that huge drop in 2018-19 represents the ownership shift and that year’s cost of an Epic Local Pass (lift ticket and pass prices listed below are the maximum for that season):

But, yeah, those day-ticket prices. Yikes.

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Who

John Emery, CEO of Alpine-X

Recorded on

August 2, 2021

Why I interviewed him

It’s such an odd conceit, isn’t it? Skiing indoors. Like surfing or mountain climbing or hunting or riding a bike, skiing belongs, in our collective imaginations, to the wide world and all its temperaments. But, as with climbing gyms or stationary bikes, technology has found a way to compartmentalize our outside pursuits, to give us a version of wild nature that’s completely walled off from it. As far as technology goes, it’s not exactly the Millennium Falcon: a big freezer on a hill covered with snow. In fact, the rest of the industrialized world has had indoor skiing for decades. Why not the U.S.? It has the population, the open land, the cultural default to canned experiences, and the wealth both to build these things and to visit them. Sure, there are plenty of ski resorts here, but they are concentrated in a few places. Thirteen states – including Florida and Texas, where a combined 50 million people live – don’t have a single ski area. And while these states have plenty of skiers of the annual-trip-to-Keystone variety, how many more would they have if anyone who wanted to try skiing could drive 20 minutes and do so? And how many of those, delirious from the rush down the decline, would then start to eye the distant snowy mountains and say, “let’s do this?”

So why, so far, has no one done it? Gone big on an experiment in U.S. indoor skiing? After Big Snow finally hummed to life nearly two years ago, Snow Operating discussed expansion south, possibly in Miami, but Covid muted such talks. When Alpine-X materialized out of ether this past January, they made their ambitions clear: to plant 20 indoor ski resorts – resorts, not areas – across the continental United States. It’s a bold and ambitious plan, and I wanted to know more.

What we talked about

How a string of corporate jobs outside of skiing readied Emery for a job running an indoor-ski startup; when your target demographic is “everyone”; the underappreciated and quirky world of Mid-Atlantic skiing; Covid upends the world in ways large and small; the global indoor-skiing landscape; how Ski Dubai changed the international conversation around domed skiing; the Great Wolf Lodge of skiing; tamping down the intimidation and embarrassment factors of learning to ski; avoiding the fate of the infamous Tokyo snowdome, which cost hundreds of millions to build and even more to tear down less than a decade later; the importance of an interesting ski experience; making skiing affordable; the necessity of terrain parks; why indoor skiing has yet to take off in the U.S. three decades after the technology debuted; Alpine-X’s potential U.S. footprint; what a good Alpine-X market looks like; imagine making after-work turns in Dallas or Miami; a skier-generation factory; why the first Alpine-X facility will be in Fairfax, Virginia; an option to get around Washington, D.C.’s impossible traffic problems; why it takes so long to built big things; the art of building atop a disused landfill; the difference between building on an existing hill versus building a steel ramp for skiing; the potential to build on natural hills; stats on the yet-to-be-built Fairfax hill; use of indoor skiing as a training facility; what kind of lifts we could see in the dome; a potential expansion timeline; how to avoid making the McDonald’s of indoor skiing; would an indoor ski dome work in a major outdoor ski market like Salt Lake City?; making indoor skiing beautiful; is there room for a second snowdome in the New York City metro area?; Alpine-X as a warm-weather feeder to outdoor ski resorts around the country; could indoor skiing draw 10 million skier visits per year?

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Skiing, like all things outdoors, is having a moment. Covid did a lot of damage, but it also crushed a lot of bad habits and inspired a lot of good ones. Suddenly, the antiseptic indoors around which the core of American life revolves was the most dangerous place you could be. What else is there? In the winter? Well, skiing. As anyone who’s long made a habit of the sport knows, hordes flooded toward it this year as though it were a thing newly invented. Some will drift away, but many won’t. And as liftlines moderate with stuffed-full chairs this coming winter, that will probably be mostly a good thing.

What this past winter suggested was that if people are presented with an option to ski, they will try it. That’s what’s so compelling here. Southern U.S. cities are stuffed with people and money. Give them the option to ski, and they will. It’s a bit of the opposite of the Covid effect – the pandemic narrowed choices and forced would-be hibernators outdoors; indoor domes will expand options by taking skiing inside. Nonetheless, the outcome will be similar: more skiers.

We are at the very beginning of indoor skiing in the United States. These domes could very well become, within a decade or two, the primary pipelines feeding the nation’s sprawling resort network. They could also fail spectacularly. Either way, I wanted to tell this story from the beginning, when optimism and possibility were at their apex.

Questions I wish I’d asked

These facilities are expensive: Emery estimates the Fairfax facility will run $200 million. Alpine-X wants to build 20 of them. That’s $4 billion. I would have liked to talk a bit more about how the company planned to raise that kind of capital and how long it would take to pay off in a best- and worst-case scenario. That enormous upfront cost is, I’m assuming, why indoor skiing has yet to take root in the United States, and it would be interesting to hear how Emery solved that problem (though one would assume he plans to follow the same basic model he did to launch the now-established Great Wolf Lodge chain of similarly ambitious facilities).

Additional reading/videos

* Ski’s overview of Alpine-X

* A list of indoor ski areas around the world

* My Storm Skiing Podcast interview with Big Snow VP of Marketing & Sales Hugh Reynolds (recorded in March 2020, just before the Covid shutdown)

* Apparently there’s an outdoor snow-tubing operation in Florida already. Who knew?

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Tim Meyer, Co-Owner and General Manager of Mountain Operations at Caberfae Peaks, Michigan

Recorded on

July 21, 2021

Why I interviewed him

In the part of my brain warehousing ski memories there are days and places that live forever. Many of those days are at Caberfae. When I first pulled up to the base area as a novice skier trained poorly at the single-lift bumps downstate I stood in dumbstruck awe of the place, its teeming peaks and lift network sprawling off into the woods. A dozen tumbling freefalls did not discourage me from its charms. Caberfae stood just 90 minutes from my house and I became a regular, returning on swirling weekends and quiet spring weeknights when I lapped empty chairs in long March sunsets after school. I moved away from Michigan long ago, but if I’m there in the winter Caberfae is the first place I go.

It is a special place, quintessentially Midwestern and unusually aggressive in its deliberate decades-long evolution. Opened in the 1930s, the complex grew by the 1970s into what Chris Diamond described in his book Ski Inc. 2020 as “a sprawling series of hills served by 20-plus rope tows, five T-Bars and a chairlift, spanning some two miles from end-to-end.” A 1966 copy of America’s Ski Book describes Caberfae as being equipped with “six T-bars and sixteen rope tows on 270 vertical feet.” Here is the 1980 trailmap, which looks like it was spun out of the ditto machines that stamped out my early grade-school classwork sheets:

Today, nearly everything on that trailmap has been permanently abandoned. In what Diamond calls “the most successful ‘ski-resort contraction’ in history,” Caberfae moved tons of earth from the bottom of two peaks to the top, boosting its vertical drop from 270 to 485 feet. “Their vertical expansion of two central peaks was accompanied by a horizontal contraction from the far-flung borders and the closing of a dozen-plus lifts, which they could never adequately cover with snowmaking,” Diamond writes. By the early 2000s, when Tim Meyer and his cousin Pete inherited the operation from their fathers, who’d had the vision to transform it, Caberfae looked like this:

For context, the Shelter run far skier’s right on the 2004 map sits between the two chairlifts on the 1980 map. But they weren’t done yet. Today, Caberfae looks like this:

The backcountry terrain, which is ungroomed and open only when natural snow allows, brought some of the old Caberfae back into the active resort footprint. They’re far from done: in the podcast, we talk about a massive project that will add a new lift and a third peak for the 2022-23 season, future development of the Backcountry, and more. “We try to do a little bit each year,” Meyer tells me in the podcast.

I’ve been waiting 25 years to have this conversation. Caberfae may be the most constantly evolving ski resort in America. It’s like a mansion that the owners can’t stop renovating. How we went from a ropetow kingdom bereft of snowmaking to a modern resort forged out of vision, willpower, patience, grit, and determination that, four decades after the family acquired it, is still a work-in-progress, was a story I’d been waiting my entire skiing life to hear.

What we talked about

The glory of the wild ropetow-laced and low-rise Caberfae of the early 1980s; lift relics still in the woods; why that terrain was abandoned and why it’s likely gone forever; growing up on the slopes of Caberfae and why Meyer lit out for Winter Park, Colorado - and what finally drew him back; running a ski area as a multi-generational family business; the kind of place where you’ll find the owner roaming the grounds in snowboots and clutching a walkie-talkie; who had the vision to transform Caberfae from an antique into a modern ski area; the incredible engineering feat of building two artificial peaks from Michigan clay and sand; improvisational construction; how the mountain stabilized the peaks; how building South Peak in the 1980s stabilized the business; the nearly 40-year-old South Peak triple is here to stay; why the ski area has changed the grade of select runs over the years; developing North Peak; why the ski area added a new triple to North Peak in 2016 and why it left the adjacent quad in service; the virtues of triple chairs; whether the ski area ever considered a six-pack for North Peak; the quirky I-75 run; why the ski area put a fence up between Smiling Irishman and Canyon; why the mountain re-opened part of the old Caberfae as an ungroomed natural-snow area; the old T-bar line hidden like a secret videogame level in the woods; the potential for chairlifts or terrain expansion in the Backcountry; why the ski area leaves its woods intact; the two retired Hall chairlifts sitting at the base of the ski area and whether they could ever come back into service, possibly as a single lift; the timeline for the third peak, what it will be called, and what kind of lift it will have; which lift is coming down to accommodate the expansion; the return of Bo Buck; the sentimental anguish of tearing the last ropetow out of the former king of the ropetows; why it could return one day; renovations on the Skyview Day Lodge; crockpots in the day lodge: “if you live in Michigan, you should have the opportunity to ski”; why Caberfae has never focused on terrain parks; going from almost zero snowmaking in the early 1980s to a modern fleet; why the mountain doesn’t push for the late spring close; how Caberfae went from selling seven golf season passes to nearly 400 and how they applied the philosophy to the $99 discounted ski season weekend or weekday pass; how that turbocharged the business; why the mountain raised the pass price to $149 last year after more than a decade at $99; the Indy Pass; why season passholders have to pick up a new metal wicket ticket each time they arrive at the ski area; the ski area’s unique lift ticket designs; why metal wickets are probably part of Caberfae indefinitely; the ski area’s colorful trailmap and when they’ll introduce a new one; why the ski area continued its relationship with Liftopia/Catalate after its troubles last year; how the 2020-21 Covid season went at Caberfae; and Covid adaptations that may stick around for future seasons.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

I actually thought February 2020 was a great time for this interview, and that’s when we initially recorded it. But the audio was compromised, filled with a conversation-from-space crackle that I couldn’t scrub out. The Storm Skiing Podcast was just four months old at the time, and I hadn’t perfected the harder-than-you’d-think art of recording a two-way conversation. I kept thinking I could resolve the issue and delayed posting. Then Covid hit. By the time I’d admitted defeat, skiing seemed small and ski area operators were preoccupied with survival. By the time the 2020-21 season came around, I was embarrassed to go back to Meyer to ask him to re-do a thing he had already done. Finally, a couple weeks ago, I fired off a bashful email asking if I could have another hour of his time. Tim graciously and immediately agreed. This has been an eternal to-do list item and it is liberating to cross it off.

Why you should ski Caberfae

Caberfae was an inaugural Indy Pass partner in the Midwest, a family-owned, family-centric Up North ski area where crockpots line the baselodge ledges and the lifties are not temp workers trucked in from the hinterlands but locals who return to their posts year after year. The place is absolute joy, no pretense, no arrogance, as down-home as Up North gets. As Meyer says in the podcast, their market is the recreational skier. That’s another way of saying it’s mostly absent of hotshots and speedsters and flippidy-doo parksters. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. This is a crowd that just loves skiing for the motion and the thrill of it, for the sensation of downhill freefall. I’ve never been to a happier ski area.

The terrain is unique for the Midwest. The artificial hills create a sensation of above-treeline skiing that is otherwise absent between Sugarloaf and Loveland. At the same time, Caberfae has eschewed the Midwest urge to clear-cut its small hills to accommodate the downhill masses – trails thread through the forest on the lower mountain, especially on North Peak and off the Shelter Chair, and the wall of trees segregating the baselodge from the slopes create a sensation of rambling bigness unusual for the Lower Peninsula. Plus, wicket tickets:

There’s one more thing. Crossing into Michigan by land invariably takes you past signs welcoming you to “Pure Michigan.” The 13-year-old slogan extolls the state’s vast forests, lakes, rivers, and wildlife, but it has been commandeered by prideful Michiganders to evoke the tireless community DIY spirit of the people themselves. When I arrived in Manhattan nearly 20 years ago, the most difficult cultural adjustment was how reliant average New Yorkers were on paid labor for even mundane tasks. No one in Michigan – at least the community I grew up in in Michigan – pays anyone to do anything they can do themselves. Ever. The concept of hiring movers, for example, still confounds me, and I moved myself – at great hassle but little expense - at least 10 times within Manhattan before settling in Brooklyn five years ago.

My point here is that Meyer and his family are Pure Michigan in that sense. When I say they engineered the most dramatic transformation of a lift-served ski area in the history of U.S. skiing over the course of four decades, I mean they engineered it. They drove the heavy equipment and they transformed glacial bumps into above-treeline peaks one shovel-load at a time and they cut the trees and reshaped the land and made the improbable inevitable. When I met Meyer on the slopes of Caberfae, he was walking across the base area in a snowsuit, carrying a crackling walkie-talkie. And you can tell in this interview, by the way he describes his sense of duty to the ski area and to his family, and maintains a crockpot-friendly Caberfae with ticket prices almost anyone can afford, that this guy and the people around him are Pure Michigan in the most elemental way.

Additional resources

This 1949 trailmap distills the zany rambling chaos that once defined Caberfae and continues to animate its spirit:

A few more items of interest:

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Caberfae lifts

* More classic Caberfae trailmaps

* Chris Diamond’s Ski Inc 2020 has a wonderful write-up of Caberfae (pgs. 128-132). The book is worth a full and repeated read for anyone interested in the modern lift-served skiing landscape.

* I wrote this story about a 5-year-old who hitched a ride on the Shelter Double with me a couple years ago.

* Another essay, this one documenting my inaugural ski season rambling over the Michigan flatlands as a teenager:

I have no photographs documenting that season. Not one. But I remember the sequence of days perfectly, the huge snowy canvas of Up North rolling out before me as I traversed the supergrid of state highways and interstates, one by one ticking off the lift-served areas that we all presumptuously called mountains but were barely hills, the largest of them 550 vertical feet from top to bottom.

To me they may as well have been Vail. After a return to single-chairlift Snow Snake, I stood in dumbfounded amazement at the base of Caberfae, four or five chairlifts sprawling across its two humped peaks poking like a giant snowy camel from the flatlands outside of Cadillac. I descended them like an inept paratrooper dropped at velocity over a decline, my gear twirling apart from me in acrobatic freefall with each concussive wipeout.

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Mike Lavertu, President of the board of directors of Lonesome Pine Trails, Maine

Recorded on

July 13, 2021

Why I interviewed him

If you’ve ever skied Maine, you probably felt as though you’d arrived at the end of the earth. And if you’ve skied Maine, you’ve probably skied Sunday River or Sugarloaf or Saddleback. And sure, they’re all remote. But from the point of view of New England’s largest state, you’re just getting moving: Lonesome pine is another five hours and 40 minutes past Sunday River, five hours 10 minutes past Sugarloaf, and five and a half hours from Saddleback. When you finally get there, you’re reached the top of America. Fort Kent sits hard by the St. John River, across the water from Canada. The ski area rises directly over the town, 500 vertical feet and a dozen trails and 10 snowguns and a T-bar. It’s a simple operation, but one that’s served its community for more than 50 years, and without the bankruptcies and debts and harebrained owners that have sunk operations large and small across New England. It is at once homey and exotic, a snowy town square perched across the street from a neighborhood, north-facing toward the world’s longest frontier. I’ve never skied there, but I’ve long wondered about this humble-brash little mountain that sits quietly in the snowy north, pushing operations into April as larger mountains shut down across New England. When Mike reached out to see if I’d be interested in an interview, I agreed immediately.

What we talked about

Lonesome Pine as labor of love; the small ski area’s surprisingly robust race program; how to transform a 1960s T-bar so it doesn’t jerk its riders up the hill; Lonesome Pine’s unique ownership structure; the mountain’s huge volunteer squad; how Fort Kent supports Lonesome Pine; how the tiny ski area stabilized its finances; yes it can even get too cold for Maine skiers; season passes; everyone needs a bar (the kind with alcohol); how a small ski area wrangles something as spectacularly expensive as a replacement groomer; how Saddleback’s Cupsuptic T-bar became a pile of parts at the base of Lonesome Pine; the caravan that carried the lift across the state; trying to figure out the origin of the T-bar that the ski area installed used more than 30 years ago; whether the ski area would ever replace the T-bar with a chairlift; dreaming of a magic carpet upgrade; the possibility of adding tubing and skating to the ski area; using volunteers to run the snowmaking operation; pushing skiing to April; the mountain’s limited operating schedule; operating during Covid; why the Canadian border closure may have worked in Lonesome Pine’s favor; and the expansive and mysterious Canadian ski world.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

A few months back, I put out a call at the end of one of the podcasts: if you ran a ski area anywhere in America, I wanted to talk to you. I didn’t care how small or remote it was. I am here to tell the full story of lift-served skiing in America. I love the Epic Pass and its flagship Western cloud-scrapers as much as I love the cowboy indies like Plattekill and the town bumps like Lonesome Pine. Mike took me seriously, and I’m glad he did – it’s far easier to track down the GM of Killington or Sugarbush or Sunday River than it is to figure out who runs Titus or Whaleback. The former, after all, are parts of conglomerates and have all the modern communications and marketing infrastructure that comes with that. An end-of-the-road bump with an antique website, run largely by volunteers, it’s never been obvious to outsiders who ran Lonesome Pine. I’d tried, in the past, to figure it out. But it’s a good story and I was thrilled when Mike reached out. If you’re the Mike of some other little ski area in the U.S. or Canada or hell Slovenia or Japan, hit me up. I want to share what you have to say.

What I got wrong

The origin of Lonesome Pine’s T-bar seemed like one of those mysteries lost to time. A 1960s-era Hall 1000, it arrived at the ski area in the mid-80s. On that, there is consensus across various online sources. But where was it for the two decades prior? In the interview, Mike speculated that it came from Vermont. In follow-up emails, he had leads telling him it came to Lonesome Pine from Pennsylvania via a Vermont broker. More digging revealed the true source: Victor Constant, the little-known but still-operating ski area at West Point, New York. This made sense: that ski area’s triple chair arrived in 1983. While I believe this is correct, I can’t find a historical trailmap showing a T-bar at Victor Constant – just this 2016 trailmap, which is the same one in use today. If anyone has any additional information on the Victor Constant T-bar – year of installation, old trailmaps, general memories – please let me know.

Why you should ski there

For all its bucolic coziness, there are not a lot of in-town ski areas in New England. Cranmore and Bousquet are two of them. Are there others? It’s one of the great shortcomings of eastern skiing. At Aspen or Park City, you ski to the bottom and walk to the bar in a city that predates lift-served skiing by half a century. In most of the Northeast, ski areas sit isolated in the countryside, a car ride from everything. Lonesome Pine is one of the few that defies this template. It’s feasible that a kid could grow up across the street. It’s right down the road from the local school. Bars and downtown sit within walking distance. A visit to Lonesome Pine will give skiers a pretty good sense of what a more imaginatively human-scaled version of Northeast skiing could be.

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Jon Hunt, Executive Director of Whaleback Mountain, New Hampshire

Recorded on

June 16, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because when Talks-Loudly-About-His-Personal-Life-In-The-Elevator-at-Work Guy brags about his upcoming ski trip, he is never going to Whaleback. He is going to Killington or Sugarbush or Stowe. Which is fine. All of those places are incredible. But they owe more to places like Whaleback than places like Whaleback owe to them. Skiing needs small ski areas. It needs places that care about beginners and families and almost nothing else. And it needs creative models to help make such ski areas sustainable. Whaleback is all of those things, an approachable sapling in a forest of redwoods. It wasn’t always so. For decades the ski area flailed along, one round of debt and foreclosure bleeding into the next, a tale nearly as tragic as Moby Dick. In 2013, a local named John Schiffman purchased the ski area under the Upper Valley Snow Sports Foundation, stopped trying to be Cannon Junior, and turned the whole operation into a nonprofit. It’s a story I wanted to hear.

What we talked about

How someone who has never worked in the ski industry ends up running a ski area; why Whaleback created an executive director position instead of hiring a general manager; how Whaleback has retained its character even through decades of apocalyptic closures; Whaleback’s new strategic plan and how it will improve the ski area; aiming for an earlier opening and 100-day season; how much life the 50-year-old summit double has left in it; why the chairlift broke in early March 2020, ending the season prematurely; upgrades to the chair this summer; where the mountain may put in a new surface lift and what it would be; coming snowmaking improvements; potential night-skiing expansion; whether the mountain could add more trails or glades; why expansion outside the current borders is likely impossible; “the coolest first day ever on any job I’ve ever had”; recent mountain improvements; how much the ski area relies on donations to stay afloat; whether ski area-owning New Hampshire and its ski area-owning governor contribute to the ski area’s operations; a professional fundraising primer from a professional fundraiser; whether fundraising has rescued a perennially indebted ski area from chronic debt; how much Whaleback relies on volunteers versus paid labor; learning from other nonprofit ski areas; the ski area’s long and brutal history of bankruptcy, bank seizure, and closing; finding an identity as a small ski area in a state stuffed with huge, developed ski resorts; how the Upper Valley Snow Sports Foundation finally put Whaleback on a path to sustainability; the active role of the ski area’s board of directors; why Whaleback’s season pass only runs $180; how much season pass sales increased last season after the ski area dropped prices for Covid; the Freedom Pass; and Covid-era ops that may hang around for future seasons.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because while the nonprofit approach seems to have brought some stability and purpose to the ski area, problems lingered – Whaleback’s 2019-20 ski season ended early not because of the Covid cataclysm, but because its summit lift simply stopped working in early March. Like a car without its engine, a ski area without its alpha lift is more decorative than useful. To forestall such issues, Whaleback’s board of directors created a new executive director position, an individual who could supercharge the ski area’s fundraising and heave its physical plant into the modern winter world. Jon Hunt is that person, and I wanted to talk to him about the huge challenge ahead.

Why you should ski Whaleback

Let’s start here:

While small by New Hampshire standards at 700 vertical feet, the mountain has legitimate pitch and terrain, with a bundle of glades raking down midmountain.

Then there’s this:

If you want to spend $1,000 on a weekend teaching your family to ski, you can punch down U.S. 4 to Killington. Or you can set up shop at Whaleback until they figure it out.

A lot of Northeast skiing is barely managed chaos, something between a stampede and a four-alarm housefire. Whaleback is not that. It’s skiing without a lot of the things that make modern skiing appealing – high-speed lifts, megapasses, snowmaking firepower that could recreate Glacier National Park in under half a day – but also a lot of the things that make it frustrating, like lift lines containing enough people to feasibly colonize the moon. When the midwinter hoards descend on New England after a snowstorm, Whaleback may be the best place you can be.

Additional reading/videos

* New England Ski History documents Whaleback’s harsh past

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Whaleback lifts

L.L. Bean created this incredible Whaleback mini-doc last year:

Some Whaleback night-skiing stoke:

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored in part by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

Who

Bruce Monette Jr., co-owner of Titus Mountain, New York

Recorded on

June 7, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Titus is perched at the snowy top of New York, an hour and change past Lake Placid, which for most of the state’s skiers already feels like the edge of the Earth. That remoteness lends a patina of mystery to the place, like the secret labyrinth of a videogame you thought you knew well. Three interlaced peaks drip with tangled mops of trails fused by a fleet of Halls and one under-the-road tunnel, presenting a meandering journey through tree and trail from one distant end to the other. The place it littered with packs of children and sometimes their parents and really no one else. The kind of knucklehead speedster native to Whiteface seems entirely absent here. It’s a joy to ski. But in 2011, Titus was on the verge of being sold off for parts, its alpha lift and snowguns bound for Pennsylvania. That’s when the Monette family, local businessfolk who had never run a ski area, bought the place. To find out how they transformed an operation on the knife-edge of shutdown into a sustainable resort, I wanted to talk to one of the people in charge of making it all happen.

What we talked about

Building the Monette family business empire from a single propane truck; the weekly weakly skier; how a family that “didn’t know anything about anything” in the ski business came to own Titus; echoes of Montage, Pennsylvania; the story behind Titus’ “Michael Jordan, ace-in-the-hole” GM; “barely hanging on” in the first season of ownership; how running a ski area is similar to running a brewery or convenience store; how Titus looked “like Cambodia” when Monette showed up; guess where Brodie’s snowguns ended up?; how the family has improved the mountain over the past decade; the challenges of managing a sprawling three-peak ski area; why the mountain isn’t fully open every day and how they decided on that schedule; rent the upper mountain; sorry no liftlines here; the condition of the fleet of Hall lifts; whether lift II is gone for good or not and where it could potentially move; why there are mailboxes at the bottom of the chairlifts; why the family’s first move was to cut glades across the mountain; the location of the new glade coming in over this summer; potential expansion on the mountain and what it could be used for; Titus’ night-skiing footprint and whether that could ever expand; the mountain’s ski-in, ski-out present and future; how being bad at snowmaking led to the ski area’s enormous maple syrup operation; season pass prices and the philosophy behind that; Titus’ post-Covid refund or deferral policy and how many skiers took advantage of it; how much the Canadian border closure hurt the mountain; the Champlain Valley Ski Card, why Titus joined, and whether it would again if the pass survives Covid; the possibility of Titus joining Indy Pass; Liftopia – so much Liftopia: the mountain’s relationship to the service prior to April 2020; how Monette reacted when the expected check didn’t show up; how much Liftopia owed the ski area; if you bought a season pass to Titus last March, the ski area never saw a penny; why the ski area honored the passes anyway; where the hell did the money go?; thoughts on the attempt at forcing Liftopia into bankruptcy; what former Liftopia CEO Evan Reece was telling Titus during the transition to a new owner; Monette’s reaction to Catalate’s offer to fully repay ski areas who will do business with them; why the betrayal was so shocking in the context of the ski business; thoughts on Reece; Titus’ new e-commerce partner; and skibanas.  

Why I thought now was a good time for this interview

Because after eyeballing the trailmap for years, I’d finally made the journey north to Titus this past winter. Never mind that I made the mistake of doing it as a daytrip from Brooklyn. It’s always an interesting experience to drive for hours and hours past nothing at all, no towns or cars or businesses, and arrive at a distant mountain bustling with families. Where they came from I have no idea, but they made the atmosphere crackle with an unpretentious let’s-have-fun-on-this-holiday-Monday attitude. In a way it felt like a small-town beach in the summertime, where looking good is less important than the act of living an active life. What that scene is to Miami, Titus is to Vail. It’s awesome. Titus was also at the center of Liftopia’s royal jackhammering, looped out of nearly fifty grand that skiers had bought in good faith that the money would go to the mountain and the people running it. While I’ve privately messaged many ski area operators about Liftopia’s implosion, this was the first time I was able to talk about it with one of them on the podcast. We discuss how Titus worked through that loss while dealing with the aftershocks of Covid.

Why you should ski Titus

Because, damn it, it’s a lot of fun. This is a place where you can let your kids wander. They’ll be fine. The terrain is fun but not terribly challenging, just steep enough for just long enough to create the sensation of freefall before moderating. There are some fun tree shots and some fun twisty runs and some long long greens. The lifts aren’t particularly fast or slow, but they are interesting, a fleet of Halls churning reliably up the incline. The place is quirky, rewarding attention and exploration with multi-colored lift towers rising over the bunny hill and mailboxes posted at the base of each lift and little terrain parks lofted into the woods. But no built feature of the mountain better synthesizes the ski area’s singular combination of ownership, geography, severe weather, and freewheeling fun than the skibanas, a row of miniature wooden houses stacked along a rim adjacent to the base lodge. A Covid adaptation built by the Amish for socially distant family shredding, these little shacks are set to become a permanent feature of Titus’ future. Go see them for yourself:

Additional resources

* Some commentary on Catalate, which is basically Liftopia 2.0 after Skitude bought the company following its implosion last spring

* Lift Blog’s inventory of Titus chairlifts

* Some Titus stories from New York Ski Blog and Ice Coast Magazine

* Follow Titus on Twitter

* Titus from the sky:

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored in part by:

* Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

* Helly Hansen - Listen to the podcast to learn how to get an 18.77 percent discount at the Boston and Burlington, Vermont stores.

Who

Scott Brandi, President of Ski Areas of New York

Recorded on

May 17, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because I spent this winter wandering the snowy New York backroads, rootless and curious, my compass aimed toward snow. I was determined to drive out my prejudices against the small and the homey, to overrule an ingrained Vermont-centrism whose calculus commanded that no roadtrip over four hours could land anywhere else. Covid required this reconsidering. But I had a pass to Hunter and could have simply lapped Catskills steeps all winter. Instead I explored. I visited, for the first time, Maple Ski Ridge, Snow Ridge, Oak Mountain, Dynamite Hill, Labrador, Song, Mount Peter, Victor Constant, Toggenburg, Four Seasons, Titus, Holiday Mountain, Willard, Royal, Hunt Hollow, Swain, and West. I poached runs on the closed slopes of Indian Lake, Newcomb, and Schroon Ski Center. And of course I hit the old familiars: Hunter and Plattekill and Belleayre and Windham and Gore. And what I found is that New York skiing is a rich world, varied and surprising, understated and retro in a way that’s neither ironic nor deliberate. Don’t tell the hipsters – they’ll sew a “locally made” patch onto the wicket tickets and drive prices up 300 percent. But talk to Scott Brandi all you want about it. As the leader of Ski Areas of New York for the past 14 years, there was no one better positioned to fill out my understanding of this sprawling lift-served world.

What we talked about

Ski NY’s mission and business model; how many of New York’s 50-plus ski areas the association represents; assisting the town tows who can’t afford membership but do so much to grow the sport; whether Vail will yank Hunter from Ski NY like they pulled their mountains out of Ski Colorado; transforming Ski NY from an indebted organization into a profitable one; lawmaking and lobbying; why the industry prioritizes self-regulation; pending bills in the New York State legislature and how they might affect ski areas; ­how the ski industry has changed since Brandi took over Ski NY in 2007; the origins of New York State’s lift maintenance program; how New York State handed out $5 million for energy-efficient snowguns; why the exact number of ski areas in the state is so confoundingly elusive; the newly lost New York ski area in need of an operator; the chances of a comeback for Hickory, Big Tupper, or Shu-Maker; lessons we can learn from Cockaigne’s resurrection; New York’s 2020-21 skier visit estimate; the Covid outdoor recreation boom; the surprise ski area sellouts and how that may translate into the future; New York’s Olympic facilities and whether the state could ever host the Winter Games again; the upcoming World University Games in Lake Placid; ORDA’s non-ski-area investments; why New York’s culture of family-owned ski areas continues to thrive; New York’s lack of ski-in, ski-out lodging and whether that could ever change; why we’re unlikely to ever see another new ski area in New York State; how Big Tupper’s comeback was strangled by litigation; thoughts on the arrival of the Epic, Ikon, and Indy passes in New York; whether the New York Gold Pass will make a comeback; teaming up with the State of New York and the NSAA to prepare for the 2020-21 Covid ski season; getting through the ski season without a single ski-area shutdown; the New York State license plate program; the state’s knockout Kids Passport program, how the state kept it going during Covid, and whether it will once again include weekends next season; why more people don’t use the programs; and New York Ski Day and whether it will come back in 2022. 

Questions I wish I’d asked

I wanted to talk a bit about New York’s private ski club culture, as it probably has more substantial members-only ski areas – Buffalo Ski Center, Holimont, Hunt Hollow, Skaneateles, Cazenovia – than any other state (most are open to the public on weekdays). Ski NY also partners extensively on adaptive ski programs, and I wanted to chat about those a bit. But we already ran long and I wanted to give Scott his day back.

What I got wrong

I forgot the name of the global winter sporting event that New York is hosting in 2023 and that it’s been preparing for for years, calling it “the World something games” as though I was conducting a man-on-the-street interview for a third-tier late-night talk show. Brandi smoothly pointed out that this event will be called the World University Games. Not exactly forgetting your wife’s name at the altar but damn man I gotta do better next time.

Why you should ski New York

New York skiing can be a tough sell. Yes, it has more ski areas than any other state, but all of them combined could probably fit comfortably into the boundaries of Park City. Whiteface has the tallest vertical drop in the East and the 11th biggest in the country, but its “Iceface” nickname is well-earned, and it doesn’t get the snowfall of the Tug Hill bumps – McCauley, Snow Ridge, Dry Hill – to its west. And the state is right next to snowy and built-up Vermont, the mountains of its powder-smashed Green Mountain spine laced with high-speed lifts and towering over ample on-site lodging. Snow, modern lifts, ski-in-ski-out – all of these are rare in New York. In fact, it’s one of the most curious ski states in the nation, as I’ve written before:

Someone built New York skiing backwards. It’s biggest and best ski areas – Whiteface, Gore, the four Catskills mountains – receive substantially less snow on average than the far smaller ski areas ringing the state’s Great Lakes borderlands. Twin lake effect snow bands blast off the eastern ends of Lakes Erie and Ontario, clobbering Midwest-sized ski hills with monstrous snow dunes. 500-vertical-foot Snow Ridge, tucked into the Ontario snow pocket along with 300-foot Dry Hill, 633-foot McCauley, and 500-foot Woods Valley, gets buried in 230 inches of annual snowfall. By comparison, Whiteface, towering three-ish hours to the east, makes due with 185 inches on average.

Or this:

New York skiing is hard to understand. It has more ski areas than any other state, but they don’t really make sense. They’re scattered all over the place. Most are at least somewhat challenging to access. A couple are enormous but most are not.

But, as Brandi notes on the podcast, that geographic dispersal means that no matter where you live in New York State (outside of Long Island), you’re no more than two hours from skiing. And since most of the mountains don’t have 32-passenger catapult lifts or farm-to-table juice bars or hell even RFID gates, their passes tend to be affordable. I’ve been tracking season pass prices for New York and every other Northeast state here, but here are a few examples:

* A joint pass for Song and Labrador is $499. Song is a bit smaller but is a better pure skier’s mountain.

* Royal Mountain, with its small footprint but wide-open woods and steady pitch, offers a $390 pass (it’s a weekends-only operation).

* New York has five Indy Pass mountains, meaning passholders can add the multipass for $189 ($89 for kids). They are: West ($599 adult), Swain ($499), Snow Ridge ($410), Catamount ($499), and Greek Peak ($595). The Catamount pass is also good for unlimited access to Berkshire East (Massachusetts’ best ski area), and Bousquet. Add unlimited Toggenburg access to a Greek Peak pass for $50. West, Snow Ridge, and Greek Peak have already passed their early-bird deadline, which drove prices up substantially.

Most of these are affordable enough to be a fair complement to an Epic or Ikon pass, so you can get some regular turns in between runs out West or to New England. There’s no reason to ski every once in a while when you can ski all the time.

Additional resources

* The definitive source for New York ski stoke is the excellent New York Ski Blog, where I am a semi-regular contributor. Run by stokemaster and all-around good dude Harvey Road, the site’s email newsletter is a must-add to your inbox. My favorite post of this past winter was Harvey’s recap of his four-day tour of Plattekill, Snow Ridge, Gore, and McCauley – probably my top four ski areas in the state. My New York contributions were write-ups of visits to Maple Ski Ridge and Willard.

* Support Ski NY by purchasing a poster, license plate, or merch.

* New York’s Ski & Ride Passport program is incredible. If you have a 3rd- or 4th-grader, they get up to three lift tickets at each participating ski area (that’s most of them), with the purchase of an adult lift ticket. The program was modified to weekdays-only this past season, but Ski NY anticipates once again including weekends for 2021-22.

* If you liked what Brandi has to say, you’d probably also like the Storm Skiing Podcast interviews with National Ski Areas Association CEO Kelly Pawlak and Ski Vermont President Molly Mahar.

* Past New York-focused podcasts include West Mountain owners Spencer and Sara Montgomery, Windham President Chip Seamans, Berkshire East and Catamount owner Jon Schaefer, and Plattekill owners Danielle and Laszlo Vajtay. If you run a mountain in New York (or, frankly, anywhere else), I want to talk to you on the podcast.

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored in part by:

* Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

* Helly Hansen - Listen to the podcast to learn how to get an 18.77 percent discount at the Boston and Burlington, Vermont stores.

Who

Doug Fish, President and Founder of the Indy Pass

Recorded on

April 26, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because the Indy Pass materialized out of nowhere to help solve so many of skiing’s intractable problems: the problem of affordability, of outsized attention to too few ski areas, of the ski family as a viable entity. Even as Vail and Alterra have consolidated the continent’s best mountains onto megapasses far below the cost of single-mountain passes of five or 10 years ago, occasional skiers have recoiled at daily lift-ticket prices that blew right past the three-digit mark without even stopping to kick the dirt off their shoes. And as good a deal as the Epic and Ikon passes are, a stack of them can still stretch well beyond a family’s annual ski budget. Indy fixed this. For $796 – a touch more than the cost of a single adult Epic Pass and well below the price of an adult Ikon Pass – a family of four can ski for the season. It will require some travel and some creativity and some patience, but the reward will be days at an interesting patchwork of ski areas. There was nothing inevitable about this. Yes, there have always been independent alternatives to the so-called corporate resorts, but it took some vision to weave dozens of distinct mountains into a coherent coalition united around a common product that’s good both for ski areas and the skiers that love them. I wanted to talk to Fish about Indy’s evolution up to now and how the pass would continue to adapt to skiing’s rapid changes.

What we talked about

Doug’s great Western roadtrip of 2021; a case for ignoring ski area statistics and just showing up; exactly how much Indy Pass skier visits exploded this past season; landing Powder Mountain on the Indy Pass; how the mountain stands out even in Utah’s powder paradise; the wisdom of limiting the number of people on the mountain; why the ski area will limit the number of Indy Pass redemptions on any given day; which other Indy partners will follow suit; which parts of the sprawling Powder Mountain terrain network you can access with a lift ticket; the snowball effect of signing a big-name mountain; why some mountains don’t need the Indy Pass; skiing in Kalamazoo; a primer on Mt. Ashland, Oregon; the Indy Pass explorer; why density is good but too much density is bad; the renaissance at West Mountain, New York; the weirdness of New York skiing and which other ski areas may join; don’t give up on ORDA just yet; what happened in New England when Indy added Cannon; whether Indy is done in New England after adding Cannon, Jay Peak, Waterville Valley, and Saddleback; which New England partners Fish would add if he had his pick; whether we’re getting closer to partners in Tahoe or Colorado; where there may still be room to expand in the Midwest; the last ski area in the region that Fish covets; the top 10 Indy ski areas for 2020-21 ticket redemptions and what was surprising on that list; the appeal of White Pass; the shocking number of redemptions for Waterville Valley; what makes a ski area work and not work as an Indy partner; an updated goal for the desired number of Indy Pass resorts; Indy’s next great expansion opportunity; the novel program Indy is considering to support independent mountains that aren’t partners; how Indy set its 2021-22 pass prices and why they increased as much as they did; Indy’s financial model; why 100 percent of partners are returning for next season in spite of a smaller-than-expected Indy Pass payout; the explosion in the number of resorts with blackouts; whether the Indy Spring pass will return in 2022; why the assurance program won’t return for 2021-22; moving the Indy Pass on-sale date to the spring; Indy’s payment plan; and limiting the number of Indy Passes at the early-bird rate.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because as it enters its third season, Indy Pass is transitioning from rough-hewn concept to polished product, with a roster of well-known and well-regarded mountains. New partners keep coming and established partners are staying. That’s good. But redemptions exploded 1,100 percent last season, pushing the payout-per-visit below the pass’ target. That’s bad. For Indy to be sustainable, it has to find the price point where skiers still feel like they’re getting a bargain and ski areas still feel like they’re not getting ripped off. Thus, new prices and lots of new blackouts. That’s going to be rough for some people who had become accustomed to Indy’s freewheeling early days. I wanted to talk to Fish about why Indy had to raise prices, how he found the right tiers, why so many more mountains have blackouts than in the past, and, maybe most important of all, how he landed Powder Mountain, the 500-inches-per-year Utah titan with strict ticket limits and a veil of exclusivity.

Why you should buy this pass

Even with the price hikes, I still think the Indy Pass is a no-brainer if you live in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, or Upper Rockies. At least it is if you have a sampler’s mentality, a willingness to drive long distances on a regular basis, and an urge to ski every possible mountain and day that you can. That or a couple of weeks off and the patience to plan a resort-hopping roadtrip. I still like Indy as a holiday complement to an Epic or Ikon Pass – hit Bolton Valley on Stowe’s busiest days, or hop over to Magic when Stratton goes nutso. The new blackout tiers will make this more challenging, and the Indy+ feels as though it’s creeping out of bargain pass territory, but you’ll have to make that choice depending on how often you think you’ll ski, how far you’re willing to travel, and how flexible your schedule is. For the organized and the committed, it’s not going to be difficult to ski this pass down to per-day prices of decades past, and have a damn good time doing it.

Additional reading/videos

I released a full breakdown of Indy’s 2021-22 pass suite earlier today. Here’s some of my past coverage of Indy Pass and its partners:

Podcasts

* West Mountain, New York owners Sara and Spencer Montgomery

* Granite Peak, Wisconsin GM Greg Fisher

* Waterville Valley, New Hampshire GM Tim Smith

* Bolton Valley, Vermont President Lindsay DesLauriers

* Saddleback, Maine GM Andy Shepard (recorded before the ski area joined the pass)

* Jay Peak, Vermont GM Steve Wright

* Cannon Mountain, New Hampshire GM John DeVivo

* Indy Pass Founder Doug Fish (May 31, 2020)

* Berkshire East and Catamount, Massachusetts Owner Jon Schaefer

* Magic Mountain, Vermont President Geoff Hatheway

Articles

* Indy Pass Signs Saddleback, Waterville Valley (Feb. 23, 2021)

* Indy Pass Adds Idaho’s Pomerelle and Soldier Mountains, Introduces Discounted Spring Pass (Feb. 2, 2021)

* Lift-Served Skiing Returns to Saddleback After Five-Year Hiatus (Dec. 16, 2020)

* Indy Pass Fills Out 2020-21 Lineup with Snow Ridge, Antelope Butte (Nov. 18, 2020)

* Indy Pass Signs Vermont’s Jay Peak (Oct. 19, 2020)

* Indy Pass Erupts Into Second Year With 630 Percent Sales Boom, Picks Up 12th New Mountain (Oct. 2, 2020)

* Indy Pass Solidifies Second-Year Coalition as It Breaks Into Wyoming, Loses Mt. Abram (Sept. 1, 2020)

* Magic Announces Record Pass Sales After Slashing Prices (June 21, 2020)

* Indy Pass Adds Cannon and Six Other Resorts, Kids Pass, Season Pass Add-On, Simple Pass Assurance Program (May 20, 2020)

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored in part by:

* Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

* Helly Hansen - Listen to the podcast to learn how to get an 18.77 percent discount at the Boston and Burlington, Vermont stores.

Who

Sara Montgomery, General Manager of West Mountain and Spencer Montgomery, Co-Owner and Operator of West Mountain, New York

Recorded on

April 12, 2021

Why I interviewed them

Because West Mountain is one of the best stories in New York skiing. A decade ago, the place was falling apart. Trails-in-name-only had become overgrown and were rarely open. A handful of homemade mobile snowguns serviced the mountain. A trio of doddering antique chairlifts rose from a cluster of ramshackle or abandoned buildings. Night-lighting was inconsistent and covered only portions of the mountain. The place puttered along on 30,000 skier visits per year. Then the Montgomerys arrived with a new vision and energy, moving their family of six to the base of the mountain and initiating a $17 million gut renovation. Eight years after their arrival, the place is transformed, with a forest of tower guns that can bury the full trail network in a few days, three new lifts, 100 percent night skiing, widened and consistently open ski runs, renovated lodges and cafeterias, and reinvigorated race and after-school programs. And that’s just phase one. The long-term aspiration is to transform West into the sort of ski-and-stay destination that New York is desperately lacking, build an affordable ski academy, and continue expanding the lift and trail network. I wanted to speak with the Montgomerys to understand how they did all this and how they were going to stretch toward the future.

What we talked about

Growing up skiing at West; how they came to own and operate the ski area; living on the mountainside; what West looked like when they took over in 2013 and where they invested $17 million to completely overhaul the ski area; why they widened the front trails beneath the main summit lift; how to raise $17 million; transforming West into a true resort with ski-and-stay condos and a pedestrian village; where we could see ski expansion and new lifts on the mountain; the great missed opportunity of New York skiing; mirroring the Holiday Valley or Jiminy Peak model; the topography and future of the mountaintop; the growth and future of the race program; ramping up customer service; the overhauled cafeteria and Northwest lodge; amping up the night-skiing operation; the growth of after-school programs; balancing strong race programs with a good ski experience for the public; making race programs affordable; growing the college and twenty-something demos; why West bought Hermitage Club’s old summit triple and why they added a loading carpet; selling off the old Riblet chairs; upgrading the Facelift chair to a quad; West’s steep terrain; choosing a new triple chair for the Northwest side and shifting it onto a different location than the lift it replaced; why stationary guns are superior to mobile guns; why a 10-inch pipe can carry three times the water of a six-inch pipe; ditching the habit of having trails-in-name-only and making sure the full trailmap was open for the majority of the winter; clearing out the warren of narrow trails beneath the main lift; why West eliminated a number of Northwest-side runs listed on old trailmaps; the potential to thin more glades; long-term expansion potential; the logic behind the $499 season pass; surging pass sales; why West ditched the midweek pass; the chances of West joining the Indy Pass; and Covid-era adaptations that may stick around beyond the 2020-21 ski season.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

For all the reasons itemized above. If you haven’t been to West since 2012 or so, you’re not going to recognize the place. It looks different. It skis different. It feels different. West circa 2010 was not throwback in the man-this-is-what-skiing-used-to-be-this-is-so-quaint-and-idyllic kind of way. It was throwback in the am-I-going-to-die-falling-off-this-jalopy-of-a-chairlift kind of way. Like what Holiday Mountain or Spring Mountain feel like today. When a ski area hits that point it either withers like a forgotten Jack-o’-lantern – still somewhat resembling the thing it once proudly was but clearly not that thing anymore either – or it finds some path to reinvention and reinvigoration. We’re seeing it elsewhere in the Northeast, where formerly beaten- down ski areas lost in the poor decisions, bad luck, and underinvestment of past decades are suddenly resurgent: Saddleback and Magic, Greek Peak and Bousquet. West has climbed aboard that list, though with less fanfare and fireworks outside of their local market, and I wanted to throw a spotlight on what’s become a remarkable little ski area.

What I got wrong

At one point I referred to the portion of I-87 from which you can see West Mountain’s 1,000 vertical feet blazing in the winter night as the “Thruway.” No doubt many of you are eager to inform me that this section of I-87 is actually called the “Northway.” I am aware of this and simply misspoke, mostly because I do not actually give a s**t what this particular section of I-87 is called because what I call this highway from top to bottom is I-87. I do not understand this Northeast habit of naming your expressways as though they are family pets, particularly when they ALREADY HAVE A F*****G NAME. I still remember the sense of rage and confusion inspired by a road sign announcing “Closures on the Deegan” as I exited the Tappan Zee Bridge one day several years ago, and all I could think is “What the f**k is the ‘Deegan’ and why would anyone call it that when any interstate traveler like say a trucker or tourist attempting to navigate cityward by map would identify this road as Interstate 87?” But hey why not disrupt the flow of commerce and confuse the s**t out of people by tossing out some colloquialism that makes sense to exactly four dozen people running the local road commission. This may just be some hokey Midwest sensibility but I generally prefer the simplest solution to most problems and the solution here is to give one road that has already been assigned an easily identifiable numeral that syncs logically with the naming conventions of the 46,876-mile United States Interstate system one name and exactly one name and that is the name it already has: I-87. But no instead New Yorkers have to give it not one or two but three separate additional special names along its 333-mile route. And this all seems confusing and unnecessary, like if I called my cat “Spike” while he was in the basement and “Fiddles” while he was upstairs and “Pokeypoo” when he was out in the yard. But it’s all the same cat you see and his real name is Number 9 but really my main goal in life is to confuse the s**t out of people for no good reason and I can see that it’s working so you’re welcome.

Why you should go there

Because you drive past it on your way to Gore or Whiteface or perhaps Vermont depending upon your route and as you do so you look up off of the road universally known as Interstate 87 and say, “Oh look a ski area I wonder what it’s called?” Well it’s called West Mountain and it is worth your time. It has a thousand vertical feet and all new everything and a cool community vibe. And it’s a family business, a place worth supporting, the kind of ski area we need to print new skiers who will one day fly their three kids out to Colorado for spring breaks. It’s not a bumps-and-glades kind of place, at least not yet, but it has good steady pitch and an interesting trail layout. And it has a big future. Go now to see what it’s like so you can follow along while it becomes what it will be.

Additional reading

Coverage of West in the Glens Falls Chronicle, Spectrum Local News, Daily Gazette, Saratogian, and WNYT. Lift Blog’s inventory of West Mountain lifts.

-

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored in part by:

* Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

* Helly Hansen - Listen to the podcast to learn how to get an 18.77 percent discount at the Boston and Burlington, Vermont stores.

Who

National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) President and CEO Kelly Pawlak

Recorded on

April 6, 2021

Why I interviewed her

Because the NSAA saved our 2020-21 ski season. They did this by creating the Ski Well, Be Well standards, which united hundreds of ski areas and millions of skiers under a shared understanding of what safe, socially distant skiing would look like. They did it by helping individual ski area operators understand which streams of the overlapping and bewildering layers of government aide they qualified for and shepherding them through the application processes. They did it by presenting a compelling alternative to full shutdowns for state-level regulators. And they did it all through tireless coalition-building among all the entities that manage this monster called lift-served skiing, landing on firm but clear operating guidelines that, while imperfect, did what they were designed to do: create consistency and order in a weather-dependent business often defined by chaos and improvisation. Leading the organization and the industry through this was Pawlak. I wanted to understand how the NSAA coordinated and executed the tectonic effort to make sure American lift-served skiing opened and stayed open for a full 2020-21 ski season.  

What we talked about

Putting the challenge of adapting to Covid in historical context; if skiing can handle this, it can handle anything; where do you even begin when Covid nukes your entire industry?; developing and rolling out the Ski Well, Be Well guidelines that helped ski areas operate in the midst of the pandemic; getting every ski area in the country to agree to require masks; the importance of state ski area associations; how the NSAA helped states develop ski area operating guidelines; the complexity of agreeing on how to load chairlifts; why politics didn’t derail 2020-21 ski area operations; when she started to believe Covid-era skiing could work; how the U.S. ski industry got through the season without a single shutdown; why mask-wearing worked both for ski area employees and skiers; Covid operating changes that may become permanent after the pandemic fades; which regions of the country best weathered the pandemic from a business point of view; helping ski areas take advantage of various rounds of federal and state assistance; how many ski areas sat out the 2020-21 season and what those operations had in common; why every ski area felt so much busier than normal; liftlines; the surge in season pass sales; whether pass refund and deferral policies and other consumer-friendly pass attributes like payment plans are here to stay; are the Epic and Ikon Passes good for skiing and small ski areas?; reaction to Vail and Alterra’s statements on diversity; the NSAA’s diversity initiatives; the importance of pipeline programs to diversify skiers and ski industry workers; skiing’s “Jerry” problem; how the declining season pass prices help more people feel like part of the ski community.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because we did it. We had a ski season. Winding toward mid-April, the ski areas that we would expect to be shut are shut and the ones we would expect to be open are open and they are making these decisions on their own, as melt-outs or slowing business stop the lifts. There was nothing inevitable about this. Skiing barely happened in Europe. Canada has weathered successive waves of shutdowns across multiple provinces. Southern Hemisphere skiing was a disaster in 2020. There is no doubt a cultural element to America’s stubbornness here - shutdowns are out of favor, politically. But the fact that skiing stayed open while so many other sorts of gathering - from concerts to sports to movie theaters - remained closed or curtailed is a testament to the efficacy of the NSAA’s Ski Well, Be Well standards. They were good conceptually and they were good practically – I visited 34 ski areas this season, and I only observed one instance of an unmasked mountain employee. I did not see any brazen instances of skier disobedience in mask compliance (I did see plenty of accidental ones). I experienced few issues with lift loading. I found the car-as-a-baselodge concept surprisingly enjoyable. The shift to ecommerce was welcome. Mostly, though, I found a sense of stability and normalcy as pandemic-induced isolation is catalyzing a massive mental health crisis. I didn’t have to hole up inside, away from the world – I was skiing twice a week, out there, adventuring. This seemed like a great time to reflect on these facts with the person perhaps most responsible for making them a reality.

Additional reading

* All about Ski Well, Be Well

* The NSAA maintains some really interesting fact sheets, documenting the number of active U.S. ski areas by year, number of ski areas by state, and much more.

COVID-19 & Skiing Podcasts: Author and Industry Veteran Chris Diamond | Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher | Magic Mountain President Geoff Hatheway | NSAA CEO Kelly Pawlak | Berkshire East/Catamount Owner & Goggles for Docs founder Jon Schaefer | Shaggy’s Copper Country Skis Cofounder Jeff Thompson | Doppelmayr USA President Katharina Schmitz | Mt. Baldy GM Robby Ellingson | Alterra CEO Rusty Gregory | NSAA Director of Risk & Regulatory Affairs Dave Byrd | Schweitzer Mountain President and CEO Tom Chasse | Ski Vermont President Molly Mahar

The Storm Skiing Podcasts: Killington & Pico GM Mike Solimano | Plattekill owners Danielle and Laszlo Vajtay | New England Lost Ski Areas Project Founder Jeremy Davis | Magic Mountain President Geoff Hatheway | Lift Blog Founder Peter Landsman | Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher | Burke Mountain GM Kevin Mack | Liftopia CEO Evan Reece | Berkshire East & Catamount Owner & GM Jon Schaefer | Vermont Ski + Ride and Vermont Sports Co-Publisher & Editor Lisa Lynn | Sugarbush President & COO Win Smith | Loon President & GM Jay Scambio | Sunday River President & GM Dana Bullen | Big Snow & Mountain Creek VP of Sales & Marketing Hugh Reynolds | Mad River Glen GM Matt Lillard | Indy Pass Founder Doug Fish | National Brotherhood of Skiers President Henri Rivers | Winter 4 Kids & National Winter Activity Center President & CEO Schone Malliet | Vail Veterans Program President & Founder Cheryl Jensen | Mountain Gazette Owner & Editor Mike Rogge | Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows President & CMO Ron Cohen | Aspiring Olympian Benjamin Alexander | Sugarloaf GM Karl Strand – Parts One & Two | Cannon GM John DeVivo | Fairbank Group Chairman Brian Fairbank | Jay Peak GM Steve Wright | Sugarbush President & GM John Hammond | Mount Snow GM Tracy Bartels | Saddleback CEO & GM Andy Shepard | Bousquet owners and management | Hermitage Club GM Bill Benneyan | Powder Magazine Editor-in-Chief Sierra Shafer | Gunstock GM Tom Day | Bolton Valley President Lindsay DesLauriers | Windham President Chip Seamans | Sunday River GM Brian Heon | Waterville Valley GM Tim Smith | Granite Peak GM Greg Fisher | Montage Mountain Managing Owner Charles Jefferson | Author and journalist Eric Wilbur | Alterra CEO Rusty Gregory |

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored in part by:

* Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

* Helly Hansen - Listen to the podcast to learn how to get an 18.77 percent discount at the Boston and Burlington, Vermont stores.

Who

Rusty Gregory, CEO of Alterra Mountain Company

Recorded on

March 24, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because Alterra and its Ikon Pass sit at the center of the lift-served skiing universe. The very fact of the pass’ existence is a marvelous development for amped-up road-tripping adventurers, a revelation that untethers the frequent skier from concerns about ticket costs and access. Ikon has at times been less marvelous for locals, or even for out-of-town passholders themselves, who sometimes find their bucolic mountain getaways overrun. Composed of an unlikely federation of nearly every big-name ski operator outside of Vail, the Ikon Pass provides a vital counterweight to the Epic Pass, an absolute equal to one of the most successful ski products of all time. I wanted to talk to the person at the head of the whole operation, to better understand how Alterra and the Ikon Pass came together and continue to evolve.

What we talked about

The Blue Mountain (not that Blue Mountain) shutdown; how a Southern California surfer discovered skiing as a college football player in the Pacific Northwest; ski-bumming at Mammoth; how a liftie ended up running the mountain; What happened when Mammoth dropped its pass prices from $1,200 to $379 in 1995; the legacy of Mammoth founder Dave McCoy, who passed away last year at age 104; a borrowed city truck and the origin of organized skiing at Mammoth; McCoy’s ski engineering innovations; the argument for a simplified work life; why Mammoth bought Big Bear and Snow Summit and dropped them on a joint pass along with June Mountain in 2014; how that small group of mountains acted as a precursor to Alterra and the Ikon Pass; how Rusty became Alterra CEO; assembling the motley chest-thumping Ikon Pass roster; how good Alterra’s Adventure Assurance plan looks in hindsight; why Alterra didn’t implement a universal reservation policy and whether they will have one next season; why Alterra shuffled Base Pass access for Jackson Hole, Aspen, Crystal, Stratton, and Sugarbush over the past two seasons; reaction to Vail cutting Epic Pass prices by 20 percent; whether Ikon prices will change as a result; Alterra’s 2021 capital plan; potential new ski area partners and acquisitions in North America and Europe; considering Jay Peak and Camelback; and why the Ikon Pass shares so many partners with the Mountain Collective.  

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because Alterra just announced its 2021-22 Ikon Pass suite, changing Crystal Mountain access on the Base Pass, maintaining its Adventure Assurance shutdown protection and deferral plan, and holding prices relatively steady. I wanted to discuss these changes, how the 2020-21 season had gone, and the outlook for the future. The interview also happened to be on the same day that Vail announced 20 percent across-the-board reductions to Epic Pass prices, and I wanted to get a sense for Alterra’s reaction to that news.

Questions I wish I’d asked

I had questions prepared on the frustrations of dealing with the social media hate mobs, the fact that Alterra gave people with unused 2019-20 Ikon Passes a free 2020-21 pass but never advertised it, why the child’s Ikon Base Plus Pass costs more than a full child’s Ikon Pass, operational changes that may stick around after Covid, why Ikon Pass prices held steady, why Alterra switched from an interest-free payment plan to a monthly plan that carries interest, why Adventure Assurance stuck around and whether the plan would continue indefinitely, what it would take to expand capacity at Crystal, the limitations of the Ikon Session Pass, and how the partnerships with Red, Windham, and Bachelor went in their first seasons. Next time.

Previous Ikon Pass Podcasts and content on The Storm

* My previous interview with Rusty, which was part of The Storm’s Covid-19 & Skiing series in the immediate aftermath of last year’s shutdowns.

* I spoke with former Sugarbush owner Win Smith last winter, and followed up with an interview with current GM John Hammond in the fall.

* Killington and Pico GM Mike Solimano appeared on the first-ever Storm Skiing Podcast

* Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher discussed the Ikon Pass at length, and then joined me in the aftermath of the shutdown to relay what that experience was like.

* Sunday River President Dana Bullen and GM Brian Heon have both joined me on the podcast.

* Just before the shutdown last year, I interviewed Sugarloaf GM Karl Strand. We connected again as the resort was ramping up for the 2020-21 ski season.

* Loon Mountain President and GM Jay Scambio talked through the resort’s 2030 plan last year.

* Windham Mountain President Chip Seamans joined The Storm for one of its most recent episodes.

* Squaw Valley-Alpine Meadows President Ron Cohen and I had an in-depth conversation about the resort’s imminent name change.

* My breakdown of 2021-22 Ikon, Epic, and Mountain Collective Pass offerings.

* You can also compare Ikon Passes to all other Northeast season passes using the Storm Skiing Journal’s Pass Tracker 5000.

Epic Pass fans will have to make do with my interview with Mount Snow GM Tracy Bartels. Vail: I’m ready to do more whenever you are.

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on March 30. It dropped for free subscribers on April 6. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:

Who

Bridget Legnavsky, President & CEO of Sugar Bowl, California

Recorded on

March 13, 2024

About Sugar Bowl

Click here for a mountain stats overview

Owned by: A group of shareholders

Located in: Donner, California

Year founded: 1939

Pass affiliations: Mountain Collective: 2 days, no blackouts

Closest neighboring ski areas: Donner Ski Ranch (:02), Soda Springs (:07), Boreal (:10), Kingvale (:14), Tahoe Donner (:24), Northstar (:27), Palisades Tahoe (:30), Homewood (:44), Diamond Peak (:52), Mt. Rose (:58), Sky Tavern (1:03) - travel times vary considerably given time of day, time of year, and weather conditions.

Base elevation: 6,883 feet

Summit elevation: 8,383 feet

Vertical drop: 1,500 feet

Skiable Acres: 1,650 acres

Average annual snowfall: 500 inches

Trail count: 103 (38% advanced, 45% intermediate, 17% beginner)

Lift count: 12 (1 four-passenger gondola, 5 high-speed quads, 3 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 platter, 1 carpet) - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Sugar Bowl’s lift fleet.

View historic Sugar Bowl trailmaps on skimap.org.

Why I interviewed her

Lagnavsky muses, toward the end of our interview, that Lake Tahoe in general is home to “the best skiing I’ve ever had in my life,” and that she can’t fathom why it’s not more of a national and international ski destination. This is coming from someone who has spent 30-plus years in the industry; who’s worked in Europe, Colorado, and New Zealand; who has freeskier credentials etched on her resume. She knows what she’s talking about.

And I agree with her. More or less**. Tahoe is spectacular. The views, the snow, the terrain, the vibe, the energy, the variety, the sheer audacity of it all. Sixteen ski areas rung around a 191-square-mile lake at the top of California*^. An improbable wintertime circus, one of the greatest concentrations of ski areas on the continent.

And no one would say there is any lack of people there. This is, again, California, home to 39 million Americans. Traffic and housing are big problems. But, being based in the East, I’m dialed into the way that much of the country thinks about Tahoe as a destination ski region. Which is to say, they mostly don’t.

And I don’t quite get why. It’s not hard to get to. Reno’s airport is closer to the major Tahoe ski areas than Denver’s is to Summit County. It’s not a huge facility, but it’s served by direct flights from 24 airports, including New York City and Chicago. While the roads can get nasty mid-storm, they’re mostly well-maintained federal and state highways. There are plenty of accommodations on or near the larger resorts. But anytime I ask an Epic- or Ikon-Pass wielding East Coast city skier where they’re going out west, they say the Wasatch or Colorado or Big Sky or Jackson Hole. And if I’m like “what about Tahoe,” they’re usually like, “there’s skiing in California? How strange.”

Not that the Epic and Ikon Tahoe mountains need more skiers. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story a couple weeks ago about how fed-up Bay Area skiers were jetting to Utah and Colorado to outsmart the crowds (slow clap for that hack, Fellas). But there is a lot more to this sprawling, captivating ski region than Palisades, Heavenly, Northstar, and Kirkwood. And one of the most overlooked but also magical pieces of it is Sugar Bowl. And the fact that it’s not, for whatever reason, a destination to anyone outside of a 250-mile radius might make it exactly the kind of place that a lot of you are searching for.

**Settle down, Utah.

*and Nevada

^”Ummmm, the highest point in California is Mt. Whitney, which is nowhere near Lake Tahoe.” Thanks Doesn’t-Understand-Intentional-Hyperbole Bro. P.S. I hate you.

What we talked about

127 inches in one storm and yes that’s real; how do you even measure that?; the “storm troopers” living at Sugar Bowl; storm mode in Tahoe; adjustable lifts; this crazy door:

A season extension; how late Sugar Bowl could stay open and why it usually shuts down before that; ski New Zealand; Treble Cone; Cardrona; the global seasonal ski resort work cycle; never-summer; the biggest cultural adjustment coming to America after running resorts in New Zealand; who owns Sugar Bowl and how committed they are to independence; “We’re an independent resort surrounded by Ikon and Epic, and that’s making it really hard for Sugar Bowl to survive”; could Sugar Bowl join the Ikon Pass?; joining Mountain Collective; “part of the beauty of Sugar Bowl is that it’s uncrowded”; Shhhhhh-ugar Bowl; the three things that set Sugar Bowl apart in a crowded ski market; operating below comfortable carrying capacity; the village gondola; what happens when you live in a car-free village; considering a gondola upgrade; considering the lift fleet; why the Crow’s Peak lift is a triple chair, rather than a high-speed quad; “I do believe we could have the best beginner’s experience in the U.S.”; Sugar Bowl’s masterplan; village evolution; the curiosity of the small ski areas surrounding Sugar Bowl; “it’s got the best skiing I’ve ever had in my life here”; why isn’t California a destination ski market?; yes snowmaking is still helpful in Tahoe, and not just in the winter.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

As far as mid-to-large-sized ski areas go, Sugar Bowl is about as well placed as any in the world. Its four peaks sit walking distance from Interstate 80, which mainlines Bay Area skiers into the mountains in under three hours (without traffic; yes, I know, there’s always traffic). Sugar Bowl is the first big ski area you hit riding east, and arguably the easiest to access. And it gets clobbered with 500 inches of average annual snowfall. Those are Alta-Snowbird numbers (keep moving, Canyon Bro; yes, it’s heavier snow, in general; I already told you LCC delivers the best skiing in America, so stop arguing about something we agree on).

And yet, skiing circa 2024 has set up a challenging obstacle course for Sugar Bowl to navigate. At least as a business. Legnavsky is frank in the podcast, telling us that, “we’re an independent resort surrounded by Ikon and Epic, and that’s making it really hard for Sugar Bowl to survive.” To underscore just how fierce competition for skiers is in Lake Tahoe, look how close Sugar Bowl is to Northstar, an Epic resort that is more than twice its size, and Palisades Tahoe, the 6,000-acre Ikon Pass monster just to its south:

It’s a tough draw. Though not as tough as that of the pass’ namesake Donner Party, who spent what would have been the bomber ski winter of 1846-47 snowbound at a nearby lake eating each other (reading the fevered history of this ordeal derailed me for half an hour while writing this article; I will just say that I’ve never been happier to live in the future). Still, for a business trying to make a go in the U.S. America of 2024, Megapass Monopoly is a tough game to play.

So if Sugar Bowl can’t beat them, why not join them? The mountain has, after all, already jumped on the Mountain Collective train. Why not just join Ikon and be done with it?

The answer, as you can imagine, is nuanced and considered. How does a ski area shape and retain an identity and remain a sustainable business in a vibrant ski region that is stuffed with snow and skiers, but also plenty of larger – and, frankly, less expensive (Sugar Bowl’s season pass is $1,099, more than the $982 Epic Pass) – ski areas? That, for now, is Sugar Bowl’s biggest challenge.

Questions I wish I’d asked

Sugar Bowl also owns the expansive Royal Gorge cross-country ski center, which they claim is North America’s largest, with more than 140 kilometers of trails. And while this trailmap resembles a Rorschach test slide (I see a bat, or maybe a volcano, or maybe a volcanic bat) more than any sort of guide I would be capable of following in and out of the wilderness, I can only assume this is impressive:

What I got wrong

I lumped Boreal in with Soda Springs, Tahoe Donner, and Donner Ski Ranch as a “small, family-oriented ski area.” That’s not really accurate. While Boreal, which, like Soda Springs, is owned by big bad Powdr Corp, is small by Tahoe standards, it’s really been transformed into a giant terrain park in line with the company’s Woodward Brand. It’s the only night-skiing operation in Tahoe, so the Park Brahs can Park Out Brah.

Why you should ski Sugar Bowl

“Part of the beauty of Sugar Bowl is that it’s uncrowded,” Legnavsky tells us in the podcast.

I’m sold.

To access the best version of modern U.S. skiing, you have to, I believe, find the ski areas with all the attributes of the destination resorts, minus their cost, congestion and Instapost-braggy name recognition. Places like Saddleback (a high-speed lift, lots of snow, great terrain, no people), Loveland (easy access, huge terrain, everyone sitting in their cars on the highway below, waiting to go skiing), or Sundance (modern lifts, great snow and scenery, minus the huge crowds just north; this also happens to be where I’m posted up at the moment, writing this article).

Sugar Bowl is one of these places. Five high-speed lifts and craptons of snow, without an access road that looks like the first draft of a caveman rollercoaster. While its 1,500-foot vertical drop ranks ninth among Tahoe ski areas, it clocks in at sixth in skiable acreage, with 1,650. Both numbers, in any context, are respectable, and will give an average skier more than enough to work with for a few days.

Vail has sold more Epic Passes every year since 2008. While new mountain acquisitions surely drove much of that growth, the company’s last new domestic pickup was Seven Springs and its sister resorts in 2021. That suggests that more Epic Pass holders are visiting the same number of ski areas each winter. I don’t know how many Ikon Passes Alterra sells, but no one at Palisades Tahoe is looking around and saying, “Man, Alterra really needs to spread the word about this place.”

I get it. The Epic and Ikon Passes are fabulous deals and fantastic products, granting Californians access to the big four Tahoe resorts and destinations far beyond. If you want to put skiing at the center of your winter, it’s hard not to buy one or the other or both. But there’s a tradeoff for everything. Every year, more people (probably; I’m speculating on Ikon) buy those passes. And every year, those resorts stay more or less the same size (with occasional expansions, like the sizeable expansions at Steamboat, Aspen, and Keystone this winter), implementing chessboard parking plans and building bigger lifts to keep the cauldron just at a boil. But you can turn down the heat yourself. Here’s the hack: exit Interstate 80 eastbound at exit 174, Donner Pass Road, drive three miles, park, and ski while everyone else is waiting to cash in their cheap Ikon Passes down highway 89.

Podcast Notes

On Cardrona and Treble Cone

Legnavsky spent a large chunk of her career running Cardrona and Treble Cone, a pair of large ski areas 40 road miles apart on New Zealand’s South Island. Both sit largely above treeline. Treble Cone rises around 2,300 vertical feet:

Cardrona’s vert is just shy of 2,000 feet on 1,149 acres. While New Zealand is known for “nutcracker” surface lifts, Cardrona runs a legit lift fleet, with a chondola, two high-speed quads, two fixed-grip quads, a platter, and three conveyors:

If you do happen onto a nutcracker, here are some tips:

On the dense concentration of ski areas around Lake Tahoe

Resetting ye’ old Tahoe ski areas inventory:

And here’s how close Sugar Bowl sits to its four small neighbors – Donner Ski Ranch is right across the street; Soda Springs and Boreal are right up the road; and Tahoe Donner is just a few miles east off Interstate 80:

On the Sugar Bowl gondola

Sugar Bowl runs what I believe is the last classic four-passenger gondola in the United States (Loon’s four-person gondola sports a more modern design):

On the old Crow’s Peak lift

Prior to expanding skier’s left into Crow’s Nest Peak in 2013, a Heron double chair that was also known as Crow’s Nest ran parallel to the Disney chair. Here’s the 2012 trailmap:

After the new triple chair opened, Sugar Bowl changed the double’s name to “Pony Express,” and eventually removed the lift around 2018.

On The Art of Skiing

We don’t discuss this in the pod, but here’s a Disney short from like 1702 or something that shows Goofy crushing it at Sugar Bowl:

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Who

Eric Wilbur, coauthor of Thirty Years In A White Haze with extreme skiing pioneer Dan Egan. Wilbur is also the online editor of New England Ski Journal.

Recorded on

March 15, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because Wilbur is one of the Northeast’s great ski journalists, running the online edition of the wide-ranging New England Ski Journal. With a couple decades covering the region’s mountains and a lifetime of New England sliding under his skis, Wilbur has the perspective to filter the events of today through the region’s history, mountains, culture, and aura. This New England orientation made Wilbur the ideal coauthor to Egan, Eric an able counterpart who could channel the more rough-and-tumble Boston of past decades as the starting blocks for the flashy and dashing global ski pioneer that Egan became. Thirty Years in a White Haze is expansive and layered, a complicated book about a complicated character, an achievement of teamwork, persistence, and storytelling. I wanted to talk to Wilbur about the process and the final product, how they put it together and why, and how it feels to hold it in his hands after years of labor.

What we talked about

The gratification of seeing your book in print after years of work; how Wilbur met Egan; the genesis of the book idea; why the book isn’t zany Egan Brothers wackiness; the coauthor writing process; Egan as a storyteller; tracking down the globetrotting Dan; the challenge of recreating events you weren’t present for; how Covid disrupted the writing process and accelerated the book’s timeline; the book’s pivotal scene and why it pinpoints such a vital moment in Egan’s life; Dan’s relationship with fellow Egan Brothers superstar John; why the book is written in the third person; why the first publisher didn’t work out; keeping the book’s narrative honest; capturing the essence of the big, boisterous, multi-generational Egan family; tracing the history of freeskiing from the hot-dogging 1970s to Squawllywood to today’s wild aerial gymnasts; the insane logic of skiing’s “progression” and reckoning with its current how-big-is-too-big state; Shane McConkey; talking to Scot Schmidt, Kristen Ulmer, Tom Day, Greg Stump and other extreme skiing pioneers for the book; how the VCR changed skiing; Dan the businessman; Warren Miller; “following CNN” on global ski quests; resilience in the face of failure; Tenney and the era of the SnowMagic machine; how Dan’s Irish-Catholic faith has influenced his life; the mission and history of the New England Ski Journal and Wilbur’s role there; covering Covid and its impact on skiing; reconsidering Massachusetts skiing; Berkshire East; Wachusett; Black Mountain, New Hampshire; why Vermont skiing is special; assessing the 2020-21 ski season; Killington and the commitment to the long season, even amid the pandemic; Cannon; Sugarloaf; what it means to make it through this season without involuntary shutdowns; the rapid evolution of the New England multipass market; why everyone complains about Vail; Stowe’s evolution as an Epic Mountain; people who complain about not grooming Wildcat don’t understand Wildcat; the importance of the Indy Pass; Magic Mountain; and Mad River Glen.   

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Wilbur has been on my list of potential interviewees since I launched the podcast a year and a half ago. It’s a long list though and I hadn’t gotten to it for the same reason I haven’t gotten to all of the other interviews I want to do: I can only do one thing at a time. But I’m glad I waited. Wilbur has nuanced insights into New England skiing, the ski industry’s fallout and recovery from Covid, and the evolution of the megapass landscape, but anchoring this interview to his book project gave us terrific insight into his working process as a journalist and storyteller, and gave the interview a much wider scope than it may have otherwise had.

Questions I wish I’d asked

I would have liked to have discussed Dan’s two previous books, Courage to Persevere and All Terrain Skiing. The book also explores the startling-to-remember reality that the brothers’ early cliff-hucking and pow-bounding took place on 1980s skinny skis, and that would have been an interesting topic. I also had a question lined up about skiing at a high level far after the age when it becomes difficult to keep up in many sports. But I don’t think anyone’s going to be listening to this podcast and saying, “Dude that was way too short,” so I’ll be happy with the three dozen topics we did roll through.

What I got wrong

I accidentally asked twice how much time Wilbur spent with Dan. The second time, I meant to ask how much time he’d spent speaking with John.

Why you should read this book

Dan Egan is a phenomenal skier. Dan Egan is an inventive and resilient businessman. Dan Egan is someone who’s struggled with alcohol, endured a tough divorce, and regrets not having children. Dan Egan is a tough and maybe impulsive boss. Dan Egan has a complicated relationship with his family, at once dependent on them and committed to his own life track.

People are complicated. At least the interesting ones are. And they are many things at once, in spite of what our current reductive social media climate insists. This book distills the many sides of that character into a compelling story, a tale that tracks the evolution of modern skiing, marketing, and media consumption. If you love skiing and the story of skiing, you’re going to devour this book. Enjoy.

Additional resources

* Buy the book.

* Wilbur and I discuss the death of skier Ian Forgays in a Mount Washington avalanche last month. Here’s Wilbur’s coverage of the event (scroll down), along with a deep account of that day by Vermont Ski + Ride’s Lisa Lynn.

* Egan on Warren Miller and skiing:

Dan and John’s Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame tribute video:

Wilbur says early on in the interview that getting the print copy of the book in the mail was his “George McFly moment.” For those of you who missed the memo on Back to the Future, this is what he was talking about (3:55):

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored in part by:

* Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.

* Helly Hansen - Listen to the podcast to learn how to get an 18.77 percent discount at the Boston and Burlington, Vermont stores.

Who

Charles Jefferson, Managing Owner of Montage Mountain, Pennsylvania

Recorded on

February 23, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Pennsylvania skiing is an exercise in the technological and improbable. Winters deliver marginal temperatures and frequent rain, making any ski area a capital-intensive affair reliant on sophisticated and aggressive snowmaking. The mountains themselves can be crowded and intense, with what feels like a higher-than-average volume of novice skiers careening downhill in unstoppable freefall. Luckily, many of the ski areas are also quite good, with 1,000-foot-plus vertical drops, interesting terrain, and a broad trail footprint. Among these, Montage is one of the best, a small- to medium-sized ski area that feels and skis big, with twisting downhill routes, terrain perfectly and naturally divided by ability, and some of the steepest runs in the Northeast. It’s an interesting place with a checkered history. Opened in 1984, it’s one of the newest ski areas in a nation that has mostly given up on building them. Operated for its first two decades as a non-profit or government entity, it was nearly run into the abyss by subsequent owners, who renamed it “Snö Mountain” and drove it into bankruptcy. Along came an investment group led by Jefferson, a real estate developer who had never skied. It’s an odd ski story in an odd ski state, but it has a happy ending: under Jefferson and company, the resort seems to be on the upswing, with a rapidly diversifying all-seasons business, a growing season passholder base, and an understated approach to skiing that’s focused on workaday maintenance rather than flashy new projects. To gauge how the mountain was doing and what lies ahead, I wanted to talk to the person overseeing the whole operation.

What we talked about

Jefferson’s background rehabilitating old properties and the transformation of downtown Scranton; how a non-skier comes to own a ski area; when you just have to believe that a waterpark is buried beneath 15 feet of snow; why buying the ski area didn’t intimidate someone who’d never been in the ski industry; believing in your team; how managing a building is similar to running a ski area; becoming a skier in your 50s; the Snö Mountain debacle; cleaning up the mess after buying Montage out of bankruptcy; how to grow your season pass base by 1,000 percent; why a ski resort can’t just be a winter business; big-time hotel plans; Montage’s unique mid-mountain parking lot; what’s next for the Long Haul triple and why it won’t be a replacement; the problem with high-speed lifts; the state of the lift fleet in general; why we’re unlikely to see a carpet in the beginner area; expansion possibilities into the appetizing sea of treed inclines surrounding Montage; why you won’t find named glades, but the policy is border-to-border when the snowpack materializes; when to groom the North Face and when to let it get bumpy; Montage’s amazing natural terrain segregation; snowmaking upgrades; keeping the guns blazing well into March; how much cash it saves when free snow falls from the sky; the logic behind the ultra-affordable early-bird season pass; the potential for an Indy Pass partnership; why Montage offers $40 Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday lift tickets, rentals included; adapting to Covid; and the outdoor Midland dining area and whether that will stick around in future seasons.           

What I got wrong

In our discussion of $40 lift tickets, I portrayed that as a Monday through Friday deal, but in fact those tickets are only available Monday through Wednesday (Jefferson did correct this but I wanted to mention it again here). At the beginning of the interview, I also asked about Jefferson’s work in Philadelphia, when in fact his recent career has been dedicated to Scranton.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because this podcast focuses on the Northeast and Pennsylvania is a large and important Northeast state that I have, 16 months into the podcast, mostly ignored. This was more circumstantial than intentional, but I’m happy to finally spotlight one of the southernmost Northeast ski hills. Montage, with its steep runs and expansion potential and ample vertical, seemed like a strong starting point. And it was. What I didn’t realize when I booked the interview was Jefferson’s novel backstory, the working-class-kid-turned-real-estate-developer-turned-ski-area-owner-who-had-never-skied. I was expecting some jet-setter who skied Montage when he couldn’t make it out to his slopeside mansion in Aspen. This is something very different, more down-to-earth and practical, a narrative of determined make-it-work-ism in a tough and unforgiving industry that often savages its most seasoned operators. It’s hard not to love the story and to love this mountain as a result.  

Why you should go there

Because if you live in New York City or Philadelphia or anywhere near either of them, it’s close. And it’s good. Real skiing, with a real thousand-foot vertical drop, moguls sometimes, trees when the snow flies. The lifts are fixed-grip and a bit poky, but the place is open 12 hours most days and you will get your vertical in. If you’ve never skied Pennsylvania, this is a good starting point, a place that at once showcases the ski state’s at-its-best potential and its frenetic downhill energy. It’s also an affordable place, with a $399 season pass ($349 for 2020-21 passholders) that’s good for the rest of this season, and $40 all-day lift tickets Monday through Wednesday (it rockets to $89 the other days, as it probably has to just to manage crowds). Plus, Midland is one of the great outdoor spaces in Northeast skiing:

Additional resources

* Lift Blog’s Montage chairlift inventory

* An America’s Best Friend podcast interview with Jefferson

* A local news article from when Jefferson was buying the mountain in 2013

* A Discover NEPA video profiling Montage from a couple years back:

COVID-19 & Skiing Podcasts: Author and Industry Veteran Chris Diamond | Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher | Magic Mountain President Geoff Hatheway | NSAA CEO Kelly Pawlak| Berkshire East/Catamount Owner & Goggles for Docs founder Jon Schaefer | Shaggy’s Copper Country Skis Cofounder Jeff Thompson | Doppelmayr USA President Katharina Schmitz | Mt. Baldy GM Robby Ellingson | Alterra CEO Rusty Gregory | NSAA Director of Risk & Regulatory Affairs Dave Byrd | Schweitzer Mountain President and CEO Tom Chasse | Ski Vermont President Molly Mahar

The Storm Skiing Podcasts: Killington & Pico GM Mike Solimano | Plattekill owners Danielle and Laszlo Vajtay | New England Lost Ski Areas Project Founder Jeremy Davis | Magic Mountain President Geoff Hatheway | Lift Blog Founder Peter Landsman | Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher | Burke Mountain GM Kevin Mack | Liftopia CEO Evan Reece | Berkshire East & Catamount Owner & GM Jon Schaefer | Vermont Ski + Ride and Vermont Sports Co-Publisher & Editor Lisa Lynn| Sugarbush President & COO Win Smith | Loon President & GM Jay Scambio | Sunday River President & GM Dana Bullen | Big Snow & Mountain Creek VP of Sales & Marketing Hugh Reynolds | Mad River Glen GM Matt Lillard | Indy Pass Founder Doug Fish | National Brotherhood of Skiers President Henri Rivers | Winter 4 Kids & National Winter Activity Center President & CEO Schone Malliet | Vail Veterans Program President & Founder Cheryl Jensen | Mountain Gazette Owner & Editor Mike Rogge | Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows President & CMO Ron Cohen | Aspiring Olympian Benjamin Alexander | Sugarloaf GM Karl Strand – Parts One & Two | Cannon GM John DeVivo | Fairbank Group Chairman Brian Fairbank | Jay Peak GM Steve Wright | Sugarbush President & GM John Hammond | Mount Snow GM Tracy Bartels | Saddleback CEO & GM Andy Shepard | Bousquet owners and management | Hermitage Club GM Bill Benneyan | Powder Magazine Editor-in-Chief Sierra Shafer | Gunstock GM Tom Day | Bolton Valley President Lindsay DesLauriers | Windham President Chip Seamans | Sunday River GM Brian Heon | Waterville Valley GM Tim Smith | Granite Peak GM Greg Fisher |

Who

Greg Fisher, General Manager and Marketing Director of Granite Peak, Wisconsin

Recorded on

Feb. 22, 2021

Why I interviewed him

Because in the ski snob chain of dismissiveness, the West looks down on the East, the East looks down on the Midwest, and the Midwest ignores them all. They’re too busy skiing. The Upper Midwest is home to one of the most well-defined, ingrained, and passionate ski cultures in the world. The sheer volume and variety of ski areas in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota is a testament to this, and among them are some of the most unique ski areas in the country. Mount Bohemia, perched at the top of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, delivers one of the wildest ungroomed lift-served ski experiences in the nation. Minnesota’s Lutsen is big, cold, and endless, with the region’s only gondola – which connects two peaks and rises all of 308 vertical feet. And while the Midwest is dotted with 200-foot bumps with nine chairlifts and an impossible anthill of frenetic youngsters, Granite Peak is not one of them. It has 700 vertical feet of terrain set on a broad ridge and served by three high-speed lifts that barrel up the mountain. And it’s not done growing yet. To learn more about this regional gem and see where it may be headed next, I wanted to talk to the person in charge of it all.

What we talked about

Mount Snow in the ASC and early Peak Resorts days; bringing $17 St. Patty’s Day lift tickets to the Northeast; beer fixes everything; Ohio skiing; Midwest night-skiing culture; opening the bar and the slopes until well after midnight for college students; North Conway is the Northeast’s best ski town; the Peak Pass lands and it was kind of a big deal; how the pass fared against the Epic and Ikon passes; the brilliance of the Drifter Pass, the now-defunct Peak Resorts pass for broke-ass twentysomethings; reaction to Vail buying Peak in 2019; moving back to the Midwest to take the top job at Granite Peak; the ski area’s supercharged lift and snowmaking infrastructure; Charles Skinner, the owner of the largest ski areas in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and his track record of building Midwest monsters; the rabid Upper Midwest ski culture; Granite Peak’s 7-year-old snow reporter; the skibum life of a general manager’s son; what’s up with all the reindeer?; the vision and status of Granite Peak’s expansion; MTB trail development; why a gondola would make sense on a 700-vertical-foot hill; why the glades from Granite Peak’s old trailmaps disappeared from their current one; future night skiing expansion; an update on the Indy Pass partnership and how the pass is growing aggressively in the Midwest; base lodge modifications; Midwest boot-up culture; and Covid ops modifications that may stick around after the virus fades.

Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview

Because Fisher is in his first year as head of the ski area, guiding it through Covid and setting it up for what should be a booming future. The resort’s expansion plans appear to be gaining momentum after a previous effort dead-ended. This ambitious project would further anchor Granite Peak as a flagship Midwest destination, a ski area that can legitimately eat several days of skiing and substitute for a trip to the Rockies. The ski area is also wrapping up its first year as an Indy Pass partner, a huge win for the pass and one that helped establish it as the Midwest’s go-to ski frequency product. This was a good time to confirm that that partnership would continue, discuss expansion, and look toward the end of pandemic skiing and start to imagine what that could look like.

Why you should go there

If you only hit one ski area in Wisconsin, this should be the one. Among the forest of kinda small and kinda underwhelming and kinda outdated hills poking out of the state’s countryside, Granite Peak soars, big and modern and fast, flush with glades and the kind of interesting and varied terrain alien to so many Midwest hills. While 700 vertical feet is small in most regions, it is titanic in the Midwest. After Granite Peak, the next largest vertical drop in the state is Mount La Crosse, at 516 feet. Vail’s Wilmot is just 230 feet. The ski area is one of five in Wisconsin on the Indy Pass, making it a no-brainer stop on an upper Midwest ski tour. Along with sister ski area Lutsen, in neighboring Minnesota, this is one of the finest ski areas in the region, and with three high-speed lifts – all of them less than 20 years old - accessing 100 percent of its terrain, the resort is one of the most well-appointed in the nation.

Additional reading/videos

* Lift Blog’s inventory and history of Granite Peak’s lift fleet

* One of the best ways to track Granite Peak’s evolution is via these historic trailmaps

* The latest Ronan Report:

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