The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Who Jeff Colburn, General Manager of Silver Mountain, Idaho Recorded on February 12, 2025 About Silver Mountain Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: CMR Lands, which also owns 49 Degrees North, Washington Located in: Kellogg, Idaho Year founded: 1968 as Jackass ski area, later known as Silverhorn, operated intermittently in the 1980s before its transformation into Silver in 1990 Pass affiliations: * Indy Pass – 2 days, select blackouts * Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackouts * Powder Alliance – 3 days, select blackouts Closest neighboring ski areas: Lookout Pass (:26) Base elevation: 4,100 feet (lowest chairlift); 2,300 feet (gondola) Summit elevation: 6,297 feet Vertical drop: 2,200 feet Skiable acres: 1,600+ Average annual snowfall: 340 inches Trail count: 80 Lift count: 7 (1 eight-passenger gondola, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 2 doubles – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Silver Mountain’s lift fleet) Why I interviewed him After moving to Manhattan in 2002, I would often pine for an extinct version of New York City: docks thrust into the Hudson, masted ships, ornate brickwork factories, carriages, open windows, kids loose in the streets, summer evening crowds on stoops and patios. Modern New York, riotous as it is for an American city, felt staid and sterile beside the island’s explosively peopled black-and-white past. Over time, I’ve developed a different view: New York City is a triumph of post-industrial reinvention, able to shed and quickly replace obsolete industries with those that would lead the future. And my idealized New York, I came to realize, was itself a snapshot of one lost New York, but not the only lost New York, just my romanticized etching of a city that has been in a constant state of reinvention for 400 years. It's through this same lens that we can view Silver Mountain. For more than a century, Kellogg was home to silver mines that employed thousands. When the Bunker Hill Mine closed in 1981, it took the town’s soul with it. The city became a symbol of industrial decline, of an America losing its rough-and-ragged hammer-bang grit. And for a while, Kellogg was a denuded and dusty crater pockmarking the glory-green of Idaho’s panhandle. The population collapsed. Suicide rates, Colburn tells us on the podcast, were high. But within a decade, town officials peered toward the skeleton of Jackass ski area, with its intact centerpole Riblet double, and said, “maybe that’s the thing.” With help from Von Roll, they erected three chairlifts on the mountain and taxed themselves $2 million to string a three-mile-long gondola from town to mountain, opening the ski area to the masses by bypassing the serpentine seven-mile-long access road. (Gosh, can you think of anyplace else where such a contraption would work?) Silver rose above while the Environmental Protection Agency got to work below, cleaning up what had been designated a massive Superfund site. Today, Kellogg, led by Silver, is a functional, modern place, a post-industrial success story demonstrating how recreation can anchor an economy and a community. The service sector lacks the fiery valor of industry. Bouncing through snow, gifted from above, for fun, does not resonate with America’s self-image like the gutsy miner pulling metal from the earth to feed his family. Town founder/mining legend Noah Kellogg and his jackass companion remain heroic local figures. But across rural America, ski areas have stepped quietly into the vacuum left by vacated factories and mines, where they become a source of community identity and a stabilizing agent where no other industry makes sense. What we talked about Ski Idaho; what it will take to transform Idaho into a ski destination; the importance of Grand Targhee to Idaho; old-time PNW skiing;...

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Who Tyler Fairbank, General Manager of Jiminy Peak, Massachusetts and CEO of Fairbank Group Recorded on February 10, 2025 and March 7, 2025 About Fairbank Group From their website: The Fairbank Group is driven to build things to last – not only our businesses but the relationships and partnerships that stand behind them. Since 2008, we have been expanding our eclectic portfolio of businesses. This portfolio includes three resorts—Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort, Cranmore Mountain Resort, and Bromley Mountain Ski Resort—and real estate development at all three resorts, in addition to a renewable energy development company, EOS Ventures, and a technology company, Snowgun Technology. About Jiminy Peak Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Fairbank Group, which also owns Cranmore and operates Bromley (see breakdowns below) Located in: Hancock, Massachusetts Year founded: 1948 Pass affiliations: * Ikon Pass: 2 days, with blackouts * Uphill New England Closest neighboring ski areas: Bousquet (:27), Catamount (:49), Butternut (:51), Otis Ridge (:54), Berkshire East (:58), Willard (1:02) Base elevation: 1,230 feet Summit elevation: 2,380 feet Vertical drop: 1,150 feet Skiable acres: 167.4 Average annual snowfall: 100 inches Trail count: 42 Lift count: 9 (1 six-pack, 2 fixed-grip quads, 3 triples, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Jiminy Peak’s lift fleet) About Cranmore Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: The Fairbank Group Located in: North Conway, New Hampshire Year founded: 1937 Pass affiliations: * Ikon Pass: 2 days, with blackouts * Uphill New England Closest neighboring ski areas: Attitash (:16), Black Mountain (:18), King Pine (:28), Wildcat (:28), Pleasant Mountain (:33), Bretton Woods (:42) Base elevation: 800 feet Summit elevation: 2,000 feet Vertical drop: 1,200 feet Skiable Acres: 170 Average annual snowfall: 80 inches Trail count: 56 (15 most difficult, 25 intermediate, 16 easier) Lift count: 7 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Cranmore’s lift fleet) About Bromley Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: The estate of Joseph O'Donnell Operated by: The Fairbank Group Pass affiliations: Uphill New England Located in: Peru, Vermont Closest neighboring ski areas: Magic Mountain (14 minutes), Stratton (19 minutes) Base elevation: 1,950 feet Summit elevation: 3,284 feet Vertical drop: 1,334 feet Skiable Acres: 300 Average annual snowfall: 145 inches Trail count: 47 (31% black, 37% intermediate, 32% beginner) Lift count: 9 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 4 doubles, 1 T-bar, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog’s of inventory of Bromley’s lift fleet) Why I interviewed him I don’t particularly enjoy riding six-passenger chairlifts. Too many people, up to five of whom are not me. Lacking a competent queue-management squad, chairs rise in loads of twos and threes above swarming lift mazes. If you’re skiing the West, lowering the bar is practically an act of war. It’s all so tedious. Given the option – Hunter, Winter Park, Camelback – I’ll hop the parallel two-seater just to avoid the drama. I don’t like six-packs, but I sure am impressed by them. Sixers are the chairlift equivalent of a two-story Escalade, or a house with its own private Taco Bell, or a 14-lane expressway. Like damn there’s some cash floating around this joint. Sixers are common these days: America is home to 107 of them. But that wasn’t always so. Thirty-two of these lifts came online in just the past three years. Boyne Mountain, Michigan built the first American six-pack in 1992, and for three years, it was the only such lift in the nation (and don’t think they didn’t spend every second reminding us of it)....

For a limited time, upgrade to ‘The Storm’s’ paid tier for $5 per month or $55 per year. You’ll also receive a free year of Slopes Premium, a $29.99 value - valid for annual subscriptions only. Monthly subscriptions do not qualify for free Slopes promotion. Valid for new subscriptions only. Who Iain Martin, Host of The Ski Podcast Recorded on January 30, 2025 About The Ski Podcast From the show’s website: Want to [know] more about the world of skiing? The Ski Podcast is a UK-based podcast hosted by Iain Martin. With different guests every episode, we cover all aspects of skiing and snowboarding from resorts to racing, Ski Sunday to slush. In 2021, we were voted ‘Best Wintersports Podcast‘ in the Sports Podcast Awards. In 2023, we were shortlisted as ‘Best Broadcast Programme’ in the Travel Media Awards. Why I interviewed him We did a swap. Iain hosted me on his show in January (I also hosted Iain in January, but since The Storm sometimes moves at the pace of mammal gestation, here we are at the end of March; Martin published our episode the day after we recorded it). But that’s OK (according to me), because our conversation is evergreen. Martin is embedded in EuroSki the same way that I cycle around U.S. AmeriSki. That we wander from similarly improbable non-ski outposts – Brighton, England and NYC – is a funny coincidence. But what interested me most about a potential podcast conversation is the Encyclopedia EuroSkiTannica stored in Martin’s brain. I don’t understand skiing in Europe. It is too big, too rambling, too interconnected, too above-treeline, too transit-oriented, too affordable, too absent the Brobot ‘tude that poisons so much of the American ski experience. The fact that some French idiot is facing potential jail time for launching a snowball into a random grandfather’s skull (filming the act and posting it on TikTok, of course) only underscores my point: in America, we would cancel the grandfather for not respecting the struggle so obvious in the boy’s act of disobedience. In a weird twist for a ski writer, I am much more familiar with summer Europe than winter Europe. I’ve skied the continent a couple of times, but warm-weather cross-continental EuroTreks by train and by car have occupied months of my life. When I try to understand EuroSki, my brain short-circuits. I tease the Euros because each European ski area seems to contain between two and 27 distinct ski areas, because the trail markings are the wrong color, because they speak in the strange code of the “km” and “cm” - but I’m really making fun of myself for Not Getting It. Martin gets it. And he good-naturedly walks me through a series of questions that follow this same basic pattern: “In America, we charge $109 for a hamburger that tastes like it’s been pulled out of a shipping container that went overboard in 1944. But I hear you have good and cheap food in Europe – true?” I don’t mind sounding like a d*****s if the result is good information for all of us, and thankfully I achieved both of those things on this podcast. What we talked about The European winter so far; how a UK-based skier moves back and forth to the Alps; easy car-free travel from the U.S. directly to Alps ski areas; is ski traffic a thing in Europe?; EuroSki 101; what does “ski area” mean in Europe; Euro snow pockets; climate change realities versus media narratives in Europe; what to make of ski areas closing around the Alps; snowmaking in Europe; comparing the Euro stereotype of the leisurely skier to reality; an aging skier population; Euro liftline queuing etiquette and how it mirrors a nation’s driving culture; “the idea that you wouldn’t bring the bar down is completely alien to me; I mean everybody brings the bar down on the chairlift”; why an Epic or Ikon Pass may not be your best option to ski in Europe; why lift ticket prices are so much cheaper in Europe than in the U.S.; Most consumers “are not even aware” that Vail has started purchasing Swiss resorts;...

For a limited time, upgrade to ‘The Storm’s’ paid tier for $5 per month or $55 per year. You’ll also receive a free year of Slopes Premium, a $29.99 value - valid for annual subscriptions only. Monthly subscriptions do not qualify for free Slopes promotion. Valid for new subscriptions only. Who Stuart Winchester, Founder, Editor & Host of The Storm Skiing Journal & Podcast Recorded on March 4, 2025 Editor’s note 1) The headline was not my idea; 2) Erik said he would join me as the guest for episode 199 if he could interview me for episode 200; 3) I was like “sure Brah”; 4) since he did the interview, I asked Erik to write the “Why I interviewed him” section; 5) this episode is now available to stream on Disney+; 6) but no really you can watch it on YouTube (please subscribe); 7) if you don’t care about this episode that’s OK because there are 199 other ones that are actually about snosportskiing; 8) and I have a whole bunch more recorded that I’ll drop right after this one; 9) except that one that I terminally screwed up; 10) “which one?” you ask. Well I’ll tell that humiliating story when I’m ready. Why I interviewed him, by Erik Mogensen I met Stuart when he was skiing at Copper Mountain with his family. At lunch that day I made a deal. I would agree to do the first podcast of my career, but only if I had the opportunity reverse the role and interview him. I thought both my interview, and his, would be at least five years away. 14 months later, you are reading this. As an accomplished big-city corporate PR guy often [occasionally] dressed in a suit, he got tired of listening to the biggest, tallest, snowiest, ski content that was always spoon-fed to his New York City self. Looking for more than just “Stoke,” Stu has built the Storm Skiing Journal into a force that I believe has assumed an important stewardship role for skiing. Along the way he has occasionally made us cringe, and has always made us laugh. Many people besides myself apparently agree. Stuart has eloquently mixed an industry full of big, type-A egos competing for screentime on the next episode of Game of Thrones, with consumers that have been overrun with printed magazines that show up in the mail, or social media click-bate, but nothing in between. He did it by being as authentic and independent as they come, thus building trust with everyone from the most novice ski consumer to nearly all of the expert operators and owners on the continent. But don’t get distracted by the “Winchester Style” of poking fun of ski bro and his group of bro brahs like someone took over your mom’s basement with your used laptop, and a new nine-dollar website. Once you get over the endless scrolling required to get beyond the colorful spreadsheets, this thing is fun AND worthwhile to read and listen to. This guy went to Columbia for journalism and it shows. This guy cares deeply about what he does, and it shows. Stuart has brought something to ski journalism that we didn’t even know was missing, Not only did Stuart find out what it was, he created and scaled a solution. On his 200th podcast I dig into why and how he did it. What we talked about How Erik talked me into being a guest on my own podcast; the history of The Storm Skiing Podcast and why I launched with Northeast coverage; why the podcast almost didn’t happen; why Killington was The Storm’s first pod; I didn’t want to go to college but it happened anyway; why I moved to New York; why a ski writer lives in Brooklyn; “I started The Storm because I wanted to read it”; why I have no interest in off-resort skiing; why pay-to-play isn’t journalism; the good and the awful about social media; I hate debt; working at the NBA; the tech innovation that allowed me to start The Storm; activating The Storm’s paywall; puzzling through subscriber retention; critical journalism as an alien concept to the ski industry; Bro beef explained; what’s behind skiing’s identity crisis; why I don’t read my social media comments; why I...

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Who Erik Mogensen, Director of Indy Pass, founder of Entabeni Systems, and temporary owner and General Manager of Black Mountain, New Hampshire Recorded on February 25, 2025 About Entabeni Systems Entabeni provides software and hardware engineering exclusively for independent ski areas. Per the company’s one-page website: Entabeni: noun; meaning: zulu - "the mountain" We take pride in providing world class software and hardware engineering in true ski bum style. About Indy Pass Indy Pass delivers two days each at 181 Alpine and 44 cross-country ski areas, plus discounts at eight Allied resorts and four Cat-skiing outfits for the 2024-25 ski season. Indy has announced several additional partners for the 2025-26 ski season. Here is the probable 2025-26 Alpine roster as of March 2, 2025 (click through for most up-to-date roster): Doug Fish, who has appeared on this podcast four times, founded Indy Pass in 2019. Mogensen, via Entabeni, purchased the pass in 2023. About Black Mountain, New Hampshire Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Indy Pass Located in: Jackson, New Hampshire Year founded: 1935 Pass affiliations: Indy Pass and Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackouts Closest neighboring ski areas: Attitash (:14), Wildcat (:19), Cranmore (:19), Bretton Woods (:40), King Pine (:43), Pleasant Mountain (:48), Sunday River (1:00), Cannon (1:02), Mt. Abram (1:03) Base elevation: 1,250 feet Summit elevation: 2,350 feet Vertical drop: 1,100 feet Skiable acres: 140 Average annual snowfall: 125 inches Trail count: 45 Lift count: 5 (1 triple, 1 double, 1 J-bar, 1 platter pull, 1 handletow – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Black Mountain’s lift fleet) Why I interviewed him I first spoke to Mogensen in the summer of 2020. He was somewhere out west, running something called Entabeni Systems, and he had insight into a story that I was working on. Indy Pass founder and owner-at-the-time Doug Fish had introduced us. The conversation was helpful. I wrote the story and moved on. Mogensen didn’t. He kept calling. Kept emailing. There was something he wanted me to understand. Not about any particular story that I was writing, but about skiing as a whole. Specifically, about non-megapass skiing. It wasn’t working, he insisted. It couldn’t work without sweeping and fundamental changes. And he knew how to make those changes. He was already making them, via Entabeni, by delivering jetpack technology to caveman ski areas. They’d been fighting with sticks and rocks but now they had machine guns. But they needed more weapons, and faster. I still didn’t get it. Not when Mogensen purchased Indy Pass in March 2023, and not when he joined the board at teetering-on-the-edge-of-existence Antelope Butte, Wyoming the following month. I may not have gotten it until Mogensen assembled, that October, a transcontinental coalition to reverse a New Hampshire mountain’s decision to drop dead or contributed, several weeks later, vital funds to help re-open quirky and long-shuttered Hickory, New York. But in May of that year I had a late-night conversation with Doug Fish in a Savannah bar. He’d had no shortage of Indy Pass suitors, he told me. Fish had chosen Erik, he said, not because his longtime tech partner would respect Indy’s brand integrity or would refuse to sell to Megaski Inc – though certainly both were true – but because in Mogensen, Fish saw a figure messianic in his conviction that family-owned, crockpots-on-tabletops, two-for-Tuesday skiing must not be in the midst of an extinction event. Mogensen, Fish said, had transformed his world into a laboratory for preventing such a catastrophe, rising before dawn and working all day without pause, focused always and only on skiing. More specifically, on positioning lunch-bucket skiing for a...

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. As of episode 198, you can now watch The Storm Skiing Podcast on YouTube. Please click over to follow the channel. The podcast will continue to stream on all audio platforms. Who Eric Clark, President and Chief Operating Officer of Mammoth and June Mountains, California Recorded on January 29, 2025 Why I interviewed him Mammoth is ridiculous, improbable, outrageous. An impossible combination of unmixable things. SoCal vibes 8,000 feet in the sky and 250 miles north of the megalopolis. Rustic old-California alpine clapboard-and-Yan patina smeared with D-Line speed and Ikon energy. But nothing more implausible than this: 300 days of sunshine and 350 inches of snow in an average year. Some winters more: 715 inches two seasons ago, 618 in the 2016-17 campaign, 669 in 2010-11. Those are base-area totals. Nearly 900 inches stacked onto Mammoth’s summit during the 2022-23 ski season. The ski area opened on Nov. 5 and closed on Aug. 6, a 275-day campaign. Below the paid subscriber jump: why Mammoth stands out even among giants, June’s J1 lift predates the evolution of plant life, Alterra’s investment machine, and more. That’s nature, audacious and brash. Clouds tossed off the Pacific smashing into the continental crest. But it took a soul, hardy and ungovernable, to make Mammoth Mountain into a ski area for the masses. Dave McCoy, perhaps the greatest of the great generation of American ski resort founders, strung up and stapled together and tamed this wintertime kingdom over seven decades. Ropetows then T-bars then chairlifts all over. One of the finest lift systems anywhere. Chairs 1 through 25 stitching together a trail network sculpted and bulldozed and blasted from the monolithic mountain. A handcrafted playground animated as something wild, fierce, prehuman in its savage ever-down. McCoy, who lived to 104, is celebrated as a businessman, a visionary, and a human, but he was also, quietly, an artist. Mammoth is not the largest ski area in America (ranking number nine), California (third behind Palisades and Heavenly), Alterra’s portfolio (third behind Palisades and Steamboat), or the U.S. Ikon Pass roster (fifth after Palisades, Big Sky, Bachelor, and Steamboat). But it may be America’s most beloved big ski resort, frantic and fascinating, an essential big-mountain gateway for 39 million Californians, an Ikon Pass icon and the spiritual home of Alterra Mountain Company. It’s impossible to imagine American skiing without Mammoth, just as it’s impossible to imagine baseball without the Yankees or Africa without elephants. To our national ski identity, Mammoth is an essential thing, like a heart to a human body, a part without which the whole function falls apart. About Mammoth Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Alterra Mountain Company, which also owns: Located in: Mammoth Lakes, California Year founded: 1953 Pass affiliations: * Ikon Pass: unlimited, no blackouts * Ikon Base Pass: unlimited, holiday blackouts Closest neighboring ski areas: June Mountain – around half an hour if the roads are clear; to underscore the severity of the Sierra Nevada, China Peak sits just 28 miles southwest of Mammoth, but is a seven-hour, 450-mile drive away – in good weather. Base elevation: 7,953 feet Summit elevation: 11,053 feet Vertical drop: 3,100 feet Skiable acres: 3,500 Average annual snowfall: 350 inches Trail count: 178 (13% easiest, 28% slightly difficult, 19% difficult, 25% very difficult, 15% extremely difficult) Lift count: 25 (1 15-passenger gondola, 1 two-stage, eight-passenger gondola, 4 high-speed six-packs, 8 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 6 triples, 3 doubles, 1 Poma – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Mammoth’s lift fleet) – the ski area also runs some number of non-public carpets About June Click...

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Jan. 23. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 30. To receive future episodes 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 Justin Steck, owner of Steeplechase ski area, Minnesota Recorded on January 7, 2025 About Steeplechase Owned by: Justin Steck Located in: Mazeppa, Minnesota Year founded: 1999, by Kevin Kastler; closed around 2007; re-opened Feb. 4, 2023 by Steck Pass affiliations: Freedom Pass, which offers three days for Steeplechase season passholders at each of these ski areas: Reciprocal partners Closest neighboring ski areas: Coffee Mill (:45), Welch Village (:41) Base elevation: 902 feet Summit elevation: 1,115 feet Vertical drop: 213 feet Skiable acres: 45 acres Average annual snowfall: N/A Trail count: 21 (9 easy, 7 intermediate, 5 advanced) Lift count: 4 (2 triples, 2 doubles – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Steeplechase’s lift fleet) Why I interviewed him They seem to be everywhere, once you know where to look. Abandoned ski areas, rusting, fading. Time capsules. Hoses coiled and stacked. Chairs spaced and numbered along the liftline. Paperwork scattered on desks. Doors unlocked. No explanation. No note. As though the world stopped in apocalypse. America has lost more ski areas than it has kept. Most will stay lost. Many are stripped, almost immediately, of the things that made them commercially viable, of lifts and snowguns and groomers, things purchased at past prices and sold at who-cares discounts and irreplaceable at future rates. But a few ski areas idle as museums, isolated from vandals, forgotten by others, waiting, like ancient crypts, for a great unearthing. Who knew that Steeplechase stood intact? Who knew, really, that the complex existed in the first place, those four motley cobbled-together chairlifts spinning, as they did, for just eight years in the Minnesota wilderness? As though someone pried open a backlot shed on a house they’d purchased years before and found, whole and rebuilt, a Corvette of antique vintage. Pop in a new battery, change the sparkplugs, inflate the tires, and it’s roaring once again. Sometimes in the summer I’ll wander around one of these lost ski areas, imagining what it was, what it could be again. There’s one a bit over an hour north of me, Tuxedo Ridge, its four double chairs stilled, its snowguns pointed skyward, holes in the roof and skis scattered about the lodge. To restore a ski area, I sometimes think, is harder than to build one whole from the earth. Most operators I speak with recoil at the very idea. Which is why, I think, most lost ski area rebuilding or revitalization stories are led by outsiders: Norway Mountain, Holiday Mountain, Tenney, Teton Pass, Paul Bunyan. By the time they realize they’re doing an impossible thing, they’ve done too much to surrender. When Steck acquired the Steeplechase property around 2016, he didn’t really know what he’d do with it. He wanted land, and here was some land. Except the land happened to hold a forgotten-but-intact ski area. Bit by bit, he rebuilt the business: restoring the chapel for weddings, then the tubing lanes, then the chairlifts. He didn’t ask permission. He didn’t make any big proclamation. Suddenly, one winter day in 2023, a ski area that everyone had forgotten was a ski area reappeared in the world. And isn’t that interesting? What we talked about A much stronger start to the 2024-25 Midwestern winter; big expansion potential and when that could happen; the mental march through the rough 2023-24 winter; considering future non-holiday midweek operations; snowmobile racing; how a house-flipping career led Steck to Steeplechase; a snapshot of the ski area lost in time in 2016; rebuilding a ski hill is “a big logistical nightmare on a regular basis,” especially during Covid; the fuzzy origins of Steeplechase’s four...

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Jan. 22. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 29. To receive future episodes 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 * Travis Kearney, General Manager * Aaron Damon, Assistant General Manager, Marketing Director * Mike Chasse, member of Bigrock Board of Directors * Conrad Brown, long-time ski patroller * Neal Grass, Maintenance Manager Recorded on December 2, 2024 About Bigrock Owned by: A 501c(3) community nonprofit overseen by a local board of directors Located in: Mars Hill, Maine Pass affiliations: Indy Base Pass, Indy Plus Pass – 2 days, no blackouts Closest neighboring ski areas: Quoggy Jo (:26), Lonesome Pine (1:08) Base elevation: 670 feet Summit elevation: 1,590 feet Vertical drop: 920 feet Skiable acres: 90 Average annual snowfall: 94 inches Trail count: 29 (10% beginner, 66% intermediate, 24% advanced) Lift count: 4 (1 fixed-grip quad, 1 triple, 1 double, 1 surface lift – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Bigrock’s lift fleet) Why I interviewed them Welcome to the tip-top of America, where Saddleback is a ski area “down south” and $60 is considered an expensive lift ticket. Have you ever been to Sugarloaf, stationed four hours north of Boston at what feels like the planet’s end? Bigrock is four hours past that, 26 miles north of the end of I-95, a surveyor’s whim from Canadian citizenship. New England is small, but Maine is big, and Aroostook County is enormous, nearly the size of Vermont, larger than Connecticut, the second-largest county east of the Mississippi, 6,828 square miles of mostly rivers and trees and mountains and moose, but also 67,105 people, all of whom need something to do in the winter. That something is Bigrock. Ramble this far north and you probably expect ascent-by-donkey or centerpole double chairs powered by butter churns. But here we have a sparkling new Doppelmayr fixed quad summiting at a windfarm. Shimmering new snowguns hammering across the night. America’s eastern-most ski area, facing west across the continent, a white-laced arena edging the endless wilderness. Bigrock is a fantastic thing, but also a curious one. Its origin story is a New England yarn that echoes all the rest – a guy named Wendell, shirtsleeves-in-the-summertime hustle and surface lifts, let’s hope the snow comes, finally some snowguns and a chairlift just in time. But most such stories end with “and that’s how it became a housing development.” Not this one. The residents of this state-sized county can ski Bigrock in 2025 because the folks in charge of the bump made a few crucial decisions at a few opportune times. In that way, the ski area is a case study not only of the improbable survivor, but a blueprint for how today’s on-the-knife-edge independent bumps can keep spinning lifts in the uncertain decades to come. What we talked about Huge snowmaking upgrades; a new summit quad for the 2024-25 ski season; why the new lift follows a different line from the old summit double; why the Gemini summit double remains in place; how the new chair opens up the mountain’s advanced terrain; why the lift is called “Sunrise”; a brief history of moving the Gemini double from Maine’s now-defunct Evergreen ski area; the “backyard engineering degree”; how this small, remote ski area could afford a brand-new $4 million Doppelmayr quad; why Bigrock considered, but ultimately decided against, repurposing a used lift to replace Gemini; why the new lift is a fixed-grip, rather than a detachable, machine; the windfarm at Bigrock’s summit; Bigrock in the 1960s; the Pierce family legacy; how Covid drove certain skiers to Bigrock while keeping other groups away; how and why Bigrock became a nonprofit; what nearly shuttered the ski area; “I think there was a period in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s where it became not profitable to own a ski area of...

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Who Max Magill, President of United Mountain Workers and ski patroller at Park City Mountain Resort, Utah Recorded on January 11, 2025 About United Mountain Workers United Mountain Workers (UMW) is a labor union representing 16 distinct employee groups across more than a dozen U.S. ski resorts: UMW is organized under Communication Workers of America, which represents more than 700,000 workers across media, healthcare, manufacturing, and other sectors. Why I interviewed him In case you missed it (New York Times): Ski patrollers at Park City Mountain in Utah triumphantly returned to the slopes on Thursday, after ending a nearly two-week strike over union wages and benefits. The strike hobbled the largest U.S. ski resort during a busy holiday period and sparked online fury about deepening economic inequality in rural mountain areas. Late Wednesday, the Park City Professional Ski Patrollers Association ratified a contract with Vail Resorts, which owns Park City and more than 40 other ski areas, that raises the starting pay of ski patrollers and other mountain safety workers $2 an hour, to $23. The most experienced patrollers will receive an average increase of $7.75 per hour. The agreement also expands parental leave policies for the workers, and provides “industry-leading educational opportunities,” according to the union. … Accusing Vail Resorts of unfair labor practices, the Ski Patrollers Association, which represents 204 ski patrollers and mountain safety personnel, went on strike on Dec. 27. The strike received national attention as a fight between the haves and have-nots — a global corporation valued at nearly $10 billion against the vital workers who aid and protect skiers on its properties. With few ski patrollers to open trails, respond to accidents and perform avalanche mitigation, only about one fourth of Park City Mountain’s terrain was open during the strike. Irate skiers and snowboarders at Park City soon pilloried Vail, taking to social media and national news organizations to denounce lengthy lift lines and contrast the high salaries of Vail leadership and expensive ticket prices with the relatively low pay of resort workers. This is a big deal, and it’s probably just getting started. What we talked about Back to work; support in unexpected corners; I hear tell of flying pizzas and donuts and I want in on this magical world; a brief timeline of contract negotiations; what Vail Resorts offered and why the union said no; “we had no choice but to play our final and most powerful card, knowing that our strike would cause massive disruption”; deconstructing the vast Vail management machine; what UMW won in the new contract; “the raises we won are life-changing for a ton of our members, including me”; a rapidly changing Utah; how the patrollers’ union was challenged when Vail merged Park City and Canyons; “a malicious union-busting campaign is the best way to organize workers”; organizing a union in a “right to work” state; the amazing complexity of Park City Mountain Resort; the complexities of importing patrollers from one resort to another; skier volumes at Park City over time; the pluses and minuses of more skiers; “this movement will continue to grow”; the patrol union vote at A-Basin (it passed); could the various patrol unions combine?; whether ski industry unions could spread to other worker groups and regions; “all workers, ski industry or not, deserve respect”; and Vail’s big 2022 pay raises. Questions I wish I’d asked I was surprised to hear Magill describe new patrol uniforms as “pretty substandard.” With every lift op rocking a Helly jacket, I figured the squad up top would get primo stuff. Why don’t they? What I got wrong Real-world facts for numbers that I roughly guessed at mid-talk: * Park City...

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Dec. 31. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 7. To receive future episodes 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 Shaun Sutner, snowsports columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Telegram.com Recorded on November 25, 2024 About Shaun Sutner Sutner is a skier, writer, and journalist based in Worcester, Massachusetts. He’s written a snowsports column for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from Thanksgiving to April for the past several decades. You can follow Shaun on social media to stay locked into his work: Read his recent columns: * On Wildcat, Attitash, and Vail Resorts * Everyone needs a bootfitter * Indy Pass is still kicking ass Why I interviewed him Journalism sounds easy. Go there, talk to people, write about it. It’s not easy. The quest for truth is like the Hobbit’s quest for the ring: long, circuitous, filled with monsters who want to eat you. Some truth is easy: Wachusett has four chairlifts. Beyond the objective, complications arise: Wachusett’s decision to replace its summit quad with a six-pack in 2025 is… what, exactly? Visionary, shortsighted, foolish, clever, pedestrian? Does it prioritize passholders or marketing or profit over experience? Is it necessary? Is it wise? Is it prudent? Is it an answer to locals’ frustrations or a compounding factor in it? The journalist’s job is to machete through this jungle and sculpt a version of reality that all parties will recognize and that none of them will be entirely happy with. Because people are complex and so is the world, and assembling the truth is less like snapping together a thousand-piece puzzle and more like the A-Team examining a trashheap and saying “OK boys, let’s build a helicopter.” Sutner is good at this, as may be expected of someone who’s spent decades on his beat. He understands that anecdote is not absolute. He knows how to pull together broad narratives (“New England’s outdated lift fleet” of the 2010s), and to acknowledge when they change (“New England operators aggressively modernize lifts” in the 2020s). He is empathetic to locals and operators alike, without being deferential to either. He knows that the best stories are 90 percent what the writer leaves out, and 10 percent identifying the essential bits to frame the larger whole. And he lives the beat, aggressively, joyously, immersively. We need more Sutners, but we are probably getting fewer. As journalism figures out what it is in the 21st century, it is deciding that it is less about community-based entities employing beat-specific writers and more about feeding mastheads to private equity funds that drag the carcass down to entrails and then feed them to the hounds. Thousands of American communities now have no local news organization, let alone one with the resources to hire writers solely devoted to something as niche as skiing. Filling the information void is Angry Ski Bro, firing off 50 dozen monthly Facebook posts about Vail’s abominable greed being distilled in a broken snowgun at Wildcat. I started The Storm as an antidote to this global complaint box. And I believe that the future of journalism includes writers tapping Substack and similar platforms to freelance the truth. But I still believe that the traditional news organization – meaning physical newspapers that have evolved into digital-analogue hybrids – can find a sustainable business model that tells a community’s essential stories. Sutner, and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, deserve credit for showing us how to do this. What we talked about Ski South America; how to ski 60 days while working full time; Worcester’s legendary Strand’s ski shop; Powdr’s sale of Killington and Pico and how the new owners can keep from ruining it; how to make Pico more relevant; is this the start of New England ski area...

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Nov. 30. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 7. To receive future episodes 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 Mike Taylor, Owner of Holiday Mountain, New York Recorded on November 18, 2024 About Holiday Mountain Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Mike Taylor Located in: Monticello, New York Year founded: 1957 Pass affiliations: None Closest neighboring ski areas: Villa Roma (:37), Ski Big Bear (:56), Mt. Peter (:48), Mountain Creek (:52), Victor Constant (:54) Base elevation: 900 feet Summit elevation: 1,300 feet Vertical drop: 400 feet Skiable acres: 60 Average annual snowfall: 66 inches Trail count: 9 (5 beginner, 2 intermediate, 2 advanced) Lift count: 3 (1 fixed-grip quad, 1 triple, 1 carpet - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Holiday Mountain’s lift fleet) Why I interviewed him Not so long ago, U.S. ski areas swung wrecking ball-like from the necks of founders who wore them like amulets. Mountain and man fused as one, each anchored to and propelled by the other, twin forces mirrored and set aglow, forged in some burbling cauldron and unleashed upon the public as an Experience. This was Killington and this was Mammoth and this was Vail and this was Squaw and this was Taos, each at once a mountain and a manifestation of psyche and soul, as though some god’s hand had scooped from Pres and Dave and Pete and Al and Ernie their whimsy and hubris and willfulness and fashioned them into a cackling live thing on this earth. The men were the mountains and the mountains were the men. Everybody knew this and everybody felt this and that’s why we named lifts and trails after them. This is what we’ve lost in the collect-them-all corporate roll-up of our current moment. I’m skeptical of applying an asteroid-ate-the-dinosaurs theory to skiing, but even I’ll acknowledge this bit. When the caped founder, who stepped into raw wilderness and said “here I will build an organized snowskiing facility” and proceeded to do so, steps aside or sells to SnowCo or dies, some essence of the mountain evaporates with him. The snow still hammers and the skiers still come and the mountain still lets gravity run things. The trails remain and the fall lines still fall. The mountain is mostly the same. But nobody knows why it is that way, and the ski area becomes a disembodied thing, untethered from a human host. This, I think, is a big part of the appeal of Michigan’s Mount Bohemia. Ungroomed, untamed, absent green runs and snowguns, accessible all winter on a $109 season pass, Boho is the impossible storybook of the maniac who willed it into existence against all advice and instinct: Lonie Glieberman, who hacked this thing from the wilderness not in some lost postwar decade, but in 2000. He lives there all winter and everybody knows him and they all know that this place that is the place would not exist had he not insisted that it be so. For the purposes of how skiers consider the joint, Lonie is Mount Bohemia. And someday when he goes away the mountain will make less sense than it does right now. I could write a similar paragraph about Chip Chase at White Grass Touring Center in West Virginia. But there aren’t many of those fellas left. Since most of our ski areas are old, most of our founders are gone. They’re not coming back, and we’re not getting more ski areas. But that doesn’t mean the era of the owner-soul keeper is finished. They just need to climb a different set of monkey bars to get there. Rather than trekking into the mountains to stake out and transform a raw wilderness into a piste digestible to the masses, the modern mountain incarnate needs to drive up to the ski area with a dump truck full of hundred dollar bills, pour it out onto the ground, and hope the planted seeds sprout money trees. And this is Mike Taylor. He has...

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Nov. 29. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 6. To receive future episodes 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 Susan Donnelly, General Manager of Mount Sunapee (and former General Manager of Crotched Mountain) Recorded on November 4, 2024 About Crotched Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Vail Resorts, which also owns: Located in: Francetown, New Hampshire Year founded: 1963 (as Crotched East); 1969 (as Onset, then Onset Bobcat, then Crotched West, now present-day Crotched); entire complex closed in 1990; West re-opened by Peak Resorts in 2003 as Crotched Mountain 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 (:34), Granite Gorge (:39), Arrowhead (:41), McIntyre (:50), Mount Sunapee (:51) Base elevation: 1,050 feet Summit elevation: 2,066 feet Vertical drop: 1,016 Skiable Acres: 100 Average annual snowfall: 65 inches Trail count: 25 (28% beginner, 40% intermediate, 32% advanced) Lift count: 5 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 1 triple, 1 double, 1 surface lift – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Crotched’s lift fleet) History: Read New England Ski History’s overview of Crotched Mountain About Mount Sunapee Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: The State of New Hampshire; operated by Vail Resorts, which also operates resorts detailed in the chart above. 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) 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 Why I interviewed her It’s hard to be small in New England and it’s hard to be south in New England. There are 35 New England ski areas with vertical drops greater than 1,100 feet, and Crotched is not one of them. There are 44 New England ski areas that average more than 100 inches of snow per winter, and Crotched is not one of those either. Crotched does have a thousand vertical feet and a high-speed lift and a new baselodge and a snowmaking control room worthy of a nuclear submarine. Which is a pretty good starter kit for a successful ski area. But it’s not enough in New England. To succeed as a ski area in New England, you need a Thing. The most common Things are to be really really nice or really really gritty. Stratton or Mad River. Okemo or Magic. Sunday River or Black Mountain of Maine. The pitch is either “you’ll think you’re at Deer Valley” or “you’ll descend the hill on ice skates and you’ll like it.” But Crotched’s built-along-a-state-highway normalness precludes arrogance, and its mellow terrain lacks the attitude for even modest braggadocio. It’s not a small ski area, but it’s not big enough to be a mid-sized one, either. The terrain is fine, but it’s not the kind of place you need to ski on purpose, or more than once. It’s a fine local, but not much else, making Crotched precisely the kind of mountain that you would have expected to be smothered by the numerous larger and better ski areas around it before it could live to see the internet....

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Nov. 25. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 2. To receive future episodes 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: What Indy Pass is a newcomer to the NYC media circuit, hosting their inaugural gathering at an airy venue hard by the Hudson River. Part of the agenda was this short panel that I moderated, featuring the leaders of four Indy Pass partner mountains. Who * Erik Mogensen, Director, Indy Pass * Steve Wright, President & General Manager, Jay Peak, Vermont * Rob Goodell, Senior Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, Loveland, Colorado * David Severn, Owner, White Pass, Washington * Geoff Hatheway, Owner & President, Magic Mountain, Vermont Recorded on October 23, 2024 About Indy Pass Indy Pass has collected 230 partners. The pass gets you two days each at 222 of them and discounts at the other eight. The pass is no longer on sale for the 2024-25 ski season, but there are baseball-game hotdogs that cost more than this thing. About the ski areas JAY PEAK, VERMONT Stats: 2,153 vertical feet | 385 skiable acres | 347 inches average annual snowfall LOVELAND, COLORADO Stats: 2,210 vertical feet | 1,800 skiable acres | 422 inches average annual snowfall WHITE PASS, WASHINGTON Stats: 2,050 vertical feet | 1,402 skiable acres | 400 inches average annual snowfall MAGIC MOUNTAIN, VERMONT Stats: 1,500 vertical feet | 205 skiable acres | 130 inches average annual snowfall What we talked about Jay isn’t remote for everyone; Magic’s black quad odyssey; PNW snow quality; why you’ve probably seen Loveland even if you’ve never skied it; Loveland Valley’s origin story; why Jay joined Indy Pass when it could have joined any pass; why White Pass’ new owners stayed on Indy Pass after purchasing it; and what finally convinced Loveland to join Indy. Podcast Notes On the original Indy Pass announcement Indy Pass’ website popped live sometime in March 2019, with a list of under-appreciated mid-sized ski areas concentrated around the Pacific Northwest. The roster grew rapidly prior to the start of the season, but even this would have been a hell of an offering for $199: On Loveland Valley Loveland is home to a little-noticed terrain pod known as Loveland Valley. With a quad, a double, and a set of carpets, this segmented zone essentially serves as a separate, beginners-oriented ski area. On The Storm’s Indy Pass/Jay Peak exclusive Somehow, I scored an exclusive on the news that Jay Peak would join Indy Pass in 2020. I was also able to record a podcast with Wright in advance of the announcement. This was a huge moment for The Storm, turning hundreds of new subscribers onto the newsletter and forging a relationship with one of the most important mountains in New England. On Hatheway being one of my first interviews Hatheway was one of the first guests on The Storm Skiing Podcast, and one of the first to agree to join me on the show. That was an incredible gesture, as I had published zero episodes when I made the request. Here’s the conversation: What I got wrong * I said that Magic “failed a couple of times” before current ownership acquired it. The ski area only completely closed once, from 1991 to 1997. The ski area then fumbled through two decades of near-failures, including a derailed attempt to form a co-op, until Ski Magic LLC took the keys in 2016. Read the full saga at New England Ski History. * I said that it took Magic “four or five” years to install the Black Quad. The full timeline is closer to six years. Stratton removed their Snow Bowl fixed-grip quad following the 2017-18 ski season (replacing it with a high-speed quad). I’m not sure when exactly Magic, just 13.6 road miles from Stratton, took delivery of the lift, but the goal was to get it spinning as the new Black lift by the 2019-20 ski season. After a series of...

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Nov. 24. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 1. To receive future episodes 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: What There’s a good reason that the Ikon Pass, despite considerable roster overlap and a more generous bucket of days, failed to kill Mountain Collective. It’s not because Mountain Collective has established itself as a sort of bargain Ikon Junior, or because it’s scored a few exclusive partners in Canada and the Western U.S. Rather, the Mountain Collective continues to exist because the member mountains like their little country club, and they’re not about to let Alterra force a mass exodus. Not that Alterra has tried, necessarily (I frankly have no idea), but the company did pull its remaining mountains (Mammoth, Palisades, Sugarbush), out of the coalition in 2022. Mountain Collective survived that, just as it weathered the losses of Stowe and Whistler and Telluride (all to the Epic Pass) before it. As of 2024, six years after the introduction of the Ikon Pass that was supposed to kill it, the Mountain Collective, improbably, floats its largest roster ever. And dang, that roster. Monsters, all. Best case, you can go ski them. But the next best thing, for The Storm at least, is when these mountain leaders assemble for their annual meeting in New York City, which includes a night out with the media. Despite a bit of ambient noise, I set up in a corner of the bar and recorded a series of conversations with the leaders of some of the biggest, baddest mountains on the continent. Who * Stephen Kircher, President & CEO, Boyne Resorts * Dave Fields, President & General Manager, Snowbird, Utah * Brandon Ott, Marketing Director, Alta, Utah * Steve Paccagnan, President & CEO, Panorama, British Columbia * Geoff Buchheister, CEO, Aspen Skiing Company, Colorado * Pete Sonntag, VP & General Manager, Sun Valley, Idaho * Davy Ratchford, General Manager, Snowbasin, Utah * Aaron MacDonald, Chief Marketing Officer, Sun Peaks, British Columbia * Geordie Gillett, GM, Grand Targhee, Wyoming * Bridget Legnavsky, President & CEO, Sugar Bowl, California * Marc-André Meunier, Executive Marketing Director, Bromont, Quebec * Pete Woods, President, Ski Big 3, Alberta * Kendra Scurfield, VP of Brand & Communications, Sunshine, Alberta * Norio Kambayashi, director and GM, Niseko Hanazono, Japan * James Coleman, Managing Partner, Mountain Capital Partners * Mary Kate Buckley, CEO, Jackson Hole, Wyoming Recorded on October 29, 2024 About Mountain Collective Mountain Collective gives you two days each at some badass mountains. There is a ton of overlap with the Ikon Pass, which I note below, but Mountain Collective is cheaper has no blackout dates. What we talked about BOYNE RESORTS The Portfolio Big Sky Sunday River Sugarloaf Topics Yes a second eight-pack comes to Big Sky and it’s a monster; why Sunday River joined the Mountain Collective; Sugarloaf’s massive West Mountain expansion; and could more Boyne Resorts join Mountain Collective? More Boyne Resorts SNOWBIRD Stats: 3,240 vertical feet | 2,500 skiable acres | 500 inches average annual snowfall Topics The new Wilbere lift; why fixed-grip; why 600 inches of snow is better than 900 inches; and how Snowbird and Alta access differ on the Ikon versus the Mountain Collective passes. Wilbere’s new alignment More Snowbird ALTA Stats: 2,538 vertical feet | 2,614 skiable acres | 540 inches average annual snowfall Topics Not 903 inches but still a hell of a lot; why Alta’s aiming for 612 inches this season; and plotting Mountain Collective trips in LCC. PANORAMA Stats: 4,265 vertical feet | 2,975 skiable acres | 204 inches average annual snowfall Topics Panorama opens earlier than most skiers think, but not for the reasons they think; opening wall-to-wall last winter; Tantum Bowl...

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Nov. 23. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 30. To receive future episodes 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: What is this? Every autumn, ski associations and most of the large pass coalitions host media events in New York City. They do this because a) NYC is the media capital of the world; b) the city is a lot of fun; and, c) sometimes mountain folks like something different too, just like us city folks (meaning me), like to get to the mountains as much as possible. But I spend all winter traveling the country in search of ski areas of all sizes and varieties. This is the one time of year skiing comes to me. And it’s pretty cool. One of the associations that consistently hosts an NYC event is Ski Utah. This year, they set up at the Arlo Soho, a chic Manhattan hotel. Longtime President Nathan Rafferty asked if I would be interested in setting up an interview station, talking to resort reps, and stringing them together into a podcast. It was a terrific idea, so here you go. Who * Nathan Rafferty, President of Ski Utah * Sara Huey, Senior Manager of Communications at Park City Mountain Resort * Sarah Sherman, Communications Manager at Snowbird * Nick Como, VP of Marketing at Sundance * Rosie O’Grady, President and Innkeeper of Alta Lodge * Jessica Turner, PR Manager for Go Heber Valley * Taylor Hartman, Director of Marketing and Communications at Visit Ogden * Brooks Rowe, Brand Manager at Snowbasin * Riley Elliott, Communications Specialist at Deer Valley * Andria Huskinson, Communications and PR Manager at Solitude * Anna Loughridge, PR Manager for Visit Utah * Courtney Ryan, Communications Manager for Visit Park City * Ryan Mack, VP of Communications for Visit Salt Lake Recorded on October 3, 2024 About Ski Utah Most large ski states have a statewide trade group that represents its ski areas’ interests. One of the best of these is Ski Utah, which is armed with a large staff, a generous budget, and some pretty good freaking skiing to promote (Buckskin, Utah Olympic Park, and Wasatch Peaks Ranch are not members of Ski Utah): What we talked about SKI UTAH Topics Why NYC; the Olympics return to Utah; why the state is such a great place to host the games (besides, you know, the awesome skiing); where we could potentially see future ski area development in Utah; Pow Mow’s shift toward public-private hybrid; Deer Valley’s expansion and ongoing snowboard ban; and the proposed LCC Gondola – “Little Cottonwood Canyon is not a great place for rubber-wheeled vehicles.” On Utah skier visits and population growth over time On chairlifts planned in Utah over the next three years Utah is on a chairlift-building binge, with the majority slated for Deer Valley’s massive expansion (11) and Powder Mountain (4 this year; 1 in 2025). But Snowbird (Wilbere quad), Park City (Sunrise Gondola), and Snowbasin (Becker high-speed quad) are also scheduled to install new machines this year or next. The private Wasatch Peaks Ranch will also add two lifts (a gondola and a high-speed quad) this year. And Sundance is likely to install what resort officials refer to as the “Flathead lift” some time within the next two years. The best place to track scheduled lift installations is Lift Blog’s new lifts databases for 2024, 2025, and 2026. On expansion potential at Brian Head and Nordic Valley Utah’s two largest expansion opportunities are at Brian Head and Nordic Valley, both operated by Mountain Capital Partners. Here’s Brian Head today: The masterplan could blow out the borders - the existing ski area is in the lower-right-hand corner: And here’s Nordic Valley: And the masterplan, which could supersize the ski area to 3,000-ish acres. The small green blob represents part of the existing ski area, though this plan predates the six-pack installation...

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Nov. 13. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 20. To receive future episodes 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 Matt Jones, President and Chief Operating Officer of Stratton Mountain, Vermont Recorded on November 11, 2024 About Stratton Mountain Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Alterra Mountain Company, which also owns: Located in: Winhall, Vermont Year founded: 1962 Pass affiliations: * Ikon Pass: Unlimited * Ikon Base Pass: Unlimited, holiday blackouts Closest neighboring ski areas: Bromley (:18), Magic (:24), Mount Snow (:28), Hermitage Club (:33), Okemo (:40), Brattleboro (:52) Base elevation: 1,872 feet Summit elevation: 3,875 feet Vertical drop: 2,003 feet Skiable Acres: 670 Average annual snowfall: 180 inches Trail count: 99 (40% novice, 35% intermediate, 16% advanced, 9% expert) Lift count: 14 (1 ten-passenger gondola, 4 six-packs, 1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 4 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Stratton’s lift fleet) Why I interviewed him I don’t know for sure how many skier visits Stratton pulls each winter, or where the ski area ranks among New England mountains for busyness. Historical data suggests a floor around 400,000 visits, likely good for fifth in the region, behind Killington, Okemo, Sunday River, and Mount Snow. But the exact numbers don’t really matter, because the number of skiers that ski at Stratton each winter is many manys. And the number of skiers who have strong opinions about Stratton is that exact same number. Those numbers make Stratton more important than it should be. This is not the best ski area in Vermont. It’s not even Alterra’s best ski area in Vermont. Jay, MRG, Killington, Smuggs, Stowe, and sister resort Sugarbush are objectively better mountains than Stratton from a terrain point of view (they also get a lot more snow). But this may be one of the most crucial mountains in Alterra’s portfolio, a doorway to the big-money East, a brand name for skiers across the region. Stratton is the only ski area that advertises in the New York City Subway, and has for years. But Stratton’s been under a bit of stress. The lift system is aging. The gondola is terrible. Stratton was one of those ski areas that was so far ahead of the modernization curve – the mountain had four six-packs by 2001 – that it’s now in the position of having to update all of that expensive stuff all at once. And as meaningful updates have lagged, Stratton’s biggest New England competitors are running superlifts up the incline at a historic pace, while Alterra lobs hundreds of millions at its western megaresorts. Locals feel shafted, picketing an absentee landlord that they view as negligent. Meanwhile, the crowds pile up, as unlimited Ikon Pass access has holstered the mountain in hundreds of thousands of skiers’ wintertime battle belts. If that all sounds a little dramatic, it only reflects the messages in my inbox. I think Alterra has been cc’d on at least some of those emails, because the company is tossing $20 million at Stratton this season, a sum that Jones tells us is just the beginning of massive long-term investment meant to reinforce the mountain’s self-image as a destination on its own. What we talked about Stratton’s $20 million offseason; Act 250 masterplanning versus U.S. Forest Service masterplanning; huge snowmaking upgrades and aspirations; what $8 million gets you in employee housing these days; big upgrades for the Ursa and American Express six-packs; a case for rebuilding lifts rather than doing a tear-down and replace; a Tamarack lift upgrade; when Alterra’s investment firehose could shift east; leaving Tahoe for Vermont; what can be done about that gondola?; the Kidderbrook lift; parking; RFID; Ikon Pass access levels; and $200 to ski...

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Nov. 12. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 19. To receive future episodes 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 Fred Seymour, General Manager of Giants Ridge, Minnesota Recorded on October 28, 2024 About Giants Ridge Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board, a State of Minnesota economic development agency Located in: Biwabik, Minnesota Year founded: 1958/59 Closest neighboring ski areas: Mt. Itasca (1:14), Cloquet Ski Club (1:11), Chester Bowl (1:13), Spirit Mountain (1:18), Mont du Lac (1:27) Base elevation: 1,472 feet Summit elevation: 1,972 feet Vertical drop: 500 feet Skiable Acres: 202 Average annual snowfall: 62 inches Trail count: 35 (33% beginners, 50% “confident skiers”; 17% expert) Lift count: 7 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 1 triple, 2 doubles, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Giants Ridge’s lift fleet) Why I interviewed him Sometimes a thing surprises me. Like I think New York City is a giant honking mess and then I walk 60 blocks through Manhattan and say “actually I can see this.” Or I decide that I hate country music because it’s lame in my adolescent rock-and-roll world, but once it goes mainstream I’m like okay actually this is catchy. Or I think I hate cottage cheese until I try it around age 19 and I realize it’s my favorite thing ever. All of these things surprised me because I assumed they were something different from what they actually were. And so, in the same way, Giants Ridge surprised me. I did not expect to dislike the place, but I did not expect to be blown away by it, either. I drove up thinking I’d have a nice little downhill rush and drove away thinking that if all ski areas were like this ski area there would be a lot more skiers in the world. I could, here, repeat all the things I recently wrote about Crystal, another model Midwest ski area. But I wrote plenty on Giants Ridge’s many virtues below, and there’s a lot more in the podcast. For now, I’ll just say that this is as solid a ski operation as you’ll find anywhere, and one that’s worth learning more about. What we talked about Rope splicing day for one of Giants Ridge’s classic lifts; a massive snowmaking upgrade; when all the water comes out of the sky after winter’s done; the slowest Midwest ski season on record; how Giants Ridge skied into April in spite of the warm winter; learning to ski with an assist from Sears (the store); skiing Colorado before I-70; the amazing Hyland Hills, Minnesota; why Seymour didn’t go all Colorad-Bro on Midwest skiing – “skiing is special in different places”; some founder’s history of the high-speed ropetow; where Giants Ridge will install its first new high-speed ropetow; the virtues of high-speed tows; Hidden Valley, Missouri and working for Peak Resorts; reaction to Vail purchasing Peak Resorts in 2019; the government agency that owns Giants Ridge; the story of the ski area’s founding and purpose; how and why the ski area is so well-funded; how the ski area funded its latest giant capital project; where Giants Ridge envisions planting a second detachable chairlift; potential for far greater lodging capacity; expansion potential; where to hunt glades at Giants Ridge; the mountain’s trail-naming theme; why the ski area’s grooming is so good; why Giants Ridge offers fourth-graders unlimited access on the Minnesota Ski Areas Association Passport, rather than the standard two days; and why Giants Ridge left the Indy Pass after just one year. Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview Lazy non-ski journalists often pull out some version of this stat to prove that lift-served skiing is a dying industry: America once had more than 700 ski areas, but that number has plummeted to fewer than 500, according to the NSAA...

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Nov. 11. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 18. To receive future episodes 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 Dustin Lyman, President and General Manager of Copper Mountain, Colorado Recorded on October 21, 2024 About Copper Mountain Owned by: Powdr, which also owns: Located in: Frisco, Colorado Year founded: 1972 Pass affiliations: Ikon Pass and Ikon Base Pass: unlimited access, no blackouts Closest neighboring ski areas: Frisco Adventure Park (:15), Keystone (:19), Vail Mountain (:21), Breckenridge (:23), Loveland (:23), Arapahoe Basin (:30), Beaver Creek (:32), Ski Cooper (:34) – travel times vary considerably depending upon time of day, time of year, and apocalypse level on I-70 Base elevation: 9,738 feet Summit elevation: 12,441 feet Vertical drop: 2,703 feet Skiable Acres: 2,538 Average annual snowfall: 305 inches Trail count: 178 Lift count: 25 (1 6/8-passenger chondola, 3 high-speed six-packs, 3 high-speed quads, 5 triples, 4 doubles, 2 platters, 1 T-bar, 6 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Copper Mountain’s lift fleet) Why I interviewed him Imagine if, rather than finding an appropriate mountain upon which to build ski area, we just identified the best possible location for a ski area and built a mountain there. You would want to find a reliable snow pocket, preferably at elevation. You would want a location close to a major highway, with no access road drama. There should be a large population base nearby. Then you would build a hill with a great variety of green, blue, and black runs, and bunch them together in little ability-based kingdoms. The ski area would be big but not too big. It would be tall but not too tall. It would snow often, but rarely too much. It would challenge you without trying to kill you. You may include some pastoral touches, like tree islands to break up the interstate-wide groomers. You’d want to groom a lot but not too much. You’d want some hella good terrain parks. You’d want to end up with something pretty similar to Copper Mountain. Because Copper is what we end up with when we lop off all the tryhard marketing meth that attempts to make ski resorts more than what they are. Copper is not Gladiator on skis, you against the notorious Batshit Chutes. But Copper is not one big groomer, either. Copper is not fur shawls in the hotel lobby. But Copper is also not duct tape around a pants leg. Copper does not serve passenger pigeon eggs in its mountaintop eateries. But Copper is also not frozen burritos and a plastic sleeve of powdered donuts. Copper is not angry, or haughty, or cloying, or righteous, or overwrought. Copper does not call you “Sir.” Copper fixes your refrigerator without having to come back with another part. Copper, quietly and without a lot of hassle, just works. What we talked about The new Timberline six-pack chairlift; why Copper upgraded T-Rex before the mountain’s much older lifts; how much better a 2024 detachable lift is from a 1994 detachable lift; why Copper didn’t sell the lift to another ski area; that one summer that Copper installed two gargantuan frontside lifts; why new chairlift installations are so challenging; Leitner-Poma; the challenges of installing mid-mountain versus base-area lifts; installing American Eagle, American Flyer, and Three Bears; how Copper quietly offered skiing for 12 consecutive months from October 2023 to September 2024, despite an official May closing date; whether year-round skiing will become an official Copper activity; why Copper builds its halfpipe entirely from snow each season rather than constructing an earthwork base; The Athlete’s Mountain; why Copper continues to build bigger and more advanced terrain parks even as many big mountains back out of the space; Woodward parks; how many crew members and snowcats Copper...

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Nov. 10. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 17. To receive future episodes 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 John Melcher, CEO of Crystal Mountain, Michigan Recorded on October 14, 2024 About Crystal Mountain, Michigan Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: The Petritz Family Located in: Thompsonville, Michigan Year founded: 1956 Pass affiliations: Indy Pass & Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackouts Reciprocal partners: 1 day each at Caberfae and Mount Bohemia, with blackouts Closest neighboring ski areas: Caberfae (:37), Hickory Hills (:45), Mt. Holiday (:50), Missaukee Mountain (:52), Homestead (:51) Base elevation: 757 feet Summit elevation: 1,132 feet Vertical drop: 375 feet Skiable Acres: 103 Average annual snowfall: 132 inches Trail count: 59 (30% black diamond, 48% blue square, 22% green circle) + 7 glades + 3 terrain parks Lift count: 8 (1 high-speed quad, 3 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Crystal Mountain’s lift fleet) Why I interviewed him The biggest knock on Midwest skiing is that the top of the hill is not far enough away from the bottom of the hill, and this is generally true. Two or three or four hundred vertical feet is not a lot of vertical feet. It is enough to hold little pockets of trees or jumps or a racer’s pitch that begs for a speed check. But no matter how fun the terrain, too soon the lift maze materializes and it’s another slow roll up to more skiing. A little imagination helps here. Six turns in a snowy Michigan glade feel the same as six turns in Blue Sky Basin trees (minus the physiological altitude strain). And the skillset transfers well. I learned to ski bumps on a 200-vertical-foot section of Boyne Mountain and now I can ski bumps anywhere. But losing yourself in a 3,000-vertical-foot Rocky Mountain descent is not the same thing as saying “Man I can almost see it” as you try to will a 300-footer into something grander. We all know this. Not everything about the lift-served skiing experience shrinks down with the same effect, is my point here. With the skiing itself, scale matters. But the descent is only part of the whole thing. The lift maze matters, and the uphill matters, and the parking matters, and the location of the lift ticket pick-up matters, and the availability of 4 p.m. beers matters, and the arrangement of base lodge seating matters. And when all of these things are knotted together into a ski day that is more fun than stressful, it is because you are in the presence of one thing that scales down in any context: excellence. The National Ski Areas Association splits ski areas into four size categories, calculated by “vertical transportation feet per hour.” In other words: how many skiers your lifts can push uphill in an ideal hour. This is a useful metric for many reasons, but I’d like to see a more qualitative measurement, one based not just on size, but on consistent quality of experience. I spend most of my winter bouncing across America, swinging into ski areas of all sizes and varieties. Excellence lives in unexpected places. One-hundred-and-sixty-vertical-foot Boyce Park, Pennsylvania blows thick slabs of snow with modern snowguns, grooms it well, and seems to double-staff every post with local teenagers. Elk Mountain, on the other side of Pennsylvania, generally stitches together a better experience than its better-known neighbors just south, in the Poconos. Royal Mountain, a 550-vertical-foot, weekends-only locals’ bump in New York’s southern Adirondacks, alternates statuesque grooming with zippy glades across its skis-bigger-than-it-is face. These ski areas, by combining great order and reliable conditions with few people, are delightful. But perhaps more impressive are ski areas that deliver consistent excellence while...

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Nov. 5. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 12. To receive future episodes 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 Gary Milliken, Founder of Vista Map Recorded on June 13, 2024 About Vista Map No matter which region of the country you ski in, you’ve probably seen one of Milliken’s maps (A list captures current clients; B list is past clients): Here’s a little overview video: Why I interviewed him The robots are coming. Or so I hear. They will wash our windows and they will build our cars and they will write our novels. They will do all of our mundane things and then they will do all of our special things. And once they can do all of the things that we can do, they will pack us into shipping containers and launch us into space. And we will look back at earth and say dang it we done fucked up. That future is either five minutes or 500 years away, depending upon whom you ask. But it’s coming and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. OK. But am I the only one still living in a 2024 in which it takes the assistance of at least three humans to complete a purchase at a CVS self-checkout? The little Google hub talky-thingys scattered around our apartment are often stumped by such seering questions as “Hey Google, what’s the weather today?” I believe 19th century wrenchers invented the internal combustion engine and sent it into mass production faster than I can synch our wireless Nintendo Switch controllers with the console. If the robots ever come for me, I’m going to ask them to list the last five presidents of Ohio and watch them short-circuit in a shower of sparks and blown-off sprockets. We overestimate machines and underestimate humans. No, our brains can’t multiply a sequence of 900-digit numbers in one millisecond or memorize every social security number in America or individually coordinate an army of 10,000 alien assassins to battle a videogame hero. But over a few billion years, we’ve evolved some attributes that are harder to digitally mimic than Bro.AI seems to appreciate. Consider the ridiculous combination of balance, muscle memory, strength, coordination, spatial awareness, and flexibility that it takes to, like, unpack a bag of groceries. If you’ve ever torn an ACL or a rotator cuff, you can appreciate how strong and capable the human body is when it functions normally. Now multiply all of those factors exponentially as you consider how they fuse so that we can navigate a bicycle through a busy city street or build a house or play basketball. Or, for our purposes, load and unload a chairlift, ski down a mogul field, or stomp a FlipDoodle 470 off of the Raging Rhinoceros run at Mt. Sickness. To which you might say, “who cares? Robots don’t ski. They don’t need to and they never will. And once we install the First Robot Congress, all of us will be free to ski all of the time.” But let’s bring this back to something very simple that it seems as though the robots could do tomorrow, but that they may not be able to do ever: create a ski area trailmap. This may sound absurd. After all, mountains don’t move around a lot. It’s easy enough to scan one and replicate it in the digital sphere. Everything is then arranged just exactly as it is in reality. With such facsimiles already possible, ski area operators can send these trailmap artists directly into the recycling bin, right? Probably not anytime soon. And that’s because what robots don’t understand about trailmaps is how humans process mountains. In a ski area trailmap, we don’t need something that exactly recreates the mountain. Rather, we need a guide that converts a landscape that’s hilly and windy and multi-faced and complicated into something as neat and ordered as stocked aisles in a grocery store. We need a three-dimensional environment to make sense in a two-dimensional...