Podcasts about Vermont

America where we drink stuff off the ground@Shacksbury @Originalsincider @hudsonnorthcider @badseedcider @graftcider #cider #podcast #radioshow Co hosts : Good ol Boy Dave, Good ol Boy Mike, Good ol Boy Drew, and Good ol Gal Julieanna SUDS  Episode – In this episode of Sips, Suds, & Smokes, we're diving into a delightful assortment of hard ciders from the Northeast! Join us as we taste and rate a selection of unique ciders. Mike gives us a quick refresher on cider apples vs. table apples. He also answers that question full of useless answers - “Why was cider so popular in early America?” With plenty of laughs, engaging discussions, and our signature ratings from 1-5, this episode is sure to delight cider enthusiasts and newcomers alike.09:02 Arlo – partnering with Petritegi Sagardoa, located just outside of San Sebastian in Spain, Petritegi presses and ferments their apples in enormous, decades-old chestnut barrels; then ships this fermented cider to Vermont where it is blended with fruit sourced from New England.  6.0% ABV  Shacksbury Cider, Vergennes VT with Petritegi Bidea 20115 Astigarraga, Gipuzkoa.  SUDS- 5   19:24 Strawberry Rhubarb Cider - with strawberries and rhubarb 5% ABV.  Hudson North Cider Company, Newburgh, NY SUDS-  3    22:58 Drier Side Unfiltered Cider- classic unfiltered hard apple cider. 4.5% ABV.  Downeast Cider House, Boston, MA  SUDS-4   25:18 Flagship Dry Hard Cider – fermented with sauvignon blanc yeast. 6.9% ABV. Bad Seed Cider, Highland, NY. SUDS- 3  35:08 Farm Flor Dry Rustic Table Cider – using their Solera program, each batch includes 10% cider from their 75-barrel oak foudre, then add 10% fresh juice back into the foudre to continue the Solera process. The remaining 90% is fermented from Hudson Valley apples and co-fermented with a tea of woods like French oak and Spanish cedar, then blended together.  6.0% ABV  SUDS-4 37:35 Black Widow – cider with blackberries. 6.0% ABV.  Original Sin Hard Cider, Lafayette, NY  SUDS- 3 info@sipssudsandsmokes.com X- @sipssudssmokes IG/FB/Bluesky - @sipssudsandsmokes Sips, Suds, & Smokes® is produced by One Tan Hand Productions using the power of beer, whiskey, and golf.  Available on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, iHeart, and nearly anywhere you can find a podcast.Check out Good ol Boy Dave on 60 Second Reviewshttps://www.instagram.com/goodoleboydave/ Enjoying that cool new Outro Music, it's from Woods & Whitehead – Back Roads Download your copy here: https://amzn.to/2XblorcThe easiest way to find this award winning podcast on your phone is ask Alexa, Siri or Google, “Play Podcast , Sips, Suds, & Smokes” Credits:TITLE: Maxwell Swing/ FlapperjackPERFORMED BY: Texas GypsiesCOMPOSED BY: Steven R Curry (BMI)PUBLISHED BY: Alliance AudioSparx (BMI)TITLE: Back RoadsPERFORMED BY: Woods & WhiteheadCOMPOSED BY: Terry Whitehead & Jeff WoodsPUBLISHED BY: Terry WhiteheadCOURTESY OF: Terry Whitehead & Jeff WoodsVoiceover talent: Hank Stromenger and Charles SettlesPost production services : Pro Podcast SolutionsAdvertising sales: Contact us directlyContent hosting services: Talk Media Network, Audioport, Earshot, Radio4All, PodBeanProducer: Good ol Gal Julieanna & Good ol Boy DaveExecutive Producer: Good ol Boy MikeHard Ciders, Shaxbury Cider, Hudson North Cider, Strawberry Rhubarb Cider, Down East Cider House, Bad Seed Cider, Graft Cider, Original Sin Ciders, Cider Tasting, Cider Ratings, Northeast Cider, Cider Subscription, Cider Apples, Craft Cider, Cider Reviews, Cider Pairing, Fermented Cider, Basque Cider, Cider Education, Cider Culture

Episode 544 / Falon StutzmanFalon Stutzman is an artist born in Silver Springs, Maryland who lives and works in Omaha, Nebraska. She received her BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in 2009. She's had solo shows atKishka Gallery in Vermont, The Door in Brooklyn, Saints and Poets curated by John Plypchuck at Megan Mulrooney Gallery in LA and she has a current solo show right now at Megan Mulrooney, The End of a Long Line, that is up until October 24th. Her work has been featured in Artmaze and New American Paintings. 

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is made in the USA. Thank you for supporting independent ski journalism.About CaberfaeOwned by: The Meyer FamilyYear founded: 1937Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 2 days, blackouts* Freedom Pass: 3 days, no blackouts Base elevation: 1,076 feetSummit elevation: 1,561 feetVertical drop: 485 feetSkiable Acres: 200Average annual snowfall: 120 inchesLift count: 5 (1 fixed-grip quad, 3 triples, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Caberfae's lift fleet)The Zoom transcript (click “transcript” above for the Substack transcript, then click on any text block to teleport to the associated point in the video; timestamps below DO NOT MATCH THE VIDEO; also since Tim and Pete were on one screen, the transcript does not differentiate between them).Stuart Winchester: Welcome to the storm. I'm your host, Stuart Winchester. Today is Thursday, September 17th, 2026, and we are going to mix things up a little bit today. Instead of starting with the takes, we are starting with the guests, and I have some great guests today.00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:40.000Stuart Winchester: They are the general managers of Cabrifay Peaks, Michigan, with over 200 acres of terrain served by 4 chairlifts across 3 peaks, with a 485-foot vertical drop.00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.000Stuart Winchester: Cabar Fay is one of the largest ski areas in Michigan's Lower Penins.00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:49.000Stuart Winchester: The ski area averaged 120 inches of lake effect snowfall per winter.00:22:49.000 --> 00:23:06.000Stuart Winchester: Their family has operated Cabaret since 1980. They are co-general managers, with Tim Meyer on the right, handling everything on the mountain, and Pete Meyer on the left, taking care of everything off. Tim and Pete, welcome to the storm. I'm always hyped to talk Cabaret. How are you guys doing today?00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:11.000Pete Meyer: Good. We're doing awesome. Thanks for having us. Yeah.00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:26.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, and trigger warning for any Sparties or Buckeyes out there who want to go to the video version on stormskiing.com or YouTube. Me and Tim are both proudly rocking our Wolverines gear. This is a shirt I wore to the maze out when Michigan blasted Oklahoma in the big house this past weekend. So we're feeling.00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:31.000Stuart Winchester: Although I understand Tim's also got a little Sparty, side loyalty.00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:35.000Pete Meyer: Yes, my children, both my sons are Spartans, so that's…00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:44.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, as soon as my daughter got into college, I bought all the gear for her place. So, you know, there's tons going on at Cabaret, and I want to start…00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:36.000Pete Meyer: It.00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:54.000Stuart Winchester: with this coming expansion, and you, you announced this a while ago, and I'm gonna share my screen here so that everyone can see, uh, see this as we talk through it.00:23:54.000 --> 00:24:13.000Stuart Winchester: And this is where I am never quite as fast as I want to be. Uh, but… okay. So, here is the Cabra Fay trail map. This is the one I took off your website this morning, so it's the most current that I have. Uh, and last time I talked to Tim in, I think, 2021, when you came on the podcast.00:24:13.000 --> 00:24:15.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, it…00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:31.000Stuart Winchester: This East Peak triple chair was still still in a theory phase and you hadn't built yet. Now that's in place and we'll talk about that in a minute and how that's gone. But talk to us about the Green Mountain triple chair, what we're getting and why you're building it.00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:34.000Pete Meyer: Yeah, so, um…00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:40.000Pete Meyer: I'm going to start with why, because it's kind of an interesting story, you know.00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:51.000Pete Meyer: we… when we put in the East Peak lift, we took out the shelter chairlift, the double. They started in almost the same place, but the shelter… the shelter lift.00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:47.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:54.000Pete Meyer: let off about halfway up the hill.00:24:54.000 --> 00:25:04.000Pete Meyer: And because we we have our dads before us and then and then we also have continued to develop the terrain.00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:13.000Pete Meyer: the terrain changes and the flow changes. And what happened over time, like, especially over the last.00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:16.000Pete Meyer: 25 years or so.00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:23.000Pete Meyer: we kept adding on to Smiling Irishman and making it wider and wider and wider, and it got busier and busier and busier, so…00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:29.000Pete Meyer: The shelter chairlift was essentially letting off these new skiers.00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:33.000Pete Meyer: in the middle of flowing traffic. And…00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:37.000Pete Meyer: We thought when we put in the East Peak lift.00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:41.000Pete Meyer: Now we're gonna take these lower end skiers to the top.00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:55.000Pete Meyer: we're going to give them a longer run, and the new part we're giving them is actually the easier half. They're already negotiating the tougher half, the steeper half, and the narrower half. If we add the upper half, it's easier, it's wider, it should be fine.00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:51.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:06.000Pete Meyer: And that's what we thought. And so we put it in and then but then what we found and this is the this is the piece that you learn as you go.00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:07.000Pete Meyer: is…00:26:07.000 --> 00:26:15.000Pete Meyer: The new skiers accepted being let off at the lower level, and having to merge into traffic, because.00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:32.000Pete Meyer: They didn't really know any different and that it was the psychological factor. Well, I'm only halfway up the mountain. I can, I can do this. When we took them up to the top, you know, that East Peak lift actually feels like a out, it almost feels like an out West lift. It has.00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:43.000Pete Meyer: like, three rises, you know? So you ride… you go up over a break, and then you… and then you go again for a while, and then up over another break, and then you're coming into the top, and you… you know, you're above…00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:47.000Pete Meyer: Tree line, basically, and you can see the horizon, and it just…00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:51.000Pete Meyer: would kind of psych out that new skier, you know, they would just, they would.00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:51.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:55.000Pete Meyer: They'd get up there and kind of freeze and panic, and…00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:06.000Pete Meyer: say, there's no way I'm gonna go down, you know, I'm not gonna go down that hill. And, uh, so we found our ski patrol having to give a lot of lessons just to get people down the hill, and…00:26:59.000 --> 00:27:00.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:13.000Pete Meyer: And, um, and so we, we just, we kind of knew that we had a, you know, a little bit of an issue that we had to work through.00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:21.000Pete Meyer: And so Pete and I would be talking, you know, and I would say, I think I have it all figured out, you know, I'm saying, um…00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:34.000Pete Meyer: we just need to give them… make sure that all the… every single new skier gets a lesson, and we get them ready to… you know, we get them ready to go. And a lot of the… a lot of this is the school groups, you know, the different groups, and we do offer lessons.00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:40.000Pete Meyer: to everybody, but sometimes they don't take them, and, you know, they slide, they slide through, and…00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:42.000Pete Meyer: And so.00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:50.000Pete Meyer: Pete and I were having a meeting on Green Mountain with our ski patrol director, Katie, and Dennis, one of our top instructors.00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:59.000Pete Meyer: And we think we have it all figured out. You know, we're just we just need to put them through a lesson and then and then problem solved.00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:00.000Pete Meyer: And…00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:12.000Pete Meyer: And Dennis, our ski instructor, was like, almost grabbed right onto my jacket. He's like, you don't understand. I can't get them ready for East Peak on this.00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:23.000Pete Meyer: we need something in between, and I… and… and so it's like, oh, oh, well, what do you need, Dennis? And he pointed up at the Green Mountain, and he said, we need that.00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:14.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:41.000Pete Meyer: And I… I said, well, I think we have a plan for that on a cocktail napkin somewhere. We could go look at that again. So basically, what… what hap… what it was is we… we had always had this. We… we actually had lift lines staked out, and we hadn't been looking at doing this. We just thought it would be…00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:51.000Pete Meyer: the last thing that we do. We thought we would… we would continue to develop into the… into the backcountry area, and then do the Green Mountain expansion later.00:28:51.000 --> 00:29:06.000Pete Meyer: But what the… what the customer told us was, no, you need the Green Mountain expansion now. So that's the why and the how, that all of a sudden that thing kind of appeared out of nowhere, and why it was a two…00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:14.000Pete Meyer: why it's a two-year construction, because there's nothing over there. No services. Um, so we've had… we had to…00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:18.000Pete Meyer: You know, we had to do the final planning kind of fast.00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:30.000Pete Meyer: so we wanted to take 2 years to do it. Um, and so what are you getting? You're getting about 135 vertical feet, a brand new Doppelmayr triple.00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:38.000Pete Meyer: uh, that's just like East Peak and just like Vista, so it's gonna show this, you know, it's gonna take the new skier, um.00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:43.000Pete Meyer: Uh, and get them going on a lift that's similar to what we have throughout the area.00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:55.000Pete Meyer: it runs a little bit slower, has a bigger chair spacing, so it's going to be a little bit easier to load and unload. And when it's all built out, we should have 4 or 5.00:29:55.000 --> 00:30:00.000Pete Meyer: really, uh, easy trails, but with character. I mean, these aren't just…00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:14.000Pete Meyer: you know, a football field at 10 degrees that doesn't have any character. These are, you know, tree-lined, um, interesting slopes. Uh, the lift itself actually goes through the woods.00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:20.000Pete Meyer: and part of the way, and it's just a really neat development. So we think that.00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:32.000Pete Meyer: You know, even though it's not big vertical, it lifts about a thousand feet long. The terrain has really good character and we think it's going to be really popular.00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:47.000Stuart Winchester: I've always loved that about Cabaret. My favorite section of Cabaret for the folks who are watching is this sort of lower section where all the trails split off. And I've always found it a little confusing and fun. And I like confusing. I like it. I feel like it makes ski areas feel bigger than they are.00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:59.000Stuart Winchester: I want to zoom out a little bit and connect this expansion to some larger ski industry narratives, because the narrative that won't die is that the big corporate consolidation and big passes are killing the independents.00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:15.000Stuart Winchester: here I'm looking at Cabra Fay, family-owned for the last 46 years, and in 2016, you put in a brand new triple chair right here on North Peak. In 2022, you put in the brand new East Peak triple chair, and then you're putting in this brand new Green Mountain triple chair next year, at least that's the plan. I mean…00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:31.000Stuart Winchester: So you're affording three new chairlifts. Uh, you know, Monarch was willing to tell me out in Colorado. Yeah, we, and we paid cash for them. I don't know if you, if you have, you know, theories on debt. I know a lot of scare operators like Platykill in New York, like to stay out of debt, but, but how did Cab.00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:40.000Stuart Winchester: How is Calgary managing all these capital upgrades, and what does it say, do you think, about independents competing in 2026?00:31:41.000 --> 00:32:05.000Pete Meyer: Yeah, I don't have access to the checkbook, so you have to let me answer that one. No, that's a great question, Stu. And Tim kind of hit on this on his first podcast with you, but when Tim and I got moved back here in 2001, we had what I call like soul crushing debt. You know, it was just crippling, like every dollar we made had to go and service the debt.00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:49.000Stuart Winchester: Yep.00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:08.000Pete Meyer: Uh, we didn't have…00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:18.000Pete Meyer: really any money to even make capital improvements or to do much of anything. So our our main mission early on was try to try to get out of debt and get out of that hole.00:32:18.000 --> 00:32:35.000Pete Meyer: And, you know, our dad's done a nice job developing and building, and they got it out of bankruptcy. So when you get something out of bankruptcy, they've already cut every corner and done all kinds of deferred maintenance, pushed it all off. So we had quite a bit to deal with, and it was a long…00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:36.000Pete Meyer: Um…00:32:36.000 --> 00:32:46.000Pete Meyer: the long slugfest. Tim and I call those the dark days, you know, about 10 years of just really grinding. And then, finally, right, you know.00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:58.000Pete Meyer: about 2015, we were able to, uh, to get out of debt, and then… and then we started to, um, really put capital back into it, and that's why we decided on… on…00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:02.000Pete Meyer: Uh, putting in some new chairlifts, and yes, we have not gone back into debt since.00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:14.000Stuart Winchester: That's fantastic, and as you think to the future, okay, you have this North Peak quad chair, built in, I think, 92, and then you have the South Peak triple, which I think early 80s lift, it's a riblet, which…00:33:14.000 --> 00:33:29.000Stuart Winchester: As you know, is out of business now. I think this one's a SeaTac. So, I don't know if when, you know, you give a really good summary, Tim, of how East Peak changed traffic around the mountain. Uh, I, I've seen a, there's a ton of comments. I was just scrolling through, through Lyft blog for the folks watching.00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:41.000Stuart Winchester: to show Peter's excellent pictures of that lift. And the Cabaret page on there has a ton of comments, and I'm sure you've seen them. So, there's a lot of wondering, it seems, among skiers.00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:44.000Stuart Winchester: Why the quad is still here, because it…00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:57.000Stuart Winchester: they don't seem to think it runs a lot, and they think the triple does the job. Is there any thought of moving the quad, or do you really need 7 seats here? Or, just thinking long-term, what does the lift distribution look like across Cabaret Fay as you look at this map?00:33:57.000 --> 00:34:13.000Pete Meyer: Well, I think that we do need the quad on the busiest days, right? Otherwise, the reason we put the Vista Triple in there is the lines on the quad used to get so long. And it was like, that's the artery. I mean, you know, more people.00:34:01.000 --> 00:34:02.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:34:03.000 --> 00:34:04.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:17.000Pete Meyer: go through the North Peak complex.00:34:17.000 --> 00:34:34.000Pete Meyer: every day than than the others, you know, because it's the middle. And so it's you go through there on your way to and from South Peak, and a lot of people just ski there because it's really really good inter advanced, intermediate and intermediate type terrain, and even some advanced beginner terrain. So it.00:34:19.000 --> 00:34:20.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:34:34.000 --> 00:34:43.000Pete Meyer: It services a wide range of abilities. So I think you want to have the two lifts.00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:45.000Pete Meyer: Um…00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:58.000Pete Meyer: I think ultimately, though, we want to have more places for people to go, more pods of skiing, so that actually you do run the quad less and less, but you have it there so that on the really busy days.00:34:58.000 --> 00:35:14.000Pete Meyer: you can turn it on and have, you know, a lift that doesn't have a line that somebody can sit on and ride up. But, um, I don't know if that answers the question. Yeah, right now, Stu, we run it 3 days a week, Friday, Saturdays, and Sundays, the busier days, and so…00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:13.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:24.000Pete Meyer: Uh, we don't run it, uh, Monday through Thursday, just because it's a redundant lift, and we don't need the uphill capacity, um, is… is why people say it's not running some of the time.00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:41.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I guess what I was getting at is, is there a world where you move the quad over here to serve some of this backcountry terrain and in the top of Green Mountain? As it's, as there's kind of open space on the trail map and, and knowing Gary Milken, how he designs maps, he sometimes leaves that space.00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:57.000Stuart Winchester: for expansion. So, so what's the thought around, you know, and you alluded to it earlier when you were thinking about a lift for backcountry, and Tim, you had mentioned even maybe reviving those halls. I don't know if that's still a possibility. I don't know if they're still sitting at the bottom of the mountain here, but what's the thought on.00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:02.000Stuart Winchester: potential expansion over in this area or lifts in this area long term.00:36:03.000 --> 00:36:17.000Pete Meyer: I think that would be the next frontier. So, somewhere in the bottom… because you've skied here, Stu, you know if you go through the backcountry, you run out of gas, and then you have… and then you have to walk, and that's why we call it backcountry, because it's a…00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:10.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:36:11.000 --> 00:36:12.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.00:36:17.000 --> 00:36:27.000Pete Meyer: Because it's a tearful experience for many people coming out of there in the flats. And so somewhere down in that basin.00:36:21.000 --> 00:36:23.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:36:27.000 --> 00:36:40.000Pete Meyer: there could, there could be a lift someday that goes up to east of the top of East Peak. And Stu, what Tim had alluded to earlier in his first answer is that that was our original plan, so that would have been.00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:34.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:58.000Pete Meyer: Uh, that was the plan to be our next chairlift, was to service that area. But due to the reaction and the response of our skiers, you know, we deviated and focused on… and moved to Green Mountain. Um, and, you know, one thing we found is that transition from the magic carpet, right there on the trail map, you can see, to the East Peak chair.00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:57.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:36:57.000 --> 00:36:59.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:15.000Pete Meyer: was just too much for most of our skiers. And not only were we not doing Cabaret any favors, but we're not doing the industry any favors. You know, it's just, it was asking them to do too much, too big of a, make too much of a jump. So by putting in this East Peak.00:37:01.000 --> 00:37:03.000Stuart Winchester: Right.00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:30.000Pete Meyer: chair, and then we'll have all green runs that'll all be, um, varying degrees of difficulty of a green run, but all of them will be in between the Magic Carpet slope and the Smiling Irishman slope, so it'll be a really nice.00:37:17.000 --> 00:37:18.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:43.000Pete Meyer: transition, and quite frankly, we think a lot of school groups and a lot of skiers are going to come out, um, and never get off that chair, and stay on Green Mountain all day, and have a wildly successful day, and want to return, um, to not only Cabaret Fay, but to other ski.00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:48.000Stuart Winchester: I love it, and I can confidently say, because I ski all over, uh, that Cabaret is now…00:37:48.000 --> 00:38:04.000Stuart Winchester: And, and especially once you put in this new lift, it's one of the most modern up to date ski areas in the entire region. And, and that wasn't always true. When I first skied at Cabaret in the nineties, it was a lot of haul double chairs. I mean, these, these guys were over here, the, the quad and the, and the triple, but.00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:11.000Stuart Winchester: that, that throwback feel to it. And I know, Tim, when you were on last time, uh, you, you talked, you lamented a little bit.00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:23.000Stuart Winchester: getting rid of the last rope toe for the carpet, and just sort of the emotion of it, even though you knew it was logically the right thing. What if you could bring back a little throwback by putting a little rope toe right here to bring people out of the backcountry?00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:27.000Pete Meyer: Well, you know, it's funny, I…00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:36.000Pete Meyer: I was kind of slow to warm up to getting rid of that rope toe. I guess, you know, I always had that old school…00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:52.000Pete Meyer: you know, I learned on a rope toe, my kids learned on a rope toe, your kids are going to learn on a rope toe, which is just backwards thinking, right, for a for a ski area manager to have that kind of thought process. I'm not sure. I know where you're going. I mean, no one knows what the future holds.00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:41.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:38:42.000 --> 00:38:43.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:38:52.000 --> 00:39:09.000Pete Meyer: I do see ski areas having a lot of success with train parks with fast tows that service them. Again, another cocktail napkin plan that we have that we're not going to get into in this interview is something like that on our property down the road.00:38:58.000 --> 00:38:59.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.00:39:09.000 --> 00:39:16.000Pete Meyer: Um, so there, you know, I could see that kind of a thing, but, um…00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:26.000Pete Meyer: And… but I think… I don't know if we would ever want to put a surface tow out of the backcountry area unless, for some reason, we weren't going to lift serve it.00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:27.000Stuart Winchester: Got it.00:39:26.000 --> 00:39:31.000Pete Meyer: But, you know, I guess, you know, no one knows for sure.00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:31.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:37.000Pete Meyer: Um, but I wanna… I wanna back up on the Green Mountain expansion a little bit, if… if you'll let me.00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:36.000Stuart Winchester: Sure.00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:38.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, do it. Let's do it.00:39:37.000 --> 00:39:44.000Pete Meyer: When we were at the Midwest, uh, show this year, there was a, there was a fireside chat, and we were talking about.00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:54.000Pete Meyer: We're talking about, you know, turning first-time skiers into second-time skiers, and making the experience the best it can be.00:39:54.000 --> 00:40:06.000Pete Meyer: And so that we have… we have success in that arena. And the Green Mountain… the Green Mountain is… is really a missing piece, because you're looking at our trail map, and you see how the parking lot is laid out.00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:07.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:12.000Pete Meyer: Um, so if you're, you know, trying to make it as easy as possible for somebody who's never skied before.00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:17.000Pete Meyer: You can park on pavement right in front of our ticket office.00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:18.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:24.000Pete Meyer: Get out of your car, walk a short distance on heated sidewalks to the ticket office.00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:23.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:36.000Pete Meyer: Get… pay for everything you need. Pay for your skis, pay for your ticket, pay for your rentals, pay for your lesson, and then walk up to the… walk up to the, um…00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:37.000Pete Meyer: Rental.00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:38.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:52.000Pete Meyer: In your, in your regular boots, so it's easy walking, go inside, take your stuff off, take your boots off, get your boots, get your skis and come and then, and then secure your lesson at the end and then walk out the door.00:40:52.000 --> 00:41:09.000Pete Meyer: And you're 30, you know, you're 30 feet from where the ski school meets and you're right at the bottom of the conveyor. So it's really easy to start out and we can get you going on the conveyor. We can virtually get anybody that can stand up on skis or snowboard up to the top.00:41:08.000 --> 00:41:10.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:41:09.000 --> 00:41:13.000Pete Meyer: And then put, you know, all their energy into getting them down the hill.00:41:13.000 --> 00:41:28.000Pete Meyer: And then once you outgrow that, you just get off the conveyor and you ski down a little slope right onto the East Peak lift. Or, I'm sorry, onto the Green Mountain lift. So now you're right there, and you have this real easy area.00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:24.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:37.000Pete Meyer: to learn to ski, and then when you, when you're ready, you just ski down, just ski down the hill to the east peak lift. So the, the flow.00:41:37.000 --> 00:41:42.000Pete Meyer: for that never ever in the in the ah, the the.00:41:42.000 --> 00:41:51.000Pete Meyer: possibility of getting them to come a second and third and fourth time is really real, and I think… I think we're in, like, a new stratosphere for getting…00:41:51.000 --> 00:41:59.000Pete Meyer: you know, getting people, uh, skiing. And then as it flows, you know, the next step, the next place to ski is East Peak.00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:10.000Pete Meyer: And then as you get a little more daring, you work your way into the North Peak complex, and then eventually over to South Peak. So the flow is really natural, and I think it's going to work out extremely well.00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:21.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, it's like a mini, uh, Copper Mountain. I know you're a Winter Park guy, but it, you know, the, the, the viability… You know what, the exciting thing, I think, for skiers who are not novices, who know Cabaret Faye well.00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:12.000Pete Meyer: Yeah.00:42:21.000 --> 00:42:38.000Stuart Winchester: starts to creep back into old Caber Fay. And, and when we've talked a while ago, Tim, I, I didn't have a good perspective, but some new maps have popped up on ski map.org, which is my go to for old trail maps. And this one I think shows the old terrain really well. So here's the road looping around, here's the parking lot.00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:47.000Stuart Winchester: And then here's all the terrain. And so I… Google Earth also makes it really easy. So as I go here…00:42:47.000 --> 00:43:02.000Stuart Winchester: I am, for those who are watching, I am zooming in on… so this is what you were talking about, you kind of just park on pavement, you get out here, for those watching on YouTube or StormSkiing.com, the carpet's right around here, and then this will be green, is that right?00:43:01.000 --> 00:43:07.000Pete Meyer: No, if you go, if you, if you go back to that old, old trail map, like you can see right to there, there's a.00:43:04.000 --> 00:43:06.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:43:07.000 --> 00:43:14.000Pete Meyer: A rope toe — there's two rope toes right there, right up that line, top of that peak. There was two rope toes.00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:12.000Stuart Winchester: Right there? Okay.00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:13.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:19.000Pete Meyer: Uh, heading up that way, and another rope tow coming out at 90 degrees from… from the top.00:43:17.000 --> 00:43:19.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:43:19.000 --> 00:43:20.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:43:19.000 --> 00:43:37.000Pete Meyer: And that shack still is up there to this day. It's a two-story tow shack where we had three different rope tows coming in. So it's going to come right up to the top of that. And that area was always called practice area. That was the old name of it. So if you look at old trail maps, you'll see that word practice area.00:43:23.000 --> 00:43:24.000Stuart Winchester: That's cool.00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:26.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:43:37.000 --> 00:43:41.000Pete Meyer: It's a great name for a learn to ski area.00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:54.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, here's another map, the 1971 map has it as practice area. Okay, so I was assuming that you were digging that up, but I guess you're taking earth from there for the other… is that where you took it for East Peak? Is that what this big sandpit is?00:43:53.000 --> 00:44:07.000Pete Meyer: Oh, that's more of the West Ridge area out into that area. So we're actually off to the left. It's all still green. Up into there, yeah, so it'll be a nice natural hilltop with big mature trees, tree line runs. It's gonna be really, it's gonna be really nice.00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:57.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:43:59.000 --> 00:44:00.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:44:01.000 --> 00:44:02.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:44:07.000 --> 00:44:18.000Stuart Winchester: So as you… so you can see, for those watching, this is old cab buffet. These are… this is all abandoned, right? I… do you still own this? I mean, it… because once you put the lift up here.00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:37.000Stuart Winchester: It seems like it could potentially open some of this backside terrain. I know people would love that. It also makes you very big. I don't know if that's on your radar as Cabaret continues to grow and succeed, but what are the thoughts on this really cool abandoned terrain that you have back here? And Tim, I know we talked about this a few years ago, but I also know that thoughts evolve over time.00:44:38.000 --> 00:44:44.000Pete Meyer: So we do still own all of that. So that area you're looking at, we do own it.00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:41.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:55.000Pete Meyer: I think that we don't have any plans to go back into that area at this time, but you never know.00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:52.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:54.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:44:55.000 --> 00:45:04.000Pete Meyer: Going back, though, a little bit, we don't want to get too far into the weeds. Unless you want to get into the weeds, we can go. Um, I brought my machete, so we can…00:45:03.000 --> 00:45:06.000Stuart Winchester: I live in the weeds, man, that's, uh, my…00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:22.000Pete Meyer: we can do what we need to do. But when… way back, going way back to 1982, 83, when South Peak opened, you know, South Peak was redeveloped, all that… a lot of that terrain was still running back then. We were riding T-bars and rope tows on the North Ridge, and West Ridge was alive, and.00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:09.000Stuart Winchester: Yes.00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:13.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:18.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:21.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:31.000Pete Meyer: The practice area tow was still running. So I remember that stuff, you know, as a kid, all happening. And when South Peak was built.00:45:31.000 --> 00:45:43.000Pete Meyer: it was so much bigger than all that, you know, vertical-wise. It was, like, twice, you know, twice the vertical, um, real snowmaking, real grooming.00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:37.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:45:43.000 --> 00:45:56.000Pete Meyer: people just abandoned the back… the back hills. They just went… they left that. They left that area, and they went to Salt Peak. And that's really why it all closed, is people just stopped going back there. It just wasn't as good. So…00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:46.000Stuart Winchester: Or did they?00:45:56.000 --> 00:46:00.000Pete Meyer: I often think maybe it just is better to be a memory.00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:05.000Pete Meyer: But but who knows? You know, down the road it could be what it could be.00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:16.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I think between opening the backcountry and that, uh, the Green Mountain expansion, I think you excited some folks. Alright, that, that's, uh, that's, that's all really cool. I appreciate you taking me inside that. Let's talk passes now, and I'm.00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:19.000Stuart Winchester: the screen share here. So, uh…00:46:19.000 --> 00:46:36.000Stuart Winchester: Cabrefe joined IndyPass as an inaugural member in 2019, and has been on that pass every season since, for the 2026-27 season. Cabrefe has, and I'm just laying this out for the listeners, uh, Cabrefe has departed the IndyPass and has joined.00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:51.000Stuart Winchester: The full icon pass, uh, on their two day tier, which is only on the full icon pass, not on the icon base, there's no access, and there's also holiday blackout, so the only mountains that are holiday blacked out on the full icon are the, the two day mountains, of which.00:46:51.000 --> 00:46:55.000Stuart Winchester: Cabaret is now one. So, so talk us through.00:46:55.000 --> 00:47:03.000Stuart Winchester: your experience with IndiePass and the decision, ultimately, to leave that partnership and to join up with ICON.00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:09.000Pete Meyer: Yeah, sure, Stu, we have a feeling this might be a topic of conversation today, so…00:47:07.000 --> 00:47:08.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:47:09.000 --> 00:47:11.000Pete Meyer: So we.00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:11.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:47:11.000 --> 00:47:22.000Pete Meyer: There's a lot of layers to this answer, and this decision was not made quickly or lightly, and a lot of analysis and discussion went into it.00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:37.000Pete Meyer: To be quite honest, we were… we've been frustrated with the IndyPass a little bit for a couple years, and we kind of… we kind of laid out a bunch of, um, the pros and cons list, and the cons list was a lot longer than the pros, and so we… we ultimately kind of came to this decision to exit, and um…00:47:37.000 --> 00:47:53.000Pete Meyer: We're going to talk about — I'll talk about a couple of those reasons now. But before I do, I think it's important to provide some history and some context with Cadbury and IndyPass. So as you mentioned, Indy launched in 2019. We were an early adopter. We had some great conversations with Doug Fish that summer.00:47:39.000 --> 00:47:41.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:46.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:47:53.000 --> 00:48:10.000Pete Meyer: Doug worked really hard to get this pass going. We really enjoyed our conversations. He kind of could answer the questions that nobody could answer. He knew things that nobody else knew. And I still remember to this day, I'm like, Doug, how do you know all this? And he's like in his raspy voice.00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:21.000Pete Meyer: I just know, you know, so it's like, it was kind of cool. So we had confidence that, uh, that he could implement this pass and make it successful, um, because he knew what it took. So we…00:48:19.000 --> 00:48:26.000Stuart Winchester: I'm sorry to interrupt. I may have been the first ever Cabaret Redemption on the Indie Pass since November 2019.00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:25.000Pete Meyer: You know what? That's this.00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:30.000Pete Meyer: It wasn't, it was December 5th, 2019.00:48:29.000 --> 00:48:31.000Stuart Winchester: Okay. It…00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:39.000Pete Meyer: So, I was gonna get into that in a little bit, but now I'll hit on that. So then, um, in digging through all these redemptions, which I was gonna get into.00:48:31.000 --> 00:48:34.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, okay, go ahead.00:48:37.000 --> 00:48:40.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Sorry, I spoiled it.00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:56.000Pete Meyer: And pouring this data, I was like, Stuart Winchester, you were redemption number one for us. I don't know if you knew that. And I remember it to this day because I never heard your name. I never heard of your podcast. I don't even know if you had it going then.00:48:41.000 --> 00:48:42.000Stuart Winchester: Yep.00:48:47.000 --> 00:48:49.000Stuart Winchester: Wow, that's cool.00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:53.000Stuart Winchester: Yah.00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.000Stuart Winchester: It launched, uh, that October, so it was brand new. Mm-hmm.00:48:57.000 --> 00:48:59.000Pete Meyer: That October? Okay.00:48:59.000 --> 00:49:14.000Pete Meyer: So the… our… my office is right behind the ticket window, and the ticket teller… our office… the ticket manager wasn't in there, so the ticket teller came and got me when he came to the window. I have this, uh, IndiePass, I don't know what to do with it. So I was showing her how to…00:49:03.000 --> 00:49:04.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:49:08.000 --> 00:49:09.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:49:14.000 --> 00:49:18.000Pete Meyer: redeem it in in Brooklyn.00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:43.000Pete Meyer: New York pops up. Oh, I got to talk to this guy. I go, you mean that you drove all the way here just to ski at Cabra Faith in Brooklyn, New York? And you're like, yeah, I did. And I thought, I'm like, this pass is awesome, right? It's great, guys. But then we talked a little bit more and you said you had family in the area and we're in the area for a while. So I was really high for a long time on the UniPass because of that. But I didn't know it was you until I was digging through the data. I'm like, oh, that's.00:49:19.000 --> 00:49:20.000Stuart Winchester: Right.00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:36.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:37.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:49:39.000 --> 00:49:40.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, so.00:49:42.000 --> 00:49:44.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, that's cool.00:49:43.000 --> 00:49:58.000Pete Meyer: That's that's so. So anyways, anyways, we'll where was I? So okay, so then we were the first as part of that. Then we were the 1st ski resort in the Lower Peninsula to to commit to the to Indy Pass, and I'm not sure about.00:49:44.000 --> 00:49:46.000Stuart Winchester: Love that.00:49:59.000 --> 00:50:01.000Pete Meyer: Um, the UP, uh.00:50:01.000 --> 00:50:16.000Pete Meyer: But the only one in the Lower Peninsula. And so we knew at that time, well, this isn't going to do anything unless we get a couple more ski resorts to join. So we had reached out to a few. And Pete Bigford was interested. And he was the CEO and president of Shanty Creek at the time.00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:30.000Pete Meyer: And Pete had said, yeah, we'll do it, but we need a couple of downstate resorts to join as well. So then we reached out to Jamie at Swiss Valley, she said yes, and Doug at Cannonsburg, and he said yes. So that first year, we had four.00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:33.000Pete Meyer: Um, resorts on the Indy Pass. And…00:50:33.000 --> 00:50:45.000Pete Meyer: During that time he that 1st year he charged resorts a thousand dollars to get in. So we we had conversations. We're like, well, let's let's try it. The worst we can do is be out a thousand dollars right? So we had these.00:50:45.000 --> 00:51:00.000Pete Meyer: 4 ski areas in, and we did… I think we did 44 redemptions that first year. It was… it was virtually nothing. I don't even think it covered the… the $1,000. It might have come… but… but we liked the concept, it was neat, and the word got out, and then… and then Crystal Mountain joined, um, the next year.00:50:52.000 --> 00:50:53.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, wow. Okay.00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:06.000Pete Meyer: Uh, and then, so we kind of hit a critical mass there, and then it was a really good pass, um.00:51:06.000 --> 00:51:16.000Pete Meyer: for a long time, for a while, for several years. And one thing that Doug had said, and during that first year, I think in 2019, they had about 50.00:51:16.000 --> 00:51:32.000Pete Meyer: ski resorts on the pass, if I remember. And he said, I really hope to get it to 80 to maybe 100 passes. Um, and you as an early adopter, um, Cabaret will have say who gets in, in, in your particular region, because I really want to keep it, do just a couple ski resorts per region.00:51:32.000 --> 00:51:37.000Pete Meyer: not to not to oversaturate the market. Like, yeah, great. This sounds sounds really good.00:51:37.000 --> 00:51:40.000Pete Meyer: So then as we go on, um…00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:50.000Pete Meyer: he sells the pass to, uh, Entebani and Eric. Um, and great for Doug, we're happy for Doug, he worked really hard to make that pass, good for him for selling it. Um, can't fault him.00:51:50.000 --> 00:52:05.000Pete Meyer: Um, and then we like to say, like, Eric, Eric took the pass and put it on steroids. You know, it's just, he, he's, he's done a wonderful job with it. You know, he's obviously very, very intelligent, very successful, running three different businesses, um, um, and doing well at all of them.00:51:56.000 --> 00:51:57.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.000Pete Meyer: But he's blown it up. He just had a different mission.00:52:09.000 --> 00:52:13.000Pete Meyer: than than Doug had. Right? So what did that evolve into?00:52:12.000 --> 00:52:14.000Stuart Winchester: Blowing it up, you mean making bigger, right?00:52:14.000 --> 00:52:22.000Pete Meyer: Yeah, making it bigger. Like, Doug was gonna keep it small and couple to each region, and we were gonna have an input on, you know.00:52:14.000 --> 00:52:15.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:17.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:52:23.000 --> 00:52:35.000Pete Meyer: to try to prevent it from being oversaturated. So, I know the Midwest has a lot of ski areas on the pass, but, like, our world is Michigan and our, more specifically, northern Michigan.00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:27.000Stuart Winchester: Yep.00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:36.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:38.000Pete Meyer: So it got down to where we had 6.00:52:38.000 --> 00:52:56.000Pete Meyer: um, ski resorts within a 60-mile radius in northern Michigan, right? So if you drop a pin, you can drive within, within 60 miles, you can get to six resorts on it. Um, that density just became too much for us, because that's 12 visits, right? If a skier buys an Andy Pass, they can ski 12 times, two at each place. It's great for them, they get a lot of.00:52:42.000 --> 00:52:43.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:52:57.000 --> 00:53:12.000Pete Meyer: Um, the problem is, is what we're seeing, and we're watching the numbers every year, um, and it was easy to do because there's not a ton of redemptions, but how many of those people were former Passovers, right? And that percentage kept rising every year.00:53:11.000 --> 00:53:12.000Stuart Winchester: Mmm.00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:25.000Pete Meyer: So what it became and evolved into is just a direct competitor of our own season pass product. And that's ultimately reason number one why we — it just oversaturated.00:53:23.000 --> 00:53:25.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:26.000Pete Meyer: And.00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:27.000Stuart Winchester: So, go ahead.00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:28.000Pete Meyer: And, you know, so…00:53:28.000 --> 00:53:34.000Pete Meyer: I and I think the the Indy Pass really for a lot of ski resorts.00:53:34.000 --> 00:53:51.000Pete Meyer: doesn't move the needle a ton, um, financially. Uh, for… for us, it really didn't, and I felt like we were… did a reasonable number of redemptions, so we could… we could take it… take it or leave it. It doesn't have a big impact. It affects the customer more. Like, that decision was hard, the person who bought it in the past.00:53:51.000 --> 00:53:56.000Pete Meyer: Um, but I think Eric's a stand-up guy. He'll let anybody who…00:53:56.000 --> 00:54:07.000Pete Meyer: who bought an E-Pass, and their favorite resort is not on that, they'll give a refund to anybody who wants one. So the Cabaret listeners know that, and I think that's nice of him to do. Also, for those.00:54:01.000 --> 00:54:02.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.00:54:07.000 --> 00:54:19.000Pete Meyer: um, Cabaret, uh, listeners who bought an Indy add-on. He'll honor that for this year, from what I understand. So, it's a couple of really good things that he's doing there, so we're thankful, thankful for that. But, um.00:54:19.000 --> 00:54:28.000Pete Meyer: through conversations, and we just decided it was time to get out. So that's reason number one. I got a couple more reasons if you've got time.00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:26.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.00:54:26.000 --> 00:54:41.000Stuart Winchester: Well, let's linger on that for a second. I mean, for me, it just comes down to good old-fashioned free market competition, right? Where there's another pass available that is looking for smaller mountains like Caber Fay. It also signed mountains like Buck Hill and.00:54:41.000 --> 00:54:58.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, and uh… Wild Mountain over in Minnesota, just small areas near populations that are popular. I saw you catching some heat in comments to me, you know, on my platforms and social media, because you go from the Indy Pass, which maxed out at $419.00:54:58.000 --> 00:55:16.000Stuart Winchester: to the full Icon, which is $1,449 right now, and I know you can upgrade and buy a discounted Icon session pass, but I don't want to overstate it. What's the reaction been like from your pass holders, and how have you handled that?00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:24.000Stuart Winchester: The fact that you're no longer available on the cheap discounted pass, multi-mountain pass, but you are available on the very expensive one.00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:27.000Pete Meyer: Great question, great question, because we've been getting…00:55:27.000 --> 00:55:42.000Pete Meyer: Uh, we've been getting both, uh, good and, and bad feedback from it. So, what, what it comes down to is the, is the decision to, to, uh, leave Indy and, and join OCCON. Those, those decisions were, were mutually exclusive. Like, like, we had made the decision to.00:55:42.000 --> 00:55:43.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:55:42.000 --> 00:55:52.000Pete Meyer: to leave Indy, um, before we even started to Icon. And we had a lot of conversations of, hey, let's just… let's just be… let's just be independent and not on any… any, uh…00:55:52.000 --> 00:56:08.000Pete Meyer: Multi resort pass, you know, there's a lot of really successful and really nice ski resorts that have that model, like Perfect North Slopes, Cascade in Wisconsin. We always go out and ski somewhere every spring and I went out to the Tahoe area this year and skied at Mount Rose, you know, that place is.00:55:58.000 --> 00:55:59.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.00:56:01.000 --> 00:56:03.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:56:08.000 --> 00:56:09.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:56:08.000 --> 00:56:18.000Pete Meyer: that place is phenomenal. They're not on any, any, um, any pants. And, um, it was neat to ski there, and just see they had a similar vibe and feel that, um, Cabaret had, right?00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:11.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.00:56:11.000 --> 00:56:13.000Stuart Winchester: Right. That's right.00:56:17.000 --> 00:56:18.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:23.000Pete Meyer: So quite a bit more, quite a bit more. Yeah, yeah.00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:21.000Stuart Winchester: Just a little more elevation.00:56:21.000 --> 00:56:24.000Stuart Winchester: They're at, like, 9,000 feet.00:56:23.000 --> 00:56:27.000Pete Meyer: Absolutely, but it was great terrain. So.00:56:24.000 --> 00:56:25.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:26.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:56:27.000 --> 00:56:29.000Pete Meyer: After we left the Indy Pass.00:56:29.000 --> 00:56:31.000Pete Meyer: Then we, um…00:56:31.000 --> 00:56:46.000Pete Meyer: Started talking to the folks at ICON, and I want to give a shout out to Aaron Keene and Caitlin Windauer, those girls are really sharp and would answer all the questions. It kind of reminded me of the early DuckFish days where they were all knowing and knew a lot of answers to everything.00:56:46.000 --> 00:56:53.000Pete Meyer: We talked to them for a long time. We weren't in any rush to make a decision to go down this road.00:56:52.000 --> 00:56:54.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:56:53.000 --> 00:56:57.000Pete Meyer: And you know what ultimately decided for us is.00:56:57.000 --> 00:57:10.000Pete Meyer: We want to do what's best for our core customer, and our core customer is our season pass holder, okay? And this IndyPass or this IconPass brought on this reciprocal benefit of a three-day.00:57:10.000 --> 00:57:27.000Pete Meyer: 3 day session pass you can get for 50% off. Right? And that adds a lot of value. To our pass holders. And so we've been hit as much as the negativity that you've seen online for leaving any pass, we've been getting messages from our pass holders saying, hey, thank you for this benefit. This is great.00:57:12.000 --> 00:57:13.000Stuart Winchester: It's.00:57:13.000 --> 00:57:15.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, three day. Yeah. Okay.00:57:18.000 --> 00:57:19.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:57:27.000 --> 00:57:43.000Pete Meyer: I'm gonna use it. I'm gonna take a trip. And then we've known we've gone out west together and 3 days of skiing is plenty. Like we like to ski bell to bell and it's you're by that 3rd day you're waking up and you're like you can't even move your legs for you know we're so so we think it's a nice.00:57:29.000 --> 00:57:31.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:57:37.000 --> 00:57:38.000Stuart Winchester: Okay, yeah.00:57:40.000 --> 00:57:41.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:57:43.000 --> 00:57:55.000Pete Meyer: Uh, you can ski locally here, you can head up in, um, hit up, hit up both Boyne Mountain and Boyne Highlands, or drive over to, uh, Blue Mountain, Ontario, so you don't have to get in a plane. So it's.00:57:55.000 --> 00:58:11.000Pete Meyer: Uh, of our pass holders. Cause we know, we know, Stuart, that nobody's going to buy a full icon pass for two days at Cabaret. We, we know that that wasn't even the, like Pete said, we're, we do like our independence and, and.00:57:57.000 --> 00:57:59.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, yeah.00:58:03.000 --> 00:58:04.000Stuart Winchester: Right.00:58:04.000 --> 00:58:06.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:58:11.000 --> 00:58:25.000Pete Meyer: And we like to create these partnerships that are good for our core customers. The people that commit to us, we're going to give you the best we can. And so, you know, that that three day session pass is just it's it's.00:58:25.000 --> 00:58:29.000Pete Meyer: It's a it's a great benefit for our core customers.00:58:29.000 --> 00:58:47.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, it's like you take a trip to Steamboat, or Palisades Tahoe, or a lot of the mountains that are on that. So, you know, it all makes sense, and I like the, you know, Boyne, Cabaret, sort of on one team, and then you have Nubs, and Crystal, and Treetops, and Shani on the other. I think that's good for skiers, it's good for.00:58:47.000 --> 00:59:03.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, two more, two more things I wanna talk about and then we'll get out of here. Uh, I, I really wanna talk about your season pass. $299 unlimited. I think it was even a little cheaper for early birds, but that's what it is right now. Uh, 219 for weekday, 129 for Sunday. That, that's an awesome, awesome deal.00:59:03.000 --> 00:59:18.000Stuart Winchester: by any measure. I noticed you no longer have the Saturday-Sunday pass, and I think it's been a couple years, and it also… Saturday lift tickets are more than Sunday, so it seems as though, from my point of view, you're really trying to manage the experience on Saturday. So, talk about your season pass suite.00:59:18.000 --> 00:59:27.000Stuart Winchester: And how that relates to your mountain management as far as making sure when people show up, they have a good experience.00:59:27.000 --> 00:59:42.000Pete Meyer: No, you're exactly right. You hit the nail on the head right there. We're trying to preserve the Saturday experience. That's the day everybody wants to ski. So if you're going to be on a pass and ski at Calgary on a pass, you got to have the seven-day week pass.00:59:42.000 --> 01:00:00.000Pete Meyer: And we wanted to protect that experience and not get overcrowded, not get overrun, and that's one of the main reasons that we got rid of the weekend pass. The weekend pass, we roll out, it was a $99 weekend pass in 2007 when we launched that, and that thing went all the way till.01:00:01.000 --> 01:00:14.000Pete Meyer: I think 2000 or 2001, we had that, so we had that for a long time, and that brought a lot of skiers here and exposed us as we continued to get better, and they saw the resort that we had, and all the work that Tim was doing on the hill.01:00:14.000 --> 01:00:21.000Pete Meyer: And then that just evolved into trying to manage the volume levels on Saturdays.01:00:21.000 --> 01:00:38.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, it's a, it's, it's a great deal. And, uh, you know, even, even as it's risen past 99, I mean, you know, 299, there's, there's a lot of resorts in the West that are charging more than that for a day this year. Beaver Creek's topping out at 392. So I love it. Okay. The last thing I want to.01:00:38.000 --> 01:00:48.000Stuart Winchester: This one's a little personal, and I know I talked to you about this, uh, it was about 4 years ago, Tim or Pete, I forget, it was maybe both of you I was talking to. So I want to talk about this Trail Starkey.01:00:48.000 --> 01:01:03.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, I knew Dick Starkey. I'm friends with his daughter Crystal from way back. We went to school together. Uh, and, and I met him and I, I was always just remember being very impressed by him. He had a really good presence. Uh, he was, he was very fit and active and, and did a lot of things.01:01:03.000 --> 01:01:09.000Stuart Winchester: Um, I didn't know him super well, but I met him a few times, and… and I… I just want to talk about, you know, he passed.01:01:09.000 --> 01:01:25.000Stuart Winchester: Four or five years ago now, and I noticed this trail and, and I said, oh, is that, is that named after Dick? And, and you said it was. So, uh, can, can you talk about the Starkey trail? Talk about Dick Starkey and, and, uh, his legacy at Cabre Fay and, and, and why it was fitting to name a.01:01:27.000 --> 01:01:34.000Pete Meyer: Yeah, Dick was a volunteer patroller at SP, patroller at Caber Fay for…01:01:34.000 --> 01:01:42.000Pete Meyer: I think… I… I think as long as… as my dad was around, you know, uh, Dick was there, and so, you know.01:01:39.000 --> 01:01:40.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.01:01:42.000 --> 01:01:52.000Pete Meyer: 40… however many years, 40… 40-some years, he was a patroller at Cabaret, and uh… you know, just had a big presence, you know, you knew him.01:01:52.000 --> 01:01:53.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.01:01:52.000 --> 01:02:01.000Pete Meyer: Played football at Ferris. Great stories about that. He was a captain and so he's tough.01:01:54.000 --> 01:01:55.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.01:02:01.000 --> 01:02:02.000Pete Meyer: And.01:02:02.000 --> 01:02:17.000Pete Meyer: just a… just a great guy, great patroller, great mentor, um, a ton… lots and lots of stories about Dick Starkey for another day, but, uh, just somebody that we wanted to honor, and, um, so, you know, we made that change.01:02:17.000 --> 01:02:21.000Stuart Winchester: And why this trail? Why this, uh, why did you choose this one?01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:35.000Pete Meyer: you know, that… I don't… I don't know why we picked that one. We just… we… we… I think we… the, um… the previous name was an old, you know, an older name that… that… that honored a…01:02:35.000 --> 01:02:47.000Pete Meyer: an older ski instructor, but I think we thought, you know, maybe… maybe it was time for a change there. Some… maybe just something a little more relevant to… someone more relevant to…01:02:41.000 --> 01:02:43.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.01:02:47.000 --> 01:02:52.000Pete Meyer: You know, this this last, you know, 40 years of caprophage tradition.01:02:51.000 --> 01:02:57.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. And, and I believe, I believe Crystal still, uh, volunteer patrols there as well, right? Yeah.01:02:56.000 --> 01:02:59.000Pete Meyer: Yes. Yes, she is.01:02:57.000 --> 01:03:03.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, that's great. I haven't talked to her in a minute, but hi, Crystal. Hope you're doing great. Pete.01:03:03.000 --> 01:03:05.000Pete Meyer: No, no, not about the trail.01:03:04.000 --> 01:03:22.000Stuart Winchester: Okay, okay, all right. Well, hey, listen, guys, I really appreciate catching up with you. There's so much always going on at Cabaret, and we were long overdue, so let's do it again soon, and I gotta get up there and ski that East Peak lift, because I haven't been in a minute, so I really appreciate that, and I'll talk to you guys soon, and thanks so much.01:03:22.000 --> 01:03:25.000Pete Meyer: Thanks, Stuart. Thanks a lot, Stu. Appreciate it.01:03:24.000 --> 01:03:26.000Stuart Winchester: All right, talk soon.01:03:26.000 --> 01:03:28.000Stuart Winchester: All right, let me just…01:03:30.000 --> 01:03:43.000Stuart Winchester: Okay, that was Tim and Pete Meyer of Cabaret. I love Cabaret. It was my pseudo home mountain when I lived in Michigan. It was just 90 minutes down the road, so I never had a season pass there.01:03:43.000 --> 01:03:51.000Stuart Winchester: but I would go there a lot. I mean, and this was, you know, lift tickets were $20 or something back then, so it didn't really matter, and they had a lot of specials. So, I want to…01:03:51.000 --> 01:03:57.000Stuart Winchester: wrap up today, I want to talk about lift tickets a little bit, because there's some lift ticket deals going on.01:03:57.000 --> 01:03:59.000Stuart Winchester: And…01:03:59.000 --> 01:04:14.000Stuart Winchester: I'll tell you about the deals first, and then I'll, I'll tell you what I make of them as a, as a theme. So we're gonna focus on Colorado for a moment. So Arapahoe Basin, to celebrate its 80th anniversary, is doing $80 lift tickets every Wednesday.01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:29.000Stuart Winchester: from late December through April, except for December 30th, which is holiday week, of course. Uh, they are $50 on Wednesdays outside of those windows, so early season at A-Basin, and then late season, and of course, uh, the mountain typically goes until June.01:04:29.000 --> 01:04:35.000Stuart Winchester: $80 lift ticket today, based in on their anniversary weekend, Saturday and Sunday, December 5th and 6th.01:04:35.000 --> 01:04:45.000Stuart Winchester: Also, anyone born in 1946, making you 80 years old, skis free all winter. Uh, A-Basin has a lot of ways to get in cheap. They have 3-day packs.01:04:45.000 --> 01:05:00.000Stuart Winchester: With no blackouts, any day, use any 3 days for $249. They have midweek packs, 5 days for $319. Midweek season pass is $539, and a full is $699, and of course, A-Basin is unlimited on both the Icon and the Icon.01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:03.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, base pass, and I wanna see…01:05:03.000 --> 01:05:08.000Stuart Winchester: Okay, they did get rid of the fall pass. I had…01:05:09.000 --> 01:05:21.000Stuart Winchester: I had emailed, because… because A-Basin used to have this great pass for, like, 250 bucks. It was from opening day until Christmas, but they did get rid of it. Uh, and… and they… Shayna from A-Basin emailed, and she told me.01:05:21.000 --> 01:05:37.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, for background, that was a very small audience for, for us who were interested in the Fall Pass pack. So, uh, so thank you, Shayna, for getting back to me so quickly, and I'd sent that right before the podcast started. So, so A-Basin deals on Wednesdays, you know, put that down in your.01:05:37.000 --> 01:05:55.000Stuart Winchester: List if you, if you wanna actually day ski and maybe you have an epic pass, but you wanna, you miss a basin. Uh, and then Thursdays Copper Mountain is again doing $99 Thursdays. They're play for every Thursdays and a portion of that goes to a good cause. They're doing that every Thursday from January 7th to April 8th.01:05:55.000 --> 01:06:04.000Stuart Winchester: Including the holiday week in February, I don't know if that's a mistake, but grab it while you can, because I don't think they can take it back once you buy it. Uh, and then.01:06:04.000 --> 01:06:05.000Stuart Winchester: $99 a copper.01:06:05.000 --> 01:06:19.000Stuart Winchester: starting Monday, April 12th, which is pretty awesome. So, if you wanted to do a little day ski, and, you know, right now you can still buy tickets and everything, or still buy passes, because we're recording this on September 17th.01:06:19.000 --> 01:06:30.000Stuart Winchester: But if you're listening in the future, you could do a Wednesday $80 a day basin, a Thursday $99 at Copper Mountain. It's not a bad couple days in Summit County for a pretty reasonable price, given.01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:44.000Stuart Winchester: prices in 2026 for lift tickets at most mountains. Uh, down the road, Aspen, for its 80th anniversary, is doing $80 lift tickets Saturday and Sunday, December 12th and 13th. They also offered…01:06:44.000 --> 01:07:01.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, tickets for $3 and 75 cents for Monday, December 14th. But those are sold out and they, I'm pretty much sure they sold out instantly. And it's funny ‘cause they didn't even market it at first. And, and Aspen folks tell me they just blew off the shelves. So that is for Aspen's 80th anniversary.01:07:01.000 --> 01:07:17.000Stuart Winchester: Same year as, uh, a basin is celebrating right now. And of course, some of the little guys around there, you know, ski Cooper hasn't announced their lift ticket prices yet. And I know it's small, but it's still, it's, it's a place you can go. It's high. There's no snow making. It's all natural snow.01:07:17.000 --> 01:07:22.000Stuart Winchester: $49 midweek tickets at Ski Cooper last year, maxed out at $99 on weekends.01:07:22.000 --> 01:07:30.000Stuart Winchester: Down the road, if you're on your way to Aspen, Sunlight, which has 1,750 feet of vertical drop.01:07:30.000 --> 01:07:46.000Stuart Winchester: And two brand new lifts. Well, one was from a base and used, but it was only 20 years old. So they put in two brand new lifts last year. Big vertical. Uh, their lift tickets max out at $109. Midweek, they're $74 to $94. It's a fun little area. It gives you Colorado.01:07:46.000 --> 01:07:53.000Stuart Winchester: with a little bit more of a… a throwback Colorado, old Colorado feel. So, so the question here is.01:07:53.000 --> 01:07:57.000Stuart Winchester: Are we starting to see a rationalization?01:07:57.000 --> 01:07:58.000Stuart Winchester: In the lift ticket market.01:07:58.000 --> 01:08:04.000Stuart Winchester: Are we starting to see ski areas value the skier that.01:08:04.000 --> 01:08:19.000Stuart Winchester: maybe has an Icon Pass, but wants to ski another mountain for a day? Or I guess more in this case, since Copper and A-Basin are both Epic Pass mountains, are we seeing them take advantage of the fact that right now, if you look at prices for.01:08:19.000 --> 01:08:27.000Stuart Winchester: Breckenridge, it's $153 to ski on Friday, November 6th. Who knows what they'll have open? Probably not a lot.01:08:27.000 --> 01:08:43.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, it's 180 that day. Breckenridge goes over 300 for peak days. Uh, and on Monday, April 19th, as, as copper has dropped to 99, Breck right now is set to have a $179 walkup price for Monday, April 19th. So.01:08:43.000 --> 01:08:49.000Stuart Winchester: I think you're seeing some smart reactions from some of the…01:08:49.000 --> 01:08:55.000Stuart Winchester: larger players and showing there's still a competitive market in Colorado. The question is…01:08:55.000 --> 01:09:07.000Stuart Winchester: will Vail follow? In their earnings call, one of their earnings calls recently, uh, Rob Katz, or their end-of-year earnings, their CEO, Rob Katz, said that Lyft ticket sales had softened considerably.01:09:07.000 --> 01:09:14.000Stuart Winchester: To absolutely no one's surprise, uh, because of the price of lift tickets. So, Ken Vale…01:09:15.000 --> 01:09:27.000Stuart Winchester: find a way in the softer seasons to start to compete, because it's clear that their direct compe

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast likes it when ski areas are run by people who are good at running ski areas. Please subscribe to the email newsletter to get new posts the moment they're live. Thank you for supporting independent ski journalism.About CamelbackOwned by: EPR Properties, managed by Peregrine Hospitality (formerly KSL Resorts)Located in: Tannersville, PennsylvaniaYear founded: 1963Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts* Ikon Base Pass: 5 days, holiday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Shawnee Mountain (:24), Jack Frost (:26), Big Boulder (:27), Skytop Lodge (:29), Saw Creek (:37), Blue Mountain (:41), Pocono Ranchlands (:43), Montage (:44), Hideout (:51), Elk Mountain (1:05), Bear Creek (1:09), Ski Big Bear (1:16)Base elevation: 1,252 feetSummit elevation: 2,079 feetVertical drop: 827 feetSkiable Acres: 166Average annual snowfall: 50 inchesTrail count: 45, with three new trails for 2026-27 (not on the map below, but discussed on the podcast)Lift count: 12 (1 high-speed six-pack, 1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 2 doubles, 5 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Camelback's lift fleet)For reference:The Zoom transcript (click “transcript” above for the Substack transcript, then click on any text block to teleport to the associated point in the video; timestamps below DO NOT MATCH THE VIDEO)00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:37.000Stuart Winchester: Welcome to The Storm! I'm your host, Stuart Winchester. Today is Wednesday, September 16th, 2026, and I've got a really good show for you today.00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:45.000Stuart Winchester: we're going to talk some Pennsylvania skiing. And Pennsylvania skiing is a really interesting thing. As I travel around the country.00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:56.000Stuart Winchester: and ski at all these different places in the Midwest, and out West, and in New England, and in the Mid-Atlantic. Uh, and as I talk to folks who… who don't ski that much, or only ski at the big mountains.00:03:56.000 --> 00:04:05.000Stuart Winchester: I'll often bring up some experience I had at a Pennsylvania ski area. Pennsylvania has quite a few ski areas as 21.00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:20.000Stuart Winchester: public chairlift-served ski areas, and it does 2.6 million skier visits on average per year. That is more than any state except for Colorado, California, Utah, Vermont, and New York.00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:26.000Stuart Winchester: It's more than Washington, it's more than Oregon, it's more than Montana, it's more than New.00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:39.000Stuart Winchester: So, Pennsylvania is a really important ski state, which is probably why Vail Resorts owns 8 ski areas there, because it is really close to a lot of population centers. In western PA, you have Pittsburgh.00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:54.000Stuart Winchester: and Seven Springs, and Laurel, and Hidden Valley, and then you have Philadelphia on the east side, and you can also draw up from Baltimore and D.C. for Round Top and Whitetail. And uh…00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:57.000Stuart Winchester: And Jack Frost's Big Boulder up in the Poconos. So…00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:00.000Stuart Winchester: Vail has a big presence there.00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:15.000Stuart Winchester: Icon has a presence there with Camelback and Blue Mountain. Uh, and then Indy Pass just signed their 8th ski area in Pennsylvania with Spring Mountain, uh, down near Philadelphia. So, so it's, it's a place where a lot of skiers start.00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:19.000Stuart Winchester: And it's a little bit of a funny place to ski, because…00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:29.000Stuart Winchester: it tends to have an outsized number of novice skiers, which is great. They're very good at doing that. Uh, but it can make it a little chaotic.00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:38.000Stuart Winchester: And the lift lines can get a little crazy, and people are all over the hill, and sometimes they're walking down the hill because they're frustrated and they're giving up.00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:40.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, and…00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:44.000Stuart Winchester: You take that as your baseline in Pennsylvania.00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:49.000Stuart Winchester: And you had any sort of complications.00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:54.000Stuart Winchester: And things get out of hand really quickly. And in general.00:05:55.000 --> 00:06:00.000Stuart Winchester: For that reason, the ski areas that have survived in Pennsylvania.00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:07.000Stuart Winchester: are among the best operators in the world, and I would put that up against anyone.00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:14.000Stuart Winchester: It's a very, very challenging environment, not only because you have a high number of novice skiers.00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:17.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, but also because you have…00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:31.000Stuart Winchester: not a ton of snow, sometimes in the west part of the state, where there's higher elevation, they do get a lot of snow, but… but not as a rule, you couldn't count on it for natural snow. Uh, you get a lot of rain, you get a lot of warm-ups.00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:35.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, and… and you, in general, have to rely on…00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:42.000Stuart Winchester: a very short season, generally mid-December-ish to mid-March-ish.00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:45.000Stuart Winchester: And the skiers there…00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:52.000Stuart Winchester: They're they're accustomed to a pretty high standard, so.00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:57.000Stuart Winchester: So when things do get out of control, uh…00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:04.000Stuart Winchester: They really rebelled, and they really noticed. So, a couple years ago, this is what happened at Camelback. So, Camelback…00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:09.000Stuart Winchester: You know, I don't generally do ops stories, uh…00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:10.000Stuart Winchester: You know.00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:19.000Stuart Winchester: ski area didn't groom this run, or they haven't opened this lift, or, uh, you know, they usually let this bump up, but they don't, or, or…00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:27.000Stuart Winchester: you know, they… they are trying to save money, or they're being cheap. I generally don't bother with those, even though I get a lot of messages.00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:32.000Stuart Winchester: Complaining about things like that, because there's almost always a pretty good reason.00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:38.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, and it's almost always temporary, and it's really not worth the effort.00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:48.000Stuart Winchester: to write the story if I'm just writing about, you know, why Stratton or Mount Snow or Magic Mountain didn't open a certain lift on a certain day.00:07:48.000 --> 00:08:04.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, it's, it's a lot to track down and it's a lot of, uh, this person said this and the other person said that. It's just not the kind of thing that I'm want to cover with the storm, right? I want to do bigger stories. I want to do trend stories. I want to look at the culture and evolution of skiing.00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:11.000Stuart Winchester: And the passes, and all the infrastructure, and all the fun stuff. So I don't generally cover the day-to-day stuff, just because…00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:18.000Stuart Winchester: The ski areas that remain in 2026 are, for the most part, run by really good operators.00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:32.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, it… because… and they've survived. Most of the bad ski areas that were either mismanaged or were in the wrong places, they went out of business a long time ago, which is why the number of ski areas has been stable for around 25 years now in America.00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:35.000Stuart Winchester: So I but I started to notice.00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:45.000Stuart Winchester: several years ago that I was getting an outsized number of complaints around one ski area in particular in the Poconos.00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:47.000Stuart Winchester: And it was Camelback.00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:51.000Stuart Winchester: And Camelback had a long history of being an independent.00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:52.000Stuart Winchester: And…00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:54.000Stuart Winchester: Really…00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:59.000Stuart Winchester: the way it's been described to me by… by season pass holders, and I've skied…00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:04.000Stuart Winchester: some at Camelback, but I don't have that depth of knowledge of having grown up there.00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:20.000Stuart Winchester: That Camelback for a long time, for decades, set the standard on snowmaking, on grooming, on just general maintenance of lifts in the ski area in the Poconos. And that was why they had chosen to ski there all those years.00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:30.000Stuart Winchester: But things had started to fall apart when a new owner showed up in 2019. It was at the time KSL Capital, who was.00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:43.000Stuart Winchester: was managing it for EPR Properties, which is the entity that bought it, and they own a bunch of ski areas, EPR Properties, including a bunch owned by Vail, including North Star, and a lot of the old Peak Resorts in Ohio and such.00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:50.000Stuart Winchester: And KSL Resorts was a division of KSL Capital.00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:53.000Stuart Winchester: which is a part owner of Altera.00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:58.000Stuart Winchester: But for some reason, Altera, which is very good at running ski resorts.00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:00.000Stuart Winchester: did not…00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:15.000Stuart Winchester: get assigned as the… as the owner of Camelback. And when KSL Resorts purchased Blue Mountain, not in Ontario, the Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania, that's about 45 minutes from Camelback, two years later, in 2021.00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:26.000Stuart Winchester: That ski area also did not fall under Altera's ownership. And it was an odd choice to make, because Altera's really good at running ski areas, and they run…00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:35.000Stuart Winchester: Mammoth, and Deer Valley, and Steamboat, and Solitude, and Palisades Tahoe, and Stratton, and Sugarbush, and they definitely have.00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:41.000Stuart Winchester: the institutional knowledge and internal firepower to be able to run these ski areas in the Poconos.00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:43.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, Blue Mountain…00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:47.000Stuart Winchester: Had the benefit of a long time tenured management team.00:10:47.000 --> 00:11:02.000Stuart Winchester: That kept the place, by all accounts, running pretty well. Camelback, on the other hand, seemed to be falling apart before our eyes, and before the eyes of the loyalist skiers who loved the place so much. And they were really, really concerned, and I started to…00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:08.000Stuart Winchester: Because they had put, uh, a management team in place, it seemed.00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:10.000Stuart Winchester: that…00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:22.000Stuart Winchester: was not familiar with the… with the inner workings of a ski area. Uh, I… I hosted Dave Makarski, the former general manager of Kalenbach, on this podcast.00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:33.000Stuart Winchester: and very nice guy. We had a great conversation. Uh, he's not a skier. And, and, you know, sometimes you can be not a skier and run a great ski resort. Uh, look at Bill Stritzler up at Smuggler's Notch.00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:43.000Stuart Winchester: Bill hasn't skied in years, and he snowboarded for a little bit, but he's not a daily skier. Look at Shawnee.00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:54.000Stuart Winchester: that where the owner… that's one of the most modern, nice ski areas in the Poconos, uh, and the owner has not skied in decades. So, so it's not always necessary, uh, but…00:11:55.000 --> 00:12:10.000Stuart Winchester: It does help and it's certainly a benefit. So everyone I talked to, I was, I was gathering all this stuff for a story and I was gonna write about Camelback and, and it, it really seemed like it was the worst run ski area anywhere that I could find based on the amount of feedback I was getting.00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:25.000Stuart Winchester: I was gathering all this feedback from all these long-time pass holders, and then they hired a new general manager, and so I scrapped the story, but I still wanted to get it, and by all accounts, Jason Bays, who I'll bring on the podcast in a moment.00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:34.000Stuart Winchester: has really done a nice job of turning CamelBak around. So, so let's go to Jason now.00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:16.000Stuart Winchester: My guest today is the Vice President and General Manager of Camelback Ski Area in Pennsylvania.00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:26.000Stuart Winchester: Camelback runs six chairlifts, or maybe seven. I might have had a typo there. Serving 45 trails on an 827-foot vertical drop.00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:41.000Stuart Winchester: Prior to taking the top job at Camelback, he was general manager for Great Wolf Resorts around the United States. He also spent time as chief operating officer and general manager of Mountain Creek Ski Area in New Jersey and director of operations.00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:54.000Stuart Winchester: for Jay Peak, Vermont. His very first jobs as a teenager were as a lifeguard and ski instructor at Camelback. Jason Bay is my guest. Jason, welcome to the Storm. Awesome to have you. How you doing today?00:14:53.000 --> 00:15:00.000Jason Bays: Thank you, Stuart. Great to be here. I've been a listener from day one, so excited to join you.00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:14.000Stuart Winchester: I love that. I'm so hyped to hear that. I know I started with a little Northeast focus. You know, you're the… you probably know this already, but you're the second straight guest I've had on. There was a Mountain Creek alum, Chris Haggerty, on yesterday. Are you acquainted with Chris?00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:18.000Jason Bays: Yeah, Chris and I worked together, um, back in our days at Mountain Creek, great guy.00:15:17.000 --> 00:15:33.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, I'm, uh, I'm not sure, I'm sure you're aware I'm based in New York City and Mountain Creek is one of my go-tos and, and was my home mountain before I started traveling all over the place for the storm. So, so, you know, Jason, I, I think it's awesome that you grew up at Camelback. Tal.00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:41.000Stuart Winchester: your childhood Camelback. What was the kingdom of Camelback like to you, uh, when you were growing up skiing there?00:15:40.000 --> 00:16:03.000Jason Bays: Yeah, look, I, you know, took, I grew up in Pocono Kid, born and raised 10 minutes from the resort. After school ski program was the first, you know, first sort of foray into life at Camelback and was immediately hooked in the summer as a swimming pool and two water slides. I thought that was the most awesome place in the world too.00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:45.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:55.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:04.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:21.000Jason Bays: And my parents thought it was a great babysitting service, you know, relative to that. So it was just an awesome, awesome place to grow up and, you know, be part of the small but mighty ski community that is Tannersville, Pennsylvania, in this area, in the Poconos.00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:39.000Jason Bays: um, you know, when it came to get a first job, uh, there's no place I was, uh, gonna consider other than Camelback. It's where all my friends were, it's where we all hung out all the time, and, um, you know, really just got introduced to, uh, to the sport, and, um, had some freedom. It was the first time I had some freedom, and it was to be at Camelback, so that's.00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:29.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:56.000Stuart Winchester: So you worked there, and you were part of the machine, so to speak, and I realized you were sort of on the peripheral of the machine, as opposed to in the center of it, as you are now. But, you know, you grew up in the Poconos, and had that experience, and you had this vision of Camelback in your head, right? Then you went off and had a big life, as…00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:57.000Jason Bays: Yes.00:16:56.000 --> 00:17:00.000Stuart Winchester: as people do, and you went and worked at all these places that I just mentioned.00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:03.000Stuart Winchester: And then you came back to Camelback.00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:06.000Stuart Winchester: When you, when you arrived.00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:10.000Stuart Winchester: How had the place changed? And I just want to tee this up. I, you know.00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:19.000Stuart Winchester: before you came on, I was talking about how I don't generally write operations stories, right? Because it… there's usually a good reason for why a trail is closed, a lift's not running.00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:26.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, but a few years ago, I started to get an outsized number of complaints about Camelback.00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:38.000Stuart Winchester: And so I started to write a story about it, and then when you came along, I shelved it, because honestly, everyone immediately was like, oh, this is so much better. So, you know, how had…00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:41.000Stuart Winchester: Camelback changed.00:17:41.000 --> 00:17:42.000Stuart Winchester: when you…00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:44.000Stuart Winchester: Came back to work there.00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:51.000Stuart Winchester: And what were the challenges facing the resort? What did you focus on immediately?00:17:50.000 --> 00:18:08.000Jason Bays: Yeah, I'll just back up to say, you know, just to contextualize, um, from when I was there as a teenager and, um, through college on the ski team, too, I would say that community was a really big word, um, that was used all the time. You, you felt like it was, it was the Camelback community, and there's a really big emphasis on the ski product.00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:28.000Jason Bays: Um, as a ski instructor, like, what we were putting out, how we were doing lessons, how many lessons we could do, and the experience that was surrounding that. And same thing on the water park side. And, you know, I think the, um, you know, some of the observations, um, coming back to Camelback was, um, I think there's a little bit of focus, um, focus direction for, for, like, to focus on the ski product.00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:44.000Jason Bays: and focusing on the water park product, and I sort of look at it as, like, a… as Disney World, right? Whereas we fill out… if we do the ski part well, we do the snow tubing part well, we do the water park well, that puts heads in beds, um, versus trying to put heads in beds.00:18:44.000 --> 00:19:01.000Jason Bays: And then have them do the activities. We're leading with an activity front and centered focus. And that means making the strategic investments in the ski product, in our recreational product, and making that the very best that it can be.00:19:01.000 --> 00:19:23.000Jason Bays: back in 2008 when I was here as a teenager, that was all there was. There was no hotel product, right? So the ski product got outsized attention just naturally because it was a 560-acre resort that identified as a ski area and a water park. And I think some of the context that was missing was that while there's been a great evolution of Camelback as a four-season resort.00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:16.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:40.000Jason Bays: It's really important that, to me, that each of those business units gets the time and attention that they would deserve if they were stand-alone units, particularly because a cog… it's a cog in the wheel, and that wheel is… it's a flywheel. It needs to… it all needs to turn at once, and so we lead with.00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:43.000Jason Bays: the recreational offerings first.00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:48.000Stuart Winchester: You know, you mentioned the community, and I wasn't aware…00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:59.000Stuart Winchester: that there was such a strong community around Camelback, and I'm not surprised, because most ski areas have that group of folks who, you know, they're retirees, and they boot up at 8am, and they take runs together.00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:14.000Stuart Winchester: But they were really passionate, and the running theme, Jason, in the emails and messages that I got from Camelback locals was that they loved Camelback. It wasn't that they hated Camelback, they hated to complain about Camelback.00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:18.000Stuart Winchester: They wanted to love it, but they couldn't. There was there was.00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:34.000Stuart Winchester: a lot of things they cited, uh, not making snowmaking when it's cold, understaffed grooming, uh, missed lift inspections. I don't know if this is true. This is what people were… they were reaching, I think, for answers. Uh, put it all together, and there was… it was definitely…00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:47.000Stuart Winchester: seemed as though the ski product was not the focus. So when you came in, what did you focus on right away and say, okay, this is what we gotta change, you know, we have to cover every trail 100% right away, or whatever it was?00:20:47.000 --> 00:21:09.000Jason Bays: Yeah, I think that's, look, I would start, you hit the nail on the head that there's a very passionate skiing community here at Camelback and in the Poconos and it means a lot to people. This is second, third generations that are learning to ski here, bring their families here and be part of this. And to your point, everyone wants to be prideful of Camelback, right?00:21:09.000 --> 00:21:24.000Jason Bays: This was the, this was family run for a really long time and, you know, very focused on sort of the, you know, season pass holders renewing year after year.00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:40.000Jason Bays: You know, a couple of things. One is I think that how we authentically tell our story isn't done in a way that is, you know, is done in a way that's authentic. A, bringing back the Camelback Mountain Facebook page that communicated ski related content.00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:39.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:21:40.000 --> 00:22:06.000Jason Bays: Right? I think that, you know, there's only so many things you can say about a hotel room and how exciting it is. Like, we really lead now first with authentically telling the story. Our snow report got a lot more detailed, gave granular information as to what was going on. So, you know, did we have a perfect winter last winter? By all means, no, but we communicated that authentically. And where we messed up, we took.00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:23.000Jason Bays: the blame for it, and said, hey, we didn't get this right, and where we were working to improve the experience, we communicated that… communicated that story. So, to me, it started from a communication standpoint, that we were authentic, that we were honest, that we were truthful, and that we were communicating on a medium that.00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:31.000Jason Bays: our guests would see, um, and relate to. So I think a big miss was, I think, admittedly, a big miss was removing the, um, Camelback Mountain.00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:53.000Jason Bays: social media pages, um, and bringing those back were really important so that, um, we could tell the story authentically. I think SKUs really appreciate, um, knowing what's going on, and to your point on, hey, there's sort of this rumor flying or that rumor flying, um, you know, we were able to, uh, sort of hone in and, and tell, tell that story. Secondarily, I think from an infrastructure standpoint.00:22:53.000 --> 00:23:09.000Jason Bays: um, we really needed to make sure that we had, um, the right team in place. And we have an amazingly talented team at Camelback, um, but we did not have key positions filled, um, in certain areas. Um, and so, we bolstered up the snowmaking. Snowmaking team went from.00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:05.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:08.000Stuart Winchester: Like, what areas?00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:30.000Jason Bays: you know, 3 to 4 to 30, um, this past winter, um, that makes a big difference, right? Our trail rollout was, um, you know, first to open in the East, uh, for Pennsylvania, um, and, uh, um, and, and focus on the core products. Um, same thing with lift operations. We brought in a really experienced lift, uh, maintenance manager.00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:13.000Stuart Winchester: Hey!00:23:13.000 --> 00:23:14.000Stuart Winchester: Wow.00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:16.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:21.000Stuart Winchester: Yep.00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:46.000Jason Bays: Um, to our team that really helped, um, support our Lyft, um, uh, operation. Um, decisions on when Lyfts ran and what time they ran, uh, you know, our thought was, let's, um, be more… like, you have to run the Terrain Park Lyft every day.00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:47.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:23:46.000 --> 00:24:06.000Jason Bays: to me, that's a commitment. We make that every day. We say we're running the Glen Lift every day. It services great novice terrain. It services the train park. And so, looking at the operational plan and saying, okay, what are ways that we can give back, you know, and make deposits back to our skiers? And in turn.00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:24.000Jason Bays: that builds momentum, right? People talk, and, like, the ski community is so connected, right? It's like, if you do something, like, people find out about it, because they're really, you know, they hear about it. And so, for us, focus on the core business was, um, you know, from a ski standpoint, was really important, and the infrastructure.00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:13.000Stuart Winchester: Right.00:24:17.000 --> 00:24:19.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:41.000Jason Bays: to be able to do it. And I would just, lastly, just say I go back to making sure that our team had the resources to do their job. We're supported, we're empowered, collaborative leadership, you know, we sat around the table and said, this is the operating plan, this is what we're going to do for our guests.00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:46.000Jason Bays: And then go out and execute it to the best we can.00:24:45.000 --> 00:25:03.000Stuart Winchester: You know, Jason, I, I, I think you could have run for governor with one of the first things that you did, which was get rid of paid parking. I, I, I don't think that I've ever, uh, heard people happier about anything. Now, now, and let me, let me qualify this, right? I think in, in some instances, paid parking and parking reservations.00:25:03.000 --> 00:25:05.000Stuart Winchester: make sense.00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:18.000Stuart Winchester: you know, super high volume days. Arapahoe Basin, I think, is a model in Colorado where they only charge for certain days and certain times, and they keep backing off which days as they learn when they really need it. Camelback was charging every day.00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:36.000Stuart Winchester: All day, you know, a Monday with, you know, 10 people on the mountain, they were charging for it. And, you know, acknowledging that sometimes it's appropriate, I think Camelback got pretty out of hand with it, and when I had Mr. Markowski on the podcast, great guy, we had a great conversation, but he was not backing off that. He said, nope, paid parking.00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:51.000Stuart Winchester: we're all in. You said no. So talk about that and how you sold. I'd imagine it was a revenue stream, right? And you had to sell management on that, and I don't know if I'm giving you credit for something someone else did, but talk to us about parking and the evolution there.00:25:51.000 --> 00:26:12.000Jason Bays: Yeah, that was a week one decision from the Camelback team when I got here made from our leadership team at Camelback that everyone was in alignment on our senior leadership team here at the property and myself to remove the paid parking. And I think definitely there's actually you have so many nice pictures behind you.00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:30.000Jason Bays: I have a picture of the old paid parking sign behind me there, if you can see it on the corner, and it actually serves to me as a reminder of the guest experience, because someone's put a sticker on that paid parking sign that you probably can't see there, but it says, Ski Camelback, we're not happy until you're not happy.00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:48.000Jason Bays: Um, and it's a reminder to, to me and our team, um, that we're here to have fun, and we're here for the guest experience, and we're here to live, live and breathe fun Camelback style. This is not a, um, you know, we want guests to look forward to, to being here. And I think, you know, yes, there was.00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:38.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:26:48.000 --> 00:27:05.000Jason Bays: So obviously we ran a financial model. We didn't just, you know, get rid of paid parking and not assume, you know, that there wasn't some revenue to be recaptured elsewhere with a strategy to do it. But I think more importantly, you know, think about it.00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:22.000Jason Bays: a non-busy day, it might even be raining, it's 40 degrees, the last thing you want is someone running around a parking lot telling you, like, hey, I need you to hand over $15, and by the way, then you're gonna schlep your stuff up two different levels of parking, um, you know, that might be even charged higher, and then get to.00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:19.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:38.000Jason Bays: uh, the mountain and go to guest services. You know, I have a 3-year-old. If my wife and I went skiing, that would be an incredible amount of friction, um, just to get to, uh, the front of the mountain. And so I think putting ourselves in the guest lens of saying, is that really what we want the guests to experience?00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:30.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:53.000Jason Bays: Um, it's not, and, and it was a burden to everyone at this, you know, you think I'm talking about, we talked to frontline associates too, like, the first thing that they had to tell people was that they had to pay for parking. You just imagine, sort of, the cascading effect that, that, that, uh, that that had, and we said, look, is there.00:27:53.000 --> 00:28:09.000Jason Bays: Um, is there a better way? Um, can we run shuttles to these lots and pick people up and bring them to the mountain and make them feel, um, you know, like our valued… like our valued guests? What does that arrival experience look like? Um, you know, that's really what we… what we looked at, and then said, okay.00:28:09.000 --> 00:28:25.000Jason Bays: can we… ultimately, will we drive more volume here? Will more people come because of a better guest experience? And I'll say that I would rather grow the sport, grow the industry. Our team would rather grow the sport and grow the industry than figuring out how to.00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:35.000Jason Bays: You know, sort of, you know, run a secondary ancillary business that's not to our core product and what we want our guests to experience here.00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:48.000Stuart Winchester: You know, it's a little counterintuitive, but sometimes, by removing a revenue stream, you get that less-is-more effect. Another example, your season pass, you know, according to my records.00:28:48.000 --> 00:29:04.000Stuart Winchester: Starting in 2020 to ‘21, the season pass was $599 at its early bird price, and it hovered between that and $649 for the next five years. This year, you put it on sale for $399. It's still at that price for unlimited Camelback.00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:20.000Stuart Winchester: That's a great bargain for, uh, for a season pass on the East Coast, and, you know, for the listeners, you are competing with the Epic Pass, which has Jack Frost, Big Boulder, right down the road, a couple exits down I-80, and their Northeast season pass is pretty affordable, and it's a pretty good deal.00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:33.000Stuart Winchester: So… so talk to us about that decision and… and… and how… how that $399 is worth it. You also wrote back, if you want to talk about, uh, the… the triple pack. I thought that was great, and I don't have the price right in front of me, but… but you've really done a lot to… to…00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:39.000Stuart Winchester: create more of a value experience for that loyal Camelback skier, from my point of view.00:29:39.000 --> 00:29:55.000Jason Bays: Yeah, thank you, and that's definitely the goal. Um, you know, I think our thought process here is let's get more people on Snow, um, and have them have a great experience while they're here. Um, I would love to tell you that there's some master business plan behind this.00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:52.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:29:55.000 --> 00:30:10.000Jason Bays: But, you know, truly, at the heart of what we do is, let's figure out how to get more people on snow, get them to a spot where they want to come back and learn and be part of it. And guess what I would just share to that is.00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:24.000Jason Bays: you know, we were charging a day ticket in 2025 of $169, um, at its highest point, right? And I would rather have a lifelong… I would rather have one per… I would much rather, I think from business proposition, we would rather have.00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:17.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:39.000Jason Bays: one person definitely not come and spend $15 to $40 to park and $169 and say, I'm never coming back, versus $399, now they're like, wow, this place is awesome, I'm getting a great value, I bring my family.00:30:32.000 --> 00:30:33.000Stuart Winchester: Damn.00:30:39.000 --> 00:31:01.000Jason Bays: I want to come enjoy food and beverage. And hey, by the way, we also have this great snow tubing park and this great water park. And would you like to stay at our hotel when you come with your season pass and enjoy Aquatopia? And we're debuting The Curse of Camelback this fall, right? Which is the Halloween, if you haven't heard, it's a Halloween 13 scare zones. Take a chair, lift up to it.00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:03.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:24.000Jason Bays: But I say all that to say we've got so many great cross marketing promotional opportunities at Camelback that that really becomes a super compelling business case for us. And I think it's the right thing to do for the sport is grow it, make it more accessible, allow more people to come here and see what we have to offer. I can't tell you how many people I meet, whether it's snow tubing, skiing.00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:41.000Jason Bays: water park, the hotel, whatever they're here for, CBKMA or Adventure Park, they have no idea that the other part exists to, um, the resort. And I'll share that that's been the case even in, like, when I was, uh, at Jay Peak running the water park.00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:34.000Stuart Winchester: Hmm. Okay.00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:43.000Jason Bays: People would come there, and they'd be like.00:31:43.000 --> 00:32:02.000Jason Bays: what is this mountain that is here? And it's Jay Peak, like, one of the most hardcore ski resorts in the world. And there were people that were coming there and were like, I had no idea there was a ski resort here. So, if it's true at Jay Peak, it certainly is true at Camelback, where.00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:49.000Stuart Winchester: Right.00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:52.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:31:52.000 --> 00:31:53.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:00.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:02.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, okay.00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:19.000Jason Bays: we have all these different offerings that people don't know about, maybe necessarily about all of them, so our fundamental business philosophy is make it accessible, make them lifelong, um, skiers and riders, and introduce them to everything that we have to offer here in the Poconos. And I would just argue, when I say Poconos.00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:41.000Jason Bays: Like go, like experience Shawnee and experience Jack Frost Big Boulder and experience, you know, the other great ski areas in this region and Mountain Creek and wherever else and get a flavor for it. I think that's, we could use more skiers in the industry and to grow the sport. So for us, that's sort of the long-term business model that we're using.00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:23.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:58.000Stuart Winchester: So, I just looked at the triple ticket, and it looks like $149, and I think that's no blackouts. $199 includes rentals. That's pretty amazing. So, talk about that product, and then you mentioned the $169 peak day ticket. Have you settled on prices yet for 2020?00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:03.000Stuart Winchester: 6, 27. I should have checked your site in advance, but I didn't. So I don't know if you've.00:33:03.000 --> 00:33:21.000Jason Bays: Yeah, we have not, uh, posted, uh, day ticket prices for this year. Last year, um, we didn't exceed around $110, um, on a day ticket. Uh, so we kept it, I think, pretty reasonable for, for, for a, for a Pocono offering. Um, triple tickets, massive, um, success, uh, for us.00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:12.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, okay.00:33:14.000 --> 00:33:15.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah.00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:37.000Jason Bays: Um, and when we talk about, like, again, getting more people introduced to the sport, you don't necessarily pick up skiing on the first time. Um, you think about that rental product, which we, um, tremendously… whatever we had on the pro forma for that was, uh, blown by by, like.00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:30.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:53.000Jason Bays: 400% on the triple ticket with rentals. And what I really believe in is that, you know, you become a lifelong skier by getting repetition, not by going once a year. It's really hard to sustain as a skier going once a year.00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:52.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.00:33:53.000 --> 00:34:11.000Jason Bays: and saying, oh yeah, that was our trip. We're really trying to create a guest for life and get them to return visit. That's in many ways more important to us than, again, trying to get, like, the highest yield on that one day that they picked. Like, come back and visit our resort and, um, you know, again, the business side to this is.00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:28.000Jason Bays: we're cross-marketing across all of our other offerings here that we have on this campus to say, come and visit us again. And again, to us, that's more important than, you know, the highest yield that we can get to. So the triple ticket's really successful. And I think one last thing I would share.00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:46.000Jason Bays: a lot of season passes in the market right now, um, the triple ticket's a great opportunity for people to get a couple of days at Camelback, even if they've committed somewhere else, and particularly, you know, our long season, um, there's plenty of time to use it, um, as well, uh, from the, uh, long season that we established from last year.00:34:46.000 --> 00:34:50.000Stuart Winchester: Jason, I think that's a really smart way to look at it as…00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:57.000Stuart Winchester: a… creating a habit rather than pulling as much yield as possible. And a lot of the larger operators.00:34:57.000 --> 00:35:11.000Stuart Winchester: get frustrated with me and the rest of the ski media because they don't understand why we focus on that peak price, right? Because the peak lift ticket this year at Beaver Creek is $392, set to be. Probably almost no one will pay that price, but…00:35:11.000 --> 00:35:28.000Stuart Winchester: What it does is it acts as a, a billboard for the rest of the ski industry and especially so, so Camelback for, for people who don't know when you're driving on I 80 I mean, you see it, it looms right over the highway. It is one of the major interstates in America, especially at night. The thing is lit up.00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:46.000Stuart Winchester: And so, chances are, if people think about skiing, and they think about where to go, they're gonna think about the most obvious one, and that's Camelback, and that's why, for many years, it was that, or Seven Springs was the busiest ski area in Pennsylvania, traditionally. So I think that's a really smart way to look at it, because if people show up that one time, and.00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:59.000Stuart Winchester: cost them, you know, $500 for 2 people, they're just not gonna come back, and they're not gonna try Shawnee, or… or Blue Mountain, or Jack Frost, or Elk Mountain, or Montage. So, um, I wanna talk about… Jason, I wanna talk about Lyft.00:35:59.000 --> 00:36:16.000Stuart Winchester: And… can you see this trail map? This is an old trail map. I mentioned that I know this, so for those watching on StormSkiing.com or YouTube, you can see this. So there's been a ton of changes, and I want to break all these down with you. The first I want to talk about is, over the past couple years.00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:32.000Stuart Winchester: Mark Antony and Cleopatra, these two lifts right here, an old triple and an old double, have been removed. Can you talk about why you took those lifts out of service, and if you plan to replace them with anything, or what you planned, or what the rationale was behind it?00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:49.000Jason Bays: Yeah, I appreciate that. Uh, that does predate my time here, that they had reached the end of their, um, uh, ability to operate. Um, and so they have, um, both been, um, sort of partially disassembled. Um, there is unfortunately not.00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:37.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:36:39.000 --> 00:36:41.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:36:46.000 --> 00:36:47.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:36:49.000 --> 00:37:05.000Jason Bays: I, by the way, two of my favorite lifts when I was a ski instructor, because you could get right up and not wait in long lines on the weekends, so absolutely realizing and recognizing the capacity that they brought, but no opportunity for us to.00:37:01.000 --> 00:37:02.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:23.000Jason Bays: um, reinstate those lifts as presently, um, as presently, uh, uh, sort of, um, situated, um, and, and not, not, not able to, uh, um, not able to, uh, rerun them. It will require a, um, new, uh, chairlift to, um, to ultimately replace.00:37:23.000 --> 00:37:37.000Jason Bays: those two lifts. It saddens me to share that, but that is, in fact, what has happened there, and I've been very open with our season pass holders about that messaging and the why behind it.00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:41.000Stuart Winchester: So, so in fantasy ski resort world, Jason.00:37:41.000 --> 00:37:46.000Stuart Winchester: Would you put a new lift here, and what would you put, if you could?00:37:45.000 --> 00:38:04.000Jason Bays: Yeah, absolutely. Um, same thing. We've, uh, we've made clear, uh, with no time, no official time frame to share, um, but certainly, uh, we've, we've, um, had, uh, preliminary conversations, um, about a fixed grip, um, quad that would, uh, would be able to take the place of both of those lifts, uh, and create that.00:38:03.000 --> 00:38:04.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:10.000Jason Bays: original redundancy that those two lifts brought to the resort when they were in operation.00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:27.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, that would be really nice. So, so, so these are gone and I, I have a, a current trail map now. So, um, and, and it's not completely current. We'll discuss the new trails in a moment, but this is the most current posted on your website. So, uh, we go over, these are the lifts that remain and see, uh, yeah, I, I miscounted in my intro, so sorry about that.00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:42.000Stuart Winchester: So this one is Stevenson, and Stevenson was, uh, it's a high-speed quad, uh, for the listeners, and it… it was a real junker. It was always stop, stop, stop, and, you know, it was… it was really… seemed to be falling apart and have a lot of issues. Now, uh, in 2020…00:38:42.000 --> 00:38:51.000Stuart Winchester: 5, this year, or 2024, I believe, Camelback, uh, McCarthy, the GM at the time, sent out a letter saying it was due for a…00:38:51.000 --> 00:38:53.000Stuart Winchester: Waltz.00:38:53.000 --> 00:39:02.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, let me see what he said… like, a complete modernization of Stevenson. So, so did that happen? And talk to us about Stevenson, and what kind of shape it's in right now.00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:20.000Jason Bays: Yeah, great, um, yes, that was a, uh, look, an amazing, um, project that was completed by, uh, by Dave and team, um, to modernize that lift. Um, it has, essentially, Doppelmayr came in and put in an entire new, uh, minus the, uh, minus the, uh, uh, the terminals and the.00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:09.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:35.000Jason Bays: Um, uh, and the structure itself, um, essentially all new components, all new electrical, um, uh, wiring components to it, a lot of the things that had plagued it. Um, and last year, uh, it operated 138 days.00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:36.000Stuart Winchester: Unbelievable.00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:53.000Jason Bays: Uh, which for Pennsylvania, uh, that's pretty darn good. I think we recognize it's a workhorse, um, it's key to accessing some really, um, fantastic terrain for us, um, and that modernization project with Doppel… in, um, partnership with Doppelmeyer that was done in the summer and fall of 2025.00:39:53.000 --> 00:39:54.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:39:53.000 --> 00:40:08.000Jason Bays: um, was, uh, very, uh, so it's all immediate impact, um, with, uh, Stevenson Reliability this past year, and we expect that to, uh, you know, knock on wood, to, uh, to continue going forward. We essentially, again, have a brand new lift, minus the, uh.00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:10.000Jason Bays: Uh, minus the physical pieces.00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:26.000Stuart Winchester: That's a really smart way to do it because they are tremendously expensive, these new lifts. And for folks who are watching or listening, this Stevenson is really important because you walk out of this giant hotel that's right here, that's not on the trail map with 400 and some rooms, and that is how you get up the mountain. Otherwise you got to.00:40:26.000 --> 00:40:41.000Stuart Winchester: pull your way over, so when that lift is not running or has problems, it's a real big issue. So, the alternative was, over here, Black Bear 6, uh, you replaced an old high-speed quad that was there, and… and I love this Black Bear 6 lift. It is…00:40:41.000 --> 00:41:01.000Stuart Winchester: Freakin' Ferrari, man. I think the price they gave me was something like $12 million that they spent, or maybe it was $10 to put that in. So that's the alternative, right? If you don't just modernize that current lift, you replace it. So, uh, Black Bear is awesome. I love it. It has bubbles. Is it too much? I mean, I know that KSL Now Peregrine had reasons for.00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:16.000Stuart Winchester: for putting it in, but what have you learned from a couple of years of having BlackBerry around, which is, again, probably the nicest lift in the state of Pennsylvania and one of the nicest in the Northeast, but maybe a little heavier than what you need for CamelBak, but I don't know, you tell me.00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:41.000Jason Bays: Yeah, you know, you know what I would share to that, um, you know, we, we brought it back for scenic chairlift rides this summer, and I mean, it's a massive hit. The summer, summer guests love, uh, the bubbles, they put them down when it's sunny, they put them down, um, probably gets more use in the summer as a bubble lift than the winter, uh, but look, it's, it's nice to, uh, have on the days where, you know, there's some liquid precipitation out here. It certainly happens in the Poconos.00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:24.000Stuart Winchester: Hmm.00:41:34.000 --> 00:41:35.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:58.000Jason Bays: um, and, uh, and, and or, um, uh, you know, other, other weather events, it's, it's, it's a nice to have, um, and it certainly, it gets you up in, you know, a little bit over two minutes. Um, it's a smooth ride, it's a great ride. Um, you are not going to get any complaints from me that we have a, um.00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:48.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:41:51.000 --> 00:41:52.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:41:58.000 --> 00:42:11.000Jason Bays: bubble, D-line, six-pack, um, in place, uh, and able to operate as our main workhorse lift. Um, and, uh, I think the six-pack versus the quad was absolutely the right, uh, call. Um…00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:27.000Jason Bays: from my experience being here before with the Sullivan Express, um, with the four-seater, the six-seater, just the… the added, uh, ability, uh, there is, uh, is… is well worth it. So, uh, we're happy to have that… happy to have that lift. I… I wouldn't, uh… I wouldn't…00:42:27.000 --> 00:42:31.000Jason Bays: We won't be trading it in at this point. Let's put it that way.00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:38.000Stuart Winchester: It is a gorgeous machine, and I have to tell you, I'm that weird person who, if there's a line on one lift.00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:56.000Stuart Winchester: And no line on the lift next to it. Even if it's a slower lift, I'll take the slower lift, because I just would rather not deal with the hassle of the line. So right here, for those who are watching, is the Bailey Double, and this is an old chair lift. It's an old slow double, it runs almost exactly parallel to Black Bear 6, doesn't land quite as high.00:42:56.000 --> 00:43:16.000Stuart Winchester: on the mountain, but functionally, it does about the same thing for you. So I like Bailey, and I was glad to see that not only did you keep it, and it does run, and that was true even under the previous regime, but you got a new gearbox for it, which is a really big deal for a lift like this in several decades. Also, talk about the work you've done on Bailey, and how you hope to use that lift.00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:18.000Stuart Winchester: this year to complement Black Bear.00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:21.000Jason Bays: Yeah, so, um, Bailey Lift…00:43:21.000 --> 00:43:32.000Jason Bays: full disclosure, Bailey Lift, Meadows Lift, Raceway Lift, and our season pass holders are very aware of this. Um, unfortunately, uh, we're not, um…00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:41.000Jason Bays: ready for day one of last year, um, or even close. And so, uh, we had to do a lot of, um…00:43:34.000 --> 00:43:35.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:43:41.000 --> 00:43:57.000Jason Bays: normal PM maintenance, um, throughout the, um, end of fall and into winter to have all of them operational. Um, what I share to that is, um, we will run, just level set here really quickly, we will run all the lifts that we have on this trail map.00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:44.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:43:57.000 --> 00:44:02.000Jason Bays: Um, and take care of them, maintain them, operate them.00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:18.000Jason Bays: Staff them, everything that you would do to run the extra capacity, we certainly need it. We'd like more capacity, actually. So that being said, Bailey Lift is critical. We got it back online.00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:10.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:34.000Jason Bays: End of January, it ran for 2 or 3 weekends, and we had a failed gearbox, um, on it, which is really unfortunate. Um, this off-season, uh, we've replaced the gearbox, we've done a full PM over the course of the summer on it, which is…00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:50.000Jason Bays: the, as you, as everyone knows, the ideal time, uh, to be, um, conducting such work, um, so that it is ready on, uh, day one. Um, it is a critical backup lift. We will run it every weekend.00:44:50.000 --> 00:45:07.000Jason Bays: Um, that we're, you know, in season, I would say in the heart of season, we're gonna run it. Won't be shy to not run it. Um, same thing with the Meadows, same thing with the Glen, same thing with the Raceway, which, um, you know, I know that that was, um, certainly chief among the complaints of.00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:22.000Jason Bays: locals and guests who were visiting from out of town alike was Lyft availability, Lyft reliability. That was something that we focused as fast as we could on last year, but we're setting ourselves up this year to be.00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:39.000Jason Bays: um, very proactive to that, and recognizing the importance of, of each of, uh, uh, you know, each of these. And look, every once in a while, uh, if the, you always want to have, like, Bailey is critical because it's the only other, if there's Black Bear, without Black Bear, it's the only other thing left, right?00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:38.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:45:39.000 --> 00:45:55.000Jason Bays: Um, and so, uh, you know, I think the, you know, back in the, when I was here, like, every Lyft ran on the weekends. It was Camelback. Um, it was busy, right? Like, everything was going. That's, that's essentially our, our, our philosophy, um, will continue to be our philosophy going forward.00:45:46.000 --> 00:45:48.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:45:55.000 --> 00:46:11.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, Jason, I'll admit, I didn't come to Camelback last season, so I wasn't able to experience it firsthand. I really wanted to come to your May thing, which I'll talk about, I'll get to in a minute, but I had a shoulder surgery, so I wasn't able to do that. But I wasn't only basing my perceptions of C.00:46:11.000 --> 00:46:19.000Stuart Winchester: on locals' reactions. I had skied there myself in recent years, and the lift line management, I have to say.00:46:19.000 --> 00:46:21.000Stuart Winchester: It was…00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:33.000Stuart Winchester: really frustrating from a skier point of view, when you're waiting for the Stevenson lift, and there's a big line, and every chair is going up with one or two people, and this is not peak COVID or anything else, this is several years later.00:46:33.000 --> 00:46:50.000Stuart Winchester: So, you know, and I had a lot of locals tell me, oh, we walk up Sun Bowl because the lift line is just too chaotic. People come from both sides. No, no, again, that was all before. What's your philosophy of lift line management? How have you tried to tame that? And there's always, it's always going to be a little wild and hard in Pennsylvan.00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:56.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, but they could definitely have been managed better. Is that something that was important to you, that you focused on?00:46:56.000 --> 00:47:15.000Jason Bays: Yeah, we focused on that. We have a new lift operations manager that was hired in November of 2025, who took the bull by the horns. We developed a supervisor team in fairly short order to that as well, to build out a well-rounded team. And then I would just share that our lift attendants.00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:32.000Jason Bays: All hired locally within the community. And I think that we were fully staffed in LiftOps this year, which was a big, very big win. It starts there, right? A, the people, and then B, the right people.00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:23.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:47:32.000 --> 00:47:49.000Jason Bays: um, on the, uh, on the bus, um, as a catalyst to drive, uh, lift operations forward. Um, and then absolutely, uh, we focused on, uh, line management, queuing, um, we set new, in some cases, new queues. We had, um, uh, supervisors, in many cases, out.00:47:49.000 --> 00:48:04.000Jason Bays: um, putting up chairs, um, and, um, and managing the lift line. We added, once we got that right, and we felt like we were in a good spot, and we, you know, look, I think, admittedly, a couple technology hiccups here and there, it was not a perfect, uh.00:48:04.000 --> 00:48:17.000Jason Bays: we didn't, like, on opening day, it wasn't perfect, but, uh, we improved, it was a big focus for our team, and I think when we talk about fundamental ski operation, um, if we just were a ski area, we would absolutely be focusing on.00:48:06.000 --> 00:48:08.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:48:17.000 --> 00:48:36.000Jason Bays: lift queuing, but we have to do that, like, we have to execute that every day because we are a ski area, um, and that's core to our business, and so that's important. Um, then we added, once we got queuing, uh, uh, correct, we added surprise and delights. Lift, uh, chocolate chip cookies were massively popular.00:48:36.000 --> 00:49:04.000Jason Bays: We handed out over 15,000 chocolate chip cookies this winter at the Stevenson lift line. And so, you know, then it becomes fun, right? Then it's the hospitality side of the business of how do we engage with our guests now that we have full chairs going up for the most part off of the Stevenson and the Black Bear and the Sun Bowl. So we hired extra associates to do that, to surprise and delight, to help our guests.00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:42.000Stuart Winchester: Cool.00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:20.000Jason Bays: The one other thing I would just share is Sunbowl is a great example. How many people get down to the Sunbowl and have never ridden a lift before? And so you need that extra human touch to be able to help. It's not even just putting people in groups of four. It's just helping them with like, here's where you go to load the lift. Here's what you do.00:49:12.000 --> 00:49:14.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:21.000Stuart Winchester: Yep.00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:33.000Jason Bays: Um, I think that that investment in our people to provide that service to our guests is very well worth it, and it's the difference between someone having a bad experience getting on a lift and never coming back.00:49:33.000 --> 00:49:43.000Jason Bays: or having a great experience, feeling well cared for, and wanting to try again. Um, and so that, that, that was, um, you know, I think that's a core, um, focus for us.00:49:43.000 --> 00:50:02.000Stuart Winchester: So, one of the ways that I can tell the resort is being run by a skier, in addition to all the things you just said, and your passion for the minutiae of things like lift lines, which I share, is that you're cutting 3 new trails in a resort that's 60 years old, and I love that. So, talk us through these trails, Jason. I'll do my best to trace them.00:50:02.000 --> 00:50:08.000Stuart Winchester: on the trail map. I don't have the updated trail map, I don't know if you've created it yet, but talk us through these three trails.00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:25.000Jason Bays: Yeah, so we're really excited. Look, this, you know, came after, you know, the so many guests, new guests that visited us at Camelback this past season. We said, you know what, let's do something fun and exciting. And like, you know, you think about how.00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:43.000Jason Bays: Um, yeah, I just, you know, if someone said, anyone puts in a new trail, uh, the skier in me wants to drive to that resort, no matter how big or small, and be like, alright, like, let's do it. Um, and our team feels, uh, you know, much of the same way. So, um, that being said, uh, we had a lot of natural snowfall this year, so…00:50:32.000 --> 00:50:33.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:50:33.000 --> 00:50:36.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:37.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, sure. Yeah.00:50:43.000 --> 00:50:59.000Jason Bays: I was acutely paying attention to where people were skiing when we had natural snowfall, where they wanted to go, and then, you know, maybe following those lines, too, and seeing what the fun was about. So, my point to all of that is, we said, let's create some, and I think for Camelback, too.00:50:46.000 --> 00:50:48.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:50:59.000 --> 00:51:15.000Jason Bays: it's very, um, you know, we wanted to create something that was sort of unique. I didn't want to just put in, like, regular trails that, A, we don't have a lot of space for regular trails, and B, um, we really wanted to create sort of unique experience. So, right underneath Black Bear, um, in between Sullivan and John Bailey there.00:51:07.000 --> 00:51:09.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:30.000Jason Bays: um, there's a, um, there's a chute, um, where the old Alpine Slide used to go. Basculus goes back into Rocket, uh, but underneath there is some really fun rolling terrain. Like, it's, it's because the mountain, the, uh, Alpine Slide.00:51:26.000 --> 00:51:28.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:54.000Jason Bays: back in the day did had several dips and curves and so we're going to lean into those dips and curves and create something sort of fun that you can get some you know launch some airtime off of if you want or carve a turn over it but it'll have some some really nice terrain variation in a way that most trails at Camelback don't have and they're coming off of an expert trail there so.00:51:54.000 --> 00:52:06.000Jason Bays: um, gives, uh, you know, anyone skiing Asp, Hump, Rocket, um, or Basilisk would be able to reach that trail, um, and, uh, and be able to, uh, just have a little bit more excitement on the way back down.00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:08.000Jason Bays: Um…00:52:08.000 --> 00:52:20.000Jason Bays: Upper Cleopatra there, if you go to the, uh, where the U is, uh, or where Upper is, we're gonna cut a trail through the woods there that's going to end up on the bottom of Big Pocono.00:52:19.000 --> 00:52:21.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:31.000Jason Bays: Um, so it's gonna go down and across. So, um, that… um, and I see where your cursor is. If you go to the… where it says Upper on Upper Cleopatra.00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:29.000Stuart Winchester: So, like, here? Or…00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:32.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, upper…00:52:32.000 --> 00:52:54.000Jason Bays: So, Big Pocono, that's Uncle B. Yeah, right there. Yep, we're going through there. Yeah, so that's gonna be, that's a narrow blue square. So, you know, I think one of the things that's fun for us is we're gonna create a blue square there. That used to be a trail back in the 60s and 70s, fun fact, when Walter Foger was designing Camelback.00:52:34.000 --> 00:52:37.000Stuart Winchester: Upper… oh, this one. Okay, so you're cutting through here?00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:39.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, cool. Okay.00:52:49.000 --> 00:52:51.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, cool.00:52:54.000 --> 00:53:09.000Jason Bays: Um, that being said, um, the… actually, it got filled in with pine trees, so it's gonna be really cool, because there's pine trees on both sides. Um, we made it narrow, so we kept the pine trees, um, and so that's gonna be a really fun, um, sort of narrow… I think about, like, the, um.00:52:58.000 --> 00:52:59.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:53:01.000 --> 00:53:03.000Stuart Winchester: That's cool. It's pretty.00:53:09.000 --> 00:53:26.000Jason Bays: the ending of Jay Peak with some of the blues at the very bottom there by Interstate. We're trying to sort of have that, obviously in a much smaller zone, have that same effect, though, where you're feeling like you're really in the trees, and you've got some nice twists and turns to it. It's not terribly steep.00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:13.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, okay.00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:44.000Jason Bays: Um, two things on that trail. One is, it takes traffic off of Honeymoon Lane, which is a main boulevard, it pushes it onto the Sphinx, which has much more trail capacity, which is great, um, comfortable carrying capacity, and secondarily, um, on weekends, we're gonna have a hot chocolate, um, hut that people can ski up to.00:53:31.000 --> 00:53:32.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:53:44.000 --> 00:53:52.000Jason Bays: Um, and get shots of hot chocolate, um, as well, so we're excited to, um, uh, to offer that to our guests. We think that'll be really fun.00:53:46.000 --> 00:53:47.000Stuart Winchester: That's cool.00:53:51.000 --> 00:53:53.000Stuart Winchester: That was awesome.00:53:53.000 --> 00:54:17.000Jason Bays: And then the Stevenson, it's going to drop on the cliffhanger side and drop down that lift line and go right down into the Faroe there and follow that lift line. Vermont skiing in a very short array but very much Vermont skiing, that's an intimidating drop. Stevenson for those that may not be familiar has a extremely.00:53:53.000 --> 00:53:55.000Stuart Winchester: And it.00:53:58.000 --> 00:53:59.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:54:08.000 --> 00:54:09.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I think so.00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:34.000Jason Bays: extremely tight, um, and high, uh, crest of the lift, because the mountain crests, um, really steeply. Well, we're gonna ski that, um, and, uh, and make snow on it, and, uh, and, and, uh, and allow our guests to, uh, um, and allow skiers to, uh, to, to, to test, um, you know, a more narrow.00:54:34.000 --> 00:54:44.000Jason Bays: um, uh, trail up there that has a really great expansive view ov

Jesse and his Perfectly Good Podcast cohost Sylvan Groth sit down to talk with her friend and neighbor, Vermont songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Bow Thayer. Bow shares his journey from growing up in Massachusetts to finding a home making over 30 albums in the small town of Vermont. He shares stories of connecting with Levon Helm, touring, having a family and his latest venture of a campground and concert venue called KnowTown. Bow also discusses his upcoming album. Inspired by both Vermont's remote Lake Ninevah and the ancient city of Nineveh, Ninevah explores nature, division, transition, and rebirth. After spending nearly a year recording the project alone, Bow scrapped much of it, took the songs on an Alaskan tour with guitarist Krishna Guthrie and percussionist Steve Ferraris, then returned to Vermont to record the album's core live. The record also features Val McCallum, James Rohr, Chazz Canney, Jabe Beyer, and Tyler Bolles and was mixed by three-time Grammy winner Justin Guip. Here's the bandcamp link https://bowthayer.bandcamp.com/album/ninevah Spotify and the others just have the single out for now https://open.spotify.com/album/2fG9WNXw1pstyyDUuPG7KH?si=HVpkGWrIRRiZMQ_xqP5Zyg&utm_source=copy-link https://music.apple.com/us/song/old-news/6804823311 https://amazon.com/music/player/albums/B0HGDJM38Q?marketplaceId=ATVPDKIKX0DER&musicTerritory=US&ref=dm_sh_bIfpT9jWrxbAoYjKXLquDmv3k Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Suzanne Seymour, independent candidate for the U.S. House to represent Vermont's At-Large Congressional District, joins Kurt & Guy to discuss her campaign.

Chaos always prompts us to search for something solid. Confronted by the upheaval of economic reckoning, ecological exhaustion, and existential uncertainty, our souls are reaching for anything tangible and true. We want what's real. That's the core message of Ryan Levesque, a seven-time Inc. 5000 CEO who walked away from his former life to move with his family to a farm in Vermont. He joins Michael and Megan to talk about his book Return to Real and how we can respond wisely to the hunger felt in our souls and in the marketplace within an artificial, digital age. He unpacks how we can craft moments—at work and at home—that reward what makes us uniquely human. Because that's what we're all longing and looking for.Memorable Quotes“The double craving—what your body, your heart, what your spirit is starving for right now—is also what much of the market is starving for. And when you can find the intersection… there's economic opportunity. What's good for your biology can also be good for your bottom line.”“The last decade, in many ways, in business was a story about dopamine… ‘Create an app that's addictive so people keep coming back to it.' But if we look at most of the maladies of modern life—loneliness, disconnection—they are symptoms of a lack of the neurotransmitter oxytocin. Oxytocin is a neurotransmitter of trust, of love.”“We're swimming in this sea of artificial everything, and we're seeking truth. We live in an era of a default state of distrust… We no longer trust our eyes and ears, our sensory experience, when we are experiencing the world through a screen.”“The truth is in the tension. It's not ‘Throw AI in a bin.' It's not ‘Go 100% analog.' It's about picking the right moments and the right places to insert it.”“People will pay for work that's been attached to a real human life… When people see the work and the effort that's gone into something, they value it. That's the provenance premium.”“Just because the technology is capable of doing something doesn't necessarily mean that that's how we should be using that technology.”“I tell my kids all the time: ‘Choose your hard, otherwise your hard will choose you.' What we've done and what we're doing is not easy… but all things in life worth doing are hard.”“If you are not analog by design, you will become digital by default… There are trillion-dollar technology companies that will not stop until every moment of human attention has been consumed and monetized… So if you're not fighting against those forces actively… then you will be consumed by the digital vortex.”Key TakeawaysYour Craving and Your Market's Are the Same. What your body and spirit want right now also reflect what much of your market wants. That double longing reveals economic opportunity.Optimize for Oxytocin. Dopamine has long been stealing the headlines, but the neurotransmitter of the next decade is oxytocin, which signals trust and love. How can you make your business more human?Don't Advertise Your AI. Deploy AI away from customer-facing environments. The technology we use helps power what's possible, but the work people value is attached to human effort and human lives.Defying Digital Requires Intention. In a world built on and by technology where trillions are spent on directing our attention, we must seek out ways to reintegrate what's real—to choose analog by design.A Rhythm You Can Try Today.  Slowing for a few moments can shift an entire day. Ryan Levesque suggests a simple resolution from Ali Jafarian: Touch earth before touching a screen.ResourcesReturn to Real: The Last Human Advantage in an Age of Artificial Everything by Ryan LevesqueThe Digital Contrarian (Ryan's Weekly Newsletter)The Full Focus Insider (Megan Hyatt Miller's Newsletter)Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall KimmererThis episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

Day Break | Record Incomes, Record Diesel & Canada's Global Pivot --- 00:00 - Monologue 19:19 – Will Fry, founder and CEO of American Operator. Fry discusses the looming leadership transition facing American businesses as a significant share of CEOs approach retirement age. He examines succession planning, the next generation of business leadership, and what companies can do to prepare for the departure of Baby Boomer executives. 28:18 – Dr. James Thorp, Chief of Maternal & Prenatal Health at The Wellness Company. Dr. Thorp discusses the XFG COVID variant, the latest mRNA COVID vaccines, and approaches to prevention and treatment as respiratory illnesses increase. He also addresses concerns raised by some patients about vaccination and spike proteins and discusses healthcare policy as the election season approaches. Visit TWC.health/GRUBER and use promo code GRUBER to save 10%. 38:32 - Monologue Featuring Ivey Gruber 47:32 – Hans von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow at Advancing American Freedom. Von Spakovsky discusses a child-custody dispute involving Catholic parents and their child's gender transition. He examines the parents' legal claims, the actions of state authorities, and the broader constitutional questions involving parental rights, religious liberty, and government authority. 57:40 – Mike Britton, Co-Founder of Artillery Tea. Britton welcomes back Pumpkin Payload for the fall and explains what distinguishes the seasonal blend from typical pumpkin-flavored drinks. He discusses its ingredients, the company's tea sachets, and the broader mission customers support when purchasing Artillery Tea. 1:06:39 – Luke Niforatos, Executive Director of the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions and Smart Approaches to Marijuana. Niforatos discusses the increasingly dangerous illicit drug supply, including the risk of counterfeit pills containing fentanyl. He examines prevention strategies and policy approaches aimed at reducing overdose deaths before they occur. 1:55:28 - Monologue 1:25:57 – Ron Rademacher, travel writer, author, speaker, storyteller, and host of Around Michigan. Rademacher highlights fall events, festivals, attractions, and unique destinations across Michigan, helping listeners find their next autumn adventure. 1:36:13 – Dr. Siri Terjesen, professor at Florida Atlantic University and author of a new Club for Growth Foundation white paper. Dr. Terjesen discusses the role of proxy advisory firms and shareholder activists in corporate America, along with proposals aimed at increasing transparency and accountability. She explains the market-based reforms outlined in her paper and how they could affect investors and corporate governance. 1:45:11 – Ivey Gruber, President of the Michigan Talk Network. Gruber joins Steve to discuss rising gasoline and diesel prices alongside record-high median household income and what those trends mean for family budgets. They also explore Vermont's Mountain School, where students spend a semester living and working on a farm with limited technology and a greater emphasis on hands-on learning and responsibility. --- Check out our brand new podcast, 'Forgotten America'... Episode 24 is live NOW at Steve Gruber on YouTube! Link below: https://youtu.be/UrGZQdE62jA

This week on Better Buildings for Humans, host Joe Menchefski sits down with architect and sustainability expert Gunnar Hubbard, co-founder of Solenworks, for a fascinating exploration of what it means to move beyond sustainable buildings toward buildings that actively make the world better. Drawing on more than three decades of experience, Gunnar shares how growing up in a self-built log cabin in Vermont shaped his passion for architecture, passive design, and creating buildings that work with nature rather than against it.The conversation explores the shift from sustainability to climate-positive design and why the decisions made at the very beginning of a project can have such a profound impact on its long-term performance. Joe and Gunnar dig into integrative design, the relationship between building performance and financial value, and why creating healthier, more sustainable environments requires looking beyond conventional approaches to design and construction.Joe and Gunnar also venture into the future of the building industry, exploring emerging technologies, offsite construction, mass timber, and the potential for buildings to become part of the solution to growing energy demands. They discuss the role of daylighting in creating better spaces and why thoughtful design—not simply adding more glass or more technology—is essential to balancing comfort, performance, and human experience.Ultimately, the conversation makes a compelling case for buildings that do more good than harm. Gunnar shares his vision for Solenworks and the opportunities ahead for advancing climate-positive design, while reminding us that great architecture begins with understanding the people, the place, and the natural systems that connect them.More About Gunnar HubbardGunnar Hubbard, FAIA, LEED Fellow. Gunnar is an architect, entrepreneur, and sustainability leader with over 30 years of global experience who founded Fore Solutions—a pioneering green building consultancy acquired by Thornton Tomasetti, where he led their global sustainability practice for 22 years. As both a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and LEED Fellow, he has shaped sustainability strategies across continents on projects ranging from Brooklyn's 69-story Alloy Development to 158 LEED for Existing Buildings in Sweden for Vasakronan to Shanghai's five-million-square-foot International Financial Center. His unique combination of technical expertise, entrepreneurial insight, and educational leadership—including teaching at Cornell University, Executive Director of the Yestermorrow Design/Build School, and serving on the national AIA Committee on the Environment—positions him as a recognized expert in scaling sustainable solutions from vision to measurable impact. Since the fall of 2024, he has been a mentor-in-residence for the Roux Institute's ClimateTech Incubator, and now is an entrepreneur-in-residence.CONTACT:https://www.linkedin.com/company/solen-works/posts/?feedView=all https://solenworks.com/ Where To Find Us:https://bbfhpod.advancedglazings.com/www.advancedglazings.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/better-buildings-for-humans-podcastwww.linkedin.com/in/advanced-glazings-ltd-848b4625https://twitter.com/bbfhpod

Luke joins the show from his future home of Stowe, Vermont, where he made friends with a woodchuck yesterday. Or maybe it was a beaver. Or was it a muskrat? Plus, Andrew's dreamscapes are expanding to include TBTL listeners, and that seems like a dangerous game. 

Rob Mermin and Bill Morancy lived in neighboring apartments in Montpelier, Vermont. They were best friends. And when Bill was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he asked his best friend to help him die. In 2013, Vermont passed the The Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act, or Act 39…our version of Death with Dignity. The legislation allows eligible Vermonters with terminal diseases the option to be prescribed medication that will hasten the end of their life. In 2015, Bill elected to use Act 39 to end his life, and he asked Rob to help him. This is a story primarily about their friendship--and the months, days and moments leading up to Bill's death. To learn more about Rob Mermin and his illustrious career as a mime and the founder of Circus Smirkus, visit HERE. The music for this show was made by Vermont musicians Brian Clark and Mike Donofrio. And you heard from the original film soundtracks of South Pacific and Carousel, both by Rodgers and Hammerstein. The piano licks in this show were made by Charlie Lander and Vermont pianist Marie Helene Belanger

Bill and Jeffery gripe about Apple's new pricing and gear decisions, then get into Norman Rockwell's staged reference photography after a Vermont museum trip, and wander through social media algorithms, creative burnout, and letting go and moving onto the next project, before wrapping with photographer of the week Frank Horvat. Photograph search of Norman Rockwell Archives Norman Rockwell “Behind the Camera” book on Amazon Rockwell “Shuffleton's Barbershop” Shelburne Farms Wikipedia Shelburne Museum Wikipedia PotW - Frank Horvat Frank Horvat on Wikipedia

On Vermont Edition: Hispanic Heritage Month. University of Vermont's Spanish lecturer Adriana Sanchez-Gutierrez, known as DJ Adru, on her new radio show called Hispanic Worlds from Vermont. It kicks off this Sunday on 99.3 FM. Musician Maiz Vargas Sandoval is the lead organizer of Burlington's Latin American Connection event. Plus: the founders of Hermanas Vermont, a group created by and for Latina women in the state. Broadcast live on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or check us out on Instagram.

Organic, natural pools with boulders and waterfalls can create a true outdoor retreat, but they demand serious artistry and engineering to be safe, efficient, and long-lasting. Mike and Trey Farley host Lucas Congdon of Lucas Lagoons, who recounts growing up in Vermont doing stonework, leaving Montana State to build hands-on, and moving to Florida where a first pool remodel led him to start Lucas Lagoons. Lucas explains learning engineering the hard way after a rock-heavy project failed, why he uses site-specific engineering and geotechnical reports, and how soils, drainage, plumbing efficiency, and equipment sizing shape complex builds. He details natural vs artificial rock risks, manifold and pump setups for grottos, and a notable speakeasy pool with 48 tons of ceiling rock pinned into a post-tension slab and X-rayed. He also discusses his contractor programs, the realities of reality TV production, and travel inspirations.   Discover more and connect with us: https://www.farleypooldesigns.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@MikeFarleyDesigns https://www.instagram.com/farleydesigns/ https://www.instagram.com/luxuryoutdoorlivingpodcast/   Watch episodes with stunning visuals on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MikeFarleyDesigns/podcasts   Discover more about Lucas Lagoons: https://lucaslagoons.com/ https://www.youtube.com/user/LucasLagoons https://www.instagram.com/lucaslagoons/   00:00 Podcast Welcome 01:17 Meet Lucas Congdon 01:47 Vermont Roots 03:33 Stonework Lessons 05:45 Montana State Detour 07:04 Finding Pools in Florida 11:12 Engineering Excellence 17:48 Geotech and Site Plans 21:33 Mastering Rockwork 28:23 Grotto Plumbing Setup 35:00 Speakeasy Pool Story 37:46 X-Rayed Rock Reinforcement 38:30 Hand Placed Boulders 39:03 Born Talent Or Trained 42:51 Hillside Pool Engineering 46:04 Texas Soil And Clay 47:59 Travel Inspiration And History 50:11 Design Changes And 3D 54:16 Insane Pools Cast Update 56:28 Scaling Signature Series 58:24 Reality TV Behind Scenes 01:02:35 Rapid Fire Favorites 01:05:13 Closing Thanks And Mission    

More than 1,000 public schools closed nationwide in the 2025-26 school year, the fourth consecutive year closures have increased. Declining birth rates, expiring pandemic relief funds, and immigration enforcement are shrinking K-12 enrollment, now projected to fall to 46.9 million students by 2031. States from Vermont to California are testing new approaches to encourage consolidation without forcing it. https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/fewer-students-too-many-schools-communities-confront-closures-and-consolidations/ #PublicEducation #SchoolClosures #DecliningEnrollment #K12 #SchoolConsolidation #EducationPolicy #WashingtonState #ClarkCounty

Luke is in Vermont after learning that Florida's lawnmower races aren't really about lawnmowers anymore. Meanwhile, Andrew is toughing out an old fashioned head cold -- they likes of which he hasn't had in a long, long time. 

How do we navigate a world where simple answers are often the most seductive and the least reliable? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman is joined by three guests who explore how we search for certainty, why we are drawn to stories and what we can learn from doubt. Drawing on philosophy, medicine and fiction, they ask how we can live with uncertainty rather than trying to escape it.Dr Xand van Tulleken - who hosts the Radio 4 podcast What's Up Docs? with his brother, discusses his book Make Me Well: A Quest to Understand the Confusing World of Wellness. As health advice becomes increasingly entangled with supplements, wearable technology and personalised testing, he investigates the promises of the booming wellness industry and asks how consumers can distinguish evidence from marketing.The philosopher Lani Watson is the author of Q: The Hidden Power of Questions in a World That Wants Answers. She argues that modern life places too much value on certainty and solutions, and not enough on curiosity and inquiry. Drawing on philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, she makes the case for questioning as one of our most important human skills.Daniel Mason is a psychiatrist as well as an award-winning novelist. His new novel Country People was picked out as one to read this summer. It follows a family who move to rural Vermont, where eccentric neighbours, local folklore and a mysterious legend blur the boundaries between fantasy and fact. With warmth, humour and an eye for the absurd, Mason explores why people cling to stories, misconceptions and beliefs, and how imagination, playfulness and community help us make sense of an uncertain world.Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Deep in the mountains of southern Vermont lies a region known as the Bennington Triangle—a place surrounded by eerie legends, unexplained events, and a series of mysterious disappearances. In this episode, we investigate the strange stories connected to the area, the people who seemingly vanished without a trace, and the enduring question: is there something unusual about the Bennington Triangle, or can its mysteries be explained?

A recent protest at an ICE facility in Williston ended with a group of Christian religious leaders arrested for trespassing. Today, we'll hear what led them to stage this protest, what happened that day and how faith guides their activism. Three of the seven arrested clergy members joined us in the studio today: Rev. Jessica Derise, an ordained minister in Burlington with the United Church of Christ, or UCC; Rev. Earl Kooperkamp of the Diocese of Vermont is an Episcopal Pastor with the Church of the Good Shepherd in Barre, and St. Mary's Parish in Northfield; and Rev. Elizabeth Gleich, an associate pastor at the UCC Congregational Church of Middlebury.Broadcast live on Monday, Sept. 14, 2026, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or check us out on Instagram.

Sarah Young from Spirited Places in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont is back on the podcast today sharing her new and incredible offering of Ancestry readings and Genealogy reports.In this episode Sarah explains this new offering and we share experiences with the reading she gave me and others, as well as the healing that can come with finding answers and connections to your past. At times we speak on death, grief, history and hardship within our ancestral lines and all things that can come up from her readings.Sarah is a potent genealogist and ancestral researcher, a medium, professional intuitive, tarot reader, artist, and guide who has been supporting people in connecting with their spirit guides and past loved ones for over a decade.Find Sarah and all that she offers on her website here: https://www.spiritedplaces.net/Our upcoming Tea & Tarot gathering and full-day Ancestral retreat this month can also be found on Sarah's website, as well as my own at www.mountainhollowmedicinals.com

Continuing our I Love the 90s series, we move on to 1996, the year the Atlanta Olympics captivated the country and Bill Clinton edged out Bob Dole to win a second term in the White House. Don and Dude drop the needle on one studio album from festival rock royalty and one alt hip hop record that became a crossover phenomenon, connecting both records to a world of holiday shoppers fighting over Tickle Me Elmo, scientists cloning a sheep named Dolly, and dance floors everywhere catching the Macarena.The AlbumsPhish – Billy Breathes (1996)Formed in Burlington, Vermont in 1983 around guitarist Trey Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon, drummer Jon Fishman and keyboardist Page McConnell, Phish built a devoted touring and tape trading fan base well before recording its sixth studio album at Bearsville Studios in the Catskills between February and June 1996. Producer Steve Lillywhite, brought in partway through on Dave Matthews' recommendation despite never having heard the band, helped steer Phish toward shorter, more direct and emotionally exposed songwriting, a marked shift from their denser earlier records.Fugees – The Score (1996)Formed by Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill and Pras Michel out of New Jersey's hip hop scene in the early 1990s, the Fugees followed their inconsistent 1994 debut Blunted on Reality with a major creative reset, taking greater control of their sound and recording much of the follow up in Wyclef's cousin's New Jersey basement. Released February 13, 1996, The Score fused hard edged East Coast rap with reggae, soul, R&B and live instrumentation, with Lauryn Hill's ability to move between rapping and singing becoming central to the group's identity. Diggin AlbumsMastodon – Marrow Deep (2026)Atlanta metal band Mastodon's first album without founding guitarist Brent Hinds, who died in 2025, leans on Greek mythology to explore life, death and destiny, with guests including Josh Homme, Geezer Butler and Randy Blythe.Stone Temple Pilots – Tiny Music...Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop (1996)San Diego's Stone Temple Pilots traded the grunge weight of Core and Purple for brighter guitars, psychedelic textures and glam swagger on this Brendan O'Brien produced left turn, spinning off Mainstream Rock No. 1s in "Big Bang Baby," "Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart" and "Lady Picture Show."Dexys Midnight Runners – Love (2026)The English band fronted by Kevin Rowland, best known for "Come On Eileen," release their first album under the full Dexys Midnight Runners name since 1985, a David Holmes produced record built around stories from Rowland's own life.Dinosaur Jr. – There Near (2026)The Amherst, Massachusetts trio's thirteenth studio album was made in short bursts over about a year, with J Mascis reportedly reaching for the same vintage amp from their mid 1980s debut to chase a rawer, more fuzzed out guitar sound.Follow & Support Follow the show on Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky @albumnerds, email your own favorites to podcast@albumnerds.com, and support the podcast by subscribing, rating, reviewing and sharing it with another music obsessive who still loves hearing whole albums front to back."There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well, I just don't understand it." - Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), Fargo (1996).

In this episode of Criminology, Mike and Morf explore the mysterious Bennington Triangle in southern Vermont, examining a series of disappearances and deaths dating back to the 1940s. The cases include hunters Carl Herrick and Middie Rivers, college student Paula Jean Welden, World War I veteran James Tedford, eight-year-old Paul Jepson, hiker Frieda Langer, and the disappearance of Martha Jeannette Jones, who was eventually found alive.Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the Bennington Triangle. Explanations range from accidents and getting lost in the rugged wilderness to abduction and foul play. Also examined is the area's eerie reputation, the legendary Bennington Monster, and Native American stories of cursed land. You can help support the show through Patreon.We'd love to connect with listeners on social media. We are available on the following platforms:Facebook - Facebook Discussion group - Instagram - Threads - X Formerly Twitter - Blue Sky - Twitch - Tik Tok Criminology is an Emash Digital production hosted by Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For generations of Vermonters, the Dog Team Tavern was the kind of restaurant people remembered for the rest of their lives: enormous prime rib, a spinning “relish wheel,” rationed sticky buns, and a history that began with an Arctic medical mission. Then, early on September 1, 2006, the restaurant burned to the ground. Owner Christopher Hesslink's pickup was found behind the building with his two dogs safely inside. Hesslink himself was later discovered dead in the ruins beside a shotgun. His death was ruled a suicide—but investigators classified the fire as suspicious, and its cause was never publicly reconciled with that ruling.Tonight, we explore the strange history, devastating final night, unanswered questions, and eventual ghost stories of Vermont's Dog Team Tavern. YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistoryTikTok - @hah_podcasthauntedamericanhistory.comPatreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It's beginning to feel like fall. Kelly is back in school, our tomatoes are screaming to be picked, and there is lots of fiber prep happening and maybe a little discipline, too. We also discuss planning for possible new projects.  Full notes with photos and links can be found in the podcast section of our shop website: TwoEwesFiberAdventures.com Join the community on Ravelry or become a patron and support the show on our Patreon Page. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Subscribe on Android. Marsha's Projects Foundation Blanket: Finished! I made the Cross Bar Check blanket using Harrisville wool in the colors Loden Blue and Mustard. I finished making the fringe, wove in the ends and corrected a few mistakes. I used a plastic storage bin filled with hot water and Dawn and then climbed in and stomped on it like grapes, then rinsed and dried. I did this twice to get the fulling I liked. When the blanket was dry I then brushed with a stiff brush. Surprising how much effort it took to full the blanket. Can't do that with merino sweaters! I love the blanket and how the washing and fulling soften it. Dimity, Diaper, Damask Blanket: I wove a blanket using 5 colors of warp and a single color of weft. I wove a bird's eye twill which falls in the Diaper category. I've woven in the ends and started the fringe. The fringe maker I ordered is a life saver! I still need to wash. Garden Cardigan by AnkeStrick. Using Kelbourne Woolens Scout in the colorway Moss Heather. Spindrift Shawl by Helen Stewart. Using by handspun from a braid by Alexandra Art of Yarn Socks: Using Madeline Tosh sock in the colorway Plum Tree. Finished first sock and cast on second. Silver Bags: Sewing bags with pacific cloth to protect silver. Sounds posh.

On March 20, 2004, a Vermont State Police trooper found a car backed into the side of an abandoned farmhouse along Route 118. The doors were closed. The keys were missing. Loose change, a broken necklace, and an unsmoked cigarette lay outside. Inside were two uncashed paychecks belonging to seventeen-year-old Brianna Maitland. The scene was initially treated as a drunk-driving accident, and the car was towed before anyone realized Brianna was missing. More than twenty years later, she still hasn't been found.Tonight, we examine Brianna's final day, the investigation that lost precious time before it even began, the theories and evidence accumulated since, and an open Vermont case police still believe can be solved. YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistoryTikTok - @hah_podcasthauntedamericanhistory.comPatreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is part two of my series on soil ecosystem health. In this episode I'm in the Mad River Valley in central Vermont with ecologist Curt Lindberg, listening to the sounds of the soil in areas with and without invasive species present. The results are fascinating.

Share your Field Stories!Laura and Nic interview Dr. Troy Hartley, executive director of the Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute, to explore how collaboration and science can advance renewable energy while protecting wildlife and ecosystems. From building genuine professional relationships to navigating a dynamic career across sectors, this episode highlights the power of curiosity, connection, and creative problem-solving.Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! Please be sure to ✔️subscribe, ⭐rate and ✍review. This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.Connect with Troy Hartley at twhartley@rewi.org. Guest Bio:Troy Hartley is the Executive Director of the Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute (REWI), with over 25 years of experience in collaborative research, stakeholder and community engagement, science-to-management processes, and innovation on a wide range of natural resources and environmental issues. Prior to joining REWI in 2025, he was the director of Virginia Sea Grant, a national federal-state, university-based partnership program funding and conducting collaborative research, extension, and workforce development activities. He has a PhD in environmental and natural resource policy from the University of Michigan, a master's in environmental policy from George Mason University, and a BS in zoology from the University of Vermont.Music CreditsIntro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace MesaOutro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs MullerSupport the showThanks for listening! A new episode drops every Friday. Like, share, subscribe, and/or sponsor to help support the continuation of the show. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and all your favorite podcast players. 

Bryson Johnson's path runs through Waterloo, Ontario's St. David's Catholic High School before landing at Bucknell University, where he became a four-year standout and two-year captain under head coach Dave Paulsen. He helped lead the Bison to two NCAA Tournament appearances (2011, 2013) and an NIT trip (2012), finishing 11th in program history with 1,384 career points and earning Second Team All-Patriot League honours. After college, the 6'2” guard played professionally with the Fraport Skyliners in Germany and spent a season with the Orangeville A's in Canada's NBL, before pivoting to coaching. His coaching career has run almost entirely alongside Paulsen: a graduate manager stint at George Mason, an assistant year at Brown, a return to George Mason, then two America East Championship seasons at Vermont, where he helped coach two straight America East Players of the Year. When Paulsen took over at Holy Cross in 2023, Johnson followed as associate head coach — a role he still holds, with Paulsen calling him the best assistant in his 33-year coaching career. Bryson Johnson - Guest https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryson-johnson-33589596 https://gomason.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster/coaches/bryson-johnson/699 Aaron Mitchell - Host Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/a_a_mitch/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ahoopsjourney/

McKayla Baker has two dogs, Casey and Nettles, who for years she took to the same local veterinary clinic — until a few years ago, when she noticed changes like extra fees and recommendations for expensive treatments. She found out that the clinic she thought was still independently owned had been acquired by a big corporation backed by private equity. That got her wondering:To what extent has private equity quietly consolidated Vermont's veterinary market? And what are the primary hidden risks for pet owners like me?Click here for photos and a full episode transcript.Update 9/16/26: Before publication, we contacted McKayla's vet to give them an opportunity to respond to the concerns she raised in the story. The practice didn't respond until after publication. They did not address the specific treatment decisions McKayla described, but said while the practice is part of a larger network, clinical decisions remain with its local veterinarians and care teams — and added that being part of a network provides additional resources and treatment options. Further resources: SEARCH: Private Equity Vet SEARCH: Independent Vet LISTEN: "Loving Their Pets to Debt," from The Daily LISTEN: "Should You Trust Private Equity to Take Care of Your Dog?" from Freakonomics Radio LISTEN: "A pro-worker experiment in private equity," from NPR's Planet Money READ:Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America, by Brendan Ballou This episode was reported by Josh Crane. Editing and production from the rest of the BLS team: That's Burgess Brown and Sabine Poux. Our intern is Sarah Bokelberg. Our executive producer is Angela Evancie. Theme music by Ty Gibbons; other music by Blue Dot Sessions.Special thanks to Zoe McDonald and Francis Wong, Kathleen Lanphear, Pam McCann, and Kim and Scott Martin.As always, our journalism is better when you're a part of it: Ask a question about Vermont Sign up for the BLS newsletter Say hi on Instagram and Reddit @bravestatevt Drop us an email: hello@bravelittlestate.org Make a gift to support people-powered journalism Tell your friends about the show!

On an August evening in 1968, two employees at a Vermont summer camp watched a strange light descend over Lake Champlain. Sixteen-year-old “Michael” and nineteen-year-old “Janet” claimed they saw smaller objects emerge from a glowing craft, one of them hovering close enough to reveal two child-sized figures inside. Then came a beam of light—and a blank space in their memories. Ten years later, recurring nightmares drove Michael to UFO investigator Walter Webb, who tracked Janet down and began an investigation that would consume five years. Under separate hypnosis, both witnesses described something far stranger than what they consciously remembered.Tonight, we examine the Buff Ledge encounter, one of Vermont's strangest UFO cases—and the controversial technique responsible for its most extraordinary claims. YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistoryTikTok - @hah_podcasthauntedamericanhistory.comPatreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today you will hear my conversation with Lily Seabird, who joins me to discuss her brilliant third album 'Lightspheres On Their Way,' and finding the glimmers of light even when it gets so dark that life starts to feel like a bad trip. We also discuss her climate activism, her lifelong love of Ween, and we also bond over our most prized possessions being things we found at the dump. ✨ MORE ABOUT LILY SEABIRD ✨Lily Seabird is a Vermont-based singer/songwriter whose diaristic and observational writing takes shape in the form of moody, rootsy rock songs that deal equally in optimism and existential doubt. Her third album 'Lightsphere's On Their Way' is out now. ✨ KEEP UP TO DATE WITH LILY SEABIRD ✨ Web: https://lilyseabird.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lilyseabirdYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-xNozs_egdoZZzhsIJTXUwBandcamp: https://lilyseabird.bandcamp.com/album/lightspheres-on-their-waySpotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1ZIjaMq0dyU2CZaI6GFxBd?si=2NYwl-62Qa2BF_QYFekE9gApple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/lily-seabird/1360832315✨ CONNECT WITH IZZY ✨Blog: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://agrrrlstwosoundcents.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/channel/UCv6SBgiYCpYbx9BOYNefkIg⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/agrrrlstwosoundcents/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠twitter.com/grrrlsoundcents⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Bestselling author Daniel Mason's new novel, “Country People," is a comedic tale of a California family that moves to southern Vermont. They discover the beauty and quirks of rural living, as well as a centuries-old local legend. Mason is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and the author of six books, including the 2023 bestseller North Woods.Plus, a longstanding music venue in Burlington – Radio Bean – just closed for good. It was an important launching pad for local bands, and a beloved nightspot. Seven Days music editor Chris Farnsworth reflects on Radio Bean's role in the local music scene.

Thom's Nutshell: "Self-denial results in dependence. Self-acceptance creates independence." Waking up is a process, not an event. A road back to our true lost selves. Daniel Fulop-Furlano joins Allen to talk about his journey towards emotional sobriety, which began with the “Divided Sky” rehab retreat in Ludlow, Vermont. Dan's book, “Sincerely, Delusional,” is a testament to both the sincerity of his delusion (which we also call “sleepwalking”), and the capacity, beginning with an earnest asking for help, that he's built brick by brick as a person courageously exposing and addressing his deep set dependencies. Learn more about Dan and purchase his remarkable book: https://www.sincerelydelusional.com Learn more about Divided Sky: https://dividedsky.org Our music is provided by the great southern artist Jefferson Ross. Learn more about Jefferson at jeffersonross.com Visit our website: www.emotionalsobriety.info Learn more about Joe C., Secular AA and Rebellion Dogs here: https://rebelliondogspublishing.com  Follow us on social media: Instagram: thomrutledge2 Joe C. Twitter: @Rebellion_Dogs   Friendly Circle Berlin workshops: https://friendlycircleberlin.org/events   Allen's book, 12 Essential Insights for Emotional Sobriety: https://www.amazon.com/12-Essential-Insights-Emotional-Sobriety/dp/1955415129/   Join Allen & Thom at our Thursday night, 7pm PST Zoom meeting on Emotional Sobriety and the Steps (login information below):  https://zoom.us/j/330149513 Password: 375986   For our ongoing workshop video series on Emotional Sobriety and the 12 Steps, visit our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHEM2-kqLkfp3I4c0jy-X-g   Also, please join our “Emotional Sobriety and Recovery” FB Group at the following link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/120450976662519 We'd love to stay in touch in between meetings.   We appreciate feedback! Contact Patrick, our producer, at pndirective4@gmail.com for any questions or comments. Chapters (00:00:07) - Introduction and Grateful Dead Sphere Chat(00:01:02) - Setting Up the Conversation on Waking Up(00:02:39) - The Flight to Rehab and Sincere Delusion(00:04:21) - Hitting the Bottom and Limitation(00:06:42) - Arriving at Treatment and Losing Freedom(00:08:49) - Returning a Year Later and Writing the Book(00:12:22) - Discovering Emotional Sobriety Language(00:14:51) - Compassion, Honesty, and Safe Spaces in Treatment(00:18:46) - Deciding to Go to Treatment Despite Resistance(00:21:11) - Sacrifice and Choosing Recovery Over Life Events(00:23:11) - Living Fully After Recovery(00:23:54) - Public Speaking, Nerves, and Practice(00:28:10) - Emotional Sobriety as Maturity and Practice(00:29:37) - Waking Up Back Into the World(00:31:41) - Book's Impact and Reactions from Readers(00:32:50) - Life as an Adventure and Closing Thoughts

In 1823, Mercie Dale lay dying in a Vermont farmhouse convinced that her son-in-law had been poisoning her. Before she died, she supposedly left the Hayden family with a curse: their name would end within three generations, and the last Hayden would die in poverty. For decades, that prediction seemed ridiculous. Mercie's grandson built a railroad fortune and erected one of the grandest mansions in Vermont, complete with an enormous ballroom and a spring-loaded dance floor. Then the children began dying. The money disappeared. The mansion was abandoned. And eventually, the final Hayden died penniless and obscure.Tonight, we explore the curse of the Hayden family, the haunted mansion it left behind, and whether supernatural vengeance—or ordinary human pride—really destroyed one of Vermont's wealthiest families. YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistoryTikTok - @hah_podcasthauntedamericanhistory.comPatreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of Coffee and Divination, I'm joined by Deborah Lipp — author, Witch, High Priestess, tarot reader, and teacher who has been practicing and teaching Wicca, magic, and occult subjects for more than forty years.Deborah is the author of numerous books on Witchcraft, ritual, magical practice, tarot, and polarity, including The Elements of Ritual, Tarot Interactions, Bending the Binary, and her newest book, Roadmap by Moonlight: A Guide to Wicca for Life.We begin by talking about what it means to build a magical and spiritual practice that can actually last for decades — not simply a collection of techniques, correspondences, or rituals. We also talk about experimentation, adapting to new situations and needs, and how we create vibrant new things, without losing the structure that makes it all work.And of course, we spend quite a bit of time on divination: Learning to see a spread as a complete image; psychic perception and the ways it can become suppressed; intuition versus projection; prediction; and the importance of becoming willing to take risks.We also talk about magical polarity beyond simplistic male/female binaries, the ideas behind Deborah's book Bending the Binary, and what happens when inherited magical structures are examined more deeply instead of simply discarded or repeated. It was a lovely conversation to have, and I appreciate all the care that Deborah puts into all of her books and teachings.--Find Deborah Lipp online:Deborah's website:https://www.deborahlipp.com/Deborah's books:https://www.deborahlipp.com/in-print/Deborah's Bookshop.org store:https://bookshop.org/shop/deborahlipp--Upcoming Events with JoAnna:Thursday, September 10, 2026 at 7 p.m.:Book signing and talk with JoAnna at Phoenix Books in Burlington, Vermont.Nov - December 2026: Registration is now open for The Diviner's Pathway - a live, small-group divination container beginning Nov. 10. Over six weeks, we'll work with multiple forms of divination - including tarot, runes, pendulums, dreams, omens, and trance divination - to develop discernment, relationship, and spiritual connection with nature spirits and our intuitive abilities.Spaces are limited to only eight people for this cohort. Learn more and register here: https://www.coffeeanddivination.com/divinerspathway--Support Coffee and Divination:The Diviner's Path: A Nature-Led Approach to Divination with Tarot, Runes & Pendulums is now available from Llewellyn Publishing and through your local bookstore.   To find it online:https://amzn.to/4e6EXH9Thank you so much for the support the book and podcast have already received. If you've read and enjoyed The Diviner's Path, even a brief review on Amazon, Goodreads, or the site where you purchased it can make an enormous difference in helping other readers discover the work.Visit Coffee and Divination:https://www.coffeeanddivination.com/Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/coffeeanddivination/Support the show and access online meet-ups through Patreon:www.patreon.com/coffeeanddivinationThank you for listening, and, as always, see you between the worlds...

This September 11th marks the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Firefighter Michael Donovan served at Ground Zero that day. He lost many friends and colleagues.On Vermont Edition: Captain Michael Donovan of Ludlow. His new memoir commemorates the 25th anniversary from a firefighter's perspective.Plus, a member of Vermont's Nepali community is trying to support his friends and family from afar. They're recovering physically and emotionally from the recent devastating floods. We'll share ways for you to help.Broadcast live on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or check us out on Instagram.

This is the third episode in a periodic series called Life of Kaye, which is about the life of Kaye, but also about what life mostly sounds like and feels like, day after day after day. This episode is called Summertime and dead batteries.CreditsThis show is recorded by Kaye Phipps, and edited by me, Erica Heilman. Thanks very much to Chelsea Edgar and Amelia Meath for their enormous support on this show.

How many times have you been told you'd never get better? That this is just the way things are now - your knee, your back, your body, your health - and you should learn to live with it? What if the doctors, the X-rays, and the diagnoses were never the whole story, and what if your body has been ready and waiting to heal this entire time, just waiting for permission? Michael shares his own remarkable story - six knee operations by age ten, being told he'd never run again, getting hit by a car while racing bicycles in Europe, years of chronic back pain doctors chalked up to permanent damage - and how he ultimately ran up Vermont's largest mountain and completed a full Iron Man, pain-free. From there, he walks through the real reason so many bodies stay stuck even when they're fully capable of healing, and leads a live group healing session designed to help you feel safe enough to finally let your own healing begin. This isn't about pushing, forcing, or gritting your way back to health. This is about understanding that no healing has ever happened from a place of fight-or-flight, and that the very first step, always, is simply letting your body know that it's safe. Key Topics: Michael's own healing journey: from being told at age 11 he'd never walk properly, let alone run, to running straight up a 4,000-foot mountain and completing an Iron Man triathlon. Why healing doesn't begin in the mind or the body, but in the heart, and why permitting yourself to feel scared, angry, or doubtful is the necessary first step, not something to bypass. The "ego of the body" concept: why your nervous system defaults to the known, even painful, status quo, because change itself registers as dangerous. Why nothing heals from a state of cortisol and fight-or-flight, and why a body that finally feels safe often wants deep rest first, before real healing can begin. Two live attunements for anchoring into safety: starting in third person ("You are safe, you're okay, you can heal") before shifting into first person ("I am safe, I am safe, I am safe") to gently bypass nervous system resistance. Real results shared from this summer's Come Back to Life program, including declining A1C and AFib numbers, a straightened curved spine, a participant coming off an oxygen tank, and significantly reduced phantom limb pain. The power of the "imaginary state": seeing yourself already healed, already whole, already living the life you want, because intention, not current reality, is what actually drives transformation. Michael's own PTSD story from being hit by a car in France, and why reliving a trauma over and over is often the nervous system's way of searching for the safety it never got to feel the first time. Your body came here whole. It carries the resonant frequency to return to perfect health; it's simply been waiting for you to decide, and to feel, deep in your heart, that it's safe to try. Healing was never about forcing your way up the mountain. It's about approaching yourself with so much love, kindness, and compassion that your body finally, gently, believes it's allowed to come back to life.

High above Bennington, Vermont, sits a stone mansion that has been a millionaire's private castle, a Catholic seminary, a college, and even a COVID vaccination site. But through every incarnation, stories have followed it. Students at Southern Vermont College reported phantom piano music, unexplained voices, a Woman in White, and a hooded figure wandering the grounds. One security guard supposedly found a 200-pound desk pushed against the inside of a locked, empty room.Tonight, we explore the Everett Mansion—and how more than a century of changing occupants transformed one eccentric Gilded Age estate into one of Vermont's most enduring haunted houses. YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistoryTikTok - @hah_podcasthauntedamericanhistory.comPatreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Storm's short-form, news-focused podcast. Don't worry, I will still write newsletters too. To browse a podcast transcript, click the “transcript” button above - click on any block of text and the audio will jump to that point in the conversation. Paid subscribers can leave a comment below - I'll respond to some in the next episode. Thank you for supporting independent ski journalism./:The Zoom transcript (click “transcript” above for the Substack transcript, which will zoom to any point in the video when you click on the associated text block; timestamps below DO NOT MATCH THE VIDEO)00:01:51.000 --> 00:02:02.000Stuart Winchester: Welcome to the Storm! It is September 8th, 2026, and if you are a Storm regular, you are probably wondering what in the heck is going on here.00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:09.000Stuart Winchester: Today, we are launching an all-new format for the Storm Skiing Podcast.00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:22.000Stuart Winchester: It is shorter, it is news-focused, it will be more frequent, and it will publish the same day that I record it in just about every instance.00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:23.000Stuart Winchester: So.00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:28.000Stuart Winchester: It's gonna have a lot of different elements. Uh, takes just…00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:31.000Stuart Winchester: on whatever's happening in the news.00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:34.000Stuart Winchester: Okay, let's scrap that and let's start again.00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:41.000Stuart Winchester: Okay, starting from the top.00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:42.000Stuart Winchester: 3.00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:44.000Stuart Winchester: Q.00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:45.000Stuart Winchester: One.00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:59.000Stuart Winchester: Welcome to the Storm! I'm your host, Stuart Winchester. It is September 8th, 2026, and I would like to welcome you all to a brand new version of the Storm Skiing Podcast.00:02:59.000 --> 00:03:02.000Stuart Winchester: So, the long-form podcast…00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:09.000Stuart Winchester: has been the default of the Storm Skiing Podcast since I launched in 2019.00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:12.000Stuart Winchester: Very proud of the Storm Skiing podcast.00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:16.000Stuart Winchester: We're at episode 227.00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:26.000Stuart Winchester: I have interviewed the leaders of nearly every large ski area in America, and the leaders of most of the large ski companies in America.00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:29.000Stuart Winchester: But something started to feel a little bit off.00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:35.000Stuart Winchester: And, you know, I started to think about the kind of podcasts that I consume.00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:44.000Stuart Winchester: And those are mostly, frankly, around Michigan football, uh, which is my other obsession besides ski-ski-ski-ski-ski-ski-ski-ski-s.00:03:44.000 --> 00:04:02.000Stuart Winchester: tend to be much more news-focused. They tend to be much shorter than the Storm Skiing Podcast. They tend to publish the same day that they record them, and they tend to break down current events. For example, I just went to a Michigan football game.00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:21.000Stuart Winchester: on Saturday in Ann Arbor. If you're even remotely a sports fan, you probably saw the controversial ending to that game when Michigan got an extra second added on, and Bryce Underwood, the quarterback, tossed a Hail Mary to win the game when JJ Buchanan, our transfer receiver, came down with the ball.00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:36.000Stuart Winchester: That's never happened in the history of Michigan football, to have a Hail Mary ending that Michigan wins. So, on the way home, it's a 10-hour drive back to New York, my wife and I listened to all the different Michigan podcasts that were breaking down that moment. And I realized that…00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:54.000Stuart Winchester: as much as I like the Storm Skiing Podcast, and as much as a lot of other people like it, I was not really making the kind of podcast that I actually listen to. And that's a problem, because in our current media environment, people have a lot of choice.00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:58.000Stuart Winchester: They have a lot of of.00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:13.000Stuart Winchester: different things they can give their attention to, and it's hard to get and keep their attention. So, I want to say right off, I am not killing the long-form storm skiing podcast. It will not end with episode 227. In fact, I have about 5 or 6 in the can that I've been sitting on.00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:30.000Stuart Winchester: for this news, and I will release those soon, and my thanks to the folks who participated in those podcasts for their everlasting patience as I got this together. So, I'm still gonna make the Storm Skiing Podcast. The frequency will go from about 45 a year at its peak.00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:47.000Stuart Winchester: It's probably about a dozen a year or so, and sometimes there will just be a time when the long form is the more appropriate form for telling the story of a mountain. If I have someone new on, for example, so for example, I've never had.00:05:47.000 --> 00:06:02.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, the GM or owner of Sierra at Tahoe in California, an important mountain on the podcast. Never had Wolf Creek on the podcast, never had Mount Baker. If I were to get one of those folks, I would want to do a long form, tell the story of the ski area. But it's not always necessary to.00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:18.000Stuart Winchester: Tell the entire story of the ski area and its history and its culture when you just want to talk about a new lift or you just want to talk about the fact that it joined a new pass. So this shorter podcast will be more frequent.00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:35.000Stuart Winchester: It will have different segments, segments with takes when I just talk about what's going on. It will still have interviews, much shorter interviews. Today we have an interview with an awesome guest, Snow Partner CEO Joe Heschen, one of the smartest guys in skiing.00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:45.000Stuart Winchester: But before, Joe and I went on for two hours. This time, we'll be able to condense it down. And then at the end of each episode, my intent.00:06:45.000 --> 00:07:02.000Stuart Winchester: and hope is to have reader interaction, and this will be a feature available only to paid supporters of the Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast, and you can upgrade to a paid subscription at stormskiing.com anytime. The podcast will be for everyone, as it's always been.00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:18.000Stuart Winchester: But only paid subscribers will be able to interact with the podcast. And the way that they will be able to do that is that they will be able to write a comment on the article that accompanies the newsletter on stormskiing.com.00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:32.000Stuart Winchester: And the next day, I will read some of those comments and react to them as appropriate. And I'll talk a little bit more about that later and why I'm doing it that way. But for now, I want to assure you.00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:48.000Stuart Winchester: This podcast is going to come to you the same way your podcasts always have. Now, there is a video version. You can watch that on YouTube, will be our primary channel, as well as Substack, which is where the newsletter is published. There will always, always, always be an audio version.00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:58.000Stuart Winchester: And it will always come to the same places that you have always gotten the podcast. If that's Apple, if that's Spotify, there's some that I don't even know.00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:11.000Stuart Winchester: how the podcast got on there, or why it's on there. There's an RSS feed that spits this out from Substack. That will not change. The storm will be… when you go looking for it, you're going to find the storm.00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:13.000Stuart Winchester: So.00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:24.000Stuart Winchester: This is something I'm super excited about because I think it will allow me to have a lot more guests a lot more often.00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:35.000Stuart Winchester: there are so many great minds in skiing right now, and I feel like there's a lot of negative sentiment around skiing and the way it's evolving. There's a lot of talk of a duopoly.00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:39.000Stuart Winchester: But from my point of view.00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:54.000Stuart Winchester: there's not a duopoly in a way that is dominating all consumer choice. And the reason I have that point of view is I'm having conversations every single day with smart people.00:08:54.000 --> 00:09:10.000Stuart Winchester: thinking far ahead and doing great things to change skiing in ways that make skiing better, that make skiing access better. People like Joe Hesham, my guest today, people like Eric Mogenson, who runs the Indy Pass, people like John Schaefer, who runs a handful of mountains.00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:28.000Stuart Winchester: in the East, people like Rick Schmitz, who runs three ski areas in the Midwest. Small ski area operators like Tim Meyer at Caber Fay in Michigan, who we'll talk about a little bit later. So, I'm talking to these people all the time, and I'm seeing the independent ski areas are really, for the most part, doing fine. I'm seeing.00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:33.000Stuart Winchester: Huge investment. I'm seeing huge innovation and.00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:43.000Stuart Winchester: Because of the frequency of the podcast, and because of the laborious nature of turning interviews into written content.00:09:43.000 --> 00:10:00.000Stuart Winchester: I don't think that I'm getting that to you in the way that I would like, in, in, in the way that you deserve. I want you to be part of this conversation. I want you to see why I'm so optimistic about skiing right now. I want you to know why I feel that skiing is in its best.00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:05.000Stuart Winchester: place, historically, that it has ever been, at least in America.00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:10.000Stuart Winchester: Now, it certainly has problems, and we will get into those as well.00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:21.000Stuart Winchester: I don't answer to anyone. I don't answer to the operators. I don't have a boss. I answer to my subscribers, and that's it. The only thing I care about is the truth.00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:28.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, and my optimism does not come from any desire to have access or anything else. My… my…00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:31.000Stuart Winchester: My content and my commitment to the truth.00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:50.000Stuart Winchester: comes from wanting to deliver a great journalistic product. Uh, and there's gonna be opinion and analysis. You're not always going to agree with what I say, and that's good! I wanna remind people that. That's good. If you agree with everything I say, I have no value. I can tell you that all of my guests.00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:54.000Stuart Winchester: disagree with things I say, but the reason they keep coming back.00:10:54.000 --> 00:11:03.000Stuart Winchester: And the reason that I hope they will keep coming back is because I'm trying to be fair, I'm trying to work within the bounds of the truth, and I'm not…00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:08.000Stuart Winchester: Jumping to these huge accusatory.00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:25.000Stuart Winchester: narratives that we see so often with the Mega Passes and with the big consolidators, Vale and Altera. So, I want to give a different perspective, I want to give it more frequently. The newsletter, one more point, the newsletter will stay the same. There will always be written content.00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:34.000Stuart Winchester: I am still a writer with a podcast, not a podcaster with a newsletter, though I kind of have to admit at this point that I am.00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:42.000Stuart Winchester: a podcaster, even though that sounds… I don't know, it sounds a little… pretentious, or juvenile, or uh… like I'm…00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:58.000Stuart Winchester: you know, doing this as a side hustle while I drive for Uber, but… but no, this is my full-time job. The Storm is and has been my full-time job for a couple of years. Now, the reason I want to switch to a news-based podcast is for days like today, because today we have.00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:00.000Stuart Winchester: Huge news.00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:04.000Stuart Winchester: One of my favorite ski areas.00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:09.000Stuart Winchester: One of the best ski areas in the eastern United States.00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:14.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, depending on your point of view, maybe one of the best ski areas in the United States.00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:20.000Stuart Winchester: is joining a Malta Mountain Pass for the first time.00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:27.000Stuart Winchester: That is Smuggler's Notch, Vermont. Smuggs is an incredible place.00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:40.000Stuart Winchester: For a lot of reasons. Number one, if you don't live in the East, and you're under the impression that the East is an ice ball, and the vertical drops are short, and the mountains are small.00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:56.000Stuart Winchester: You're wrong. You're just wrong. And there is a snow. There's plenty of big mountains in the east. First of all, there's plenty of good snow pockets in the east. One of the best snow pockets is in northern Vermont, and you have a line of resorts.00:12:56.000 --> 00:13:12.000Stuart Winchester: We call it the spine of the Green Mountains. Starts at Killington Pico, goes up to Sugarbush, which is in Alterra Mountain. Right next door is Mad River Glen, the famous Indy with the single chair. North of that is Bolton Valley, which is on Indy Pass. North of that is Stowe, which is owned by V.00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:23.000Stuart Winchester: On the backside of Stowe is Smuggler's Notch, and then north of that is Jay Peak. Smuggler's Notch joins IndyPass today, and here are the stats.00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:39.000Stuart Winchester: It is a 2610 foot vertical drop that is the fourth tallest in the east. It has one smug says 1060 skiable acres that they claim there's actually more in the woods. If you count the back bowls and some of the secret stashes.00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:54.000Stuart Winchester: Off of the Sterling lift. So that makes it the fourth largest ski area in the east. It is the second snowiest ski area in the east after Jay Peak, which is also an IndyPass partner with 322in of snowfall.00:13:54.000 --> 00:14:10.000Stuart Winchester: On average per winter. Yes, that's a lot. That's those are Vail numbers. Those are Colorado numbers. No, it's not Cottonwoods, but it's deep enough that those ski areas almost always have tree skiing from the beginning.00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:22.000Stuart Winchester: from around Christmas through the end of the season. I've skied Glades at Stowe in April many times. I've done the same at Jay Peak. So, the snow coverage really.00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:38.000Stuart Winchester: comes and it really falls. Mount Mansfield, which is where Stowe is, right next to Smuggs, is the tallest mountain in Vermont, and they have a snow stake there that consistently builds up to around 60 inches or so for the season. So, Smuggs joins Indy Pass.00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:56.000Stuart Winchester: today. It is the… and, and, and, and… No Blackouts on Indie Bass Pass, which goes on sale today to the general public, or actually maybe tomorrow it goes on sale, for… $419.00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:57.000Stuart Winchester: The ND…00:14:57.000 --> 00:15:13.000Stuart Winchester: Plus is 469. So I'll give you a few stats here. So Indy with adding smugs, that is the 43rd Alpine lift serve ski area that Indy has added for the 2026 to 2027.00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:14.000Stuart Winchester: Winter.00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:30.000Stuart Winchester: That gives them a total. Now, my totals are going to be a little different than Indy's because they're counting cross-country ski areas. And I'm leaving those off. And I also count sometimes two ski areas, as one when they're when they're separate entities. But but they share days.00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:45.000Stuart Winchester: So Indy now has 256 ski areas, lift-served alpine downhill ski areas, which get two days each. So they have more than you could possibly use. That includes 148 ski areas in the United States.00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:57.000Stuart Winchester: 32 in Canada, 39 in Europe, and 32 in Japan. You can ski 30% of all ski areas in America on Indy.00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:14.000Stuart Winchester: Now, on the flip side, Indy also had some important losses this winter. They lost, and they're all in the Midwest, and Indy's lost mountains before, and with a roster that big, you're gonna have some turnover. Uh, but the first wave of losses came back.00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:24.000Stuart Winchester: in past release season in March, when the three areas owned by Midwest Family Ski Resorts, some of the best operators in the country, uh, they own Lutzen Mountain in Minnesota.00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:39.000Stuart Winchester: one of the largest ski areas in the Midwest, uh, Granite Peak in Wisconsin, which has 3 high-speed lifts, and Snow River, which is really 2 side-by-side ski areas and a nice snow belt in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. They left for Icon Pass.00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:53.000Stuart Winchester: Now, there's a little bit of a historical precedent there, because those three ski areas had been on the Max Pass, which had been the immediate predecessor, along with the Rocky Mountain Super Pass, to the Icon Pass. Uh, the…00:16:53.000 --> 00:17:10.000Stuart Winchester: Icon Pass, when it debuted in 2018, left off Snow River, Granite Peak, and Lutzen. And I always thought, well, Snow River wasn't a part of Midwest Family at the time, but I always thought that was a mistake. So I'm not surprised to see them go, but those were big drivers of Indy Pass sales.00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:16.000Stuart Winchester: Because those are marquee mountains in the Midwest. They also recently lost…00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:34.000Stuart Winchester: Another three mountains run by another great operator in Wisconsin, Little Switzerland, Crystal Ridge, and Nordic Mountain. Now, these are small ski areas. They're feeder ski areas, but they're important ski areas because Rick is a very smart guy. He's very influential.00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:50.000Stuart Winchester: And he has a lot of influence in the ski business, including being part of the board of directors of the National Skiers Association. Everyone respects him. They also lost Cabar Fay, one of my favorite mountains in Michigan. It was my pseudo-home mountain when I lived in Michigan as a teenager.00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:57.000Stuart Winchester: I have a lot of respect for Tim and Pete Meyer, who run that over there. So, I'll talk a little bit more…00:17:57.000 --> 00:18:10.000Stuart Winchester: about that with Joe, because I think there's going to be some crossover with the snow pass. So, quickly, before we get to our guest, I want to tell you about Profile Search International.00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:15.000Stuart Winchester: A lot of you come to this podcast to hear from the best minds in skiing.00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:20.000Stuart Winchester: But what if you want to find one of these great leaders for your own mountain team?00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:35.000Stuart Winchester: Well, let me introduce you to the folks at Profile Search International. They are the ski industry talent acquisition experts, and are the only executive search and recruitment firm in the world that is 100% focused on the ski industry.00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:48.000Stuart Winchester: They have used their intimate understanding of skiing and related industries and available candidates worldwide to place hundreds of transformational leaders at the best and most progressive ski areas over the past 30 years.00:18:48.000 --> 00:19:04.000Stuart Winchester: With offices in the US and Canada, Profile Search finds and negotiates with the right leaders for your team. You can reach out to them directly at profilesearch.com or contact them by email or phone, or send me a note and I will connect you directly with their expert team.00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:08.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:19:08.000 --> 00:19:11.000Stuart Winchester: We are joined.00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:13.000Stuart Winchester: As soon as we get a video.00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:33.000Stuart Winchester: We are joined today by the founder and CEO of Snow Partners, which owns and operates the Mountain Creek Outdoor Ski Area and the Big Snow American Dream Indoor Ski Areas in New Jersey. Snow Partners' terrain-based learning program has been used by more than 80 ski resorts worldwide.00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:50.000Stuart Winchester: And the company has rolled out its SnowCloud all-in-one resort management software with at least 15 clients, including Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Last year, the company launched the Snow Triple Play Pass, which was good for 3 days, total across 16 ski areas in eastern North America.00:19:50.000 --> 00:20:01.000Stuart Winchester: Ahead of Winter 2026-27, Triple Play adds 7 additional mountains, for a total of 23, at a price of $179.00:20:01.000 --> 00:20:18.000Stuart Winchester: Snow Partners has also launched the Snow Pass, which is loaded with two days each at 14 ski areas for $339.99. My guest to break all this down for us today is a good friend of the Storm Skiing Podcast, Joe Heschen. Joe, welcome back to the storm. Always good to track you down.00:20:17.000 --> 00:20:18.000Joe Hession: Thanks.00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:21.000Stuart Winchester: How are you feeling on Snow Pass launch day?00:20:21.000 --> 00:20:36.000Joe Hession: You know, it's launch day for Snow Pass. It's launch day for Mountain Creek Seasons Passes. So winter's in the air. Things are happening. It's really exciting. This is probably my favorite time of year. So thanks for having me on such a special day. Winter's coming.00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:36.000Stuart Winchester: I'll do it.00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:53.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, and it's the first day of the new platform for the Storm. So I wanted to get you on first. I'll admit, I want to do a little bit of a flex because I know you're a hard guy to track down and you're doing a lot of cool, interesting things. I want to start with the Snowpass, Joe, because you came on the podcast last year to talk about Snow Triple Play.00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:56.000Stuart Winchester: And your launch, and you were pretty…00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:55.000Joe Hession: Mm-hmm.00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:09.000Stuart Winchester: adamant, you know, this is not a pass. I don't want to do a pass. And, you know, we talked about it a lot, and I probably harassed you about it a little bit, and now we have a pass!00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:01.000Joe Hession: Yep.00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:05.000Joe Hession: Mm-hmm.00:21:09.000 --> 00:21:17.000Stuart Winchester: So, so tell us about that journey. How did, how did we get from TriplePlay to SnowPass, and, and why do you have the two different products?00:21:09.000 --> 00:21:10.000Joe Hession: Yep.00:21:17.000 --> 00:21:32.000Joe Hession: Yeah. And, and, you know, you might be very responsible for it because you, you pushed it early on of, you know, why, why would this not be a pass? And, you know, originally we were really following the data and the data we were really focused on was 73% of people ski between one and five days.00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:50.000Joe Hession: the price point for that, and we were looking at the data for Mountain Creek with our triple play, and saying, you know, there's really not a lot of triple plays for multi-resort. That's kind of a cool, unique concept. So we were really stuck on the data. Obviously, we heard feedback from folks like yourself, and also your other… all your listeners and subscribers, and…00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:43.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:21:50.000 --> 00:22:05.000Joe Hession: And… but then, it was really our past partners. The people that bought the Triple Play were like, if we had this option, we'd be really happy. They hit us that in our post-survey, they said, we really would like this. Um, and then the resorts. We had great partners on the Triple Play program, and…00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:13.000Joe Hession: they came in and said, we would like this as well. So, you know, the model's been done, and we made the leap to do it. So we're really excited about it.00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:28.000Stuart Winchester: You have a great network to launch, and I think especially if you live in New York Metro, and I want to talk about — I do want to talk about Triple Play, but let's focus on Snowpass for a minute. The three key mountains here are Bel Air, Gore, and Whiteface.00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:43.000Stuart Winchester: These mountains, for those of us who are in the area, we know they're state subsidized. They've gotten a half billion dollars in investment. That's a whole different subject. We're going to leave that alone because the result of that for your pass holders is these are awesome ski areas. Bel Air is essentially a brand new ski area.00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:58.000Stuart Winchester: And if you're in New York Metro, you get two days at Mountain Creek, and you get two days at Big Snow, then there's some little ones. You get up in Connecticut, you have Mount Southington. So you have a really nice network of.00:22:58.000 --> 00:23:10.000Stuart Winchester: 14 ski areas, 12 of them are in the east. Talk about that network, Joe, and how deliberate it was that they kind of worked together to create a compelling pass product.00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:27.000Joe Hession: Yeah, that's a great question because that is, you know, we probably look at the world a little differently than people looking at different passes and different programs. And I think you nailed it. Like, you know, with the news last week, you know, sometimes people from Colorado chirp and they, this pass doesn't make sense for me. I'm like, yeah.00:23:27.000 --> 00:23:44.000Joe Hession: Yeah, congratulations. You can read and understand basic logic. So we love our friends in Colorado, we love our friends out west, but this is a pass that's very regional. It makes so much sense if you live in this area and you're planning to have those trips and, and, and you might remember this, but years ago.00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:32.000Stuart Winchester: Right.00:23:44.000 --> 00:24:00.000Joe Hession: at the NSA show, which is the National Ski Association. I was on stage with a bunch of different groups, talking about Epic Pass and ICOM Pass, and this is before we had a Pass product. And I was saying, and I was a little critical too.00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:18.000Joe Hession: you know, listen, I think the high-level past products that exist, which just throw out big numbers, like, you know, 40 of these resorts, these resorts, or 300 resorts, like, it's cool, but the reality is, is I'm really focused on how does someone actually use it? So if we go back to the skier.00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:35.000Joe Hession: and the snowboarder, and how do they actually use this pass? And, you know, back in the day, and I love, you know, the industry is much smaller than people, especially your listeners might realize, like, I have a ton of respect for almost everybody. If anyone's in this business, I respect them, because it's a really hard business.00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:36.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:51.000Joe Hession: And so for us, I've always looked at it and said these big pass products that are kind of like overwhelming with the options, like how do people actually use them and where does it drive traffic and traffic to the right places at the right time and stuff like that. So we're very deliberate.00:24:51.000 --> 00:25:02.000Joe Hession: very deliberate in, if you live in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Long Island, um, upstate New York, parts of Pennsylvania, this is a very compelling pass that not only takes you from the city.00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:18.000Joe Hession: Because for us, what's really critical is that kind of warm handshake from, we're teaching a hundred thousand new people a year to ski at Big Snow. Where do they then go to? And obviously we want them to come to Mountain Creek, but I also want them to go to Whiteface and Bel Air and Gore and Platic Hill.00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:17.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:34.000Joe Hession: Um, because things like that, that's kind of how this industry can work together to take people who are new to the sport, or people who are, maybe have never gone. Maybe they always go to Vermont, and we love Vermont, but maybe this is their chance to go up to Whiteface and realize, oh, wow.00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:41.000Joe Hession: That's, you know, you can see JP from there, right? So it's kind of it's people don't realize how far north Whiteface is.00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:37.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:49.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, so you have a really nice network, and I think it's gonna sell really well. I mean, just even if… even if you just launched.00:25:49.000 --> 00:26:05.000Stuart Winchester: a Bel Air Gore Whiteface pass at that price point, I think it would probably sell really well. Uh, but the reality is you're going up against a very competitive market. So, uh, you look at Epic Pass, not maybe so competitive, you're doing something different, they don't have as many mountains in the market. Indy Pass.00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:20.000Stuart Winchester: I'm not even sure if you know this yet, because the embargo literally lifted when we started this at 10 a.m. eastern. A smuggler's notch today announced they are joining the Indy Pass. So the Indy Pass gives you a really nice network of resorts in your neighborhood.00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:14.000Joe Hession: Yep.00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:34.000Stuart Winchester: In New England, it has Waterville Valley, Cannon, Jay Peak, Saddleback, and now Smug, some of the best ski areas in the region. It has ski areas all over New York. That goes on sale to the public.00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:50.000Stuart Winchester: Today or tomorrow, the Indy Pass, they do a fall sale for $419. They have 256 alpine ski areas as of today, including 61 in the western US. They have a big head start, right? They started in 2019, so.00:26:50.000 --> 00:27:04.000Stuart Winchester: you're offering a different product, but it works in the same way, right? SnowPass. Uh, little lower price point, $340 as opposed to $419. What's your pitch for someone considering SnowPass or IndyPass?00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:20.000Joe Hession: Yeah, so, well, well, first let me hit that because it's, it's, what's interesting is, and, and it's important to kind of explain our background and where we come from. I probably see the world differently than almost everyone involved in this past world. I, I kind of look at it as.00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:18.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:35.000Joe Hession: you know, the pitch is, if you live in this area and you want to visit the resorts on our pass, it's a no-brainer. Not only that, I don't think we're going to live in a world where there's Epic, Icon, Indy, Snow Pass, Mountain Collective.00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:53.000Joe Hession: I think we should be trying to live in a world where we democratize skiing back to the skiers and snowboarders, and allow them to make choices in their price points where they want to go, vastly different than it is today. I think these programs, um, really exist because lack of good technology.00:27:53.000 --> 00:28:08.000Joe Hession: Like, like, basically, we would have reciprocal programs back years ago with, uh, like, Mound Creek and Killington. And to get that to actually make sense to the guests, where they show up, and it's seamless, and the money's able to be traded the right way, wasn't possible years ago.00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:02.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:24.000Joe Hession: So, for us, you know, and I'll get to the question of what the pitch directly to Indy, but I see the world so dramatically different than IndyPass. I see a world where independent ski resorts should be working with each other.00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:16.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:43.000Joe Hession: for the betterment of their guests to share people to different locations that people find interesting. A real-life example is Martok in Nova Scotia and Cape Smoky have a reciprocal program that they're actually allowed to have… they have one pass that's able to work at both places and can split the revenue and funding between it.00:28:43.000 --> 00:29:00.000Joe Hession: between them. They have common ownership. But they're both on SnowCloud. So really, you know, our software platform, SnowCloud, which really operates all the things that is involved with Snowpass and Snow TriplePlay, our real pitch long-term, our real pitch of what we're trying to do with Snowpass.00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:46.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:17.000Joe Hession: is open up the door to give resort leaders and operators tools where they take out the middleman. And what I mean by the middleman is Wachusett and a resort up in Vermont doesn't need a third party to organize their pass benefits.00:29:17.000 --> 00:29:33.000Joe Hession: They should be doing it directly themselves, using better technology. So, I am calling for a shift, a big shift, in the way that people think of this, of, let's get away from these big, pillar, clunky things that are these big, like.00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:46.000Joe Hession: big, like, kind of ego plays of passes, and let's take skiing back to the skiers and snowboarders, and let them have direct relationships with the resorts they love, and give these operators great tools to allow that to happen.00:29:37.000 --> 00:29:38.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:50.000Joe Hession: Um, so that that's our long term pitch. Yeah.00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:56.000Stuart Winchester: So let me jump in there. I just want to ask now, I want to follow up on that. So are you saying this snow pass, your goal is to…00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:01.000Stuart Winchester: make it extinct at some point? It's a building block to the next level, is that what you're saying?00:29:58.000 --> 00:29:59.000Joe Hession: Yeah.00:29:59.000 --> 00:30:01.000Joe Hession: You…00:30:01.000 --> 00:30:17.000Joe Hession: Yeah, what's interesting is Snowpass, we have no upside in Snowpass. So we've been very open and clear about this. And I just want to make sure the goal of Snowpass is secure. We share all of our books openly with all of our resort partners. They can see every transaction, every dollar flow.00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:18.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:33.000Joe Hession: There's overhead in some of the expenses. They get a clear, like, this is the piece that we do that. We originally said it was estimated at 5%. If it ends up becoming 3%, we'll distribute the rest of that to the resorts. We have no profit margin built into our plan for Snowpass.00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:43.000Joe Hession: Snowpass to us is the first step in trying to prove the theory of could we remove the middleman from the equation?00:30:43.000 --> 00:30:58.000Joe Hession: And we applaud the idea that if you're on Snowpass, and let's say that Whiteface wants to now work with Platykill directly, we would celebrate that and see that as a huge win.00:30:58.000 --> 00:30:59.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:14.000Joe Hession: Because we want resorts to collaborate. If people are real fans of skiing and snowboarding, and they've been buying passes for years, and part of it, they know that the beauty of the ski industry is when the ski industry, skiers, snowboarders, the people that operate these resorts, work together.00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:26.000Joe Hession: they create beautiful things. So we need to give them tools to work together, and also the ability to work together, because some companies restrict people from being able to work with each other, which goes against the spirit of the whole ski industry in the first place.00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:32.000Stuart Winchester: So if you were… So let's think of… Let's do a thought experiment here. So let's take some…00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:32.000Joe Hession: Okay.00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:53.000Stuart Winchester: some resorts that share your operating software, right? So you have Mountain Creek, so you can do whatever you want with it, and you have big snow. I know that, for example, Greek Peak up in upstate New York uses, it's up near Cornell, sort of central New York for folks who aren't familiar. It would be a great feeder from Mountain Creek because it has.00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:40.000Joe Hession: Yep.00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:45.000Joe Hession: Mm-hmm.00:31:53.000 --> 00:32:09.000Stuart Winchester: a resort feel, and it's a big mountain, and it has a nice hotel across the street with a water park and everything. So you have, uh, Greek Beak, and then you signed Jackson Hole, right? So would an example be that if you were a…00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:05.000Joe Hession: Yeah.00:32:09.000 --> 00:32:13.000Stuart Winchester: Mountain Creek Passholder, you could somehow…00:32:13.000 --> 00:32:25.000Stuart Winchester: Mountain Creek could sign a deal with Greek Peak for shorter-term visits and Jackson Hole for longer-term. Is that the goal, and how would that be different from a pass we have now?00:32:23.000 --> 00:32:40.000Joe Hession: Yeah, so, yeah, well, because it could be priced exactly to the price, it would make sense to the consumer. Because right now, and remember, when people buy an IndiePass or a pass like that, there's an idea that all these resorts, like, I'm a big fan of IndiePass.00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:57.000Joe Hession: Pareto charts, the 80/20 rule. I will guess, not knowing anything about their business, that 80% of the revenue is made up of 20% of the resorts and the visits. I will almost guarantee it because that's how statistics works. So when you have huge numbers, it starts to cloud the efficiency of it, right?00:32:51.000 --> 00:32:53.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:32:57.000 --> 00:33:17.000Joe Hession: So to me, I look at and say, yeah, so a program where it's like if Mountain Creek went to Greek Peak and said, we want to have a reciprocal program where if someone uses this, it seamlessly just works at the lift. So imagine someone took their Mountain Creek pass, went and rode the lift at Greek Peak and boom, the transaction happened. The guests never even knew it happened.00:33:11.000 --> 00:33:12.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:33:16.000 --> 00:33:18.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:32.000Joe Hession: the business relationship worked, and then we shared data to basically say, oh, this is a Mountain Creek and Greek Peak guest. Now you guys can market directly to them and hopefully get them to come for a longer stay next time. That's where I… that's where I would love to have it, and Greek Peak's a great example.00:33:32.000 --> 00:33:40.000Joe Hession: We're great partners with them. We love that resort. They've been great early adopters of SnowCloud. We're not allowed to have a reciprocal program with them at Mountain Creek or Big.00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:58.000Joe Hession: They're, they're contractly obligated not to work with anyone other than who they work with, which is, which to me is just wild. And I think most people don't realize that that's how it works. And, you know, the last thing we need is, is the middleman kind of inserting themselves into controlling how people operate. It's just.00:33:58.000 --> 00:34:10.000Joe Hession: So… so I would love… I see a future like that. Currently, unfortunately, with a place like Repeat, we're not allowed to work with them. We're… we're… and… and I mean not on Snowpass. We can't have a reciprocal…00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:16.000Joe Hession: We can't give someone a discount if they're a Mountain Creek holder to go to Greek Peak. It's.00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:18.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, and great.00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:18.000Joe Hession: Less rules. We need less rules.00:34:18.000 --> 00:34:29.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, Greek Peak has worked with IndiePass since 2019. They've been an original partner over there. I want to get to that in a second. You know, I…00:34:19.000 --> 00:34:20.000Joe Hession: Okay.00:34:29.000 --> 00:34:44.000Stuart Winchester: I don't know if I see a post-pass world, because I like a menu, I like the big passes. However, what I think you're describing could solve is the free visit problem.00:34:44.000 --> 00:35:02.000Stuart Winchester: because I know Indian Ski Cooper, for example, had a dust-up a few years ago because Ski Cooper was essentially… India accused him of essentially creating a national pass, and that was probably my fault because I wrote an article that said, hey, look at this secret national pass for 300 bucks in Colorado. Nonetheless, it's a lot of…00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:56.000Joe Hession: Mm-hmm.00:35:02.000 --> 00:35:19.000Stuart Winchester: Free visits and you have mountains like Bogus Basin in, in Idaho that are still giving away a lot of free visits. Now, Bogus is a great business and, and it's doing well and they have a surplus and, and they've evolved great in the past decade or so. Uh, but, but it seems like that could really solve that.00:35:11.000 --> 00:35:13.000Joe Hession: Yep.00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:26.000Stuart Winchester: free visits problem, where there is some revenue sharing. Is that part of what you're trying to solve here?00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:41.000Joe Hession: 100%. And you see the big players do it, right? Like a big thing about us too is I'm not against anything. I think Indie is fantastic. And it's very important to point this out. I think that is, but I also think Epic and Icon are great.00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:35.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:42.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:57.000Joe Hession: Like, I'll put it this way, operating a small resort here in New Jersey, Mountain Creek, or Big Snow, there are things that Vail does so much better than us that we wish we had the resources they have. Now, with that said, we do things way better than Vail does, and they wish they had the resources.00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:51.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:14.000Joe Hession: Or the ability to do what we can do, right? And, you know, there's an old commercial years ago that there was, like, a big boardroom, and the boardroom, they're like, I wonder what the little guys are doing. And then all of a sudden, it showed the people in, like, the startup, and they're like, I wonder what the big guys are doing. So, we're all in the same business, and we're.00:35:59.000 --> 00:36:00.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:06.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:32.000Joe Hession: some of the things they've done to try to cure their own things. They own most of their resorts on their program, so they're gonna do things the way that benefits them, because they own all those resorts together. And they've tried to solve these problems in similar ways, and I think learning from them on that stuff, same thing with Icon is doing similar stuff to that.00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:35.000Joe Hession: Um, but yeah, I think…00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:44.000Joe Hession: that's exactly what we're trying to solve. We're trying to solve… we want resorts to have relationships that make sense to the consumer. Like, for example.00:36:44.000 --> 00:37:00.000Joe Hession: Who is going to go, and I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll focus on someone else for a minute. Who's gonna, who's gonna go to 40 resorts in a year on a certain pass? Nobody. Nobody. Skiers are smarter than that. No one's doing that. What they're doing, if you buy an Epic or Icon.00:36:56.000 --> 00:36:57.000Stuart Winchester: Right.00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:08.000Joe Hession: in the real world, the conversation goes, um, oh, I live in New York? Great. What pass are my friends buying?00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:24.000Joe Hession: Because where are they going to go this year? Where do we want to take our family trip? Oh, and it just happened. My wife and I, our family, we have a place in Snowmass. So every year, we have some friends who are like, I want to come out to Snowmass. Well, they buy an IconPass. Their decision is made based on, oh.00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:11.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:37:17.000 --> 00:37:18.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:43.000Joe Hession: your condo's available, I can go, I'm gonna lock in an Icon Pass. That's how consumers actually work. So, to me, it's like, I agree with you, I love the big passes, I don't think they should go away. I think there's a great place for India, I think there's a great place for Icon, I think there's a great place for Epic Pass. There might be a great place for Snowpass.00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:59.000Joe Hession: But I also get really excited about other options. And I feel like we're at this disruptive time where we're seeing the results of these passes and kind of the rubs that are rubbing people the wrong way. And I think it might be time with technology that we can kind of.00:37:56.000 --> 00:37:57.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:37:59.000 --> 00:38:06.000Joe Hession: take it to the next level. Like, you know, we're talking about the evolution of, you know, major.00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:21.000Joe Hession: uh, success has been done, and there's been some learnings, right? Like… like, the pictures of the long lines and stuff, uh, that we see every holiday or powder day, like, is a result of the PASS program. It's a result of this, it's an output of that, and I think there's ways we can maybe.00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:37.000Joe Hession: Make it better where the skier gets a better choice, a better experience, and then the resorts get to share in different ways. So really, at the end of the day, I think it's a technology driven way to better collaborate for the betterment of the ski experience to democratize.00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:35.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:38:37.000 --> 00:38:42.000Joe Hession: It's kind of the price and take out the middleman is really, is really my pitch.00:38:41.000 --> 00:38:44.000Stuart Winchester: So, Joy, I appreciate…00:38:42.000 --> 00:38:45.000Joe Hession: I'd like to remove myself from the equation eventually.00:38:44.000 --> 00:39:01.000Stuart Winchester: You know, the problem with you removing yourself from the equation, Joe, is that everyone I talk to really likes working with Snow Partners, your team. They like the train-based learning, they like your operating software.00:38:54.000 --> 00:38:55.000Joe Hession: Yeah.00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:16.000Stuart Winchester: And I appreciate that spirit of Bonhomie, and you're right, the ski industry is small, and it was smaller than I would have imagined, and it was more welcoming than I would have imagined. I'm not sure if you read the lawsuit.00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:25.000Stuart Winchester: The most recent one filed against Veil Altera, Boyne Powder, the National Skier Association and and RRC. And it's built.00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:21.000Joe Hession: Yep.00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:34.000Stuart Winchester: the case for the lawsuit is built on accusations of collusion. Using a lot of.00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:33.000Joe Hession: Yep.00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:50.000Stuart Winchester: kind of fluffy evidence of people getting together at NSAA shows and basically sharing data and sharing best practices. I think all industries do this. Now, I'm going somewhere with this.00:39:50.000 --> 00:40:07.000Stuart Winchester: I appreciate that, and I think IndyPass, a lot of people love working with them. However, maybe a little more conflict would be good for the ski industry, because one thing I've seen as I've been reading old newspaper clippings is ski operators used to talk a lot more junk to each other, like, oh, Summit County, Colorado does.00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:17.000Stuart Winchester: more skier visits to the whole state of Utah. Obviously, those days are over, but there used to be a little more smack talk. So let me get into a little controversy here, and you can address this as you want.00:40:11.000 --> 00:40:13.000Joe Hession: Yep.00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:17.000Joe Hession: Yeah.00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:34.000Stuart Winchester: As you said, Indy Pass does not share. You have been willing to share and and the snow triple or snow pass shares two mountains, Bromance in Quebec and Whiteface with Mountain Collective and three.00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:45.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, Butternut, Jiminy Peak, and Cranmore with the Icon today. You and Indy are both claiming Snow King, you're both telling me it's locked in, uh, and…00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:55.000Stuart Winchester: Indy's telling me it's only gonna be on Indy, so… there's a little conflict for ya. Uh, how are you approaching that, and what do you think about the scenario?00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:52.000Joe Hession: Yeah, yeah.00:40:56.000 --> 00:41:00.000Joe Hession: Yeah, so we're talking about Snow King specifically?00:40:59.000 --> 00:41:02.000Stuart Winchester: Yes, Snow King specifically.00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:10.000Joe Hession: Yeah, so specifically Snow King, we have a signed agreement with Snow King. We're very excited to work with Snow King.00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:08.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:23.000Joe Hession: Uh, Snow King would love to have visits, uh, come from us, and they are on our website, and we launched with Snow King. Um, that's where we're at. Um, you know, as far as what's going on with them in Indy.00:41:23.000 --> 00:41:39.000Joe Hession: Um, I'll kind of let them speak to that to themselves, but from what I understand, which I'll take some liberties and say what I think is going on, is there is a clause in an IndyPass that if someone leaves the IndyPass program.00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:55.000Joe Hession: They have to not work with anyone for another year. And it's kind of buried in the fine details. So I think what happened is I think they were off that pass, planned to be off that pass, maybe wasn't familiar with that clause, and then signed an agreement with us.00:41:55.000 --> 00:42:10.000Joe Hession: So for me, so the big question is, hey, so here's the choices as we sit today. We have a signed agreement. We've told Snow King, if this is going to hurt you, we never want to hurt you. So we are 100% willing to do whatever that takes.00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:12.000Joe Hession: to do it.00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:17.000Joe Hession: But, you know, we're not gonna just, like, bow down, because at the end of the day.00:42:17.000 --> 00:42:31.000Joe Hession: It's also on Indy, and maybe they… maybe they signed an agreement that wasn't… that was not the right thing to do. We have a signed agreement. They're on our paths, right? Um, at the end of the day, there's one person who can make a big choice here.00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:27.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:42:31.000 --> 00:42:32.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:42:31.000 --> 00:42:37.000Joe Hession: Is Indy gonna sue Snow King because of this clause in the piece?00:42:37.000 --> 00:42:54.000Joe Hession: I read in the Boston Globe that Eric Mogensen is going to, like, change and save skiing. Is he going to sue a small ski resort? Like, and I know that's blunt, but I would put the ball right back in his court. I would love to, you know, if he sues Snow King.00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:45.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:42:54.000 --> 00:43:12.000Joe Hession: That would be an insane thing. And I think he should go out to everyone and say, you know what, we're not going to litigate. You know, I know he hasn't been operating a ski resort long, and I have a ton of respect because of the fact that the fact that he's a GM of a ski resort, the fact that he's operating a ski resort, there's not a single person. And I respect him.00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:27.000Joe Hession: I really do. I really do. There's just one piece that we don't see eye to eye on. And it's… he's told me he's the anti-collaborator, and I am the ultimate collaborator. So when you get us in the ring together, it's one is super collaboration and one isn't. And so to me.00:43:27.000 --> 00:43:39.000Joe Hession: I think, you know, the more he operates a ski resort, he's gonna realize that litigation is one of the hardest things we have to deal with in the ski business. We have realities of things that happen at ski resorts that involve litigation.00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:49.000Joe Hession: suing each other is just a waste of time. Like, what are we doing? Like, we should be, like, we need… we should be talking about skiing and snowboarding, and we should be thinking.00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:43.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:43:49.000 --> 00:44:09.000Joe Hession: how many visits can Indy give Snow King? I would love for them to get a ton of visits. How many visits can Snow Pass give Snow King? Let's get Snow King visits. Let's give people options. And just because of, like, some, uh, you know, red tape in a contract, we're then gonna threaten and clause, like.00:43:52.000 --> 00:43:53.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:44:09.000 --> 00:44:28.000Joe Hession: So that's… so here's… so I gave you probably more than I should have, but… and I'm sure Hugh is no longer looking at me, so he… but he didn't give me the hook, so I'm still talking, right, Hugh? We're good? So, I'm sure… you know, but you'll definitely… you wanted to have, you know, for this inaugural session, you wanted to have some stories. This is a story.00:44:28.000 --> 00:44:39.000Joe Hession: The story is, the reality is, the truth is, that they were under contract, Indy, from what I understand, which they've told me, they wrote they are no longer to work, they gave them the right.00:44:39.000 --> 00:44:53.000Joe Hession: I'm out. This is the time you're supposed to be out. They were unaware of this one clause, which we were also unaware of. We signed, we moved forward, we announced. After announcement, it was, no, you can't do that. So, really, right now, I think Snow King would gladly take visits from both.00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:54.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:56.000Joe Hession: We would gladly take visits from both.00:44:56.000 --> 00:45:02.000Joe Hession: Ball's in Mogensen's court, we'll see what he does. I guess the best way to approach this is publicly. So, here.00:44:58.000 --> 00:45:00.000Stuart Winchester: And he…00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:16.000Stuart Winchester: I agree, and Eric is scheduled to be on this podcast on Thursday, so he will have his chance to respond. And you know what, Joe, you're welcome back anytime to respond. But before you go out the door, I do want… I did promise to keep these short, and I know for you and I.00:45:06.000 --> 00:45:07.000Joe Hession: Perfect!00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:12.000Joe Hession: Yep.00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:16.000Joe Hession: Yep.00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:31.000Stuart Winchester: Both, that's a challenge. I do want to call out some of these awesome new triple play partners, uh, Jiminy Peak and Cramore, especially. I have a ton of respect for the Fairbanks and, and, uh, what, and what they do. Uh, Bromont is, is an excellent.00:45:27.000 --> 00:45:28.000Joe Hession: Yeah.00:45:31.000 --> 00:45:51.000Stuart Winchester: edition, and Hallamont. Actually, Hallamont is on Snow Pass as well, which is a terrific skier. I never realized until I went there this year. It's just because it's private on the weekends and in public during the week. What do you have to do to convince some of these folks, especially Jiminy Cranmore Bromont, to jump over to Snow Pass? Do you think there's a path there?00:45:52.000 --> 00:46:10.000Joe Hession: Yeah, you know, I do. I think it's kind of proving it out over time, but also making, you know, going back to what I said earlier, maybe the right product for them is a relationship with different resorts, right? Maybe it's a whole new version of what happens, but I think we're very lucky to have them on the program.00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:25.000Joe Hession: Both operators are fantastic. Brian and Tyler Fairbank, we go back really far. Like, they were early adopters of us with snow operating and train-based learning. Brian Fairbank, if people don't know, is one of the godfathers of snowmaking in the industry.00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:16.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:40.000Joe Hession: He's still at it. He's in his 80s. He's out there making snow. I mean, he's an absolute legend. So anytime we get to work with him and his resort partners, we're really happy. Tyler, we've obviously known for well over a decade and a half as well.00:46:40.000 --> 00:47:00.000Joe Hession: great resorts, we've loved visiting them, and I think they're great operators, so I think people are going to love discovering them. And that's, you know, one thing I'll give a lot of credit to Indy for, which has opened our eyes, is the fact that there's so many passes on the program, there's the fact that there's all these different options. People learn new places they've never learned before, right? And I think Epic and I kind of have done the same.00:46:54.000 --> 00:46:55.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:15.000Joe Hession: You know, I never thought of going to Crested Butte, but because it's on the Epic Pass, I'm going to go to Crested Butte, or I never thought of going to this resort, but because of it. And I think that's been a huge success. And it's great to hear you say, like, Hollymont, like, oh, I didn't know that much about the.00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:05.000Stuart Winchester: Yep.00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:29.000Joe Hession: I think that's the spirit. The spirit is, how do you take skiers from different regions and inspire them to want to go to somewhere else and make that transaction seamless and easy for the operators to navigate, is really our goal.00:47:28.000 --> 00:47:49.000Stuart Winchester: It's such a rich world, and I love how you're helping folks explore it. Leave us with this, Joe. Where can we buy Snowpass? And I believe you said you're selling a limited number. You probably won't tell me that number, but how soon should folks go to where you're going to tell us to go before they're going to lose this special price of, I believe, 340 for Snowpass and 179?00:47:49.000 --> 00:47:52.000Stuart Winchester: For the triple play.00:47:52.000 --> 00:48:05.000Joe Hession: Correct. So, so 4pm today, mysnowpass.com, uh, it's gonna be a limited release. Uh, if you know the Mound Creek world, and you know how we do it, it's actually Mound Creek's on the clock right now.00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:22.000Joe Hession: Um, we've been selling for 31 minutes, so I'm gonna get an update when we get off the call here, but at 4 o'clock, we will have our watch party with our group in the kind of war room. We're watching the transactions live. We have a number that we have promised ourselves we will not exceed, and it'll shut itself down at that number.00:48:08.000 --> 00:48:09.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:40.000Joe Hession: Um, so 4PM today will be, uh… will be the birth of a new product in the industry, which hopefully will inspire other new products down the road, and… and hopefully start to change the relationship between resorts and… and the skiers, because that's what it's about. It's about getting skiers the best price for the best mountains, new… doing new things, and working together.00:48:40.000 --> 00:49:00.000Joe Hession: And we have a beautiful industry of resorts, but we have great customers. People who are skiers and snowboarders are so passionate. Like, I read everything they post on your stuff. You know, the comments have been just amazing. And, you know, we're looking forward to, over time, I want to make that person in Colorado that keeps saying, this pass stinks, has nothing to do for me.00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:51.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:09.000Joe Hession: I want to eventually win them over by giving them a product that does make sense for them or allowing resorts there to find a product that works for them. So it's really exciting day.00:49:06.000 --> 00:49:17.000Stuart Winchester: Colorado bro is very proud of Colorado. Uh, last year, Joe, you sold Snow Triple Play, I believe, until Christmas Eve. You have a similar schedule in mind for these two passes this year?00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:11.000Joe Hession: Yes.00:49:17.000 --> 00:49:32.000Joe Hession: Yeah, exactly the same schedule. So they'll be… the best price will be the launches. So today will be the lowest possible price, it'll scale up in another drop, and then it'll be on sale for a little bit at its full retail price, and then it'll turn off at that time. Exactly.00:49:19.000 --> 00:49:20.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:49:31.000 --> 00:49:51.000Stuart Winchester: Joe, so good to run you down. Good luck with the launch. I can't wait to see how it goes, and how this thing grows, and frankly, how this little controversy between Snowpass and Indypass resolves itself, because I'm sure that you will find a way through it. So, thank you so much for being my first guest on the new platform. I really appreciate it.00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:35.000Joe Hession: Yes.00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:51.000Joe Hession: Okay.00:49:51.000 --> 00:49:54.000Stuart Winchester: You're welcome on anytime. We'll talk to you really soon.00:49:54.000 --> 00:49:56.000Joe Hession: Great. Thanks for having me.00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:57.000Stuart Winchester: All right, take care, Joe. Bye now.00:49:58.000 --> 00:50:00.000Stuart Winchester: Alright, so…00:50:01.000 --> 00:50:03.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, what do you…00:50:03.000 --> 00:50:23.000Stuart Winchester: Okay, so that was Joe Heschen, the CEO of Snow Partners and the founder. Quick update from another partner before I wrap up the show today. If you run a ski area or outdoor brand, I want to tell you about my friends at Bonfire Collective.00:50:23.000 --> 00:50:35.000Stuart Winchester: They are a fractional marketing team that collaborates with ski areas and outdoor brands, and they will give your marketing a fresh perspective and better storytelling to supercharge your rebranding or advertising.00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:41.000Stuart Winchester: Bonfire can help you rethink your approach in ways that can turbocharge your business.00:50:41.000 --> 00:50:49.000Stuart Winchester: For example, Bonfire took on the marketing at one New Hampshire ski area and doubled revenue in just three years.00:50:49.000 --> 00:51:04.000Stuart Winchester: When the storm was ready to invest in its first ever digital marketing campaign last year, I worked with Bonfire to make it happen. I could not be happier with the results, and I think you will love working with them as well. To get started, you'll want to talk to Eric.00:51:04.000 --> 00:51:21.000Stuart Winchester: over at Bonfire Collective. He was a co-founder of Bluebird Backcountry Colorado, the first human-powered ski area, so he knows the ski business. You can actually listen to his podcast episode on the Storm Skiing Podcast, long form. Visit bonfirecollective.com.00:51:21.000 --> 00:51:25.000Stuart Winchester: Or I will be happy to make that connection for you.00:51:26.000 --> 00:51:28.000Stuart Winchester: All right, how great was Joe?00:51:28.000 --> 00:51:45.000Stuart Winchester: This is why I love the new pod, because I can have guys like that on all the time. I have dozens of relationships like that throughout the ski industry. Anytime you've listened to a podcast and you've heard someone on there and you enjoyed the conversation.00:51:45.000 --> 00:52:01.000Stuart Winchester: Whether it was Carl Kapczynski, who runs California Mountain Resorts, or… and owns Mountain High, and Bear Valley, and China Peak, and Dodge Ridge out in California. Or if it was…00:52:01.000 --> 00:52:15.000Stuart Winchester: Dustin, who… the president at Copper Mountain, uh, or it was Rob Katz, you know, the Vale CEO. I'm interacting with these people, or… or the folks who represent them, all the time.00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:31.000Stuart Winchester: I talk to Carl Kabasinski all the time, but I haven't had him on the podcast in four years. He's already agreed to come on the new shorter form to talk about all the things going on in his mountains. And that's what's great about it. And, you know, one of the concerns that I heard from people when I announced a shorter form pod was.00:52:31.000 --> 00:52:47.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, well, I really like when you covered small mountains. Well, this will allow me to do that much more, because I don't have to commit an entire hour and a half long episode to it, and it doesn't have to be the whole history of the area. I can just, for example, ask.00:52:47.000 --> 00:53:02.000Stuart Winchester: Rick Schmitz from Little Switzerland in Wisconsin to come onto the show and talk about the new quad chairlift that he's putting up or two new quads put

Welcome to New England Legends From the Vault – FtV Episode 186 –  Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger trek into the woods of Wallingford, Vermont, in search of the 1831 Patch Hollow Massacre site. Along the way, the guys encounters tales of tar, feathers, and a man named Rolon Wheeler who put up the fight of his life. This is the true story of when the rumor mill turns fatal. This story could have been ripped from today's headlines! This episode first aired  November 15, 2018 Listen ad-free plus get early access and bonus episodes at: https://www.patreon.com/NewEnglandLegends  Buy Jeff Belanger's new book Wicked Strange New England on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4lMkM3G  Check out Jeff's new underground publication Shadow Zine! https://shadowzine.com  Listen to Ray's Local Raydio! https://localraydio.com/ 

For generations of students at Bennington College, Jennings Hall has been the building you don't want to be inside after midnight. Phantom piano music drifts from locked practice rooms. Footsteps pace empty corridors. Doors slam without wind. And one story claims a terrified professor once fled into the Vermont snow as violent knocking traveled through the mansion toward him. But Jennings has another claim to fame: that the imposing granite estate inspired Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. It's a perfect story. It's also almost certainly wrong. Tonight, we explore the genuine hauntings of Jennings Hall, the strange musical history embedded in its walls, and the surprising collection of psychic researchers, Manhattan architecture, California mansions, and family history that actually helped Shirley Jackson build Hill House. YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistoryTikTok - @hah_podcasthauntedamericanhistory.comPatreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

August 20th, 2016. Kingston. Thirteen songs into the last set The Tragically Hip ever played, and 'Putting Down' made the cut.Track four on "Music @ Work" (2000), the second of two records Steve Berlin made with the boys, and the one that took home the 2001 Juno for Best Rock Album (per Wikipedia and Discogs, still owed a HipMuseum or This Is Our Life cross-check). It sits at 143 out of 169 on the TTHTop40 Countdown, a deep cut by that measure alone. Then the Facebook group poll came back and the ranking didn't survive contact with the room: like or love landing somewhere in the 80s or 90s percent, by the panel's own count. Justin's read: run the original poll again with a fan base twice the size it was when it ran, and 143 doesn't happen.It's a callback week too. This same song turned up at Historic Fort York on June 24th, 2006, four songs ahead of 'No Threat,' the track this show covered last week (per setlist.fm).The lyrics get worked over three different ways before anybody lands close to the same page. Indigenous reconciliation, read through "the documented indigenous" and "civilization flipped its desk." A career-long metaphor about writing itself, "paint and sketch" as the whole method. And a theory about the United State of Ricochet that might be about atomic particles, might be about Gord catching flack for something he said, might be neither. Nobody wins the argument. Everybody's a little bit right, which tracks for a Gord Downie lyric.WHAT ELSE IS IN HEREBreck's debut, and the two words he reaches for before anything else about the song: crispy and classic.The unsteeped teabag. What Breck gets called mid-episode, and why it sticks.A grade five teacher with an alarming approach to desk discipline, and the times tables it apparently taught for life.The case for Gord Sinclair's harmonies being the most underrated thing on the whole record. Justin makes it twice, unprompted.End of summer picks. Justin's answer is this song itself, which is the whole reason he's in the chair this week. Breck goes with 'Ahead By A Century'. Toots goes with 'Lake Fever', the track right before this one on the record."I feel this tune and I know all the words and I can sing all the words, but it doesn't mean that I understand them." Justin, more or less summing up the whole hour.Next week the wheel lands on 'Vaccination Scar,' from "In Between Evolution."THE PANELBreck from Reno. First time in the chair. A musician (formerly of Trouble Show) who hears the interplay between Paul and Rob before he hears anything else. Plays Sagebrush Sounds in Winnemucca, Nevada this month, put on by High Desert Habit, with new music of his own coming this fall.Toots from Whitby. Back again. A pro gigging drummer, twenty years alongside Matthew Holpe, with a sold-out barn show called September Songs on the 12th and a new project debuting October 30th, his 50th birthday, at Melanie Pringles in Whitby.Justin from Bridport, Vermont. Back again, and showed up having already decided this was his song of the summer before jD even asked the question. Announces Sprint Cars of New England at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and helps run the Vermont Motorsports Hall of Fame, which names its 2026 class in early October at the Milk Bowl, Thunder Road.GEDFEST TORONTO - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17The Horseshoe Tavern, with Grace, 2. Every dollar goes to Campfire Circle and the Murphy Family Fund in Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer. Tickets through facebook.com/GEDfestYYZ.THE HIP HANDBOOKThe free discography, lyrics, and live-performance archive keeps growing: thehiphandbook.tthpods.com.YER LETTEROnce a month, the whole network in one email. subscribe.tthpods.comTHE TIP JARIf the shows are worth something to you, buymeacoffee.com/tthtop40.FIND USHome: home.tthpods.comEmail: jd@tthpods.comFacebook community: community.tthpods.comInstagram: @tthpodsYouTube: youtube.com/@tthpodsYer Letter: subscribe.tthpods.comMORE THE TRAGICALLY HIP ON SHUFFLE LIVE STREAM'No Threat': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/46c0301d-0fa0-4cb4-8154-1836552e3a66'Tiger The Lion': https://redcircle.com/shows/a01e8de3-1a04-4a44-ab9c-8fc6e3cb7474/ep/718fe20e-83d6-4c69-86eb-cc2b4af02834Setlist details for Kingston (August 20, 2016) and Fort York (June 24, 2006) come from setlist.fm, cited here. Album credits and the Juno Award come from Wikipedia and Discogs (see the fact-check notes in Block C).#TheTragicallyHip #MusicAtWork #TTHOnShuffle #GordDownie #TheHip #TTHPodsSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/tthtop40/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Cody Taylor returns to the Free Outside Podcast after completing one of the most ambitious unsupported hiking efforts on Vermont's Long Trail: a complete out-and-back, also known as a Long Trail yo-yo.Cody began near the Canadian border carrying a 51-pound backpack loaded with 16 days of food. He traveled the entire length of the Long Trail to its southern terminus—and then turned around and hiked the whole thing again. With no resupply, Cody covered approximately 550 miles and 135,000 feet of elevation gain in 17 days, 8 hours, and 42 minutes.Having previously pursued an unsupported Fastest Known Time on the Long Trail myself, I know how deceptive this route can be. The mileage only tells a small part of the story. Vermont's wet rocks, roots, mud, steep climbs, technical descents, and rugged northern mountains make it one of the most relentless long-distance hiking trails in the United States.Cody shares how he planned nearly 4,000 calories per day while keeping his food weight under two pounds a day, why he carried a stove and hot meals, and how running short on food affected his final 30 miles. We also break down his backpacking gear, shelter, sleep system, rain gear, electronics, footwear, and what he would change before attempting another multiweek unsupported adventure.The trip included days of heavy rain, flooded trails, dangerously cold conditions, terrible sleep, and as many as 20 falls per day during the opening section. Cody explains how he recognized the early signs of hypothermia, why he continued moving, and what happened when exhaustion caused him to hallucinate clowns beside the trail.Beyond the gear, nutrition, and Fastest Known Time, this conversation explores the mental side of thru-hiking, fastpacking, ultrarunning, and unsupported endurance challenges. Cody describes how he progressed from experiencing a panic attack during his first major project to feeling calm and grateful on the Long Trail. We discuss training for a 17-day effort, starting conservatively, adapting as the pack becomes lighter, and why it is impossible to prepare perfectly for an adventure of this scale.We also talk about Cody's relationship with endurance athlete and mentor Ray Zahab, his transition from traditional ultramarathons toward expedition-style projects, and why the experience ultimately matters more than the record.This episode is for anyone interested in the Long Trail, Appalachian Trail, thru-hiking, backpacking, fastpacking, ultrarunning, FKTs, outdoor adventure, endurance training, hiking gear, trail nutrition, and the psychology behind pursuing enormous goals.Follow Cody Taylor Performance and subscribe to the Free Outside Podcast for more conversations about thru-hiking, ultrarunning, Fastest Known Times, endurance, and adventure.

Brent has two hours to build a great website, and the solution he finds feels more like a Linux tool than a modern web framework. Naturally, Wes takes it too far.Sponsored By:Jupiter Party Annual Membership: Put your support on automatic with our annual plan, and get one month of membership for free!Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.Support LINUX UnpluggedLinks:Web Boost — Send us a boost via sats or USD

Kevin Hoyt returns for another explosive conversation with Michael Jaco, bringing his latest claims and investigations out of Vermont and into the national spotlight. A former Vermont gubernatorial candidate and longtime government critic, Hoyt discusses what he believes are interconnected failures involving election integrity, state and local government, law enforcement, CPS/DCF, financial corruption, trafficking networks, surveillance, and organized criminal activity. Hoyt shares why he says years of reporting concerns to local, state, and federal authorities have only strengthened his determination to keep speaking out. He and Michael also discuss his allegations surrounding Vermont's political system, voter rolls, RICO-style corruption, government accountability, and the role everyday Americans can play in demanding transparency. The episode also turns personal as Kevin talks about his daughter, the enormous cost his activism has had on his life, and why he says he remains committed to continuing the fight. Later, Kevin shares his personal experience with LifeWave patches and why he decided to make them available through his own LifeWave link. Support Kevin Hoyt: Donate: https://donorbox.org/become-a-truth-w... Cash App: $GovernorKevin Kevin's LifeWave: https://www.lifewave.com/GovernorKevin Follow Michael Jaco: Website: https://michaelkjaco.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MichaelJaco Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/michaelj5326 Live Younger with MJ: https://michaelkjaco.com/liveyoungerwithmj/ The allegations discussed in this interview represent the speakers' claims and perspectives and should not be interpreted as independently established findings.

We are in Vermont for Sony Kando 2026 chatting all things cameras, FX5, and what we are up to!

A small group of Vermonters wanted to improve the environment and preserve the rural character of the state. Along with two friends, David Richie and his wife found a way: they founded the Green Mountain Spinnery. David Richie and his wife, Diana, wanted to keep their home state and region green and farm-friendly. Believing in thinking globally and acting locally, they joined a reading group in the late 1970s with others interested in conservation and social responsibility. Concerned about the environmental dangers of nuclear power in New England, their friends Claire Wilson and Libby Mills found themselves in jail after protesting a nearby power plant, giving them time to talk about what they could do to make a difference on a smaller scale. Claire asked, “When I see so many sheep here in Vermont, why do I have to order my weaving yarn from Sweden?” Farmers' markets had begun to arise, bringing produce from the field to home cooks in the heart of the city, letting small-scale farmers keep more of their profits by selling direct. Why not do the same for shepherds and make their sheep's wool available to weavers? As knitters and weavers, Claire and Libby knew about using yarn, but none of the four knew anything about operating a wool mill, let alone starting one. Undaunted, they took one step after another: they wrote a business plan, purchased an old gas station as their new facility, and began purchasing mill equipment. And so began an adventure that has passed 45 years and is still gathering steam. Learning to produce yarn—understanding the equipment, downstream (literally) effects, sourcing fibers—is an ongoing process. The Spinnery makes thousands of pounds of yarn each year for farmers, yarn companies, and their own store, but they continually refine the process, from improving their wastewater handling to switching over to more eco-friendly spinning oil. Although David began without fiber experience, his influence is felt in every part of the tightly-packed Spinnery building. In addition to environmental stewardship, the Spinnery has always been dedicated to offering an equitable work environment. To give employees a stake in the company's success, they decided early on to become a worker-owned cooperative. The values that led to Green Mountain Spinnery's founding in 1981 continue guiding the project. Links Green Mountain Spinnery This episode is brought to you by: Treenway Silks is where weavers, spinners, knitters and stitchers find the silk they love. Select from the largest variety of silk spinning fibers, silk yarn, and silk threads & ribbons at TreenwaySilks.com. You'll discover a rainbow of colors, thoughtfully hand-dyed in Colorado. Love natural? Treenway's array of wild silks provide choices beyond white. If you love silk, you'll love Treenway Silks, where superior quality and customer service are guaranteed. The Mountain & Valley Fiber Arts Festival comes to Durango, Colorado, the first full weekend in October. Formerly the Taos Wool Festival, this new chapter brings together natural fiber artists, vendors, instructors, growers, and makers for a weekend of shopping, learning, and community. Plan your fiber arts weekend at Mountain & Valley Fiber Arts Fest at mavwafiberartsfest.org. Green Mountain Spinnery is a worker-owned cooperative woolen mill with over 45 years of experience spinning quality yarns from natural local and US-produced fibers. They craft woolen-spun yarns in a wide variety of rich heathered hues and premium fiber blends. As a part of the chain from sheep to skein and shepherd to maker, Green Mountain Spinnery is dedicated to respecting the environment we all share. Visit the mill shop in Putney, VT, or explore their collection at spinnery.com.

Venezuela makes a once-unimaginable turn toward American oil investment, privacy advocates propose “collective bargaining” for personal data, and Trump's FDA nominee inherits a long-stalled review of the abortion pill. Plus: Where religion becomes rule, Cal Thomas on the test that caught his cancer, a Vermont woman growing a dress so slowly the fashion trend may come back around, and the Tuesday morning news.Support The World and Everything in It today at wng.org/donate.Additional support comes from Cedarville University—a Christ-centered, academically rigorous university located in southwest Ohio, equipping students for Gospel impact across every career and calling. Cedarville integrates a biblical worldview into every course in the more than 175 undergraduate and graduate programs students choose from. New online undergraduate degrees through Cedarville Online offer flexible and affordable education grounded in a strong Christian community that fosters both faith and learning. Learn more at cedarville.edu, and explore online programs at cedarville.edu/online.From World Watch. A 10-minute daily news program that explores current events for students 5-12th grade. This high-energy show connects learners to the present, history and communities around the world. Join 40,000 Christian families that utilize World Watch as a tool to foster curiosity and have conversations about today's news as a discipleship rhythm within their families. “Whatever the news, the purpose of the Lord will stand!” First time? Take advantage of a 30-days free trial at worldwatch.news/podcast. Not ready to sign up? Check out a free episode at get.worldwatch.news/free-episode. And from Boyce College—which offers a Christ-centered education built on the truth of God's Word. Every student—no matter their major—takes 30 hours of Bible and theology, learning how to think biblically, live faithfully, and lead with conviction.Formed from the 160-year legacy of Southern Seminary, Boyce College prepares students for maximum faithfulness in the world, the workplace, the church, and the family.Learn more at boycecollege.com

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