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For a limited time, upgrade to ‘The Storm's' paid tier for $5 per month or $55 per year. You'll also receive a free year of Slopes Premium, a $29.99 value - valid for annual subscriptions only. Monthly subscriptions do not qualify for free Slopes promotion. Valid for new subscriptions only.WhoIain Martin, Host of The Ski PodcastRecorded onJanuary 30, 2025About The Ski PodcastFrom the show's website:Want to [know] more about the world of skiing? The Ski Podcast is a UK-based podcast hosted by Iain Martin.With different guests every episode, we cover all aspects of skiing and snowboarding from resorts to racing, Ski Sunday to slush.In 2021, we were voted ‘Best Wintersports Podcast‘ in the Sports Podcast Awards. In 2023, we were shortlisted as ‘Best Broadcast Programme' in the Travel Media Awards.Why I interviewed himWe did a swap. Iain hosted me on his show in January (I also hosted Iain in January, but since The Storm sometimes moves at the pace of mammal gestation, here we are at the end of March; Martin published our episode the day after we recorded it).But that's OK (according to me), because our conversation is evergreen. Martin is embedded in EuroSki the same way that I cycle around U.S. AmeriSki. That we wander from similarly improbable non-ski outposts – Brighton, England and NYC – is a funny coincidence. But what interested me most about a potential podcast conversation is the Encyclopedia EuroSkiTannica stored in Martin's brain.I don't understand skiing in Europe. It is too big, too rambling, too interconnected, too above-treeline, too transit-oriented, too affordable, too absent the Brobot ‘tude that poisons so much of the American ski experience. The fact that some French idiot is facing potential jail time for launching a snowball into a random grandfather's skull (filming the act and posting it on TikTok, of course) only underscores my point: in America, we would cancel the grandfather for not respecting the struggle so obvious in the boy's act of disobedience. In a weird twist for a ski writer, I am much more familiar with summer Europe than winter Europe. I've skied the continent a couple of times, but warm-weather cross-continental EuroTreks by train and by car have occupied months of my life. When I try to understand EuroSki, my brain short-circuits. I tease the Euros because each European ski area seems to contain between two and 27 distinct ski areas, because the trail markings are the wrong color, because they speak in the strange code of the “km” and “cm” - but I'm really making fun of myself for Not Getting It. Martin gets it. And he good-naturedly walks me through a series of questions that follow this same basic pattern: “In America, we charge $109 for a hamburger that tastes like it's been pulled out of a shipping container that went overboard in 1944. But I hear you have good and cheap food in Europe – true?” I don't mind sounding like a d*****s if the result is good information for all of us, and thankfully I achieved both of those things on this podcast.What we talked aboutThe European winter so far; how a UK-based skier moves back and forth to the Alps; easy car-free travel from the U.S. directly to Alps ski areas; is ski traffic a thing in Europe?; EuroSki 101; what does “ski area” mean in Europe; Euro snow pockets; climate change realities versus media narratives in Europe; what to make of ski areas closing around the Alps; snowmaking in Europe; comparing the Euro stereotype of the leisurely skier to reality; an aging skier population; Euro liftline queuing etiquette and how it mirrors a nation's driving culture; “the idea that you wouldn't bring the bar down is completely alien to me; I mean everybody brings the bar down on the chairlift”; why an Epic or Ikon Pass may not be your best option to ski in Europe; why lift ticket prices are so much cheaper in Europe than in the U.S.; Most consumers “are not even aware” that Vail has started purchasing Swiss resorts; ownership structure at Euro resorts; Vail to buy Verbier?; multimountain pass options in Europe; are Euros buying Epic and Ikon to ski locally or to travel to North America?; must-ski European ski areas; Euro ski-guide culture; and quirky ski areas.What I got wrongWe discussed Epic Pass' lodging requirement for Verbier, which is in effect for this winter, but which Vail removed for the 2025-26 ski season.Why now was a good time for this interviewI present to you, again, the EuroSki Chart – a list of all 26 European ski areas that have aligned themselves with a U.S.-based multi-mountain pass:The large majority of these have joined Ski NATO (a joke, not a political take Brah), in the past five years. And while purchasing a U.S. megapass is not necessary to access EuroHills in the same way it is to ski the Rockies – doing so may, in fact, be counterproductive – just the notion of having access to these Connecticut-sized ski areas via a pass that you're buying anyway is enough to get people considering a flight east for their turns.And you know what? They should. At this point, a mass abandonment of the Mountain West by the tourists that sustain it is the only thing that may drive the region to seriously reconsider the robbery-by-you-showed-up-here-all-stupid lift ticket prices, car-centric transit infrastructure, and sclerotic building policies that are making American mountain towns impossibly expensive and inconvenient to live in or to visit. In many cases, a EuroSkiTrip costs far less than an AmeriSki trip - especially if you're not the sort to buy a ski pass in March 2025 so that you can ski in February 2026. And though the flights will generally cost more, the logistics of airport-to-ski-resort-and-back generally make more sense. In Europe they have trains. In Europe those trains stop in villages where you can walk to your hotel and then walk to the lifts the next morning. In Europe you can walk up to the ticket window and trade a block of cheese for a lift ticket. In Europe they put the bar down. In Europe a sandwich, brownie, and a Coke doesn't cost $152. And while you can spend $152 on a EuroLunch, it probably means that you drank seven liters of wine and will need a sled evac to the village.“Oh so why don't you just go live there then if it's so perfect?”Shut up, Reductive Argument Bro. Everyplace is great and also sucks in its own special way. I'm just throwing around contrasts.There are plenty of things I don't like about EuroSki: the emphasis on pistes, the emphasis on trams, the often curt and indifferent employees, the “injury insurance” that would require a special session of the European Union to pay out a claim. And the lack of trees. Especially the lack of trees. But more families are opting for a week in Europe over the $25,000 Experience of a Lifetime in the American West, and I totally understand why.A quote often attributed to Winston Churchill reads, “You can always trust the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the alternatives.” Unfortunately, it appears to be apocryphal. But I wish it wasn't. Because it's true. And I do think we'll eventually figure out that there is a continent-wide case study in how to retrofit our mountain towns for a more cost- and transit-accessible version of lift-served skiing. But it's gonna take a while.Podcast NotesOn U.S. ski areas opening this winter that haven't done so “in a long time”A strong snow year has allowed at least 11 U.S. ski areas to open after missing one or several winters, including:* Cloudmont, Alabama (yes I'm serious)* Pinnacle, Maine* Covington and Sault Seal, ropetows outfit in Michigan's Upper Peninsula* Norway Mountain, Michigan – resurrected by new owner after multi-year closure* Tower Mountain, a ropetow bump in Michigan's Lower Peninsula* Bear Paw, Montana* Hatley Pointe, North Carolina opened under new ownership, who took last year off to gut-renovate the hill* Warner Canyon, Oregon, an all-natural-snow, volunteer-run outfit, opened in December after a poor 2023-24 snow year.* Bellows Falls ski tow, a molehill run by the Rockingham Recreation in Vermont, opened for the first time in five years after a series of snowy weeks across New England* Lyndon Outing Club, another volunteer-run ropetow operation in Vermont, sat out last winter with low snow but opened this yearOn the “subway map” of transit-accessible Euro skiingI mean this is just incredible:The map lives on Martin's Ski Flight Free site, which encourages skiers to reduce their carbon footprints. I am not good at doing this, largely because such a notion is a fantasy in America as presently constructed.But just imagine a similar system in America. The nation is huge, of course, and we're not building a functional transcontinental passenger railroad overnight (or maybe ever). But there are several areas of regional density where such networks could, at a minimum, connect airports or city centers with destination ski areas, including:* Reno Airport (from the east), and the San Francisco Bay area (to the west) to the ring of more than a dozen Tahoe resorts (or at least stops at lake- or interstate-adjacent Sugar Bowl, Palisades, Homewood, Northstar, Mt. Rose, Diamond Peak, and Heavenly)* Denver Union Station and Denver airport to Loveland, Keystone, Breck, Copper, Vail, Beaver Creek, and - a stretch - Aspen and Steamboat, with bus connections to A-Basin, Ski Cooper, and Sunlight* SLC airport east to Snowbird, Alta, Solitude, Brighton, Park City, and Deer Valley, and north to Snowbasin and Powder Mountain* Penn Station in Manhattan up along Vermont's Green Mountain Spine: Mount Snow, Stratton, Bromley, Killington, Pico, Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, Bolton Valley, Stowe, Smugglers' Notch, Jay Peak, with bus connections to Magic and Middlebury Snowbowl* Boston up the I-93 corridor: Tenney, Waterville Valley, Loon, Cannon, and Bretton Woods, with a spur to Conway and Cranmore, Attitash, Wildcat, and Sunday River; bus connections to Black New Hampshire, Sunapee, Gunstock, Ragged, and Mount AbramYes, there's the train from Denver to Winter Park (and ambitions to extend the line to Steamboat), which is terrific, but placing that itsy-bitsy spur next to the EuroSystem and saying “look at our neato train” is like a toddler flexing his toy jet to the pilots as he boards a 757. And they smile and say, “Whoa there, Shooter! Now have a seat while we burn off 4,000 gallons of jet fuel accelerating this f****r to 500 miles per hour.”On the number of ski areas in EuropeI've detailed how difficult it is to itemize the 500-ish active ski areas in America, but the task is nearly incomprehensible in Europe, which has as many as eight times the number of ski areas. Here are a few estimates:* Skiresort.info counts 3,949 ski areas (as of today; the number changes daily) in Europe: list | map* Wikipedia doesn't provide a number, but it does have a very long list* Statista counts a bit more than 2,200, but their list excludes most of Eastern EuropeOn Euro non-ski media and climate change catastropheOf these countless European ski areas, a few shutter or threaten to each year. The resulting media cycle is predictable and dumb. In The Snow concisely summarizes how this pattern unfolds by analyzing coverage of the recent near loss of L'Alpe du Grand Serre, France (emphasis mine):A ski resort that few people outside its local vicinity had ever heard of was the latest to make headlines around the world a month ago as it announced it was going to cease ski operations.‘French ski resort in Alps shuts due to shortage of snow' reported The Independent, ‘Another European ski resort is closing due to lack of snow' said Time Out, The Mirror went for ”Devastation” as another European ski resort closes due to vanishing snow‘ whilst The Guardian did a deeper dive with, ‘Fears for future of ski tourism as resorts adapt to thawing snow season.' The story also appeared in dozens more publications around the world.The only problem is that the ski area in question, L'Alpe du Grand Serre, has decided it isn't closing its ski area after all, at least not this winter.Instead, after the news of the closure threat was publicised, the French government announced financial support, as did the local municipality of La Morte, and a number of major players in the ski industry. In addition, a public crowdfunding campaign raised almost €200,000, prompting the officials who made the original closure decision to reconsider. Things will now be reassessed in a year's time.There has not been the same global media coverage of the news that L'Alpe du Grand Serre isn't closing after all.It's not the first resort where money has been found to keep slopes open after widespread publicity of a closure threat. La Chapelle d'Abondance was apparently on the rocks in 2020 but will be fully open this winter and similarly Austria's Heiligenblut which was said to be at risk of permanently closure in the summer will be open as normal.Of course, ski areas do permanently close, just like any business, and climate change is making the multiple challenges that smaller, lower ski areas face, even more difficult. But in the near-term bigger problems are often things like justifying spends on essential equipment upgrades, rapidly increasing power costs and changing consumer habits that are the bigger problems right now. The latter apparently exacerbated by media stories implying that ski holidays are under severe threat by climate change.These increasingly frequent stories always have the same structure of focusing on one small ski area that's in trouble, taken from the many thousands in the Alps that few regular skiers have heard of. The stories imply (by ensuring that no context is provided), that this is a major resort and typical of many others. Last year some reports implied, again by avoiding giving any context, that a ski area in trouble that is actually close to Rome, was in the Alps.This is, of course, not to pretend that climate change does not pose an existential threat to ski holidays, but just to say that ski resorts have been closing for many decades for multiple reasons and that most of these reports do not give all the facts or paint the full picture.On no cars in ZermattIf the Little Cottonwood activists really cared about the environment in their precious canyon, they wouldn't be advocating for alternate rubber-wheeled transit up to Alta and Snowbird – they'd be demanding that the road be closed and replaced by a train or gondola or both, and that the ski resorts become a pedestrian-only enclave dotted with only as many electric vehicles as it took to manage the essential business of the towns and the ski resorts.If this sounds improbable, just look to Zermatt, which has banned gas cars for decades. Skiers arrive by train. Nearly 6,000 people live there year-round. It is amazing what humans can build when the car is considered as an accessory to life, rather than its central organizing principle.On driving in EuropeDriving in Europe is… something else. I've driven in, let's see: Iceland, Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro. That last one is the scariest but they're all a little scary. Drivers' speeds seem to be limited by nothing other than physics, passing on blind curves is common even on mountain switchbacks, roads outside of major arterials often collapse into one lane, and Euros for some reason don't believe in placing signs at intersections to indicate street names. Thank God for GPS. I'll admit that it's all a little thrilling once the disorientation wears off, and there are things to love about driving in Europe: roundabouts are used in place of traffic lights wherever possible, the density of cars tends to be less (likely due to the high cost of gas and plentiful mass transit options), sprawl tends to be more contained, the limited-access highways are extremely well-kept, and the drivers on those limited-access highways actually understand what the lanes are for (slow, right; fast, left).It may seem contradictory that I am at once a transit advocate and an enthusiastic road-tripper. But I've lived in New York City, home of the United States' best mass-transit system, for 23 years, and have owned a car for 19 of them. There is a logic here: in general, I use the subway or my bicycle to move around the city, and the car to get out of it (this is the only way to get to most ski areas in the region, at least midweek). I appreciate the options, and I wish more parts of America offered a better mix.On chairs without barsIt's a strange anachronism that the United States is still home to hundreds of chairlifts that lack safety bars. ANSI standards now require them on new lift builds (as far as I can tell), but many chairlifts built without bars from the 1990s and earlier appear to have been grandfathered into our contemporary system. This is not the case in the Eastern U.S. where, as far as I'm aware, every chairlift with the exception of a handful in Pennsylvania have safety bars – New York and many New England states require them by law (and require riders to use them). Things get dicey in the Midwest, which has, as a region, been far slower to upgrade its lift fleets than bigger mountains in the East and West. Many ski areas, however, have retrofit their old lifts with bars – I was surprised to find them on the lifts at Sundown, Iowa; Chestnut, Illinois; and Mont du Lac, Wisconsin, for example. Vail and Alterra appear to retrofit all chairlifts with safety bars once they purchase a ski area. But many ski areas across the Mountain West still spin old chairs, including, surprisingly, dozens of mountains in California, Oregon, and Washington, states that tends to have more East Coast-ish outlooks on safety and regulation.On Compagnie des AlpesAccording to Martin, the closest thing Europe has to a Vail- or Alterra-style conglomerate is Compagnie des Alpes, which operates (but does not appear to own) 10 ski areas in the French Alps, and holds ownership stakes in five more. It's kind of an amazing list:Here's the company's acquisition timeline, which includes the ski areas, along with a bunch of amusement parks and hotels:Clearly the path of least resistance to a EuroVail conflagration would be to shovel this pile of coal into the furnace. Martin referenced Tignes' forthcoming exit from the group, to join forces with ski resort Sainte-Foy on June 1, 2026 – teasing a smaller potential EuroVail acquisition. Tignes, however, would not be the first resort to exit CdA's umbrella – Les 2 Alpes left in 2020.On EuroSkiPassesThe EuroMegaPass market is, like EuroSkiing itself, unintelligible to Americans (at least to this American). There are, however, options. Martin offers the Swiss-centric Magic Pass as perhaps the most prominent. It offers access to 92 ski areas (map). You are probably expecting me to make a chart. I will not be making a chart.S**t I need to publish this article before I cave to my irrepressible urge to make a chart.OK this podcast is already 51 days old do not make a chart you moron.I think we're good here.I hope.I will also not be making a chart to track the 12 ski resorts accessible on Austria's Ski Plus City Pass Stubai Innsbruck Unlimited Freedom Pass.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.WhoErik Mogensen, Director of Indy Pass, founder of Entabeni Systems, and temporary owner and General Manager of Black Mountain, New HampshireRecorded onFebruary 25, 2025About Entabeni SystemsEntabeni provides software and hardware engineering exclusively for independent ski areas. Per the company's one-page website:Entabeni: noun; meaning: zulu - "the mountain"We take pride in providing world class software and hardware engineering in true ski bum style.About Indy PassIndy Pass delivers two days each at 181 Alpine and 44 cross-country ski areas, plus discounts at eight Allied resorts and four Cat-skiing outfits for the 2024-25 ski season. Indy has announced several additional partners for the 2025-26 ski season. Here is the probable 2025-26 Alpine roster as of March 2, 2025 (click through for most up-to-date roster):Doug Fish, who has appeared on this podcast four times, founded Indy Pass in 2019. Mogensen, via Entabeni, purchased the pass in 2023.About Black Mountain, New HampshireClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Indy PassLocated in: Jackson, New HampshireYear founded: 1935Pass affiliations: Indy Pass and Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Attitash (:14), Wildcat (:19), Cranmore (:19), Bretton Woods (:40), King Pine (:43), Pleasant Mountain (:48), Sunday River (1:00), Cannon (1:02), Mt. Abram (1:03)Base elevation: 1,250 feetSummit elevation: 2,350 feetVertical drop: 1,100 feetSkiable acres: 140Average annual snowfall: 125 inchesTrail count: 45Lift count: 5 (1 triple, 1 double, 1 J-bar, 1 platter pull, 1 handletow – view Lift Blog's inventory of Black Mountain's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himI first spoke to Mogensen in the summer of 2020. He was somewhere out west, running something called Entabeni Systems, and he had insight into a story that I was working on. Indy Pass founder and owner-at-the-time Doug Fish had introduced us. The conversation was helpful. I wrote the story and moved on.Mogensen didn't. He kept calling. Kept emailing. There was something he wanted me to understand. Not about any particular story that I was writing, but about skiing as a whole. Specifically, about non-megapass skiing. It wasn't working, he insisted. It couldn't work without sweeping and fundamental changes. And he knew how to make those changes. He was already making them, via Entabeni, by delivering jetpack technology to caveman ski areas. They'd been fighting with sticks and rocks but now they had machine guns. But they needed more weapons, and faster.I still didn't get it. Not when Mogensen purchased Indy Pass in March 2023, and not when he joined the board at teetering-on-the-edge-of-existence Antelope Butte, Wyoming the following month. I may not have gotten it until Mogensen assembled, that October, a transcontinental coalition to reverse a New Hampshire mountain's decision to drop dead or contributed, several weeks later, vital funds to help re-open quirky and long-shuttered Hickory, New York.But in May of that year I had a late-night conversation with Doug Fish in a Savannah bar. He'd had no shortage of Indy Pass suitors, he told me. Fish had chosen Erik, he said, not because his longtime tech partner would respect Indy's brand integrity or would refuse to sell to Megaski Inc – though certainly both were true – but because in Mogensen, Fish saw a figure messianic in his conviction that family-owned, crockpots-on-tabletops, two-for-Tuesday skiing must not be in the midst of an extinction event.Mogensen, Fish said, had transformed his world into a laboratory for preventing such a catastrophe, rising before dawn and working all day without pause, focused always and only on skiing. More specifically, on positioning lunch-bucket skiing for a fair fight in the world of Octopus Lifts and $329 lift tickets and suspender-wearing Finance Bros who would swallow the mountains whole if they could poop gold coins out afterward. In service of this vision, Mogensen had created Entabeni from nothing. Indy Pass never would have worked without it, Fish said. “Elon Musk on skis,” Fish called* him. A visionary who would change this thing forever.Fish was, in a way, mediating. I'd written something - who knows what at this point – that Mogensen hadn't been thrilled with. Fish counseled us both against dismissiveness. I needed time to appreciate the full epic; Erik to understand the function of media. We still disagree often, but we understand and appreciate one another's roles. Mogensen is, increasingly, a main character in the story of modern skiing, and I – as a chronicler of such – owe my audience an explanation for why I think so.*This quote hit different two years ago, when Musk was still primarily known as the tireless disruptor who had mainstreamed electric cars. What we talked aboutWhy Indy Pass stepped up to save Black Mountain, New Hampshire; tripling Black's best revenue year ever in one season; how letting skiers brown bag helped increase revenue; how a beaten-up, dated ski area can compete directly with corporate-owned mountains dripping with high-speed lifts and riding cheap mass-market passes; “I firmly believe that skiing is in a bit of an identity crisis”; free cookies as emotional currency; Black's co-op quest; Black's essential elements; skiing's multi-tiered cost crisis; why the fanciest option is often the only option for lifts, snowcats, and snowguns; what ski areas are really competing against (it isn't other ski areas); bringing big tech to small skiing with Entabeni; what happened when teenage Mogensen's favorite ski area closed; “we need to spend 90 percent of our time understanding the problem we're trying to solve, and 10 percent of our time solving it”; why data matters; where small skiing is in the technology curve; “I think it's become very, very obvious that where you can level the playing field very quickly is with technology”; why Entabeni purchased Indy Pass; the percent of day-ticket sales that Indy accounts for at partner ski areas; limiting Indy Pass sales and keeping prices low; is Indy Pass a business?; and why Indy will never add a third day.Questions I wish I'd askedMogensen's tenure at Indy Pass has included some aggressive moves to fend off competition and hold market share. I wrote this series of stories on Indy's showdown with Ski Cooper over its cheap reciprocal pass two years ago:These are examples of headlines that Indy Pass HQ were not thrilled with, but I have a job to do. We could have spent an entire podcast re-hashing this, but the story has already been told, and I'd rather move forward than back.Also, I'd have liked to discuss Antelope Butte, Wyoming and Hickory, New York at length. We glancingly discuss Antelope Butte, and don't mention Hickory at all, but these are both important stories that I intend to explore more deeply in the future.Why now was a good time for this interviewHere's an interesting fact: since 2000, the Major League Baseball team with the highest payroll has won the World Series just three times (the 2018 Red Sox, and the 2000 and '09 Yankees), and made the series but lost it three additional times (the 2017 Dodgers and 2001 and '03 Yankees). Sure, the world champ rocks a top-five payroll about half the time, and the vast majority of series winners sit in the top half of the league payroll-wise, but recent MLB history suggests that the dudes with the most resources don't always win.Which isn't to say it's easy to fight against Epic and Ikon and ski areas with a thousand snowguns and chairlifts that cost more than a fighter jet. But a little creativity helps a lot. And Mogensen has assembled a creative toolkit that independent ski area operators can tap to help them spin-kick their way through the maelstrom:* When ski areas join Indy Pass, they join what amounts to a nationally marketed menu for hungry skiers anxious for variety and novelty. “Why yes, I'll have two servings of the Jay Peak and two Cannon Mountains, but I guess I'll try a side of this Black Mountain so long as I'm here.” Each resulting Indy Pass visit also delivers a paycheck, often from first-time visitors who say, “By gum let's do it again.”* Many ski areas, such as Nub's Nob and Jiminy Peak, build their own snowguns. Some, like Holiday Valley, install their own lifts. The manly man manning machines has been a ski industry trope since the days of Model T-powered ropetows and nine-foot-long skis. But ever so rare is the small ski area that can build, from scratch, a back-end technology system that actually works at scale. Entabeni says “yeah actually let me get this part, Bro.” Tech, as Mogensen says in our interview, is the fastest way for the little dude to catch up with the big dude.* Ski areas can be good businesses. But they often aren't. Costs are high, weather is unpredictable, and skiing is hard, cold, and, typically, far away from where the people live. To avoid the inconvenience of having to turn a profit, many ski areas – Bogus Basin, Mad River Glen, Bridger Bowl – have stabilized themselves under alternate business models, in which every dollar the ski area makes funnels directly back into improving the ski area. Black Mountain is attempting to do the same.I'm an optimist. Ask me about skiing's future, and I will not choose “death by climate change.” It is, instead, thriving through adaptation, to the environment, to technological shifts, to societal habits. Just watch if you don't believe me.Why you should ski Black MountainThere's no obvious answer to this question. Black is surrounded by bangers. Twin-peaked Attitash looms across the valley. Towering Wildcat faces Mt. Washington a dozen miles north. Bretton Woods and Sunday River, glimmering and modern, hoteled and mega-lifted and dripping with snowgun bling, rise to the west and to the east, throwing off the gravity and gravitas to haul marching armies of skiers into their kingdoms. Cranmore gives skiers a modern lift and a big new baselodge. Even formerly beat-up Pleasant Mountain now spins a high-speeder up its 1,200 vertical feet. And to even get to Black from points south, skiers have to pass Waterville, Loon, Cannon, Gunstock, and Ragged, all of which offer more terrain, more vert, faster lifts, bigger lodges, and an easier access road.That's a tough draw. And it didn't help that, until recently, Black was, well, a dump. Seasons were short, investment was limited. When things broke, they stayed broken – Mogensen tells me that Black hadn't made snow above the double chair midstation in 20 years before this winter. When I last showed up to ski at Black, two years ago, I found an empty parking lot and stilled lifts, in spite of assurances on social media and the ski area's website that this was a normal operating day.Mogensen fixed all that. The double now spins to the top every day the ski area is open. New snowguns line many trunk trails. A round of explosives tamed Upper Maple Slalom, transforming the run from what was essentially a cliff into an offramp-smooth drag-racer. The J-bar – America's oldest continuously operating overhead cable lift, in service since 1935 – spins regularly. A handle tow replaced the old rope below the triple. Black has transformed the crippled and sad little mid-mountain lodge into a boisterous party deck with music and champagne and firepits roaring right beneath the double chair. Walls and don't-do-this-or-that signs came down all over the lodge, which, while still crowded, is now stuffed with families and live music and beer glasses clinking in the dusk.And this is year one. Mogensen can't cross five feet of Black's campus without someone stopping him to ask if he's “the Indy Pass guy” and hoisting their phone for selfie-time. They all say some version of “thank you for what you're doing.” They all want in on the co-op. They all want to be part of whatever this crazy, quirky little hill is, which is the opposite of all the zinger lifts and Epkon overload that was supposed to kill off creaky little outfits like this one.Before I skied Black for three days over Presidents' weekend, I was skeptical that Mogensen could summon the interest to transform the mountain into a successful co-op. Did New England really have the appetite for another large throwback ski outfit on top of MRG and Smuggs and Magic? All my doubt evaporated as I watched Mogensen hand out free hot cookies like some orange-clad Santa Claus, as I tailed my 8-year-old son into the low-angle labyrinths of Sugar Glades and Rabbit Run, as I watched the busiest day in the mountain's recorded history fail to produce lift lines longer than three minutes, as Mt. Washington greeted me each time I slid off the Summit double.Black Mountain is a special place, and this is a singular time to go and be a part of it. So do that.Podcast NotesOn Black Mountain's comebackIn October 2023, Black Mountain's longtime owner, John Fichera, abruptly announced that the ski area would close, probably forever. An alarmed Mogensen rolled in with an offer to help: keep the ski area open, and Indy and Entabeni will help you find a buyer. Fichera agreed. I detailed the whole rapid-fire saga here:A year and dozens of perspective buyers later, Black remained future-less heading into the 2024-25 winter. So Mogensen shifted tactics, buying the mountain via Indy Pass and promising to transform the ski area into a co-op:On the Mad River Glen co-opAs of this writing, Mad River Glen, the feisty, single-chair-accessed 2,000-footer that abuts Alterra's Sugarbush, is America's only successful ski co-op. Here's how it started and how it works, per MRG's website:Mad River Glen began a new era in 1995 when its skiers came together to form the Mad River Glen Cooperative. The Cooperative works to fulfill a simple mission;“… to forever protect the classic Mad River Glen skiing experience by preserving low skier density, natural terrain and forests, varied trail character, and friendly community atmosphere for the benefit of shareholders, area personnel and patrons.” …A share in the Mad River Cooperative costs $2,000. Shares may be purchased through a single payment or in 40 monthly installments of $50 with a $150 down payment. The total cost for an installment plan is $2,150 (8.0% Annual Percentage Rate). The installment option enables anyone who loves and appreciates Mad River Glen to become an owner for as little as $50 per month. Either way, you start enjoying the benefits immediately! The only other cost is the annual Advance Purchase Requirement (APR) of $200. Since advance purchases can be applied to nearly every product and service on the mountain, including season passes, tickets, ski school and food, the advance purchase requirement does not represent an additional expense for most shareholders. In order to remain in good standing as a shareholder and receive benefits, your full APR payment must be met each year by September 30th.Black is still working out the details of its co-op. I can't share what I already know, other than to say that Black's organizational structure will be significantly different from MRG's.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

QuestCast VR, der Podcast für alles rund um die Meta Quest Plattform. In Folge 23 begrüßen wir euch nach einer langen Pause zurück. Wir reden über die Quest 4, erzählen von den Erfahrungen mit einem Gunstock und HDMI Adapter und bringen eine gute Auswahl an Spielen mit. Aber wie immer bleibt es natürlich nicht dabei, denn die 92739749 weiteren Spiele wollen natürlich auch besprochen werden. Schreibt uns gerne eure Fragen, Verbesserungsvorschläge und Lobgesänge. Hier findet ihr uns auf allen Plattformen ⁠⁠⁠https://questcastvr.my.canva.site/questcastvr⁠⁠⁠ Wir würden uns über eine 5 Sterne Bewertung freuen. Danke für´s zuhören!

Original Air Date: October 19, 1949Host: Andrew RhynesShow: The Lone RangerPhone: (707) 98 OTRDW (6-8739) Stars:• Brace Beemer (Lone Ranger)• John Todd (Tonto) Writer:• Fran Striker Producer:• George W. Trendle Music:• Ben Bonnell Exit music from: Roundup on the Prairie by Aaron Kenny https://bit.ly/3kTj0kK

Original Air Date: October 19, 1949Host: Andrew RhynesShow: The Lone RangerPhone: (707) 98 OTRDW (6-8739) Stars:• Brace Beemer (Lone Ranger)• John Todd (Tonto) Writer:• Fran Striker Producer:• George W. Trendle Music:• Ben Bonnell Exit music from: Roundup on the Prairie by Aaron Kenny https://bit.ly/3kTj0kK

Welcome to the 25th episode of the New England Endurance Podcast! To mark this milestone, and the coming winter season, we explore one of our favorite endurance activities: cross-country skiing!  We chat with two leaders from the New England Nordic Ski Association (NENSA): Isabel Caldwell, Community Development Director, and Ben Theyerl, Competitive Program Director. Together, they explore NENSA's mission to make Nordic skiing accessible and enjoyable for skiers of all ages and abilities, while sharing insider tips and hidden gems that even seasoned skiers might not know.Episode Highlights:Nordic Skiing Essentials: For newcomers, Isabel and Ben give a rundown on Classic vs. Skate skiing and offer advice on choosing the right first-time experience. They break down the accessibility of NENSA's programs, like the Bill Koch Youth Ski League, which combines fun and community to help young skiers develop a lifelong love for Nordic skiing. Listeners will be inspired by stories of athletes who began their journey in NENSA programs like the beloved Bill Koch Festival, a must-attend event for young skiers that celebrates community spirit and friendly competition. Isabel and Ben discuss how NENSA promotes both grassroots participation and elite-level achievement, balancing support for competitive athletes with initiatives to bring new people into the sport.The Impact of Nordic Rocks:  NENSA's Nordic Rocks program recently received a Share Winter Foundation grant to expand access for youth across the region. Ben and Isabel share a peek into a Nordic Rocks session and describe the reactions of kids trying cross-country skiing for the first time—pure joy and discovery.Hidden Gems of New England Nordic Skiing:* Curious about where to find the region's best-kept skiing secrets? Isabel and Ben reveal some lesser-known spots that offer unique trails and stunning scenery: Quarry Road Trails in Waterville, ME, known for its pristine trails and varied terrain. Wild Wings Ski in Peru, VT, a picturesque location with cozy, tree-lined trails. Trapp Family Lodge Marlboro Nordic Ski and Prospect Mountain in Woodford, VT, both offering fantastic experiences for intermediate and advanced skiers. Gunstock's Valentine's Paintball Biathlon in NH, a quirky, fun race combining skiing with paintball! In a delightful twist, Ben introduces the *Gunstock Valentine's Paintball Biathlon*, a playful take on the traditional biathlon where participants swap out rifles for paintball markers, adding a fun and unexpected layer to the experience. This event exemplifies how NENSA creates unique, inclusive spaces for skiers to enjoy the sport without the intensity of competition. Tour de Stowe, an event featuring some of Vermont's finest ski trails, ideal for those seeking a mix of scenic touring and challenging terrain...with soup and beer at the end! Rikerts Outdoor Center, a versatile venue with trails that accommodate everyone from beginners to seasoned Nordic veterans.Join us for an inspiring episode that highlights the trails, traditions, and hidden gems of New England's Nordic skiing community. Whether you're a competitive racer or simply looking for a scenic winter activity, Isabel and Ben's stories will make you want to hitArt & Eric embark on a journey to showcase and celebrate the endurance sports community in New England.

Sr. Row returns. Jr. Row and Island to Gunstock Mainland vs Island staff game part 3 What a day!!!

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 15. It dropped for free subscribers on April 22. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoTom Day, President and General Manager of Gunstock, New HampshireRecorded onMarch 14, 2024About GunstockClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Belknap County, New HampshireLocated in: Gilford, New HampshireYear founded: 1937Pass affiliations: Unlimited access on New Hampshire College Pass (with Cannon, Cranmore, and Waterville Valley)Closest neighboring ski areas: Abenaki (:34), Red Hill Ski Club (:35), Veterans Memorial (:43), Tenney (:52), Campton (:52), Ragged (:54), Proctor (:56), Powderhouse Hill (:58), McIntyre (1:00)Base elevation: 904 feetSummit elevation: 2,244 feetVertical drop: 1,340 feetSkiable Acres: 227 Average annual snowfall: 120 inchesTrail count: 49 (2% double black, 31% black, 52% blue, 15% green)Lift count: 8 (1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples, 3 carpets - view Lift Blog's inventory of Gunstock's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himIn the roughly four-and-a-half years since I launched The Storm, I've written a lot more about some ski areas than others. I won't claim that there's no personal bias involved, because there are certain ski areas that, due to reputation, convenience, geography, or personal nostalgia, I'm drawn to. But Gunstock is not one of those ski areas. I was only vaguely aware of its existence when I launched this whole project. I'd been drawn, all of my East Coast life, to the larger ski areas in the state's north and next door in Vermont and Maine. Gunstock, awkwardly located from my New York City base, was one of those places that maybe I'd get to someday, even if I wasn't trying too hard to actually make that happen.And yet, I've written more about Gunstock than just about any ski area in the country. That's because, despite my affinity for certain ski areas, I try to follow the news around. And wow has there been news at this mid-sized New Hampshire bump. Nobody knew, going into the summer of 2022, that Gunstock would become the most talked-about ski area in America, until the lid blew off Mount Winnipesaukee in July of that year, when a shallow and ill-planned insurrection failed spectacularly at drawing the ski area into our idiotic and exhausting political wars.If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can read more on the whole surreal episode in the Podcast Notes section below, or just listen to the podcast. But because of that weird summer, and because of an aspirational masterplan launched in 2021, I've given Gunstock outsized attention in this newsletter. And in the process, I've quite come to like the place, both as a ski area (where I've now actually skied), and as a community, and it has become, however improbably, a mountain I keep taking The Storm back to.What we talked aboutRetirement; “my theory is that 10 percent of people that come to a ski area can be a little bit of a problem”; Gunstock as a business in 2019 versus Gunstock today; skier visits surge; cash in the bank; the publicly owned ski area that is not publicly subsidized; Gunstock Nice; the last four years at Gunstock sure were an Asskicker, eh?; how the Gunstock Area Commission works and what went sideways in the summer of 2022; All-Summers Disease; preventing a GAC Meltdown repeat; the time bandits keep coming; should Gunstock be leased to a private operator?; qualities that the next general manager of Gunstock will need to run the place successfully; honesty, integrity, and respect; an updated look at the 2021 masterplan and what actually makes sense to build; could Gunstock ever have a hotel or summit lodge?; why a paved parking lot is a big deal in 2024; Maine skiing in the 1960s; 1970s lift lines; reflecting on the changes over 40-plus years of skiing; rear-wheel-drive Buicks as ski commuter car; competing against Epic and Ikon and why independent ski areas will always have a place in the market; will record skier-visit numbers persist?; a surprising stat about season passes; and how a payphone caused mass confusion in Park City.  Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewOn January 19, Gunstock Marketing Director Bonnie MacPherson (long of Okemo and Bretton Woods), shot me a press release announcing that Day would retire at the conclusion of the 2023-24 ski season.It was a little surprising. Day hadn't been at Gunstock long. He'd arrived just a couple months before the March 2020 Covid shutdowns, almost four years to the day before he announced retirement. He was widely liked and respected on the mountain and in the community, a sentiment reinforced during the attempted Kook Coup of summer 2022, when a pair of fundamentalist nutjobs got flung out of the county via catapult after attempting to seize Gunstock from Day and his team.But Gunstock was a bit of a passion project for Day, a skiing semi-lifer who'd spent three decades at Waterville Valley before fiddling with high-end odd-jobs of the consultancy and project-management sort for 10 years. In four years, he transformed county-owned Gunstock from a seasonal business that tapped bridge loans to survive each summer into a profitable year-round entertainment center with millions in the bank. And he did it all despite Covid, despite the arrival of vending-machine Epic and Ikon passes, despite a couple of imbeciles who'd never worked at a ski area thinking they could do a better job running a ski area than the person they paid $175,000 per year to run the ski area.  I still don't really get it. How it all worked out. How Gunstock has gotten better as everything about running a ski area has gotten harder and more expensive and more competitive. There's nothing really special about the place statistically or terrain-wise. It's not super snowy or extra tall or especially big. It has exactly one high-speed lift, a really nice lodge, and Awe Dag views of Lake Winnipesaukee. It's nice but not exceptional, just another good mid-sized ski area in a state full of good mid-sized ski areas.  And yet, Gunstock thrives. Day, like most ski area general managers, is allergic to credit, but I have to think he had a lot to do with the mountain's late resilience. He's an interesting guy, thoughtful and worldly and adventurous. Talking to him, I always get the sense that this is a person who's comfortable with who he is, content with his life, a hardcore skier whose interests extend far beyond it. He's colorful but also plainspoken, an optimist and a pragmatist, a bit of back-office executive and good ole' boy wrencher melded into your archetype of a ski area manager. Someone who, disposition baked by experience, is perfectly suited to the absurd task of operating a ski area in New Hampshire. It's too bad he's leaving, but I guess eventually we all do. The least I could do was get his story one more time before he bounced.Why you should ski GunstockSkiing Knife Fight, New Hampshire Edition, looks like this:That's 30 ski areas, the fifth-most of any state, in the fifth-smallest state in America. And oh by the way you're also right next door to all of this:And Vermont is barely bigger than New Hampshire. Together, the two states are approximately one-fifth the size of Colorado. “Fierce” as the kids (probably don't) say.So, what makes you choose Gunstock as your snowsportskiing destination when you have 56 other choices in a two-state region, plus another half-dozen large ski areas just east in Maine? Especially when you probably own an Indy, Epic, or Ikon pass, which, combined, deliver access to 28 upper New England ski areas, including most of the best ones?Maybe that's exactly why. We've been collectively enchanted by access, obsessed with driving down per-visit cost to beat inflated day-ticket prices that we simultaneously find absurd and delight in outsmarting. But boot up at any New England ski area with chairlifts, and you're going to find a capable operation. No one survived this long in this dogfight without crafting an experience worth skiing.It's telling that Gunstock has only gotten busier since the Epic and Ikon passes smashed into New England a half dozen years ago. There's something there, an extra thing worth pursuing. You don't have to give up your SuperUltimoWinterSki Pass to make Gunstock part of your winter, but maybe work it in there anyway?Podcast NotesOn Gunstock's masterplanGunstock's ambitious masterplan, rolled out in 2021, would have blown the ski area out on all sides, added a bunch of new lifts, and plopped a hotel and summit lodge on the property:Most of it seems improbable now, as Day details in the podcast.On the GAC conflictSomeone could write a book on the Gunstock Shenanigans of 2022. The best I can give you is a series of article I published as the whole ridiculous saga was unfolding:* Band of Nitwits Highjacks Gunstock, Ski Area's Future Uncertain - July 24, 2022* Walkouts, Resignations, Wild Accusations: A Timeline of Gunstock's Implosion - July 31, 2022* Gunstock GM Tom Day & Team Return, Commissioner Ousted – 3 Ways to Protect the Mountain's Future - Aug. 8, 2022If nothing else, just watch this remarkable video of Day and his senior staff resigning en masse:On the Caledonian Canal that “splits Scotland in half”I'd never heard of the Caledonian Canal, but Day mentions sailing it and that it “splits Scotland in half.” That's the sort of thing I go nuts for, so I looked it up. Per Wikipedia:The Caledonian Canal connects the Scottish east coast at Inverness with the west coast at Corpach near Fort William in Scotland. The canal was constructed in the early nineteenth century by Scottish engineer Thomas Telford.The canal runs some 60 miles (100 kilometres) from northeast to southwest and reaches 106 feet (32 metres) above sea level.[2] Only one third of the entire length is man-made, the rest being formed by Loch Dochfour, Loch Ness, Loch Oich, and Loch Lochy.[3] These lochs are located in the Great Glen, on a geological fault in the Earth's crust. There are 29 locks (including eight at Neptune's Staircase, Banavie), four aqueducts and 10 bridges in the course of the canal.Here's its general location:More detail:On Day's first appearance on the podcastThis was Day's second appearance on the podcast. The first was way back in episode 34, recorded in January 2021:On Hurricane Mountain, MaineDay mentions skiing a long-gone ropetow bump named Hurricane Mountain, Maine as a child. While I couldn't find any trailmaps, New England Lost Ski Areas Project houses a nice history from the founder's daughter:I am Charlene Manchester now Barton. My Dad started Hurricane Ski Slope with Al Ervin. I was in the second grade, I remember, when I used to go skiing there with him. He and Al did almost everything--cranked the rope tow motor up to get it going, directed traffic, and were the ski patrol. As was noted in your report, accommodations were across road at the Norton farm where we could go to use the rest room or get a cup of hot chocolate and a hamburger. Summers I would go with him and Al to the hill and play while they cleared brush and tried to improve the hill, even opened one small trail to the right of the main slope. I was in the 5th grade when I tore a ligament in my knee skiing there. Naturally, the ski patrol quickly appeared and my Dad carried me down the slope in his arms. I was in contact with Glenn Parkinson  who came to interview my mother , who at 96 is a very good source of information although actually, she was not much of a skier. The time I am referring to must have been around 1945 because I clearly recall discussing skiing with my second grade teacher Miss Booth, who skied at Hurricane. This was at DW Lunt School in Falmouth where I grew up. I was in the 5th grade when I hurt my leg.My Dad, Charles Manchester , was one of the first skiers in the State, beginning on barrel staves in North Gorham where he grew up. He was a racer and skied the White Mountains . We have a picture of him at Tuckerman's when not many souls ventured up there to ski in the spring. As I understand it, the shortage of gas during WWII was a motivator as he had a passion for the sport, but no gas to get to the mountains in N.H. Two of his best ski buddies were Al Ervin, who started Hurricane with him, and Homer Haywood, who was in the ski troopers during WWII, I think. Another ski pal was Chase Thompson. These guys worked to ski--hiking up Cranmore when the lifts were closed due to the gas shortage caused by WWII. It finally got to be too much for my Dad to run Hurricane, as he was spending more time directing traffic for parking than skiing, which after all was why he and Al started the project.I think my Dad and his ski buddies should be remembered for their love of the sport and their willingness to do whatever it took to ski. Also, they were perfect gentlemen, wonderful manners on the slope, graceful and handsomely dressed, often in neckties. Those were the good old days!The ski area closed around 1973, according to NELSAP, in response to rising insurance rates.On old-school Sunday RiverI've documented the incredible evolution of Sunday River from anthill to Vesuvius many times. But here, to distill the drama of the transformation, is the now-titanic ski area's 1961 trailmap:This 60s-era Sunday River was a foundational playground for Day.On the Epic and Ikon New England timelineIt's easy to lose track of the fact that the Epic and Ikon Passes didn't exist in New England until very recently. A brief timeline:* 2017: Vail Resorts buys Stowe, its first New England property, and adds the mountain to the Epic Pass for the 2017-18 ski season.* 2018: Vail Resorts buys Triple Peaks, owners of Mount Sunapee and Okemo, and adds them to the Epic Pass for the 2018-19 ski season.* 2018: The Ikon Pass debuts with five or seven days at five New England destinations for the 2018-19 ski season: Killington/Pico, Sugarbush, and Boyne-owned Loon, Sunday River, and Sugarloaf. Alterra-owned Stratton is unlimited on the Ikon Pass and offers five days on the Ikon Base Pass.* 2019: Vail buys the 17-mountain Peak Resorts portfolio, which includes four more New England ski areas: Mount Snow in Vermont and Crotched, Wildcat, and Attitash in New Hampshire. All join the Epic Pass for the 2019-20 ski season, bumping the number of New England ski areas on the coalition up to seven.* 2019: Alterra buys Sugarbush. Amps up the mountain's Ikon Pass access to unlimited with blackouts on the Ikon Base and unlimited on the full Ikon for the 2020-21 ski season. Alterra also ramps up Stratton Ikon Base access from five days to unlimited with blackouts for the 2020-21 winter.* 2020: Vail introduces New England-specific Epic Passes. At just $599, the Northeast Value Pass delivers unlimited access to Vail's four New Hampshire mountains, holiday-restricted unlimited access to Mount Snow and Okemo, and 10 non-holiday days at Stowe. Vail also rolls out a midweek version for just $429.* 2021: Vail unexpectedly cuts the price of Epic Passes by 20 percent, reducing the cost of the Northeast Value Pass to just $479 and the midweek version to $359. The Epic Local Pass plummets to $583, and even the full Epic Pass is just $783.All of which is background to our conversation, in which I ask Day a pretty interesting question: how the hell have you grown Gunstock's business amidst this incredibly challenging competitive marketplace?The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 30/100 in 2024, and number 530 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 8. It dropped for free subscribers on April 15. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoDan Egan, General Manager of Tenney Mountain, New HampshireRecorded onMarch 14, 2024About Tenney MountainOwned by: North Country Development GroupLocated in: Plymouth, New HampshireYear founded: 1960 (closed several times; re-opened most recently in 2023)Pass affiliations:* No Boundaries Pass: 1-3 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Campton (:24), Kanc Recreation Area (:33), Loon (:34), Ragged (:34), Waterville Valley (:35), Veteran's Memorial (:39), Red Hill Ski Club (:42), Cannon (:44), Proctor (:44), Mt. Eustis (:50), Gunstock (:52), Dartmouth Skiway (:54), Whaleback (:55), Storrs (:57), Bretton Woods (:59)Base elevation: 749 feetSummit elevation: 2,149 feetVertical drop: 1,400 feetSkiable Acres: 110 acresAverage annual snowfall: 140 inchesTrail count: 47 (14 advanced, 27 intermediate, 6 beginner) + 1 terrain parkLift count: 3 (1 triple, 1 double, 1 platter - view Lift Blog's inventory of Tenney's lift fleet)View historic Tenney Mountain trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himDan Egan is an interesting guy. He seems to have 10 jobs all at once. He's at Big Sky and he's at Val-d'Isère and he's writing books and he's giving speeches and he's running Tenney Mountain. He's a legendary freeskier who didn't die young and who's stayed glued to the sport. He loves skiing and it is his whole life and that's clear in talking to him for 30 seconds.So he would have been a great and compelling interview even outside of the context of Tenney. But I'm always drawn to people who do particular, peculiar things when they could do anything. There's no reason that Dan Egan has to bother with Tenney, a mid-sized mountain in a mid-sized ski state far from the ski poles of the Alps and the Rockies. It would be a little like Barack Obama running for drain commissioner of Gladwin County, Michigan. He'd probably do a good job, but why would he bother, when he could do just about anything else in the world?I don't know. It's funny. But Egan is drawn to this place. It's his second time running Tenney. The guy is Boston-core, his New England roots clear and proud. It makes sense that he would rep the region. But there are New England ski areas that stand up to the West in scope and scale of terrain, and even, in Northern Vermont, snow volume and quality (if not consistency). But Tenney isn't one of them. It's like the 50th best ski area in the Northeast, not because it couldn't be better, but because it's never been able to figure out how to become the best version of itself.Egan – who, it's important to note, will move into an advisory or consultant role for Tenney next winter – seems to know exactly who he is, and that helps. He understands skiing and he understands skiers and he understands where this quirky little mountain could fit into the wide world of skiing. This is exactly what the ski area needs as it chugs into the most recent version of itself, one that, we hope, can defy its own legacy and land, like Egan always seems to, on its skis.What we talked aboutA vision for Tenney; what happened when Egan went skiing in jeans all over New Hampshire; the second comeback season was stronger than the first; where Tenney can fit in a jam-packed New Hampshire ski scene; why this time is different at Tenney; the crazy gene; running a ski area with an extreme skier's mindset; expansion potential; what's lost with better snowmaking and grooming and wider trails; why New England breeds kick-ass skiers; Tenney's quiet renovation; can Tenney thrive long-term with a double chair as its summit lift?; what's the worst thing about a six-person chair?; where Tenney could build more beginner terrain; expansion opportunities; the future of the triple chair; an endorsement for surface lifts; the potential for night skiing; the difference between running Tenney in 2002 and 2024; the slow death of learn-to-ski; why is skiing discounting to its most avid fans?; the down side of online ticket discounts; warm-weather snowmaking; Tenney's snowmaking evolution; the best snowmaking system in New Hampshire; “any ski area that's charging more than $100 for skiing and then asking you to put your boots in a cubby outside in the freezing cold … to me, that's an insult”; the importance of base lodges; “brown-baggers, please, you're welcome at Tenney”; potential real estate development and the importance of community; New England ski culture – “It means something to be from the East”; “why aren't more ski area operators skiing?”; skiing as confidence-builder; the No Boundaries Pass; the Indy Pass; Tenney season pass pricing; and Ragged's Mission: Affordable pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIn late 2022, as Tenney's social media feeds filled with hyperactive projects to re-open the ski area, I asked a veteran operator – I won't say which one – what they thought of the ski area's comeback potential.“No chance,” they'd said, pointing to lack of water, strained and dated infrastructure, and a mature and modern competitive marketplace. “They're insane.”And yet, here we are. Tenney lives.The longer I do this, the less the project of operating a ski area makes sense to me. Ski areas, in my head, have always been Mount Bohemia: string a lift up the mountain and let the skiers ride. But that model can only work in like four places on the continent, and sometimes, like this year, it barely works there. The capital and labor requirements of running even a modest operation in schizophrenic New England weather are, by themselves, shocking. Add in a summit lift built six decades ago by a defunct company in an analogue world, an already overcrowded New Hampshire ski market, and a decades-long legacy of failure, and you have an impossible-seeming project.But they're doing it. For two consecutive winters, lift-served snowskiing has happened at Tenney. The model here echoes the strategy that has worked at Titus and Holiday Mountain and Montage: find an owner who runs other successful, non-ski businesses and let those businesses subsidize the ski area until it can function independently. That could take a while. But Steven Kelly, whose Timberline Construction Company is big-timing it all over New England, seems committed.Some parts of the country, like Washington, need more ski areas. Others, like New Hampshire, probably have too many. That can be great for skiers: access road death matches are not really a thing out here, and there's always some uncrowded bump to escape to on peak days. Operators competing for skiers, however, have a tricky story to tell. In Tenney's case, the puzzle is this: how does a fixed-grip 1,400-footer compete in a crowded ski corridor in a crowded ski state with five-dollar Epic Passes raining from the skies and Octopus lifts rising right outside of town and skiers following habits and rituals formed in childhood? Tenney's operators have ideas. And some pretty good ones, as it turns out.Questions I wish I'd askedI know some of you will be disappointed that I didn't get into Egan's career as a pro skier. But this interview could have been nine hours long and we wouldn't have dented the life of what is a very interesting dude. Anyway here's Egan skiing and talking about skiing if you were missing that:What I got wrongWe recorded this before 2024-25 Tenney season passes dropped. Egan teased that they would cost less than 2023-24 passes, and they ended up debuting for $399 adult, down from $449 for this past winter.When describing the benefits of nearby Ragged Mountain's $429 season pass, I mention the ski area's high-speed lifts and extensive glades, but I neglected to mention one very important benefit: the pass comes loaded with five lift tickets to Jay freaking Peak.Why you should ski TenneyBefore high-speed lifts and Colorado-based owners and Extreme Ultimo Megapasses, there was a lot more weird in New England skiing. There was the Cranmore Skimobile:And these oil-dripping bubble doubles and rocket-ship tram at Mount Snow:And whatever the hell is going on here at now-defunct King Ridge, New Hampshire:I don't really know if all this was roadside carnival schtick or regional quirk or just a reflection of the contemporary world, but it's all mostly gone now, a casualty of an industry that's figured itself out.Which is why it's so jarring, but also so novel and so right, to pull into Tenney and to see this:I don't really know the story here, and I didn't ask Egan about it. They call it the Witch's Hat. It's Tenney's ticket office. Perhaps its peculiar shape is a coincidence, the product of some long-gone foreman's idiosyncratic imagination. I don't even know why a ski area with a base lodge the size of Rhode Island bothers to maintain a separate building just for selling lift tickets. But they do. And it's wonderful.The whole experience of skiing Tenney evokes this kind of time-machine dislocation. There's the lattice-towered Hornet double, a plodding 60-year-old machine that moves uphill at the pace of a pack mule:There's the narrow, twisty trails of Ye Old New England:And the handmade trail signs:Of course, modernity intrudes. Tenney now has RFID, trim grooming, a spacious pub with good food. And, as you'll learn in the podcast, plans to step into the 2020s. The blueprint here is not Mad River Glen redux, or even fixed-grip 4EVA Magic Mountain. It's transformation into something that can compete in ski area-dense and rapidly evolving New Hampshire. The vision, as Egan lays it out, is compelling. But there will be a cost to it, including, most likely, the old Hornet. That Tenney will be a Tenney worth skiing, but so is this one, and better to see it before it's gone.Podcast NotesOn 30 Years in a White HazeI mentioned Egan's book, 30 Years In A White Haze, in the intro. I dedicated an entire podcast with his co-author, Eric Wilbur, to this book back in 2021:On Jackson Hole's jeans-skiing daySo this happened in December:On the December washoutEgan references the “December washout” – this is the same storm I went deep on with Sunday River GM Brian Heon recently. Listen here.On “what I did 20 years ago” and warm-weather snowmakingThis was Egan's second run as Tenney general manager. His first tenure, near the turn of the century, overlapped with the ski area's experiments in warm-weather snowmaking. New England Ski History summarizes:In October of 2002, Tenney was purchased by SnowMagic, a company seeking to showcase its snowmaking technology. The company's origins dated back to the late 1980s, when Japanese skier Yoshio Hirokane developed an idea to make snow in warmer temperatures, called Infinite Crystal Snowmaking. Hirokane later joined forces with Albert Bronander to found the New Jersey-based SnowMagic company. A significant investment was planned at Tenney, rumored to be a choice of either replacing the 1964 Stadeli double chairlift with a high speed detachable quad or installing the high-tech snowmaking system.In advance of the 2002-2003 ski season, the investment in a SnowMagic system was announced. The system, rumored to cost $1,000,000, would allow the ski area to stay open year round. There was some speculation that the runaway success of this new system would allow for the purchase of a high speed quad shortly thereafter. Famous skier Dan Egan served as General Manager when the area reopened in December 2002.After dealing with equipment shipping delays reportedly caused by a longshoreman's strike, Tenney was able to open during the summer and fall of 2003 thanks to the system. Numbers were disappointing and costs were high, especially considering it was only covering a small slope. Summer snowmaking operations were cancelled in 2004 and the snowmaking system was sent to Alabama. While summertime snowmaking was expected to return to Tenney in 2005, it was all but forgotten, as the company determined the systems yielded better revenue in warmer climates.The most recent headline-making experiment in warm-weather snowmaking landed last October, when Ski Ward, Massachusetts beat everyone to open for the 2023-24 ski season with an assist from an expensive but powerful piece of technology:It cost $600,000. It's the size of a shipping container. In an August test run, it cranked out a six-foot-tall pile of snow in 83-degree weather.It's the L60 snowmaking machine from Quebec-based Latitude 90. And it just helped Ski Ward, Massachusetts beat every other ski area in North America to open for the 2023-24 ski season.The skiing wasn't much. A few feet of base a few hundred feet long, served by a carpet lift. Ski Ward stapled the novelty to its fall festival, a kitschy New England kiddie-fest with “a petting zoo, pony rides, kids crafts, pumpkin painting, summer tubing, bounce houses … and more.” Lift tickets cost $5.On potential Tenney expansionsWe discuss several expansion opportunities for Tenney, including a proposed-but-abandoned upper-mountain beginner area. This 1988 trailmap shows where the potential new lift and trails could sit:On the evolution of LoonLoon, in recent years, has leapt ahead of its New Hampshire competitors with a series of snowmaking and lift upgrades that are the most sophisticated in the state (Waterville Valley might argue with me on that). I've profiled this evolution extensively, including in a conversation with the ski area's current GM, Brian Norton, in 2022 - listen here.On Waterville Valley's summit T-barOne of the most underrated lifts in New England is Waterville Valley's summit T-bar. The story behind it is instructive, though I'm not sure if anyone's paying attention to the lesson. Here's the background – in 1988, the ski area installed the state's first high-speed quad, a base-to-summit machine then known as High Country Express (the ski area later changed the name to “White Peaks Express”:But detachable lifts were new in the ‘80s, and no one really understood that stringing one to the top of White Peak would prove problematic. Wind holds were a constant problem. So, in 1996, Waterville took the extraordinary step of shortening the lift by approximately 400 vertical feet. Skiers could still travel to the summit on the High Country double chair, a Stadeli machine left over from the 1960s:But that lift was still prone to wind holds. So, in 2018, Waterville GM Tim Smith tried something both simple and brilliant: replacing the double chair with a brand-new T-bar, which cost all of $750,000 and is practically immune from wind holds:The result is a better ski experience enabled by a lost-cost, low-tech lift. The ski area continued to invest heavily in the rest of the mountain, throwing down $12 million on the Tecumseh Express bubble six-pack – which replaced the old White Peaks Express – in 2022.Video by Stuart Winchester.On JP AuclairEgan mentions JP Auclair, a Canadian freeskier who died in an avalanche in 2014. Here's a nice tribute to JP from Chris O'Connell, who cofounded Armada Skis with Auclair:There are a million things that can be said about JP as a skier—how he pioneered and transcended genres, and the indelible mark he has made on the sport. But there is so much more: he was a genuinely good human; he was my favorite person to be around because he was hilarious and because he was kind.In the summer of 1997 I watched a VHS tape of JP Auclair and JF Cusson skiing the park at Mt. Hood. It was a time when snowboarding was peaking and, in many places, skiers weren't even allowed in the park. Skiers certainly weren't doing tricks that rivaled snowboarders—in difficulty or in style. To see JP and JF doing cork 720s blew my mind, and, as a snow sports photographer, I wanted to meet them. At the time, I was a senior photographer at Snowboarder Magazine and I had begun contributing with a start-up ski magazine called Freeze. The following spring the photo editor of Freeze blew out his knee and in his place, I was sent to the Nordic jib land, Riksgransen, Sweden to meet these guys.JP and I hit it off and that's how it began – 16 years of traveling and shooting with him. Often, those travels were the kind which involved appearances, autograph sessions and less than ideal ski situations. He would put on a smile and give it 100 percent at an awkward press conference in China when we knew Interior BC was getting hammered. He would shred the icy slopes of Quebec when duty called, or log long hours in the Armada office to slam out a product video. JP was a champion no matter how adverse or inane. That was part of what made him so good.Ironically, JP and I had a shared sense that what we were doing, while fulfilling in context, at times seemed frivolous. We spent our lives traveling to the far ends of the earth, and we weren't doing it to build bridges or irrigations systems or to help people have clean drinking water. Instead, we were doing it for skiing. Read the rest…On Crotched and Peak ResortsEgan is right, Crotched is often overlooked and under-appreciated in New England skiing. While much of the region fell behind the West, from a technology point of view, in the 2000s, Peak Resorts rebuilt Crotched almost from scratch in 2003, relocating three lifts from Virginia and installing a new snowmaking system. Per New England Ski History:At the turn of the millennium, Midwestern ski operator Peak Resorts started looking into either acquiring an operational mid-sized area or reopening a defunct area in New England. Though Temple Mountain was heavily considered, Peak Resorts opted to invest in defunct Crotched Mountain. According to Peak Resorts' Margrit Wurmli-Kagi, "It's the kind of small area that we specialize in, but it skis like a larger mountain. It has some nice glades and some nice steeps, but also some outlying areas that are perfect for the beginners."In September 2002, Peak Resorts formed S N H Development, Inc. as a New Hampshire corporation to begin rebuilding the former western side of the ski area. In terms of vertical feet, the prospective ski area was three times larger than any of Peak Resorts' current portfolio. After a 50 year lease of the property was procured in May 2003, a massive reconstruction project subsequently took place, including reclearing the trails, constructing a new snowmaking system, building a new base lodge, and installing rebuilt lifts from Ski Cherokee, Virginia. A reported ten million dollars later, Crotched Mountain reopened as essentially a new ski area on December 20, 2003. Though most of the terrain followed the former western footprint, the trails were given a new science fiction naming scheme.While the reopened ski area initially did not climb to the top of the former quad chairlift, additional trails were reclaimed in subsequent years. In February of 2012, it was announced that Crotched would be acquiring Ascutney's detachable quad, reopening the upper mountain area. The lift, dubbed the Crotched Rocket, opened on December 1, 2012.On “Rusty” in the hall of fameEgan refers to “Rusty's” U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame induction speech. He was referring to Rusty Gregory, former CEO of Alterra Mountain Company and three-time Storm Skiing Podcast guest. Here's the speech (with an intro by Egan):The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 26/100 in 2024, and number 526 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Oct. 26. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 2. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoBen Wilcox, President and General Manager of Cranmore Mountain Resort, New HampshireRecorded onOctober 16, 2023About CranmoreClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Fairbank GroupLocated in: North Conway, New HampshireYear founded: 1937Pass affiliations: NoneReciprocal partners: 1 day each at Jiminy Peak and BromleyClosest neighboring ski areas: Attitash (:16), Black Mountain (:18), King Pine (:28), Wildcat (:28), Pleasant Mountain (:33), Bretton Woods (:42)Base elevation: 800 feetSummit elevation: 2,000 feetVertical drop: 1,200 feetSkiable Acres: 170 acresAverage annual snowfall: 80 inchesTrail count: 56 (15 most difficult, 25 intermediate, 16 easier)Lift count: 7 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 1 double, 2 carpets)Why I interviewed himNowhere does a high-speed quad transform the texture and fate of a mountain so much as in New England. Western mountains, geographically dispersed and disposed to sunshine, can still sell you a ride on a 1,700-vertical-foot fixed grip triple, as Montana Snowbowl did with their new Transporter lift last year, and which Mt. Spokane has promised to do should the ski area ever upgrade its Jurassic Riblets. Midwest hills are too short for lift speed to matter as anything other than a novelty.But in the blustery, frenetic East, a single detachable lift can profoundly alter a ski area's reach and rap. Such lifts have proven to be stabilizing mechanisms at Burke, Gunstock, Ragged, Bromley, and Saddleback – mountains without the terrain or marketing heft of their much-larger neighbors. In each case, one high-speed quad (and a sixer at Ragged), cracked the mountain open to the masses, uniting all or most of the terrain with one six-minute lift ride and, often, stabilizing operations that had struggled for decades.Cranmore is one such mountain. Had the Skimobile Express quad not gone up in 1995, Wilcox tells us on the podcast, he's not so sure that the ski area hanging over North Conway would have gotten out of the last century alive. A “dark period” followed the Skimobile's 1990 demolition, Wilcox says, during which Cranmore, tottering along on a double chair strung to the summit, fell behind its high-dollar, high-energy, rapidly consolidating competitors. The Skimobile had been pokey and inefficient, but at least it was freighted with nostalgia. At least it was novel. At least it was cool. An old double chair was just an old double chair, and local skiers had lost interest in those when high-speed lifts started rising up the New England mountainsides in the late 1980s.It's true that a handful of New England ski areas continue to rely on antique doubles: Smugglers' Notch, Magic, Black Mountain in New Hampshire, Mt. Abram. But Smuggs delivers 300 inches of snow per winter and a unique, sprawling terrain network. The rest are improbable survivors. Magic sat idle for half the ‘90s. We nearly lost Black earlier this month. All anybody knows about Mt. Abram is that it's not Sunday River.The Skimobile Express did not, by itself, save Cranmore. If such a lift were such a magic trick, then we'd still be skiing the top of Ascutney today (yes Uphill Bro I know you still are). But the lift helped. A lot.There is a tendency among skiers to conflate history with essence. As though a ski area, absent the trappings of its 1930s or ‘40s or ‘50s origins, loses something. These same skiers, however, do not rip around on 240s clapped to beartrap bindings or ski in top hats and mink shawls. Cranmore could not simply be The Ski Area With The Skimobile forever and ever. Not after every other ski area in New England, including Cranmore, had erected multiple chairlifts. There is a small market for such tricks. Mad River Glen can spin its single chair for 100 more years if the co-op ownership model holds up. But that is a rowdy, rugged hunk of real estate, 2,000 feet of nasty, a place where being uncomfortable is half the point. Cranmore… is not.So Cranmore changed. It is now a nice, modern, mid-sized New England ski area, with a 1,200-foot vertical drop and a hotel at the base. More important, it is an 86-year-old New England ski area, one that began in the era when guys named Harv and Mel and Bob and Jenkins showed up with a hacksaw and a 12-pack and started building a lift-served snowskiing operation, and transitioned into a new identity suited to a new world. Wilcox, with his grasp of the resort's sprawling, mad history, is a capable ambassador to tell us how they did it.What we talked aboutThe new Fairbank base lodge; what Cranmore found when they tore down the old lodge; the future of Zip's Pub; who the lodge is named after; the base lodge redevelopment plan; what happened when the Fairbanks purchased Cranmore; North Conway; traffic; Bretton Woods; Booth Creek; Cranmore pride; “if [the Skimobile Express] hadn't gone in in the mid-90s, I'm not sure if we'd still be here”; the Skimobile Express upgrade and why Cranmore didn't replace it with a new lift; the history of America's Zaniest lift, the original Skimobile; why Cranmore ultimately demolished the structure; potential upgrades for Lookout; the long-rumored but never-built Blackcap expansion; the glory and grind of southern exposure; night skiing; what happened when Vail came to town; competing against discount Epic Passes; why the days of car-counting are over; the history and logic behind the White Mountain Super Pass and the Sun and Snow Pass; Black Mountain; staffing up when your biggest rival raises minimum wage to $20 an hour; and whether Cranmore has considered a Jiminy Peak-esque wind turbine.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe Fairbank Group did something unsung and brilliant over the past two years. While major resorts across the continent razed and replaced first-generation detachables at a per-project cost approaching or exceeding double-digit millions, Cranmore (which Fairbank owns), and Bromley (which they operate), modernized in a more modest way. Rather than tearing down the high-speed quads that act as base-to-summit people-movers for each ski area, they gut-renovated them. For around $1 million per lift, Bromley's Sun Mountain Express and Cranmore's Skimobile Express got new, modern drives, comms lines, safety systems, and more. The result: two essentially brand-new lifts with three-plus decades of good life ahead of them.Skiers may not see it that way, and most won't even know about the upgrades. The aesthetics, mostly, remain unchanged. But for independent ski area operators knocked into eyes-bulging terror as they see price quotes for a Double Clutch Z-Link Awesomeness 42-passenger Express Lift, the Fairbank model offers an approachable alternative. Knock down the walls, but keep the building intact, a renovation rather than a rebuild.Boyne does this all the time, mostly with lifts the company is relocating: the Kanc quad at Loon becomes the Seven Brothers quad; Big Sky's Swift Current quad becomes Sugarloaf's Bucksaw Express; Sunday River's Jordan quad is, someday, maybe, supposedly going to land at Pleasant Mountain. Sugarloafers may grumble on their message boards about getting a used quad while Sunday River erects its second D-Line bubble lift in two years, but, as Loon President/GM Brian Norton told me about the Seven Brothers upgrade on the podcast last year, the effect of such projects are that skiers get “a new lift… you won't recognize it.” Other than the towers and the chairs, the machine parts of these machines really are brand new.Cranmore and its sister resorts have found a different way to sustainably operate, is my point here. The understated chairlift upgrades are just one expression of this. But both operate, remember, in impossible neighborhoods. Bromley is visible from almost any point on Alterra-owned Stratton, Southern Vermont's Ikon Pass freight train. Cranmore sits just down the road from Vail-owned Attitash and Wildcat, both of which are larger, and both of which share a pass – which, by the way, is less expensive than Cranmore's – with each other and with their 20 or 50 or 60 best friends, depending upon how Epic you want your winter to be. The local lift-served skiing market is so treacherous that Black Mountain, less than 11 miles north of Cranmore and in continuous operation since 1935, was saved from permanent closure last week only when Indy Pass called in the cavalry.Yet, Cranmore thrives. Wilcox says that season pass sales continue to increase every year. Going into year five of Northeast-specific Epic Pass offerings and year six of the Ikon Pass, that's an amazing statistic. Cranmore's pass is not cheap. The early-bird adult price for the 2023-24 ski season came in at $775. It's currently $1,139. For a 1,200-vertical-foot mountain in a state full of 2,000-footers, with just one high-speed lift in a neighborhood where Sunday River runs five, statistical equivalencies quickly fail any attempt to explain this momentum.So what does explain it? Perhaps it's the resort's massive, ongoing base area renovation that landed a new hotel and lodge onsite within the past year. Perhaps it's consumer habit and proximity to North Conway, looming, as the mountain does, over town. Perhaps it's the approachable, just-right size of the mountain or, for families, the fact that all trails funnel back to a single base. Perhaps it's the massive seasonal youth and race programs. It is, most likely, a combination of all of these things, as well as atmospheric intangibles and managerial competence.Whatever it is, Cranmore shows us that a pathway exists for a Very Good Mountain to thrive in the megapass era without being a direct party to it. It's worth noting that Black, which nearly failed, is a fifth-year member of Indy Pass, which Cranmore has declined to join. While this conversation with Wilcox does not exactly explain how the mountain has been so successful even as it sidesteps megatrends, it's easy enough to appreciate, as you listen to his passion for and appreciation of the place, why it does.What I got wrongI noted that the Skimobile Express quad had been upgraded “last year, or maybe the year before.” Cranmore completed the lift overhaul in 2022.I referred to Vail's Northeast Value Epic Pass as the “Northeast Local Pass.”Why you should ski CranmoreThe New England Ski Safari is not quite the social media meme that it is in the big-mountain West, where Campervan Karl and Bearded Bob document their season-long adventures over switchbacking passes with their trusty dog, Labrador Larry. Alta/Snowbird to Jackson to Big Sky to Sun Valley to Tahoe with a sickness Brah. Hella wicked rad. Six weeks and 16 storms, snowshovels in the roof box and Larry pouncing through snow in IG Stories.Distance is not such an obstacle in the East. New England crams 100 ski areas into a six-state region half the size of Montana (which is home to just 17, two of which it shares with Idaho). Between pow runs we can just… go home. But the advent of the megapass in the Northeast over the past decade has enabled this sort of resort-hopping adventure. Options abound:* Epic Pass gives you three of Vermont's largest ski areas (Okemo, Mount Snow, Stowe); one of New England's best ski areas (also Stowe); and four stops in New Hampshire, three of which (Mount Sunapee, Wildcat, and Attitash), are sizeable. Crotched gives you night skiing.* Ikon Pass delivers four of New England's biggest, best, and most complete ski areas: Killington, Sugarbush, Sunday River, and Sugarloaf; as well as two of its best lift systems (Stratton and Loon – yes, I know the gondolas are terrible at both); and a sleepy bomber in Pico.* Indy Pass gives you perhaps New England's best ski area (Jay Peak); three other mountains that stack up favorably with anything on Epic or Ikon (Waterville Valley, Cannon, Saddleback); and a stack of unheralded thumpers where light crowds and great terrain collide (Black Mountain of Maine, Black Mountain NH, Magic, Bolton Valley, Berkshire East); and a bunch of family-friendly bumps (Whaleback, Dartmouth Skiway, Pats Peak, Saskadena Six, Mohawk, Catamount, Bigrock).Hit any of those circuits, and you're bound for a good winter. So why tack on an extra? Cranmore is one of the few large New England independents (along with Bretton Woods, Smugglers' Notch, Mad River Glen, Bromley), to so far decline megapass membership. That makes it a tricker sell to the rambling resort-hopper.But this is not Colorado. You can score a Cranmore lift ticket for as little as $65 on select Sundays, even in mid-winter, (including, as of this writing, the always raucous St. Patrick's Day). If you're skiing Attitash and staying in North Conway, you can roll up to Cranmore starting at 2 p.m. on Wednesday or Saturday for a $69 night-ski and some pre-dinner turns.And it's worth the visit. This is a very good ski mountain. The stats undersell the place. It skis and feels big. The fall lines are sustained and excellent. Glades are more abundant than the trailmap suggests. The grooming is outstanding. It faces south – a not unimportant feature in often-frigid New England.Even if you're megapass Bro (and who among us is not?), this one fits right into the circuit, close to Attitash, Black, Wildcat, Cannon, Loon, Waterville. It's easy to ski multiple New England mountains on a single trip, or even in a single day. The last time I skied Cranmore, I cranked through 17 high-speed laps in three hours and then bumped over to Pleasant Mountain, half an hour down the road.Podcast NotesOn Hans SchneiderHenry Dow Gibson, who New England Ski History refers to as an “international financier” founded Cranmore in 1937, but it was Austrian ski instructor Hannes Schneider who institutionalized the place. Per New England Ski History:Hannes Schneider was born on June 24, 1890 in Stuben, a small town west of Arlberg Pass in Austria. At the age of 8, Schneider started skiing on makeshift skis.While becoming a renowned skier in his teenage years, Schneider developed the Arlberg technique. The Arlberg technique quickly caught on, resulting in Schneider becoming in demand for demonstrations, films, and military training.Following Nazi Germany taking Austria in the Anschluss, Schneider was imprisoned March 12, 1938.In January of 1937, international financier Harvey Gibson purchased land on Cranmore Mountain in Conway with the aim to make North Conway a winter destination. Two years later, after lawyer Karl Rosen managed to transfer Schneider from prison to house arrest, Gibson leveraged his firm's German holdings and negotiated with Heinrich Himmler to get Schneider and his family released from Germany and transported to the United States. Following a massive welcoming party in North Conway in February of 1939, Schneider took over Cranmore and worked quickly to make it one of the best known ski areas in the country.One of Schneider's first big decisions at Cranmore was to expand lift service to the summit, which was accomplished during his first full season when the upper section of the Skimobile was installed. With top to bottom Skimobile coverage, Cranmore was second only to Cannon's tram in terms of continuous lift served vertical drop in New England.With the onset of World War II, Hannes was reportedly involved in the training and providing intelligence for United States and British ski troops. His son Herbert served in the 10th Mountain Division during World War II, earning a Bronze Star for his heroic actions in Italy. Following the war, Herbert returned to North Conway to work for his father.In 1949, Hannes Schneider was hired to oversee construction of the new Blue Hills ski area outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Schneider referred to the ski area was "Little Cranmore."In the spring of 1955, Schneider was actively working to open new terrain at Cranmore, serviced by its first chairlift. Following a day of laying out new terrain in what would become the East Bowl, Schneider died of a heart attack. Schneider's son Herbert assumed control of the Cranmore ski school and, circa 1963 started a two decade run as owner of the ski area.Schneider's name lives on at Cranmore, as a trail (Schneider in the East Bowl) and the annual Hannes Schneider Meister Cup Race.On the Fairbank GroupCranmore is owned by the Fairbank Group, whose chairman and namesake, Brian Fairbank, transformed Jiminy Peak from a Berkshires backwater into the glimmering modern heart of Massachusetts skiing. The company also operates Bromley (which is owned by Joseph O'Donnell), and owns a renewable energy operation (EOS Ventures), a ski industry e-learning platform (Bullwheel Productions), and a snowmaking outfit (Snowgun Technologies). For all this and more, including Jiminy Peak's early embrace of clean energy to power its operation, Brian Fairbank earned a spot in the Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2020. I hosted him on the podcast that autumn to discuss his career and achievements:On Booth Creek Ski HoldingsIn an alternate universe, Booth Creek may stand today on Alterra's throne, Vail's foil in the Skico Wars. For a brief period in the late ‘90s, the company, founded by former Vail and Beaver Creek owner George Gillett Jr., owned eight ski areas across the United States: Cranmore, Loon, Waterville Valley, Grand Targhee, Summit at Snoqualmie, Bear Mountain (now part of Big Bear), Northstar, and Sierra-at-Tahoe. In 1998, the company attempted to purchase Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. But, as this summary chart from New England Ski History shows, Booth Creek began selling off resorts in the early 2000s. Today, it owns only Sierra-at-Tahoe:On the SkimobileHad Cranmore's monolithic Skimobile survived to the present day, most visitors would probably mistake it for a mountain coaster. When it went live, in 1938, skiers likely mistook it for the future. “Well, by gum, a contraption that just takes you right up the mountain while you sit on your heinie. This will change skiing forever!”Instead, the Skimobile, a two-track monster that toted skiers uphill in single-passenger carts, passed five decades as a beloved novelty before Cranmore demolished it in 1990. The New England ski diaspora is still sore about this. But imagine building a Great Wall of China vertically up your mountain. It would kind of make it hard for skiers, Patrol, groomers, etc. to move around the bump. And someone came up with a better idea called a “chairlift.” When the only feasible alternative was the ropetow, the Skimobile probably seemed like the greatest invention since electricity. But once the chairlift proliferated, the shortcomings of a tracked lift became obvious.The Skimobile rose Cranmore's full 1,200 vertical feet in two sections: the lower, built in 1938, and the upper, constructed the following year. Skiers had to disembark the first to take the second. Here's how they laid out in a circa 1951 trailmap:On the potential Black Cap expansionWilcox and I discussed Cranmore's long-proposed Black Cap expansion, which would give Cranmore a several-hundred-acre, several-hundred-vertical-foot boost off the backside. New England Ski History includes the following details in its short write-up of Black Cap:In 1951, Cranmore obtained an easement on 500 acres of land on Black Cap, a ledgy peak located to the east of the ski area. If the ski area were expanded to the top of Black Cap, Cranmore would see an increase of 700 vertical feet to 1,800 feet, making it the second highest in the Mount Washington Valley.Wilcox provides slightly different numbers, but doesn't rule out the possibility of this significant expansion at some future point. The current trailmap shows Black Cap looming in the background:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 91/100 in 2023, and number 477 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

How much do you know about seaweed? Probably not enough! Prepare to have your mind blown by the incredible potential of this marine plant to combat climate change. Our guest, Howard Gunstock, CEO of Carbon Kapture, is here to educate us on the rapid CO2 absorption capacity of seaweed, which grows up to 30 times faster than trees and matures in a mere six to seven months.We explore CarbonKapture's unique business model that draws on a circular ecology concept. They harvest seaweed to create biocharcoal, an innovative solution that aids in removing CO2 from the sea and enriching the soil. Howard reveals the resilient qualities of seaweed, its role in reducing coastal erosion, and enhancing marine biodiversity. This conversation redefines the phrase 'green business', showing us how companies can offset carbon emissions while preserving our ecosystems.Lastly, we delve into how you can lend a hand to CarbonKapture's mission. There's more than one way to contribute to saving the planet, and Howard breaks down the company's engagement strategies and how you can get involved. Tune in to this episode to learn about the tangible solutions that are changing the game in the fight against climate change. Be prepared to be fascinated by the power of seaweed and its potential role in preserving our world.--------(0:00:08) - Innovative Seaweed Solution for Climate Change(0:06:58) - Seaweed's Environmental Benefits(0:15:09) - Circular Ecology Business Model(0:24:26) - Seaweed Farming and Climate Change Solutions(0:31:56) - Engagement and Promotions for Business Growth Subscribe to Saving Tomorrow's Planet Podcast Apple Spotify

This weeks edition of OTR LIVE Eric and Erika get together to recap the past weekend of events. The main event was Erika's home town race, the Goffstown Gallop. We talked about the weather, everyone who showed up to run or watch. Swimming after and a parking lot party.Erika also touches up on Trailfest at Gunstock. We talk Badwater, Western States as Erika fan girled again, and we fit in a decent aount of Peolton talk. We were all over the map on this one. It was fun. Enjoy this edition of OTR LIVE!Linktree - Find everything hereInstagram - Follow us on the gram YouTube - Subscribe to our channel Patreon - Support us Email us at OnTheRunsPod@gmail.com

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on June 15. It dropped for free subscribers on June 18. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoKeith Kreischer, General Manager of Granite Gorge, New HampshireRecorded onMay 30, 2023About Granite GorgeOwned by: Granite Gorge Partnership LLC, a group of local investorsLocated in: Roxbury, New HampshireYear founded: 1959Pass affiliations: NoneReciprocal partners: NoneClosest neighboring ski areas: Crotched (32 minutes), Brattleboro (32 minutes), Bellows Falls (35 minutes), Pats Peak (37 minutes), Mount Sunapee (50 minutes), Arrowhead (50 minutes), Ascutney (58 minutes), McIntyre (1 hour), Hermitage Club (1 hour, 6 minutes), Mount Snow (1 hour, 9 minutes), Magic (1 hour, 3 minutes), Wachusett (1 hour, 7 minutes), Bromley (1 hour, 13 minutes), Berkshire East (1 hour, 13 minutes), Okemo (1 hour, 13 minutes), Veterans Memorial (1 hour, 14 minutes), Ragged Mountain (1 hour, 16 minutes), Stratton (1 hour, 18 minutes)Base elevation: 800 feetSummit elevation: 1,325 feetVertical drop: 525 feetSkiable Acres: 25Average annual snowfall: 100 inchesTrail count: 17 (2 expert, 3 advanced, 5 intermediate, 7 beginner)Lift count: 3 (1 double, 1 handletow, 1 carpet)Why I interviewed himIt doesn't happen often, these comebacks. Ski areas die and they stay dead. Or they die and return and die again and then they're really gone.We're at a weird inflection point. After decades of exploding numbers followed by decades of divebombing ranks, the number of U.S. ski areas has stabilized over the past 20 years. Most of the ski areas that are going to die already have. Most of the ones that remain will survive indefinitely. Yes, climate change. But this has been a long-simmering storm and operators have strung lines of snowguns like cannons along a castle wall. They are ready to fight and they will.They have plenty to fight for. In most of U.S. America, it is all but impossible to build a new ski area. Imagine if no one could build a new restaurant or grocery store. The owners of existing restaurants and grocery stores would rejoice, knowing that anyone who wanted to eat out or buy a banana would have to do it through them. Such is the state of U.S. skiing – what we have is all we're ever going to get*. The established mountains are not exactly monopolies, but they do not have to worry about unexpected new competition, either.There is one hack: if a would-be owner can find an abandoned ski area, the path to selling lift tickets and hauling weekenders up the incline becomes infinitely easier. It's the difference between fixing up a junkyard car and assembling one from the raw elements of the earth. You'd have a better chance of building a time machine out of cardboard boxes and a Nintendo Game Boy than you would of constructing a ski area on a raw New England hillside. But find one already scarred with the spiderweb of named trails, and you have a chance.It's not a good chance. Ski areas do come back: Saddleback in 2020, Tenney and Granite Gorge in 2023. Les Otten may bring the Balsams Wilderness back as a mega-resort. But most simply fade. There are hundreds of lost ski areas in New England – many times more have died than survived. Many big and established ski centers evaporated: Mt. Tom, Brodie, Crotched East, King Ridge, Moose Mountain, Mt. Whittier, Maple Valley, Plymouth Notch, Snow Valley. Empty lifts still swing over many of these mountains decades after they went bust, but none ever found its way back.So why this one? Why Granite Gorge? A small ski area in a state stuffed with giant ski areas, many of them a mainline shot off the interstate from Boston. Once the joint closed after a rough winter in 1977, that should have been it. Another lost ski area in a state littered with them.But then Granite Gorge re-opened, miraculously, improbably, in 2003, under Fred Baybutt, who also ran a local construction company with his family. Baybutt added snowmaking and night skiing, built a new lodge and a new bridge over from Route 9. He bought a used Borvig double and ran it to the summit.But the ski area never really found momentum under Baybutt. By 2018, the chairlift had ceased operations. The ropetow and carpet continued to spin, but in August 2020, Baybutt died suddenly, and the ski area appeared to die with him.Except that it didn't. Granite Gorge is back. Somehow, this 525-vertical foot, low-elevation molehill whose direct competitors include basically every ski area in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts has more lives than a cartoon coyote smashed under an anvil. It's one of the best stories in New England skiing right now, and I had to hear it.*With rare exceptions, such as the forthcoming Mayflower, Utah.What we talked aboutWhat it's like to take that first general manager job; an overgrown mess; “I had to keep in mind that there was going to be an unlimited amount of punches that were going to be dealt”; how a busted Ford Taurus and a can of Red Bull foreshadowed the renaissance of Granite Gorge; Kreischer's messianic, decade-long quest to rescue Granite Gorge; how an ownership group “who really just wanted this thing back in the hands of the community” came together; advice for up-and-comers in the ski business; trying to save the lost Tanglwood ski area in Pennsylvania or Maple Valley in Vermont; Granite Gorge under the Baybutt family, the previous owners; Keene, New Hampshire; the rabid outdoor culture in the Northeast; how this time is different at Granite Gorge; fixing the bridge back to the ski area; helping ownership understand the enormous capital needs; the power of admitting your shortcomings; “if you don't know something, you need to find someone who does”; the comeback season was “awesome”; much love for Mountain Creek; finding a niche at Nashoba Valley; reviving the Granite Gorge double chair; why the ski area removed the lift's mid-station; Granite Gorge's snowmaking footprint and aspirations; how the ski area's new mountain bike operation will enhance glade skiing; surviving as a small ski area in a big ski state; night skiing; building terrain parks at an appropriate scale for mortals; running a mountain as a dad with five children; keeping lift tickets and passes affordable; a parking shortage; and competing against megapasses.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewI first connected with Keith sometime last spring, when he shot me an email with a promising update on Granite Gorge. The ski area was re-opening, he said, but I'd have to keep it to myself for the time being. Shortly after, the new ownership group officially named him general manager, and by August he was whacking weeds from beneath the Granite Gorge sign on Route 9 and brushing ticks off his legs.Excited as I was about this news, I generally don't ask folks to join me on the podcast until they've weathered at least one season leading their current resort. It's impossible to really know the place until you've sat teeth-gritted through a brown rain-soaked January and roared in glory at a nor-easter-driven March power-up. It's just not something you can appreciate through Zuckerberg's Oculus glasses. You have to be there.So we waited. In January, the ski area cranked open with its ropetow. The chairlift came online in mid-February. I was there the next day, taking fastlaps off the summit with my six-year-old. I stopped Kreischer for what would become my first #TwoMinuteStorm (basically, very short interviews with ski area managers) video on Instagram (click through to listen):Kreischer and I talked last summer, so I had a sense of his baseline. This podcast was almost like talking to a different person. It was like he'd spent 10 months cramming for a master's degree in Granite Gorge. Which I guess he had. But waiting was the right decision. Kreischer is a terrific ski area leader, thoughtful and passionate and enthusiastic and full of positive energy. He's the kind of guy who only gets more interested in a topic as he immerses himself in it. And after transforming an overgrown backwoods bump into a living business, his raw passion for the job had only amplified and become more focused. Last summer, Granite Gorge was an abstract thing. It was right there, waiting, but you could only really find it in your imagination. Now it's real. Now, he's actually done it. Actually re-opened a dead-as-the-dinosaurs ski area. Even if you normally just read this article and skip the podcast, listen to this one. Kreischer is as authentic and sincere as they get.Why you should ski Granite GorgeNot to be lazy with it, but I've covered this one already:Of all the ski states in America, I can't think of a rougher one to make a go as an operator than New Hampshire. There are so many good and large resorts and they are impossibly easy to access, stacked along I-93 like a snowy outlet mall. But here's little Granite Gorge, opened in 1959 but busted in the ‘70s and re-opened in 2003 and busted again in 2020 and now, improbably, opened again under a group of local business owners who bought it at auction last June. The joint sits in the southwest corner of the state, well off the main ski thoroughfares, which means it will make it as a locals' bump for Keene or it won't make it at all. I took my 6-year-old and we rolled 15 runs off the double chair that had re-opened the day before after not running since 2018. It was creaky and cranky and the mid-station was gone but it was running. We skied the same run over and over, a thin and windy green lolling off the summit. Six hundred vertical feet, up and down. Skier traffic was light but the tubing hill was full. It was a holiday weekend and we'd found a hack. No liftlines on a New England Sunday.Skiing there feels like being part of an excavation, as though they are digging things out of the ground and looking at them and trying to figure out what the ancients of New Hampshire could have been doing with such contraptions. It's spunky and plucky and a little ramshackle. You drive over a single-vehicle bridge to access a parking lot that's muddy and ungraded and unmanaged. They removed the chairlift mid-station, but it's still laying in parts scattered all over the woods. The lodge is squat and half-finished like a field hospital. But a strong spirit of revival is there, and if the owners can have patience enough to give this thing five years and focus on busloads of kids, it has a future.OK maybe not the best commercial for the place. But here's what Granite Gorge can give you: a completely uncrowded and inexpensive ski experience in a region that's getting short on both. Probably not your destination if you and the boys are looking to link Flipdoodle Supremes on monster kickers. Perfect if, like me, you're a dad who doesn't want to fight crowds on a holiday weekend. Or if you're a local looking to crush turns after work. Or if you live nearby and you have an Epic Pass but you just want to support the joint. There are worse places for your money.Podcast NotesOn the auction timelineThe current owners won Granite Gorge in an auction last June. From the June 6, 2022 Keene Sentinel:It took nearly 10 minutes of deliberation, two bidders dropping out and a back-and-forth bidding war amounting to $210,000 before a developer secured the rights to the former Granite Gorge Ski Area property along with the intent to reopen it for recreation.Between breaks of silence, bidders at Friday's foreclosure auction raised the stakes from an opening bid of $240,000 to a winning bid of $430,000 on site at the property, located along Route 9 in Roxbury. Bryan Granger, the senior vice president of Keene-based wholesale grocery company C&S Wholesale Grocers, clinched the final bid.Granger represented Granite Gorge Partnership, LLC at the auction, which claims itself to be a local group of Keene investors with a “shared desire of returning winter and summer activities to Granite Gorge in a safe and inclusive manner,” according to a media statement Granger provided to The Sentinel.The other bidder was a Massachusetts-based contractor named Nick Williamson.On Granite Gorge's troubled historyNew England Ski History provides a succinct timeline of Granite Gorge's history (the ski area was originally known as “Pinnacle”). A few highlights:Following the 1974-75 season, George LaBrecque transferred the ski area to Maurice Stone. One year later, Stone sold the area to Paul and Eleanor Jensen of Connecticut. Dealing with subpar snowfall, no snowmaking, and aging infrastructure, the Jensens only operated the Pinnacle for the 1976-77 season. Following the season, when mortgage payments were missed, Stone foreclosed and took back the property. There would be no more lift-served skiing at Pinnacle for the rest of the twentieth century.In November 1980, Stone sold the 94-acre Pinnacle property to Juanita Robinson of Kentucky and her three sons, one of whom lived in Massachusetts. Though “big plans” were teased with skiing to return in 1980 or 1981, Pinnacle remained idle.In December 1985, the Robinsons sold the property to Bald Mountain Park, Inc. The real estate entity held the property for fourteen years.In September 1999, Baybutt Construction purchased the former ski area and commenced studies for a potential reopening. …After a quarter of a century of idleness, the Pinnacle became a work site in the spring of 2002 when a new bridge was built from Route 9 to the base area.The Pinnacle reopened in early 2003 under the name of Granite Gorge. … The tiny startup on the Bunny Buster slope featured a rope tow and snowmaking. …After multiple years of planning and decades after the first proposal, Granite Gorge saw a significant expansion in 2005 with the addition of a double chairlift to Spruce Peak.Snowmaking and night skiing were expanded for 2006-07, which also featured a new base yurt. Snowmaking was expanded to the top of the chairlift for the 2008-2009 season, while night skiing followed up the mountain for the 2009-2010 season.In 2010 Granite Gorge was approved for a 300-person lodge, to be built in phases. Portions were completed in 2011 and 2012.In late 2012, parent company Baybutt Construction was dealing with escalating financial problems. One of Baybutt's lenders, Interstate Electrical Services Corp., arranged for a foreclosure auction of some of Baybutt's properties, including Granite Gorge ski area, for February 1, 2013. The auction was cancelled at the last minute and the ski area remained open. That month, Baybutt Construction Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.Granite Gorge continued to operate and grow in subsequent years, including adding to its off season offerings and events. …Granite Gorge scaled back operations for the 2018-19 season, as it ceased operating the chairlift and instead focused on snow tubing and skiing on the Bunny Buster trail. After nearly being auctioned off in the summer of 2019, the ski area continued to operate its surface lifts during the winter of 2019-20.On August 3, 2020, Fred Baybutt died of a sudden heart event at the age of 60. Following his death, Granite Gorge sat idle.On Tanglwood, PAKreischer recalls early snowboard adventures at Tanglwood, one of dozens of abandoned ski areas in Pennsylvania's Poconos. DCSki lists modest stats for the joint: 415 vertical feet on 35 acres served by two double chairs and a ropetow. The place closed around 2010 and liquidated its lifts in 2012. Here's a circa 2008 trailmap:I spent a few hours hiking the place back in 2021. Here's what I wrote at the time:Another 40 minutes up wild Pennsylvania highway is Tanglwood, 415 vertical feet shuttered since 2010. The mountain once had two doubles and two T-bars and a ropetow but now it has nothing, the place stripped as though looted by a ski grinch stuffing the chairs and tower guns into his wicked sleigh. Concrete lift towers anchored into the forest and the trails themselves are all that remain. The place is filled with deer. Like all the ski areas I visited that day it is lined with houses. It is late in the day and the American mole people are emerging to stand on their decks and tend to their plants and I wonder what it would be like to live on a ski area and then not live on a ski area because the ski area is gone and now you just live on a mountain where it hardly ever snows and you can hardly ever ski. I think I would be pissed.On Maple Valley, VermontKreischer also considered resurrecting Maple Valley, a thousand-footer in Southern Vermont. It had a nice little spread:The place opened in 1963 and made it, haltingly, to the end of the century under a series of owners. The culprit was likely a very tough neighborhood – Southern Vermont skiers have their choice of Stratton, Mount Snow, Bromley, or Magic. Maple Valley was just a little too close and a little too small to compete:I also included Granite Gorge on the map, so you can see how close the place is. I wouldn't have bet on Granite to re-open before Maple if pure ski terrain were the only factor to consider. But a fellow named Nicholas Mercede tried twice to open the ski area, according to New England Ski History. NIMBYs beat him back, and he died in 2018 at age 90.The lifts – a pair of 1960s Hall doubles – are, I believe, still standing. An outfit called “Sugar Mountain Holdings” has owned the ski area since 2018, and “a long-term vision was announced for possibly reopening the ski area,” according to New England Ski History.On Ski Resort Tycoon, the videogameKreischer's first run at ski resort management came via Ski Resort Tycoon, a 2000 sim game that you can still purchase on Amazon for $5.95. According to Wikipedia, “A Yeti can also be seen in the game, and it can be found eating the guests.” My God, can you imagine the insurance bill?On the density of New England ski areasNew England is one of the most competitive ski markets on the planet. It's certainly one of the densest, with 100 ski areas stuffed into 71,988 square miles – that's an area small than any major western ski state. The six New England states are small (Maine occupies nearly half of the total square mileage), so they share the glory, but their size masks just how tightly they are clustered. Check this stat: the number of ski areas per square mile across the six New England states is more than four times that of Colorado and six times that of Utah:Of course, New England ski areas tend to measure far smaller than those of the West. But the point of this exercise is to underscore the sheer volume of choices available to the New England skier. Here's what Granite Gorge is competing against as it works to establish itself as a viable business:That means the ski area is fighting against heavies like Mount Snow, Okemo, Stratton, and Mount Sunapee for its local Keene market – and the Keene market is essentially Granite Gorge's only market. There's probably a place for this little knuckler to act as a new-skier assembly line and weekend hideout for families and teenage Park Bros, but there's probably not a tougher place in America to pull this off than southwest New Hampshire.On Granite Gorge's mountain bike park and better glade skiing Kreischer believes that Granite Gorge cannot survive as a winter-only business. Earlier this spring, he announced the construction of a downhill mountain bike park. You can track their progress via Instagram:As regular readers know, I don't cover MTB, but we discuss these new trails in the context of their potential to enhance the ski area's glade network. Very little of Granite Gorge's face has been cut with trails. The potential for glade development is huge, and this initial poke into the forest is an excellent start.On Highland bike parkKreischer and I briefly discuss Highland Bike Park in New Hampshire. This is the only lift-served MTB park in New England that doesn't also double as a ski area. It was, in fact, once a 700-vertical-foot ski area. Here's a circa 1987 trailmap:Highland closed for skiing in 1995, and re-opened as a mountain bike park at some point over the next dozen years. Bike people tell me that the place is one of the best-regarded MTB facilities in New England. Here's the current bike trailmap:There are no current plans to re-open the area for skiing. “While there have been rumors that limited ski operations could resume in the future, the park remains biking-only at this point,” according to New England Ski History. Highland is in a tough spot for skiing, lodged between Ragged and Gunstock, which both have high-speed lifts and far more vertical. Highland sits just over two miles off Interstate 93, however, and there could be room in the market for a terrain-park only mountain à la Woodward Park City. Loon is the current terrain park king of New Hampshire, but it's crowded and expensive. Imagine a parks paradise with $50 day tickets and $300 season passes. That could work.On the alarm beeping in the backgroundYou may notice an alarm beeping in the background during the latter half of the podcast. I thought this was on my end, and I planned to simply edit the noise out, since I'm listening most of the time. After the podcast, I came up the stairs toting a ladder, prepared to dismantle the fire alarm. My wife looked at me, baffled. “What beeping?” she asked. Well, it was on Keith's end. Hopefully he wasn't so devoted to the podcast that he let his house burn down while recording it. Though I doubt that. Maybe he is Batman and that was his Batman alarm alerting him to nearby crimes. Though frankly I'm not sure a superhero could have revived Granite Gorge in six months. So it was probably just his You're Awesome alarm going off. All part of the story here.On an assist from Pats PeakKeith followed up via email after our call to throw some credit to his contemporary at Pats Peak: “I was reflecting on our conversation last night and one huge thing I forgot to mention was Kris Blomback and the help from Pat's Peak. They were instrumental in giving us a patrol sled and some awesome rental equipment that was a big deal getting us going this season. Kris is an amazing guy and a great leader. When I listened to his podcast episode with you, his words of advice to me was virtually verbatim, which really showcases his honesty, class, and true passion for bolstering skiing in this region. I really want to thank Kris and the rest of the Pats team for their help and assistance bringing us back to being a feeder for the entire Southern NH region.”On New Hampshire skiingI am an enormous, unapologetic fan of New Hampshire skiing. The mountains are many and varied, each one distinct. I've hosted a number of New Hampshire resort leaders on the podcast, and I have conversations scheduled with Cranmore GM Ben Wilcox and Attitash GM Brandon Swartz later this year. I also recorded an episode with Dartmouth Skiway GM Mark Adamczyk earlier this week – you'll have that one soon. Here's what's in the catalog right now:* Loon Mountain GM Brian Norton – Nov. 14, 2022* Pats Peak GM Kris Blomback – Sept. 22, 2022* Ragged Mountain GM Erik Barnes – April 29, 2022* Whaleback Executive Director Jon Hunt – June 17, 2021* Waterville Valley President and GM Tim Smith – Feb. 23, 2021* Gunstock President and GM Tom Day – Jan. 13, 2021* Cannon Mountain GM John DeVivo – Oct. 12, 2020* Loon Mountain President and GM Jay Scambio – Feb. 7, 2020The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing in North America year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 51/100 in 2023, and number 437 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Gunstock has been retired after a number of different injuries curtailed its racing career. The stable also have a strong team heading to Mornington today

Globe was an impressive winner at Sandown on Saturday and the stable also had success with lightly raced Gunstock later in the day

Howard Gunstock  Carbon Kapture Launch    Carbon Kapture has launched. In our weekend show, I explored how we take that dream and make it a reality. It brought to mind a past guest Howard Gunstock who is doing just that. Our show is a follow-on programme, a chance to catch up with this fantastic project. It has been six years since Howard's life was turned upside down; you can find the story in his original podcast. The potted version was that in the space of months, all of Howard's close relationships ended or changed, leaving him empty and believing his life had become meaningless. It was at that point that he heard Greta Thunberg speak at Davos.    It was a road to road to Damascus moment, and three years on we stand at the start of a project that can potentially change the world. Carbon Kapture is a project that will support rural areas by providing sustainable work and growing seaweed to improve the local ecology. The seaweed, once removed, will be processed and the carbon safely sequestered. This show explores the ups and downs of bringing something new into reality. Check out the new project and maybe buy some rope  at https://CarbonKapture.com       Further details about this podcast along with my Guest's website and social links are all available at: https://lifepassionandbusiness.com/howard-gunstock-carbon-kapture-the-launch/     Life Passion & Business is dedicated to exploring what it takes to be Extraordinary, to face challenges and rejoice in the opportunities they bring, and expand our vision into new ways of thinking and living. There is a lot to gain from listening to other people's stories, however the real work begins by taking action in your own life. For full details of Events, Resources and Services visit: www.lifepassionandbusiness.com

Michael Kent Jnr joins us ahead of ANZAC Day racing tomorrow where Gunstock looms as one of the most interesting runners

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Feb. 22. It dropped for free subscribers on Feb. 25. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoDave Scanlan, General Manager of Eaglecrest, AlaskaRecorded onFebruary 13, 2023About EaglecrestClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The City of JuneauLocated in: Juneau, AlaskaYear founded: 1975Pass affiliations: Indy Pass, Powder Alliance, Freedom PassReciprocal partners:* 3 days each at: Anthony Lakes, Diamond Peak, Hilltop, Hogadon Basin, Lookout Pass, Monarch Mountain, Mount Bohemia, Mount Sima, Mount Ashland, Skeetawk, Skiland* 1 unguided day at Silverton* Eaglecrest has one of the most extensive reciprocal networks in America. Here's an overview of everything that's included in a season pass, which debuted for this season at $576. While there's a ton of overlap, adding an Indy Pass onto this would give you another 50-plus ski areas:Closest neighboring ski areas: Eaglecrest's website reminds us that “There are no roads into Juneau, Alaska— you have to live here, fly, or ferry to experience this powder paradise.” There are no other ski areas nearby. So stay for a few days and enjoy it.Base elevation: 1,130 feetSummit elevation: 2,750 feetVertical drop: 1,620 feetSkiable Acres: 640Average annual snowfall: 350 inchesTrail count: 36 (40% advanced/expert, 40% intermediate, 20% beginner)Lift count: 4 doubles – Eaglecrest also plans to add a pulse gondola, which will likely be ready for the 2025 summer season and 2025-26 ski season.Why I interviewed himThis podcast started, as so many of them do, with me asking one question: what is going on here?Every ski area is different, but some are more different than others. Mount Bohemia, with its complete absence of grooming and snowmaking and $109 season pass. Perfect North, which sits on southern Indiana farmland but processes more than 10,000 skiers on a busy day and employs 1,200 workers in the winter – bigger numbers than some Western alphas. Black Mountain of Maine, which, over the past decade, has undergone the largest expansion of any New England ski area – with zero promotion, masterplanning, or fanfare.And here's Eaglecrest. This ski area up in Alaska. But not just regular Alaska. Isolated coastal Alaska. Where roads don't go. You have to fly or take a ferry. There, for some reason, is where the 49th state chose to locate its capital, Juneau. The state's residents have voted many times to move the capital. But it remains. It is a gorgeous place, mountains launching dramatically from the water. There are 31,000 people there. And one ski area. Eaglecrest is big enough to stir curiosity, but not big enough to draw skiers in volume from the mainland, who have dozens of larger ski areas to bounce between. It is an Indy Pass member, a Freedom Pass member, a Powder Alliance member. It has a dozen reciprocal partnerships besides. Almost anyone can ski there – almost no one does. So what is this place? This city-owned ski area at the end of civilization? And what does it want to be? And how does it plan to get there?I had questions. Scanlan had answers. This is a good one.What we talked aboutFifteen straight days of snow is just how they roll in Southern Alaska; the Pineapple Express; if you think Alaska is all dark and subzero weather, think again; skiing in fishing gear; “we don't have the big testosterone bro-brah attitude”; is Juneau ski bum paradise?; where a crowd on a Saturday pow day is a dozen early-risers ahead of you in the maze; Midwest pride; bump skiing at Wilmot; when “you fall in love with it not for the hype of a powder day, but for the feeling you get when you're on your skis or snowboard”; a young vagabond in the ‘90s; Hope Alaska; founding the Mountain Rider's Alliance to help small ski areas; the potential for resurrecting the long-lost Manitoba Mountain, Alaska; Skeetawk (Hatcher Pass); moving to and running Mt. Abram, Maine; what it's like to compete with Sunday River; hardcore New England; Maine nice; landing a dream job at Eaglecrest; reworking the primitive snowmaking system; the pros and cons of running a city-owned ski area; whether Eaglecrest could ever survive without city subsidies; massive summer potential; easier to get to than you think: “If you live in Seattle, you can be sitting on the chair at Eaglecrest before most days you could be sitting on the chair at Crystal”; fly and ski free with your boarding pass; pushing back against locals who want to keep the place secret; why Eaglecrest has so many reciprocal partners and how effectively that's drawing skiers to Alaska; why you saw an Eaglecrest booth at the Snowbound Festival in Boston; Indy Pass; comparing the coming Eaglecrest gondola installation with how the Lone Peak Tram transformed Big Sky in the 1990s; 20,000 daily summer visitors to a town that has 30,000 residents; “how do I take advantage of this amazing opportunity to put the cash in the pocket that I need to turn Eaglecrest into the best ski area in the world?”; why low-capacity lifts will continue to be Eaglecrest's default; the drive to begin relocating quality used ski lifts from Europe to North America; breaking down Eaglecrest's soon-to-be-installed fixed-grip pulse gondola; where the gondola's top, bottom, and midstations will sit; how much larger Eaglecrest's trail footprint will get; “I do carry some guilt of polarizing our ski community” by putting a lift into what's now hike-in terrain; why the ski area needs investment to survive; thoughts on the future of the four double chairs; visiting and riding the future Eaglecrest gondola in Europe; massive upgrades for the lift; how the gondola will work with the Mt. Roberts Tram; a gondy timeline; potential for a beginner carpet; and how much the official count of 36 trails undersells the resort's terrain.   Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewEaglecrest is, as noted above, one of the continent's most aggressive Megapass-Reciprocity players. That makes it an important mountain in an important Storm sub-narrative: how can you ski as much as possible, at as many ski areas as possible, for as little money as possible? While Eaglecrest's network (50-ish partners), and pass price-point ($576 early-bird for 2022-23) don't quite drop it into the Ski Cooper realm ($329 early-bird for this season and 61 partner ski areas), it nonetheless acts as a powerful enabling device for skiers with an adventurous bent and a small degree of logistical savvy.The question, of course, is why Eaglecrest bothers. The place is marooned along the North American coast, one of the few non-island cities unreachable by road from the rest of the landmass. I'm sure some Eaglecrest locals journey south by plane and orchestrate a ski loop through the continental West. But I'm not sure if that's the point here. Rather, Eaglecrest is trying to get skiers to come to them, to realize that if they hop a plane two-and-a-half hours north, they can land in the Great Unspoiled and have a powder-draped ski area to themselves.The goal is to create long-term skiers. Tourists, you know. And once they've seen what the place is now, they'll be revved up to return once Eaglecrest runs a new-used pulse gondola from its base to the top of Pittman's Ridge. That will bring lift service to the ski area's full 1,620-foot vertical drop for the first time and, more importantly, open hundreds of new acres of terrain skier's left of the current boundary.If you're not familiar with a pulse gondola, you may have seen them at Snowmass or Steamboat – they run with little groups of cabins together, and are typically used in America more as transit lifts than ski lifts (the Snowmass lift mostly takes passengers up the village, and Steamboat's lift moves skiers up from a cluster of condos down the mountain). These are fixed-grip lifts, but travel at tram speeds – Scanlan estimates the base-to-summit ride at around seven minutes. The lift will travel in three pods of 15-passenger cabins and will have a mid-station, off of which Eaglecrest could eventually build a learning area with carpets, Scanlan tells me. The yellow line here shows where the gondola will run on the mountain - the red lines represent the current lifts:The lift has been controversial. It's 34 years old, and operated at Austria's Galsterberg Ski Area until last April. It cost approximately $2.5 million to purchase and transport, and will cost an additional $5.5 million to install. It will operate at a far lower capacity than a modern detachable gondola, which is what most U.S. ski areas use. Critics say the gondola competes with the private sector – in particular, the Mount Roberts Tramway.Scanlan addresses each of these points in our conversation, with a nuanced analysis of Juneau's thumping summer tourism season and how Eaglecrest can both act as a relief valve and boost its own long-term goal of financial independence.Questions I wish I'd askedTwo points I wanted to discuss that I didn't get to: how much the gondola will cost, and Eaglecrest's very low lift ticket prices, which top out at $68. The ski area breaks down the cost in an FAQ on its website:Q: I've heard about a $2 million cost and a $7.5 million cost. Which amount is correct?$2 million [it ended up being $2.5 million] covers the initial purchase, transportation, and preliminary engineering of the Austrian pulse gondola. The funding ordinance currently under review is for this sum.$5.5 million covers the cost of installation and additional infrastructure. Eaglecrest may eventually seek this sum as a loan to be paid back by summer operations. This number will be refined in the months ahead as we continue work with the Eaglecrest Board and Eaglecrest Summer Task Force to examine the business case and evaluate future costs.Why you should ski EaglecrestBecause this might be it. Survey the West: it's full. Colorado High Country, the Wasatch, Tahoe, the Seattle and Portland day-drivers, Jackson, Mammoth, Big Sky – it's traffic or it's ticket limits or it's sticker-shock pricing or it's rivers of people or it's the raw cost of living and everything else. Or it's several or all of these factors, blended, to frustrate the romance of mountain-town living.Not that rustic snowy backwaters don't remain. But they are backwaters. Places like Turner, Montana, 2,110 vertical feet and 1,000 acres but lodged in the wilderness between Schweitzer and Whitefish. Sunrise Park, Arizona, 1,800 feet of vert and 1,200 acres, but marooned 90 miles from the nearest interstate highway and so dysfunctional that a huge chunk of the mountain sat inaccessible for five years after their monster triple chair broke down (it now takes three lift rides to reach that same terrain).But look north. Look at this:If you haven't watched yet, let me pull one stat: Scanlan says on this video that a busy day at Eaglecrest – a weekend powder day, for instance – might draw 900 skiers. For the day. There's more people waiting in the average McDonald's drive-through line than that.“Yeah Brah but it's small.”Watch the video, Brah.“Yeah but it gets like half the snow of Mt. Tahoe, where my boys ride Brah.”Watch the video.“Yeah but it's in Alaska and I don't see the point of skiing in Europe when I can ski right here in U.S. America.”Brah, watch the video.As mainland Western U.S. skiing boils over, Eaglecrest remains on a low simmer. And while you'll need an airplane to get there, you land in a state capital, with all the infrastructure and life conveniences that attend such a place. Juneau is a small city – 31,000 people – but an important one, with abundant stable government and industrial fishing jobs. It's big enough to host a woo-hoo walkable downtown and all the standard American big-box claptrap on the outskirts, small enough that unloading every skier in the valley onto Eaglecrest's access road won't be enough to clog the drain. And when you arrive, you just ski. No parking drama. No lines. No Powder Day Death Matches. Just. Ski.Yes, the lifts are old and slow: four fixed-grip doubles. Yes, accessing the full vert requires some hiking. Yes, coastal snow is not Wasatch snow. And yes, the total skiable acreage does not match your big-mountain Western destinations. But: recalibrate. Reset your expectations. Stripped of the hoards and the Hunger Games mentality they inspire, skiing is something different. A 10-minute lift ride is not so intolerable when you ski right onto the chair. Six hundred forty acres is plenty when it's mostly ungroomed faces sparsely cut by the local bombers. Three hundred fifty inches is sufficient when it tumbles over the mountain in lake-effect patterns, a few inches every day for weeks at a time, refreshing and resetting the incline day after day.Eaglecrest is going to get bigger, better, and, probably, busier. That gondola will change how Eaglecrest skis and, eventually, who skis there. It's not a destination yet, not really. But it could be. And it probably should be – we're rapidly moving past the era in which it makes sense for city tax dollars to subsidize a ski area. There are plenty of examples of publicly owned ski areas operating at a profit, and Eaglecrest should too. Go there now, before the transformation, to see it, to say you were there, to try that different thing that gets at what you're probably looking for in the mountains already.Podcast NotesOn the gondolaWe referenced a note Scanlan penned shortly after taking delivery of the gondola. Read it in full here.On Manitoba MountainScanlan tells the story of trying to resurrect a small ski area called Manitoba Mountain near Hope Alaska. It had operated with up to three ropetows from World War II until the lodge burned down in 1960. Skimap.org has archived a handful of concept maps circa 2011, but Scanlan moved to Maine to take over Mt. Abram before he could re-open the ski area:On Skeetawk/Hatcher PassScanlan and I discuss a recently opened Alaska ski area that he refers to as “Hatcher Pass.” This is Skeetawk, a 300-vertical-foot bump that finally opened in 2020 after decades of failed plans. Here's the ski area today:And here's a circa 2018 concept map, which shows where a future high-speed quad could run, connecting, in turn, to a high-alpine lift that would transport skiers to 4,068 feet. That would give the ski area a 2,618-foot vertical drop.On the impact of the Big Sky tramIt's hard to imagine, but Big Sky was sort of Small Sky before the ski area broke out the Lone Peak Tram in 1995. That project, which acted as a gateway to all-American pants-shitting terrain, transformed the way skiers perceived the mountain. But the tram was bigger than that: the lift accelerated the rapid late-90s/early-2000s evolution of U.S. skiing as a whole. An excerpt from this excellent history by Marc Peruzzi:As unpolished, friendly, and authentic as Big Sky was in the early 1980s, it was a timid place known within Montana for stunning views, but exceedingly gentle pitches. Big Sky was the yin to rowdy, chute-striped Bridger Bowl's yang. And it was struggling. Annual skier visits hovered around 80,000. The mountain wasn't on the destination circuit. The business was losing money. Bound up skiing wasn't working. …it's easy to overlook the fact that the Lone Peak Tram was and is the most audacious lift in North American skiing history. It was such a bold idea in fact, that John Kircher had to agree to the purchase without the approval of his father, and Boyne Resorts founder, Everett who disapproved vehemently with the project. The audacious claim is not hyperbole. The Peak 2 Peak Gondola in Whistler (it came 20 years later) might sport a longer span, but it was a far more straightforward installation and it's more of a people mover than a ski lift. The Jackson and Snowbird trams serve serious terrain, but they run over a series of towers like traditional lifts. The Lone Peak Tram is an anomaly. Because it ascends a sheer face, the lift features a continuous span that's unique in North America. No other design would work. Beyond the challenges of the cliff, the routine 120mph hour winds in the alpine would rip chairs off cables and smash tram cars into towers. …By 1996, the year the tram opened, the skiing nanny state was crumbling. … At the forefront of this change was the Lone Peak Tram. It changed the mindset of the ski industry. But that change was bigger than the sheer audacity of the lift and the terrain it served—or even the fact that Big Sky's patrol had figured out how to manage it. The Lone Peak Tram didn't just make for good skiing, it made good business sense. Whereas Kircher is quick to credit Montana's frontier culture for the actual construction of the tram, Middleton discounts the cowboy element and insists it was a strategic long-term business play to elevate the ski experience. But two things can be true at the same time, and that's the case with the Lone Peak Tram. …In the years after the Lone Peak Tram opened, expansion into steep terrain became commonplace again. Sunshine Village's Delirium Dive opened in 1998. Then came the hike-to terrain of Aspen Highlands' Highland Bowl; Crystal Mountain's “inbounds sidecountry” in the Southback zone, and its 2007 Northway expansion; and more recently Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico finally strung a lift to Kachina Peak, which as with Lone Peak had been hiked for years. Any skier worth their weight would add the Headwaters at Moonlight to that list.This video tells the story just as well:The context in the podcast was the incoming Eaglecrest gondola, and whether that lift could have the same transformative impact on Eaglecrest. While the terrain that the new-used Alaskan lift will serve is not quite as dramatic as that strafing Big Sky, it will reframe the ski area in the popular conversation.On ski pornI don't write a lot about athletes, obviously, but Scanlan mentions several that he skied with at summer camps on the Blackcomb Glacier back in the ‘90s. One is Candide Thovex, who is like from another galaxy or a CG bot or something:On old-school Park CityScanlan talks about the summer he helped yank out the “old-school” Park City gondola and install the “Payday six-packs.” He was referring to the Payday and Bonanza sixers, which replaced the mountain's two-stage, four-passenger gondola in the summer of 1997. Here's the 1996 trailmap, showing the gondy, which had run since 1963:And here's the 1997-98 trailmap, calling out the new six-packs as only a 1990s trailmap can:On old-school AltaModern Alta – the one that most of you know, with its blazing fast lifts and Ikon Pass partnership – is a version of Alta that would have been sacrilege to the powder monks who haunted the place for decades. “The ski area for traditionalists, ascetics, and cheapskates,” read one Skiing Magazine review in 1994. “The lifts are slow and creaky, the accommodations are spartan, but the lift tickets are the best deal in skiing, especially when Alta's fabled powder comes with them.” Here's what Alta looked like in 2000, the year before Sugarloaf gave way to the resort's first high-speed chairlift:This is the Alta of Scanlan's ski-bum days, “before the high-speeders came in,” as he puts it. Before the two-stage Collins lift took out Germania (which lives on at Beaver Mountain, Utah), a longer Supreme killed Cecret, and a new Sunnyside sixer deleted Albion, which served Alta's boring side. Before a peak-day walk-up lift ticket ran $179 (throw in another $40 if you want to connect to Snowbird). They do, however, still have the stupid snowboard ban, so there's that.On previous GM Matt LillardScanlan and I discuss his immediate predecessor, Matt Lillard, who is now running Vermont's Mad River Glen. Lillard joined me on the podcast three years ago, and we briefly discussed Eaglecrest:On GunstockScanlan compares Eaglecrest's operating and ownership models to Gunstock, noting, “we've all seen how that can go.” We sure have:On Eaglecrest's fly-and-ski-free programHere are details on how to cash in your boarding pass for an Eaglecrest lift ticket on the day you land in Juneau. Alaska Airlines offers similar deals at Alyeska, Bogus Basin, Red Lodge, Red Mountain, Schweitzer, Marmot Basin, and, shockingly, Steamboat, where a one-day lift ticket can cost as much as a 747.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 14/100 in 2023, and number 400 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing all year long. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Good Day To You!!! Welcome and thank you for listening to another episode of the Ski Rex Media Podcast! This week, I continue the unplanned series of interviews with those that run New Hampshire ski areas & resorts. I say unplanned because I realized after the first two episodes that the next couple were also from NH. Anyway, enjoy this episode featuring Tom Day, GM at Gunstock Mountain Resort in Gilford, NH. We get into some of the info about the mountain, about Tom, about the time I was having there on the media trip, and about the stuff that went down there last summer. Thank you for listening to this one and I hope that you enjoy it.   If you would like more information about Gunstock Mountain Resort and would like to buy your ticket, head over to their website at https://www.gunstock.com. You'll also find links to their social media, so don't forget to follow them on your platform of choice.   Be sure to check out the Ski Rex Media Partners, as well: Whaleback Mountain - Saint Custom Ski & Snowboards - Skiing With No Filter Please follow/subscribe to the Ski Rex Media Podcast on Podbean, your favorite podcast app, or YouTube. Head to http://www.skirexmedia.com for more from Ski Rex Media, which includes links to social media, contact links, merch, and a link to the Ski Rex Media Patreon page, which is at https://www.patreon.com/skirexmedia. Subscribing there gets you the podcast on Sunday instead of Wednesday, priority call-ins during live streams, bonuses, and other tasty tidbits. Thank you!!!

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Jan. 13. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 16. To receive future pods as soon as they're live and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoJim van Löben Sels, General Manager of Mt. Spokane, WashingtonRecorded onJanuary 9, 2023About Mt. SpokaneClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Mt. Spokane 2000, a nonprofit groupPass affiliations: Freedom Pass – 3 days each at these 20 ski areasReciprocal partners: 3 days each at Mt. Ashland, Mount Bohemia, Great Divide, Loup Loup, Lee Canyon, Snow King, White Pass, Ski CooperLocated in: Mt. Spokane State Park, WashingtonYear opened: 1938Closest neighboring ski areas: 49 Degrees North (1 hour, 45 minutes), Silver Mountain (1 hour, 45 minutes), Schweitzer (2 hours, 10 minutes) – travel times may vary considerably in winterBase elevation: 3,818 feetSummit elevation: 5,889 feetVertical drop: 2,071 feetSkiable Acres: 1,704Average annual snowfall: 300 inchesTrail count: 52 (15% advanced/expert, 62% intermediate, 23% beginner)Lift count: 7­­ (1 triple, 5 doubles, 1 carpet)Why I interviewed himPerception is a funny thing. In my Michigan-anchored teenage ski days any bump rolling more than one chairlift uphill seemed impossibly complex and interesting. Caberfae (200 acres), Crystal (103), Shanty Creek (80), and Nub's Nob (248 acres today, much smaller at the time) hit as vast and interesting worlds. That set my bar low. It's stayed there. Living now within two and a half hours of a dozen thousand-plus-footers feels extraordinary. In less than an instant I can be there, lost in it. Teleportation by minivan.Go west and they think different. By the millions skiers pound up I-70 through an Eisenhower Tunnel framed by Loveland, to ski over the pass. Breck, Keystone, Copper, A-Basin, Vail, Beaver Creek – all amazing. But Loveland covers 1,800 acres standing on 2,210 vertical feet – how many Colorado tourists have never touched the place? How many locals?It seems skiers often confuse size with infrastructure. Loveland has one high-speed chairlift. Beaver Creek has 13. But the ski area's footprint is only 282 acres larger than Loveland's. Are fast lift rides worth an extra 50 miles of interstate evacuation drills? It seems that, for many people, they are.We could repeat that template all over the West. But Washington is the focus today. And Mt. Spokane. At 1,704 acres, it's larger than White Pass (1,402 acres), Stevens Pass (1,125), or Mt. Baker (1,000), and just a touch smaller than Summit at Snoqualmie (1,996). But outside of Spokane (metro population, approximately 600,000), who skis it? Pretty much no one.Why is that? Maybe it's the lift fleet, anchored by five centerpole Riblet doubles built between 1956(!) and 1977. Maybe it's the ski area's absence from the larger megapasses. Maybe it's proximity to 2,900-acre Schweitzer and its four high-speed lifts. Probably it's a little bit of each those things.Which is fine. People can ski wherever they want. But what is this place, lodged in the wilderness just an hour north of Washington's second-largest city? And why hadn't I heard of it until I made it my job to hear about everyplace? And how is Lift 1 spinning into its 67th winter? There just wasn't a lot of information out there about Mt. Spokane. And part of The Storm's mission is to seek these places out and figure out what the hell is going on. And so here you go.What we talked aboutFully staffed and ready to roll in 2023; night skiing; what happened when Mt. Spokane shifted from a five-day operating week to a seven-day one; a winding career path that involved sheep shearing, Ski Patrol at Bear Valley, running a winery, and ultimately taking over Mt. Spokane; the family ski routine; entering the ski industry in the maw of Covid; life is like Lombard Street; Spokane's long-term year-round business potential; who owns and runs Mt. Spokane; why and how the ski area switched from a private ownership model to a not-for-profit model; looking to other nonprofit ski areas for inspiration; a plan to replace Spokane's ancient lift fleet and why they will likely stick with fixed-grip chairlifts; the Skytrac-Riblet hybrid solution; sourcing parts for a 67-year-old chairlift; how much of Lift 1 is still original parts; which lift the mountain will replace first, what it will replace it with, and when; the virtues of Skytrac lifts; parking; the Day-1-on-the-job problem that changed how Jim runs the mountain; why Northwood lift was down for part of January; what it took to bring the Northwood expansion online and how it changed the mountain; whether future expansions are possible; Nordic opportunities; working with Washington State Parks, upon whose land the ski area sits, and how that compares to the U.S. Forest Service; whether Mt. Spokane could ever introduce snowmaking; how eastern Washington snow differs from what falls on the west side of the state; glading is harder than you think; where we could see more glades on the mountain; the evolution of Spokane's beginner terrain; why Mt. Spokane tore out its tubing lanes; expanding parking; which buildings could be updated or replaced and when; whether we could ever see lodging at the mountain; why the mountain sets its top lift ticket price at $75; why Mt. Spokane joined Freedom Pass; exploring the mountain's reciprocal pass partnerships and whether that network will continue to grow; and the possibility of joining the Indy Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIn August, Troy Hawks, the marketing mastermind at Sunlight and the administrator of the Freedom Pass, emailed to tell me that Mt. Spokane was joining the Freedom Pass. I asked him to connect me with the ski area's marketing team for some context on why they joined (which I included in this story). Then I asked if Jim would like to join me on the podcast. And he did.That's the straight answer. But Mt. Spokane fits this very interesting profile that matches that of many ski areas across the country: a nonprofit community hill with dated infrastructure and proximity to larger resorts that's been pushed to the brink not of insolvency but doors-bursting capacity despite successive waves of macro-challenges, including Covid and EpKon Mania. Weren't these places supposed to be toast? As a proxy for the health of independents nationwide, Mt. Spokane seemed like as good a place as any to check in.There's another interesting problem here: what are you going to do with a Riblet double built in 1956? The thing is gorgeous, tapering low and elegant up the hillside, a machine with stories to tell. But machines don't last forever, and new ones cost more than some whole ski areas. Mt. Spokane also has no snowmaking and dated lodges and too little parking. Will it modernize? If so, how? Does it need to? What is that blend of funk and shine that will ensure a mountain's future without costing its soul?In this way, too, Mt. Spokane echoes the story of contemporary independent American skiing: how, and how much, to update the bump? Jim, many will be happy to learn, has no ambitions of transforming Mt. Spokane into Schweitzer Jr. But he does have a vision and a plan, a way to make the mountain a little less 1950s and a little more 2020s. And he lays it all out in a matter-of-fact way that anyone who loves skiing will appreciate.Questions I wish I'd askedI'm so confused by Mt. Spokane's trailmap. Older versions show the Hidden Treasure area flanking the main face:While new versions portray Hidden Treasure as a distinct peak. Again:Meanwhile, Google Maps doesn't really line up with what I'm seeing above:While I love the aesthetic of Mt. Spokane's trailmap, it seems wildly out of scale and oddly cut off at the bottom of Hidden Treasure. The meanings of the various arrows and the flow of the mountain aren't entirely clear to me either.Really, this is more a problem of experience and immersion than anything I can learn through a knowledge transfer. A smart professor made this point in journalism school: go there. I really should be skiing these places before I do these interviews, and for a long time, I wouldn't record a podcast about a ski area I hadn't visited. But I realized, a year and a half in, that that would be impractical if I wanted to keep banging these things out, particularly as I reached farther into the western hinterlands. Sometimes I have to do the best I can with whatever's out there, and what's out there can be confusing as hell. So I guess I just need to go ski it to figure it out.What I got wrong* I intimated that Gunstock was a nonprofit ski area, but that is not the case. The mountain contributes revenue to its owner, Belknap County, each season.* I stated that Mt. Spokane didn't have any beginner surface lifts. In fact, it has a carpet lift.* Jim and I discussed whether Vista Cruiser was the longest contiguously operating chairlift in the United States. It's not – Hemlock has been serving Boyne Mountain, Michigan, since 1948. It's a double that was converted from a single that originally served Sun Valley as America's first chairlift in the 1930s. Still, Vista Cruiser may be the most intact 1950s vintage lift in America. I really don't know, and these things can be very hard to verify what with all the forgotten upgrades over the years, but it really doesn't matter: a 67-year-old chairlift is a hell of an impressive thing in any context.* While discussing reciprocal agreements, I said, rather hilariously, that Mt. Ashland was “right there in Oregon.” The ski area is, in fact, an 11-hour drive from Mt. Spokane. I was vaguely aware of how dumb this was as I said it, but you must remember that I grew up in the Midwest, meaning an 11-hour drive is like going out to the mailbox.Why you should ski Mt. SpokaneLet's start here:How many 2,000-vertical-foot mountains post those kind of rack rates? A few, but fewer each year. And if you happen to have a season pass to any other Freedom Pass ski area, you can cash in one of your Mt. Spokane lift tickets as you're floating through.As for the skiing itself, I can only speculate. It looks like typical PNW wide-open: wide runs, big treed meadows, bowls, glades all over. Three hundred inches per winter to open it all up. I mean there's really not much else that's necessary on my have-a-good-time checklist.Podcast Notes* Jim mentioned that Schweitzer was working on adding parking. More details on their plan to plug 1,400 more spaces into the mountain here.* I was shocked when Jim said that Mt. Spokane's $75 lift tickets ($59 midweek) were the second-most expensive in the region after Schweitzer's, which run $110 for a full-day adult pass. But he's correct: 49 Degrees North runs $72 on weekends and holidays and $49 midweek. Silver Mountain is $71 on weekends (but $65 midweek). And Lookout Pass is $66 on weekends and $55 midweek. I guess the memo about $250 lift tickets hasn't made its way up I-90 just yet.* The best way to support Mt. Spokane, which is a nonprofit ski area, is to go buy a lift ticket. But you can also donate here.* Here's a bit more Mt. Spokane history.* And some stoke Brah:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 4/100 in 2023, and number 390 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Dec. 24. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 27. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoShaun Sutner, snowsports columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Telegram.comRecorded onNovember 21, 2022About Shaun SutnerShaun is a skier, a writer, and a journalist based in Worcester, Massachusetts. For the past 18 years, he's been pumping out a snowsports column from Thanksgiving to April. For the past two years, he's joined me on The Storm Skiing Podcast to rap about it. You should follow Shaun on social media to stay locked into his work:Why I interviewed himI've often said that the best interviews are with people who don't have bosses. That's true. Mostly. But not exclusively. Because journalists are just as good. And that's because they possess many attributes crucial to holding an interesting conversation: on-the-ground experience, the ability to tell a story, and a commitment to truth. Really. That is the whole point of the job. Listen to the Storm Skiing Podcasts with Eric Wilbur, Jackson Hogen, or Jason Blevins. They are among the best of the 122 episodes I've published before today. It's a different gig from the running-a-mountain-and-making-you-want-to-ski-that-mountain post that 75 percent of my guests hold. And these writers deliver a different kind of conversation, and one that enriches The Storm immensely.I'd like to host more ski journalists, but there just aren't that many of them. It's a weird fact of America and skiing that there are far more ski areas than there are American ski journalists. The NSAA lists 473 active ski areas. NASJA (the North American Snowsports Journalists Association) counts far fewer active members. The NBA, by contrast, has 30 teams and perhaps thousands of reporters covering them around the world. There's a lot more happening in skiing than there are paid observers to keep track of it all, is my point here.But there are a few. And Sutner is one of the real pros – one who's been skiing New England for most of his life, and writing about it for decades. His column is enlightened and interesting, essential reading for the entire Northeast. We had a great conversation last year, and we agreed to make it an annual thing.What we talked aboutWell I still can't pronounce “Worcester,” but we didn't discuss it this time which thank God; opening day vibes at Mount Snow; comparing last year's days-skied goal to reality; that Uphill Bro life and chewing up all our pow Brah; surveying the different approaches to New England uphill access; cross-country skiing and the opportunity of the Indy Pass; skiing in NYC; the countless ski areas of Quebec; Tremblant, overrated?; Le Massif; pass quivers; the importance of racing and race leagues to recreational skiing; why the rise of freeskiing hasn't killed ski racing; Sutner's long-running snowsports column; the importance of relationships in journalism; the Wachusett MACHINE; Sutner defends the honor of Ski Ward, my least-favorite ski area; the legacy of Sutner's brother Adam, former executive at Vail, Jackson Hole, and Crystal, who passed away suddenly last year; reaction to PGRI purchasing Jay Peak; what's next for Burke?; the future of Gunstock; Mount Sunapee crowding; Crotched, Attitash, and Wildcat's 2021-22 struggles; what the Epic Day Pass says about Vail's understanding of New Hampshire; whether Vail's pay increases and lift ticket sales limits will be enough to fix the company's operational issues in New Hampshire; the impact of Kanc 8 on Loon and what that could mean for new lifts at Stowe and Mount Snow; New England's lift renaissance; eight-packs and redistributing skiers; let's play Fantasy Ski Resort owner with Sugarloaf; the investment binge at Loon; high-speed double chairs; will Magic ever get Black Quad live?; the rebuilding of Catamount; a New England lift wishlist; Berkshire East; fake vertical; Smuggs' lift fleet; the future of Big Squaw; The Balsams; Whaleback; Granite Gorge; and Tenney.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewWell the intent was to push this podcast out alongside the debut of Sutner's first column of the year, on Thanksgiving Day. I, uh, missed that target. But I'll fix that whole timing bit, and you can expect a Sutner appearance on The Storm Skiing Podcast every Thanksgiving week for as long as he's interested in doing it.What I got wrong* I noted in the podcast that it was a 15-minute drive from Mountain Creek to High Point Cross Country Ski Center in New Jersey – it's closer to half an hour.* Sutner and I referenced Seven Brothers at Loon as an unfinished lift. That was true when we recorded this podcast on Nov. 21, but the lift opened on Dec. 17.* Sutner referenced a New England lift project that he knew about but that was not public yet – it's public now, and you can read about it here.* Shaun referred to a “little-known” summit T-bar at Sugarloaf. It must be a really well-kept secret, because I can't find any reference to it, now or in the past.Why you should read Sutner's columnBecause what I wrote last year is still true:Because it's focused, intelligent, researched, fact-checked, spell-checked, and generally just the sort of professional-level writing that is increasingly subsumed by the LOLing babble of the emojisphere. That's fine – everyone is lost in the scroll. But as the pillars of ski journalism burn and topple around us, it's worth supporting whatever's left. Gannett, the parent company of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, has imposed fairly stringent paywalls on his work. While I think these local papers are best served by offering a handful of free articles per month, the paper is worth supporting if it's your local – in the same way you might buy a local ski pass to complement your Epkon Pass. Good, consistent writing is not so easy to find. Sutner delivers. Support his craft.I wish there was one place where all of Sutner's columns were collected, but the reality of being part of a larger entity is that your work gets mashed together with everything else. Here are direct links to Sutner's columns so far this season:* Skiing Vail Remains a Treasured Rocky Mountain Experience* Plenty of Updates and Upgrades have Crotched Mountain Resort Thriving in New Hampshire* Key Improvements Signal Strong Seasons Ahead for Attitash, Wildcat Ski Areas* World Cup Ski Racing Continues to Thrive at KillingtonSutner's column tends to be less-newsy, more focused on the long-term than the what-just-happened? But, thanks to decades of experience and a deep well of sources, he can fire off a breaking news story in a hurry when he needs to. Earlier this month, for example, he turned around this dispatch about Wachusett's sudden cancellation of its volunteer Ski Patrol program – known locally as “Rangers” – in just a few hours:Wachusett Mountain Ski Area ended its volunteer Ranger program at the start of the ski and snowboard season last month in an unexpected move that could have safety consequences on the mountain's busy slopes, at least in the short term. The ski area apparently was forced into ending or suspending the program due to an investigation by the state attorney general's office into whether treating the Rangers as volunteers violates state labor laws. A spokeswoman for the AG's office declined to comment on whether the office is investigating Wachusett.The case could have national ramifications in the ski industry, where more than 600 ski areas across the country use volunteer ski patrollers under the umbrella of the nonprofit National Ski Patrol, as well as volunteers similar to Rangers. Read the full story here:Podcast Notes* Sutner and I discussed Wachusett quite a bit, and specifically my podcast interview with resort President Jeff Crowley from last year:* We also had a long discussion about Ski Ward, which stemmed from this write-up I published in February:Ski Ward, 25 miles southwest, makes Nashoba Valley look like Aspen. A single triple-chair rising 220 vertical feet. A T-bar beside that. Some beginner surface lifts lower down. Off the top three narrow trails that are steep for approximately six feet before leveling off for the run-out back to the base. It was no mystery why I was the only person over the age of 14 skiing that evening.Normally my posture at such community- and kid-oriented bumps is to trip all over myself to say every possible nice thing about its atmosphere and mission and miraculous existence in the maw of the EpKonasonics. But this place was awful. Like truly unpleasant. My first indication that I had entered a place of ingrained dysfunction was when I lifted the safety bar on the triple chair somewhere between the final tower and the exit ramp and the liftie came bursting out of his shack like he'd just caught me trying to steal his chickens. “The sign is there,” he screamed, pointing frantically at the “raise bar here” sign jutting up below the top station just shy of unload. At first I didn't realize he was talking to me and so I ignored him and this offended him to the point where he – and this actually happened – stopped the chairlift and told me to come back up the ramp so he could show me the sign. I declined the opportunity and skied off and away and for the rest of the evening I waited until I was exactly above his precious sign before raising the safety bar.All night, though, I saw this b******t. Large, aggressive, angry men screaming – screaming – at children for this or that safety-bar violation. The top liftie laid off me once he realized I was a grown man, but it was too late. Ski Ward has a profoundly broken customer-service culture, built on bullying little kids on the pretext of lift safety. Someone needs to fix this. Now.Look, I am not anti-lift bar. I put it down every time, unless I am out West and riding with some version of Studly Bro who is simply too f*****g cool for such nonsense. But that was literally my 403rd chairlift ride of the season and my 2,418th since I began tracking ski stats on my Slopes app in 2018. Never have I been lectured over the timing of my safety-bar raise. So I was surprised. But if Ski Ward really wants to run their chairlifts with the rulebook specificity of a Major League Baseball game, all they have to do is say, “Excuse me, Sir, can you please wait to get to the sign before raising your bar next time?” That would have worked just as well, and would have saved them this flame job. For a place that caters to children, they need to do much, much better.As I'm wont to do, I followed that write-up with casual Ward-bashing on Twitter. Sutner took exception to this, saying that I was oversimplifying it and working on too small a sample size. Which, fair enough. He further defends the ski area's honor in our pod, though frankly I remain salty about the place.* Sutner spoke at length about his brother Adam, a member of Crystal Mountain, Washington's executive team, who died suddenly in April. Shaun wrote his younger brother's obituary, which reads in part:Adam lived and worked overseas in the advertising and tech business in Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Paris, Tokyo and Melbourne. He also lived and worked in advertising and the ski industry in New York City, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and in Vail, Colo., Jackson Hole, Wyo., and Greenwater, Wash.He lived the life he wanted to live.He was widely known for working hard and being a leader in the ski industry profession he loved, often starting work before dawn.Adam loved French Martinis, fast cars and motorcycles, high-speed skiing, music, reading literature and non-fiction, wok cooking, James Bond and art heist caper movies and smoking his beloved cigarillos. He was an ardent fan of international soccer and rugby.He liked to pick up and drop off at the airport the steady stream of visitors who he accommodated, with utmost hospitality, at his various well-appointed homes. He collected watches, fine art and mid-century modern furniture and accessories.He was a witty storyteller, entertaining family and friends with tales of his lifelong travels and adventures. He had an acerbic sense of humor and keen intellect.Read the full obit here:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 136/100 in 2022, and number 382 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 14. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 17. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoBrian Norton, President and General Manager of Loon Mountain, New HampshireRecorded onNovember 1, 2022About LoonClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Boyne ResortsPass affiliations: Ikon Pass, New England PassReciprocal pass partners:* Unlimited access to Sunday River and Sugarloaf* 3 days each at Pleasant Mountain, Boyne Mountain, The Highlands, Brighton, Big Sky, Summit at Snoqualmie, CypressLocated in: Lincoln, New HampshireClosest neighboring ski areas: Kanc (3 minutes), Cannon (21 minutes), Campton (26 minutes), Mt. Eustis (28 minutes), Mt. Prospect (35 minutes), Waterville Valley (37 minutes), Bretton Woods (38 minutes), Cranmore (55 minutes), Veterans Memorial (55 minutes), Ragged (58 minutes), King Pine (58 minutes), Attitash (1 hour), Gunstock (1 hour, 6 minutes), Black Mountain NH (1 hour, 7 minutes), Pleasant Mountain (1 hour, 7 minutes), Wildcat (1 hour, 13 minutes), Abenaki (1 hour, 15 minutes)Base elevation: 950 feetSummit elevation: 3,050 feetVertical drop: 2,100 feetSkiable Acres: 370 (will increase to 400 with next year's South Peak expansion)Average annual snowfall: 160 inchesTrail count: 61 (20% black, 60% intermediate, 20% beginner)Lift count: 11, plus one train (1 four-passenger gondola, 1 eight-pack, 3 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 3 doubles, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Loon's lift fleet). Loon will add a second fixed-grip quad - this one with a carpet-loader - rising approximately 500 feet off the Escape Route parking lots, in 2023.Why I interviewed himThere are 26 ski areas in New Hampshire. And lots of good ones: Cannon, Waterville, Bretton Woods, Attitash, Wildcat. Black and Cranmore and Ragged and Gunstock and Sunapee. Pats Peak and Crotched and King Pine. Don't “you forgot…” me, You-Forgot-[Blank] Bro. I'm making a point here: there are more good ski areas in this state than even You-Forgot-[Blank] Bro can keep track of.That means I have plenty of podcast material: I've hosted the leaders of Cannon, Gunstock, Waterville Valley, Whaleback, Ragged, and Pats Peak on the podcast. And Loon, a conversation with then-President and General Manager Jay Scambio shortly after the resort launched its so-call Flight Path 2030 plan in early 2020.So why, before I've checked off Bretton Woods or Black or Cranmore or any of the four Vail properties, am I revisiting Loon? Fair question. Plenty of answers. First, the Loon I discussed with Scambio in February 2020 is not the Loon that skiers ski today. And the Loon that skiers will make turns on before the end of this month is not the same Loon they'll ski next year, or the year after that. Kanc 8 – New England's first Octopus Lift – changed the whole flow of the resort, even though it followed the same line as the legacy lift. This year's Seven Brothers upgrade should do the same. And next year's small but significant South Peak expansion will continue the evolution.Second, Scambio, young and smart and ambitious, jumped up the Boyne Resort food chain, and is now chief operating officer for the company's day areas (Brighton, Summit at Snoqualmie, Cypress, and Loon), clearing the way for the young and smart and ambitious Norton to take the resort's top job.Third, my first Loon Mountain podcast did not age well from a technical point of view. Pre-Covid, I relied mostly on a telephone recording service to capture podcast audio. Sometimes this landed fine, but Jay and I sound as though we're talking in a 1940s war movie recorded in a field tent. I also sound considerably less enthusiastic than I actually was. I wish I could re-master it or something, but for now, Storm Skiing Podcast number 12 is an artifact of a platform in motion, seeking its shape and identity. The Storm is a far better product now, and this is as close to a re-do as I'm going to get.Fourth, the guest I originally had scheduled for the week of Oct. 31 had to cancel. Loon had just announced the South expansion, and the timing seemed perfect to revisit a New England favorite. Norton was good enough to step in, even in the midst of intensive preseason prep.So here you go: Loon podcast number two. It won't be the last.What we talked aboutHow Loon determines opening day; potential changes to the terrain-opening cadence; “I hate the thought that you do something one way because you've always done it that way”; from college student/East Basin liftie to president and general manager; Wachusett nights; that New Hampshire vibe; Planet Terrain Park; living through the Booth Creek-Boyne Resorts transition; Loon, the most popular kid on the block; managing skier volume; why Loon doesn't have night skiing, and whether the ski area has ever considered it; the amazing Kanc 8; “so much of our guest's day is not skiing”; how the new lift changed Loon skier patterns and other reflections on season one; Kanc's chaotic, wonderful lift queue; evolving the Governor's Lodge side of the resort; the Seven Brothers upgrade: “it's a new lift … you won't recognize it”; the slight modifications to the location of the top and bottom terminals; the fate of the Seven Brothers triple; comparing the new and old lifts; the importance of terrain parks to Loon; thinking through long-term upgrades to the South Peak and North Peak Express quads and the gondola; what having “the most technologically advanced lift fleet in New England” means; thoughts on the future of the East Basin double; breaking down the 2023 South Peak expansion; what it means to finally run a lift up from the massive Escape Route parking lots; the importance of connecting Loon to Lincoln; evolving Loon's learning experience; breaking down the bottom and top terminals of the coming quad lift and why it will sit slightly away from the parking lot; where the expansion will fit into the terrain-opening sequence; Loon's evolving glade philosophy; where Loon will be eliminating a glade and why; where new glades will be coming online; three huge projects at Loon in three years: “this is a commitment across the board to grow”; what the Westward Trail expansion is and when we could see it; breaking down potential additional development on North Peak; why Lincoln Peak Express doesn't go to the summit of South Peak; Loon's absolute commitment to snowmaking; why Loon will require Ikon Pass reservations this coming season, and how the mountain will set the number of reservations for each day.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIt's all just changing so fast. Ever since dropping Flight Path 2030 plan in early 2020, Loon has built the massive and gorgeous Kancamagus eight-pack (New England's first), rebuilt the old Kanc quad and moved it across the mountains to replace the Seven Brothers triple chair, and announced a 30-acre 2023 expansion that will finally knot the ski area's massive Escape Route parking lots to the rest of the resort with a lift. And the mountain has built all that around Covid-19, with all its operational disorientation and a one-year delay on construction of Kanc 8 (originally scheduled to go live in 2020).They're just getting going. Flight Path's overarching goal, from a skier-experience point of view, is to stand up “the most technologically advanced lift network in the East to increase uphill speed and achieve ultimate comfort.” That means upgrades to the Lincoln and North Peak high-speed quads and that weird little four-person gondola. The snowmaking system, hundreds of guns that can already bury most of Loon's 370 acres by Christmas, is going full auto. New trails are likely incoming for North and South peaks. More glades, too. The Westward Trail expansion could potentially add hundreds more acres and shoot Loon past Bretton Woods for the largest-in-New Hampshire title.Even if Loon stopped with next year's expansion, the place would be in good shape. Lincoln Peak Express is only 15 years old. North Peak is 18. Kanc 8 is a glorious, beautiful machine, standing monolithic at Governor Adams, so smooth in its ascent that it appears to float up the rise. And Seven Brothers is more than a lift-and-shift – “It's a new lift,” Norton tells me on the podcast, after Doppelmayr spent a year on an overhaul so thorough that “you won't recognize it.”The 500-vertical-foot, beginner-oriented expansion, to be served by a carpet-loaded fixed-grip quad, seems small in the scale of 2,100-vertical-foot, super-octopus-lift-served Loon. But the new pod is a crucial connection both to the checkerboard of outer-edge parking lots currently served by shuttlebuses, and to the town of Lincoln, the edges of which sit walking distance to the new lift. The expansion will also add new beginner terrain, a product that extra-intermediate Loon currently lacks in meaningful quantities. Here's a peek:And here's how the little pod will fit in with the rest of the resort:With so much so recently accomplished, and so much more incoming, this seemed like a perfect moment to check in with one of New England – and, really, America's – most rapidly evolving ski areas.What I got wrongRumors were all over the place last year that Kanc 8 experienced intermittent power issues last season. I asked Norton about this in the podcast, and it turns out that the rumors weren't true. But I asked the question in a way that presumed they were. Instead of asking “what was happening with the intermittent power issues,” I should have framed it this way: “There was a lot of chatter that intermittent power issues interfered with Kanc 8 operating last year – was that true?” I'll do better.Why you should ski Loon MountainIf you're questing for rad, keep driving. Cannon is 20 minutes up the road. Loon is many things, but challenging is not one of them (watch this be the site of my next catastrophic injury). Here's what it is: one of the best exactly-in-the-middle mountains in New England skiing. Its peers are Okemo and Mount Snow and Bretton Woods; lots of fast lifts, ExtraGroomed and extra busy, with lots of skiers welcomed by the welcoming terrain.Loon is, in other words, what every ski area east of the Rockies was trying to be before terrain parks and glades and bumps made skiing more interesting: a perfect groomed ski area. Approachable and modest, big and sprawling enough to feel like an adventure, well-appointed with Boyne's particular brand of largess.Loon has an amazing terrain park, of course. Some steeper stuff off North and South. Some trees if you're timing is right. But that's not the point of the place (well, the park sort of is), and it doesn't need to be. Loon is for blue skiers like Jay is for glade skiers and like springtime Killington is for bump skiers. Groomers are the point here. Let them run.But stop, please, mid-mountain beneath the Kanc 8. Watch this beautiful machine glide. Up and over and away, the smoothest lift in skiing. Rising from frantic load terminal to propelled silence as it advances toward the summit, floating and flying and encased in a bubble. Then catch the J.E. Henry railroad over to the gondola, ride to the summit, board Tote Road – the party lift – across the mountain decorous with pines, sprawling like a mini-Sugarbush, and roll the endless, glorious blue-square Cruiser or Boom Run to the base. This is Loon – a big ramble, quirky and stimulating and easy – easy to ski, easy to like, easy to settle into and ride.Podcast notes* Norton noted that previous plans for the South Peak expansion had included two proposed lifts. This version, which, according to New England Ski History, dates to 2013, shows one possible alignment, with two crisscrossing fixed-grip quads oriented against the existing Cruiser and Escape Route trails. This plan also included the magic carpets:* We also briefly discussed the so-called “Westward Trail expansion,” which Flight Path 2030 names as a potential late-stage project. Norton noted that several hundred additional acres exist within Loon's permit area, that plans for such an expansion have existed for decades, and that this is what the Westward Trail expansion referred to. Unfortunately, I've been unable to locate these maps. If you are in possession of any, please send them over.* I attended Kanc 8's grand opening last December. Here's video of the first-ever chair:* And of course, the J.E. Henry, an honest-to-goodness steam engine that skiers ride between the Governor Adams and Octagon base areas:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 122/100 in 2022, and number 368 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Sept. 26. Free subscribers got it on Sept. 29. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoKris Blomback, General Manager of The Mighty Pats Peak, New HampshireRecorded onSeptember 19, 2022About Pats PeakClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Patenaude familyPass affiliations: Indy PassReciprocal pass partners: NoneLocated in: Henniker, New HampshireClosest neighboring ski areas: Crotched (30 minutes), Mount Sunapee (30 minutes), McIntyre (30 minutes), Veterans Memorial (50 minutes), Ragged Mountain (50 minutes), Granite Gorge (50 minutes – scheduled to return this season), Whaleback (50 minutes), Gunstock (1 hour), Storrs Hill (1 hour),Base elevation: 690 feetSummit elevation: 1,460 feetVertical drop: 770 feetSkiable Acres: 115 acres      Average annual snowfall: 100 inchesTrail count: 28 trails, 9 glades (17% double-black, 12% black, 21% intermediate, 50% beginner)Lift count: 11 (4 triples, 2 doubles, 2 carpets, 1 J-bar tow, 2 handle tows - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Pats Peak's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himLiving next door to Vermont is probably a little like being Hoboken. Nice town, great location, all the advantages of city life, but invisible in the orbit of Earth's most famous island. Did you know that the population density of Hoboken is about double that of New York City? Probably not. It's fine. Most people don't. Nobody cares about Hoboken.That's how it seems the ski intelligentsia sometimes views New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, the three ski states bordering Vermont. By whatever accident of geology and meteorology, the Pretentious Beer State possesses most of the region's biggest ski areas and its most reliable snowzone: the Green Mountain Spine. Along this rim sit your headliners: Killington, Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, Stowe, Smugglers' Notch, Jay Peak. If you tried to tell me these were the six best ski areas between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, I'd probably be like, “OK” and go eat my Pop-Tarts.But if The Storm was just a documentary tool for places where New Yorkers vacation, then I would have wrapped this project up two years ago. This is a big New Hampshire house, and always has been: the heads of Loon, Cannon, Gunstock, Waterville Valley, Whaleback, and Ragged have all made podcast appearances. Still, the Vermont interview tally is 15, even though I ski New Hampshire as often as I do Vermont. Clearly I have work to do.So here we are. A New Hampshire ski area with the best attributes of New Hampshire ski areas: service- and snowmaking-oriented; steep and varied; busy because it's close to everything; lots of lifts; lots of community and tradition. If you don't think all that fits into 115 acres, you haven't skied New England. The Mighty Pats Peak jams it all in just fine.What we talked aboutReaction to the Jay Peak sale;Ragged Mountain; Pats Peak in the early ‘90s; a brief history of Pats Peak; Blomback's 100-point list to modernize Pats Peak; “when you operate a ski area 60 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, she's got something to say about that”; how Pats Peak survived when so many Southern New Hampshire ski areas died; the overcorrection that nearly wiped out Pats Peak's competition; the problem with debt; thoughts on the pending comebacks of Granite Gorge and Tenney; why the ski area has dubbed itself “the mighty Pats Peak”; knowing who you are; cheapskate expert skiers; who owns Pats Peak; the value of autonomy; what's kept Blomback at Pats Peak for 31 years; Magic Mountain in the ‘80s; why Pats buys used lifts; where Pats' current lifts came from; which lifts are next in line for an upgrade and what may replace them; the poor-man's detachable; a history of (non-mechanical) high-speed lift fails in New England; the “magic length” of a detach; ski areas are littered with dead halfpipes; some unique attributes of Mueller lifts; whether it's a pain in the butt to have chairlifts made from a half-dozen different manufacturers; why Vortex rarely has liftlines even when the bottom triples have 20-minute waits; how Pats Peak crushes its larger competitors in snowmaking on a regular basis; the ski area's audacious goal to go from nothing open to every trail open in 48 hours; the history, purpose, and experience of Cascade Basin; additional trail and glade expansion opportunities; snowmaking in the glades; why Pats Peak was an early Indy Pass adopter; Pats Peak is the third-most redeemed Indy resort and I mean damn; why Indy draws so many first-time visitors to Pats Peak; a new reason to hate Liftopia; Indy Pass D-day at Pats Peak; reaction to Vail entering New Hampshire; competing with the Northeast Value Epic Pass; “skiing is an experience”; the logic of over-staffing; “service and experience is what sets Pats Peak apart”; and competing against Vail's $20-an-hour minimum wage.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewAs the Indy Pass settled in over the past three years, an interesting pattern has emerged: New England absolutely crushes the rest of the country in total redemptions. During the 2020-21 ski season, six of the top 10 resorts by number of Indy skiers were in New England. Last season, that number rose to seven of 10. With long, cold winters; generation-spanning ski traditions; and incredible population density, these results weren't surprising so much as affirming of what anyone who has skied out here already knows: the Northeast loves to ski.But there's data within the data, and surprises abound. Those seven New England ski areas do not stack up according to vertical drop or skiable acreage or average annual snowfall. Sometimes, as in the case of perennial Indy number one Jay Peak, mountain stats – especially 349 inches of average annual snowfall – do trump distance. By the statistical standard, no one is really surprised to see 2,020-vertical-foot Waterville Valley sitting in the two-spot. But statistical assumptions break down after that, because instead of 2,000-plus-footers Cannon or Saddleback claiming the third spot, you have the Mighty Pats Peak, with a third of the rise and a bunch less snow.There are a few obvious contributing factors to the ski area's Indy rank: Pats Peak is the easiest mid-sized ski area to reach from Boston; the mountain had zero Indy Base Pass blackouts until this coming season; Crotched, its closest competitor, was constrained in operating hours and open terrain last year; it's open all the time – nearly 90 hours on peak weeks. But those attributes alone aren't enough to explain how a 770-vertical-foot mountain finished number three out of 82 – 82! – Indy Pass partners for total redemptions last season.A succession of bigfoots were expected to stomp Pats Peak flat over the past three decades, Blomback tells us in the podcast. SKI, Peak Resorts, Vail. But business has never been stronger. The product on the snow doesn't just matter a lot, it turns out – it matters more than anything.Questions I wish I'd askedI already have a bad habit of keeping my guests way too long, but, believe it or not, there are almost always un-asked questions remaining at interview's end: why are all Pats Peak's trails named after winds? How important is it to retain some New England indies as Jay Peak joins a conglomerate? How can Vail make sure Crotched is as good as Pats Peak from a snowmaking and open-terrain point of view? How are season pass sales going? And on and on. Somehow I usually have the sense to keep these under two hours, but that rises more from guilt over time theft than any sense of personal decency.What I got wrongI think I mispronounced “Patenaude” – the last name of the ski area's owners – about every way that it could be mispronounced over the course of an hour-long interview.Why you should ski Pats PeakAs you can imagine, I possess a lot of ski passes. And despite the lack of an in-town bump, I can reach around 150 of them within a five-hour drive. So my options on any given day are fairly vast. While my travels – well documented on Twitter, Instagram, and the “this week in skiing” section of the weekly-ish news update – may seem random, I am almost always chasing snow and conditions. Who, within that vast radius fanning off New York City, is firing? Eerie? Ontario? The Green Mountain Spine? The Whites? And what's the path of least resistance? If the Catskills get hammered, I'm unlikely to plow through to the Adirondacks. If the Poconos get their once-every-five-year dump, I'm going. Almost any ski area can deliver a riotous day with the right conditions. The secret trees pop open. The jumps and drops are more forgiving. The ice evaporates and for one afternoon you can close your eyes* and pretend you're in Utah.But sometimes it doesn't snow anywhere. And I still have to ski every week because you know why. Last December-to-January we hit just such a hellstreak in the Northeast. The kind that makes you wonder how long an industry reliant upon temperatures below freezing can stitch together sustainable seasons. The fats were all in various states of open but many of the littles sat brown-hilled and empty over Christmas week. No one was offering anything resembling their trailmaps.Except Pats Peak. One hundred percent open by the first day of 2022. And why? It was weird. Its base elevation is 690 feet. The mountain sits in Southern New Hampshire, outside of the major snowbelts. Unlike similarly sized Crotched, right down the road, it's not owned by a CorpCo that can helicopter in snow from the Wasatch. It's just a 770-foot local bump owned and operated by locals.And yet there it is, routinely the first ski area in New England to pop its full menu open for the season. How? “We often joke we're a snowmaking system with a ski area attached,” Blomback tells me. Go there and you'll see it. That's what I did in January. And there: Unimaginable snowmaking firepower. Gunning anytime temperatures allow. Day or night, chairlifts spinning or idle. A plume of white powder erupting from the stubborn brown hills around it.And guess what? The skiing is pretty good too. From the parking lot the ski area erupts, fall lines apparent. Lifts everywhere. In the backyard a hidden pod, Cascade Basin, like a second miniature ski area of its own. Glades tucked all around. Weekdays it's all yours. Until school lets out. Then it belongs to the kids. Busloads of them, learning, racing, messing around. To the baselodge, and one of the great bars in New England skiing.Just remember to make your Indy Pass reservation first. The information era has been good for the mighty Pats Peak. Real-time weather and trail reports have made it obvious who's mastered the snowmaking game. Pats Peak isn't the only snowmaking killer in New Hampshire. But I'd argue that there's no one better. I'm not the only one. The place parked out for the first time last season. Blomback and team quickly adjusted, limiting Indy Pass slots and bringing back the Covid-season reservation system. This year, Pats Peak will have Indy Base blackouts for the first time. But these won't matter in mid-December when the big bombers are five percent open and Pats Peak is breaking out new terrain out daily.*Actually maybe don't do this.Podcast NotesBlomback notes that, “at one time, in southern New Hampshire, we lost King Ridge, Ragged, Whaleback, Crotched, Temple, Highlands, and Pinnacle.” Ragged, Whaleback, and Crotched are obviously back, and Pinnacle is orchestrating its second comeback as Granite Gorge. But here's a quick look at the others:King RidgeVertical drop: 775 feet; Lifts: 2 triples, 1 double, several surface liftsThis was a terrific little ski area that made the mistake that just about every terrific little ski area made in the ‘80s: it decided that snowmaking was a fad. Then it dropped dead. Really the important thing about King Ridge though is that it has the single greatest trailmap ever printed (circa 1994):TempleVertical drop: 600 feet; Lifts: 1 quad, 1 doubleThis little spot, just down the road from Crotched, ran for 63 seasons before shutting down in 2001. The quad now stands at Nashoba Valley, according to New England Ski History. The state purchased what was left of the ski area in 2007 and let it fade back into nature.HighlandsVertical drop: 700 feet; skiable acres: ; Lifts: 1 triple, 2 T-bars, 1 pony, 1 ropetowHighlands stood as a ski area from the late ‘60s to the mid-90s. Today, it's the only lift-served mountain-bike-only area in New England (the rest all offer wintertime skiing). This one, seated just a few minutes off I-93, seems like a good candidate to re-open for skiing at some point, perhaps with a parks focus.Crotched EastWhile Peak Resorts famously resuscitated the then-long-dead Crotched in 2003, they did not revive all of it. The ski area was once a two-sided operation, consisting of Crotched East and West (also known as Onset or Bobcat). West is present-day Crotched. East sits right next door, liftless, fading away. I doubt Vail has any ambitions to revive it, though they could certainly use the extra capacity. Crotched circa 1988:And this is what survives today:Similarly, Magic Mountain, Vermont has an abandoned ski area on the backside (which you are still allowed to ski, though the lifts are long gone). Here's what the place looked like in its 1980s ultimate form, when Blomback worked there:Magic today:Blomback and I discussed the phenomenon of the Vortex double chair, which terminates just alongside the Hurricane and Turbulence triples, but rarely has a line, even when the other two are backed up for 20 minutes. This, Blomback says, is because the double loads above the lodge, rather than continuing the 50 vertical feet to the true base at the Peak chair. The same phenomenon happens all over, but the similar instance we discussed was Sunday River's Locke and Barker chairs. Locke, a triple, rarely has a line, while Barker – a high-speed quad – often has lines longer than the gestational cycle of several species of mammal. Why? I don't know. There is a lot of terrain crossover between the two lifts. The main difference is that one is faster (and racers often commandeer large chunks of Locke). I've always wondered what would happen if Sunday River were to bring the Locke loading station down beside Barker? Unless they upgrade it to a high-speed lift, I can't imagine it would matter much – which is fine with me, as I'll lap the slow lift with no line all day long:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing all year round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 102/100 in 2022, and number 348 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Reporter Amanda Gokee of the New Hampshire Bulletin joins A. J. Kierstead of WKXL in the Morning to discuss translated voter information, fallout from the Gunstock closure, and the state's new solid waste plan. More from them at https://newhampshirebulletin.com

On the mid-week supplemental episode of The Knife Junkie podcast (episode 345), Bob "The Knife Junkie" DeMarco surveys slip joint knife patterns, such as the Trapper, Boy's Knife, Gunstock, Sodbuster, Camp/Scout, Peanut and more. Find the list of all the knives (and slip joint patterns) shown in the show, and links to Knife Life news stories, at https://theknifejunkie.com/345.Bob starts the show with his favorite comment of the week followed by his "pocket check" of knives -- the ZT 0452CF, Jack Wolf Knives K9 Jack, Kramer Custom Knives Voodoo and the Microtech Troodon (his emotional support knife). In Knife Life News, The Kizer/Pinkerton Urban Bowie gets the Kizer Friday treatment and Hoo Knives goes on hiatus.Meanwhile in his "State of the Collection," Bob shows off a his new Finch Knives Buffalo Tooth.Support The Knife Junkie channel on your next knife purchase by using our affiliate links found at https://theknifejunkie.com/knives. You can also support The Knife Junkie and get in on the perks of being a Patron -- including early access to the podcast and exclusive bonus content. Visit https://www.theknifejunkie.com/patreon for details.Let us know what you thought about this episode. Please leave a rating and/or a review in whatever podcast player app you're listening on. Your feedback is much appreciated.Please call the listener line at 724-466-4487 or email bob@theknifejunkie.com with any comments, feedback or suggestions on the show, and let us know what you'd like to hear covered next week on The Knife Junkie Podcast Supplemental edition.To watch or listen to past episodes of the podcast, visit https://theknifejunkie.com/listen.

Reporter Amanda Gokee of the New Hampshire Bulletin joins A. J. Kierstead of WKXL in the Morning to preview her article on the Gunstock debacle, Berlin utilizing Burgess BioPower, Mt. Washington hearings, and Bedford elections. More from them at https://newhampshirebulletin.com

Belknap County-owned Gunstock Mountain Resort reopened after weeks of controversy between the Gunstock Area Commission and the mountain's management team. The manufacturing company Saint-Gobain shut down operations in Merrimack this week after the system it used to limit PFAS contamination failed. Meanwhile, the National Academy of Sciences has provided new recommendations for how doctors should treat patients who have been exposed to PFAS. We cover those stories and more in this week's edition of the New Hampshire News Recap with NHPR's Mara Hoplamazian and InDepthNH's Paula Tracy.

Ken interviews Representative Barbara Comtois, member of the audit committee for Gunstock and clerk of the Belknap County Delegation and John Plumer, also a member of the audit committee and candidate running for NH State Senate in District 2.

Cody and Jonathan cover Gunstock Mountain Resort's fight to operate; access issues & potential solutions; WC DH MTBers forming a union; mountain-town advice; what we're reading & watching (answer: TOP GUN) and more.TOPICS & TIMES:Hunters, Skiers, & Offroaders: Cody on the onX meetup (4:58)Gunstock ski area's fight to operate (13:38)Update: New info on Gunstock after we recordedAccess Issues & Solutions: Red Rock Canyon (28:26)WC DH MTB racers forming a union (38:53)Most / Least Canadian News Story (46:50)Mountain Town Advice (50:17)What We're Reading & Watching (1:04:44)RELATED LINKS:Become a Blister Member / Get our Buyer's GuideSubscribe to our Gear Giveaways & NewsletterOUR OTHER PODCASTS:Bikes & Big IdeasOff The CouchGEAR:30 podcast See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on July 27. Free subscribers got it on July 30. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoBrad Wilson, General Manager of Bogus Basin, IdahoRecorded onJuly 11, 2022About Bogus BasinClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Bogus Basin Resort Association Inc., a group of approximately 100 people who own the ski areaPass affiliations: Powder Alliance, Freedom PassLocated in: Boise National Forest, IdahoClosest neighboring ski areas: Tamarack (2.5 hours), Soldier Mountain (2.5 hours)Base elevation: 5,790 feetSummit elevation: 7,852 feetVertical drop: 1,800 feetSkiable Acres: 2,600 Night-skiing acres: 175Average annual snowfall: 250 inchesTrail count: 88 (24% double-black, 49% black, 20% intermediate, 7% beginner)Lift count: 10 (4 high-speed quads, 3 doubles, 3 carpets, - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Bogus Basin’s lift fleet)Why I interviewed himFor many years, I lived in West Harlem. Specifically, a slice of bricks and concrete called Morningside Heights. It’s beautiful. The streets straightline up from the river with San Franciscan steepness. Walking and bike paths line the Hudson and above this looms Riverbank State Park, a neat grid of basketball courts and plazas and a full 400-meter track and west-facing benches where I would write and watch the sun set over New Jersey. I lived on the fourth floor of a rambling prewar building of four- and five-bedroom apartments, in a small corner room set with enormous river-facing windows, bracketing the Palisades and the George Washington Bridge twinkling over the swarm.Harlem is a big, busy neighborhood – a neighborhood of neighborhoods, as they say around here. It was a part of the city that still acted like the old city, vibrant with life beyond transit, kids running and inflatable pools dragged onto the sidewalk and on hot days the local fire brigade would pop open the hydrants and let the water gush. Men played Dominoes on folding tables. It was a primarily Dominican neighborhood, and the bodegas stocked heaping crates of wild exotic fruits.This was wonderful, but the place had shortcomings. It was hard to find basic items, such as a toothbrush. I once found myself in need of bug spray and had to take the 1 train down to the Upper West Side – 51 blocks – to find it. I was frequently offered drugs while walking down the street. There were no bars and few restaurants.Every New York-based newspaper and magazine would point to Harlem, with its lovely building stock and dense network of subway lines and irreplaceable Manhattan location, as the “next Brooklyn.” What that meant, of course, was gentrification. That’s a heavy subject, and one I’ll skim over here. What I wanted was to be able to restock my medicine cabinet without an excursion across the island, like some sort of uptown Laura Ingles Wilder. When a chain pharmacy finally moved into four combined storefronts in my third or fourth year in the neighborhood, I was relieved. I thought maybe a nice pub would follow.It never did. I moved back to the Upper East Side in 2014. For four years, I kept the apartment and rented out the rooms. A chichi wine bar popped up here and there, but Morningside Heights today looks much the same as it did in 2009, when I moved in: smoke shops and sex shops and bodegas and variety stores that look as though they are stocked by dumping out the contents of random shipping containers. It’s lively and raw and interesting, but Harlem was not, in fact, the next Brooklyn.And that’s kind of how I view Idaho. It’s skiing’s next big thing that never quite gets there. And why not? There is plenty of snow. Lookout Pass scores 400 inches per year. Pomerelle rocks 500. Brundage, Schweitzer, Silver, and Tamarack each claim 300. If you count Lost Trail, which straddles the Idaho-Montana border, the state has nine ski areas* with more than 1,000 acres of terrain and 12 with a vertical drop of more than 1,000 feet**. The southern part of the state is well-served by Boise airport, and the northern part by Spokane.So why, as Colorado and Utah overflow from Epkon skiers, do Idaho lifts continue to spin empty so much of the time? Most skiers not from Idaho can name one Idaho ski area: Sun Valley. And then they’re stumped. Or maybe they get Schweitzer, whose profile is rising thanks to Ikon Pass membership. Or they’ve heard about once-troubled Tamarack, launched with gusto in 2004 and soon shuttered by a rash court-appointed receiver (it’s back now, and I had a great, extended conversation with current resort president Scott Turlington about the resort’s past and future earlier this year). But, mostly, this is a prime ski state that is not at all perceived as one on the national scene.I’m not exactly sure why. Bogus Basin encapsulates this mystery better than any other Idaho ski area. The mountain is less than an hour (on good roads), from the Boise airport. It’s roughly the size of Copper Mountain and is larger than Beaver Creek, Telluride, Deer Valley, or Jackson Hole by inbounds skiable acreage. It is, in fact, larger than Sun Valley, which is far more remote (a fact somewhat obviated by a good airport). It has four high-speed quads. Coming expansions could further supersize the place.What gives? I put this question to Wilson in the podcast, and his answer is enlightening (and inspiring), for anyone wondering if all big mountains are destined to become Disney-at-Altitude.*Schweitzer (2,900 acres), Bogus Basin (2,600), Sun Valley (2,434), Brundage (1,920), Lost Trail (1,800), Silver (1,600), Soldier Mountain (1,142), Tamarack (1,100), and Pebble Creek (1,100).**Sun Valley (3,400 feet), Tamarack (2,800), Schweitzer (2,400), Silver (2,200), Pebble Creek (2,200), Brundage (1,921), Bogus Basin (1,800), Lost Trail (1,800), Soldier Mountain (1,425), Lookout Pass (1,150), Pomerelle (1,000), and Kelly Canyon (1,000).  What we talked aboutA record financial season at Bogus Basin; reopening in April after putting the mountain away for the year; learning to ski in the early ‘70s hotdog scene; Heavenly in the Killebrew days; Gunbarrel lunchbreaks; the legendary team in the Goldmine-transitioning-to-Big Bear days; what made that team disperse; stumbling upon Brian Head; Sugarbush in the American Skiing Company days; yet another testament to the virtues of Sugarbush; yeah I forgot the name of the Slide Brook Express shoot me; fixing up Mountain High; SoCal as snowboard mecca; from 180,000 skier visits to 577,000 in four years with very little capital investment, dethroning Snow Summit as king of SoCal; Alpine Meadows in the Powdr Corp days; why Wilson didn’t become the general manager at Alpine; the difference between the two sides of the resort now known as Palisades Tahoe and thoughts on the base-to-base gondola; how Wilson wound up living and working on Catalina Island, 24 miles off the California coast, for several years; becoming a ski consumer; the unique governance structure of Diamond Peak and how that makes it challenging to operate; finally a GM; how Diamond Peak is different from other Tahoe ski areas; that one season Diamond Peak had the best season of any ski area in Tahoe, and why; trying to market a ski area where the skiers don’t want any other skiers; master planning Diamond Peak; Bogus Basin’s complex ownership structure; Alf Engen’s role in founding Bogus Basin; the ski area’s evolution; the dire financial situation at Bogus Basin when Wilson arrived and how he turned it around; the legacy of Mike Shirley and the birth of the mega-bargain season pass; the incredible, exponential increase in pass sales when the first $199 sale hit; where the discount-pass strategy faltered; what happened when Wilson finally raised the price after more than two decades; Bogus Basin’s expansive reciprocal season pass lift ticket program and why the mountain began charging extra for an upgrade to that pass; what percentage of the ski area’s pass holders upgrade; why Bogus Basin hasn’t (and probably won’t) join the Indy Pass; Bogus Basin’s incredibly low walk-up lift ticket prices; the amazing number of night-skiing passes the mountain sells and the importance of night skiing to the mountain; the tremendous value of the twighlight family pass; the two trails that Bogus Basin is in the process of adding to its night-skiing footprint as soon as the 2022-23 ski season; puzzling through the elaborate equation of night skiing, grooming, avalanche mitigation, and everything else that goes along with big-mountain management; grooming in a low-snow year; coping with Boise’s explosive growth; where Bogus Basin could expand terrain next; when we could see an update of the ski area’s 2016 masterplan; where new trails could be cut within the mountain’s existing footprint; which chairlifts may get an upgrade next; where Bogus Basin may upgrade a high-speed quad to a six-pack; where the ski area may install a new lift within the existing trail footprint and what sort of lift we may see there; is Deer Point the most-used chairlift in the country?; ideas to reconfigure the Coach liftline and what sort of lift could replace the existing machine; the improved and widened beginner trail debuting off the top of Morningstar this coming winter; how Bogus Basin discovered it had water and built a snowmaking system from scratch; expanding the system in the future; and what’s keeping 2,600-acre Bogus Basin from becoming a national destination resort.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIt started with a comment on one of the most-popular Storm stories I’ve ever written: Rob Katz Changed Skiing. What Comes Next for Vail Resorts?, which I published last December:Let's set the record straight, Vail did not create the concept of cheap passes driving volume. That piece of history should go to Bogus Basin in Boise, Idaho. In 1998 the ski area lowered their anytime season pass rates from $450 to $199. They went from 5,500 passes sold in 1997 to 25,000 in 1998. The rest of the industry took notice and many, if not most ski areas jumped on board. Rob may have expanded on the concept, largely because he had a much larger audience, but he in no way came up with the concept. I'm sure SAM could pull up some old stories. Thanks and Happy New Year-Brad Wilson, GM Bogus Basin Mountain Recreation Area.Well that was a nice surprise. Perhaps Brad wanted to set the record straight on the podcast, rather than in the comments section alongside various Angry Ski Bros and one guy who said the article was too long for him to read “while riding in the car,” (which really should describe any bit of writing longer than the name of your radio station)?It took us a while, but we finally arranged the chat. Idaho has turned out to be fertile ground for The Storm – the Tamarack pod landed well, and the general managers of Brundage and Sun Valley are scheduled to join me in the fall. As I attempt to sort out both the mystery of Idaho’s secret radness and the market forces and historical events driving the modern U.S. American ski landscape, this sort of insight and historical perspective from the people who lived and are living these things is invaluable.But there was another interesting element to this that I didn’t realize until I began researching the resort for my interview: for a long time, Bogus Basin wasn’t a very good business. For several years, it lost money. And while it never seemed to be in danger of closing, it was in desperate need of new management. Enter Wilson, who, since 2015, has orchestrated one of the greatest big-mountain turnarounds in modern U.S. American skiing. In less than seven years, he has grown revenues from $8 million annually to $18 million. Operating surpluses have grown from negligible to $5 million per year. One hundred percent of that goes back into the mountain, which operates as a nonprofit.This is rare. Most nonprofit ski areas lose money (profitable Bridger Bowl is another exception). Many are taxpayer subsidized. Wilson, who carried four decades of ski industry experience into the corner office with him, has so far been able to navigate whatever bureaucratic and organizational hurdles hobble these other organizations and transform the mountain into an understated gem of the Upper Rockies, a place no one has heard of that everyone could try if they spent about two minutes on logistics. It’s a good mountain that is getting better, and it was a good time to talk about what that better could look like.Questions I wish I’d askedBogus Basin has now explained to me a couple of times why they aren’t interested in joining the Indy Pass, and it has come down to some version of “we don’t want our passholders to have to pay extra for the partner resort lift tickets.” Indeed, Bogus Basin has one of the most phenomenal reciprocal programs (see chart below) in the country – but they charge extra for it. A Bogus Basin-only pass is $549, while the “True Bogus” pass, which includes the reciprocal days, is $80 extra. Granted, that is far less than the $199 Indy AddOn Pass would cost passholders, but it also weakens the rationale that the reciprocal days ought to be embedded in the pass as a native benefit. Wilson explained that the True Bogus pass is a year-round pass and also includes access to all the summer stuff, including scenic lift rides and the MTB trails. He also said there’s a lot of crossover between Bogus Basin’s reciprocals and the Indy Pass - 23 Indy Pass partners are also Bogus Basin reciprocal partners. I’m still not sure that I really understand the fundamental equation here, and I would have liked to have asked a follow-up question or two. But it wouldn’t have really mattered – whatever they’re reason, the mountain is not interested in joining the Indy Pass.What I got wrongI stated in the intro and a couple times throughout the podcast that Bogus Basin was “publicly owned.” That is untrue. While the mountain is registered as a nonprofit organization, it is in fact privately owned by the Bogus Basin Resort Association Inc., which, according to Wilson, is a group of “about 100 volunteers” who own the ski area. If they were ever to sell it, Wilson said, the operation would go to the state.My understanding was that Bogus Basin was running a $1.2 million surplus prior to Wilson’s arrival, but this was, according to Wilson, an isolated figure from one standout year. Most years, the ski area lost money – enough that it totaled “millions of dollars” over the decades, according to Wilson.I stated a couple times in the interview that Bogus Basin was “almost as big as Sun Valley.” It is, in fact, larger by 166 acres. Who knew?In the middle of our conversation, I attempted to call out the name of “the long lift between the two peaks” at Sugarbush, and I blanked. Like a dumbass. Slide. Brook. Express. Maybe if I have a ski publication I ought to be able to remember the name of the longest chairlift on the planet?Why you should ski Bogus BasinBogus Basin seems to have everything a ski resort needs to transform itself into a major name in the U.S. American ski scene: good terrain, plenty of snow, fast lifts, proximity to a major(-ish) airport. It’s larger than the state’s one true legendary destination, Sun Valley, and a bit easier to get to (access road excepted). So why, I asked Wilson, isn’t Bogus Basin lobbying for Ikon membership and tying all these attributes together into a come-ski-me package?Because, he said, the mountain cares about locals and locals alone. That’s its mission: make sure the people of Treasure Valley, Idaho have access to outdoor recreation. So that’s where the mountain focuses its marketing, and that’s what guides its pricing decisions. Peak-day walk-up lift tickets were $73 last year. That’s insane. Who cares if the mountain isn’t on your ULTIMATE FLIPKICK PASS!!! – you can just walk up and ski like it’s Keystone in 2003.There’s another something cool about this local’s focus. When I swing through a locals’ bump in New England, the pace and sense of comfort and urgency is completely different than if I’m at Stratton or Okemo. There’s a sense of, “hey, no need to hurry here. We’re home.” Typically, that sort of place-building self-confidence only exists at places stripped of high-speed lifts and triple-digit trail counts. The big joints – outside of northern Vermont – can rarely retain it. But here is one of the 20 largest ski areas in America, and you’ll find almost no tourists. It’s a place by and for locals, a big ski area that acts like a little one while still skiing like a monster. And that’s pretty cool.Podcast notesWilson came up with Tim Cohee, who is now CEO and part-owner of China Peak, at Heavenly and Big Bear. Cohee joined me on the podcast last year, and there is a ton of crossover between their stories:It’s worth noting that we recorded this podcast on July 11, a week and a half before Gunstock’s senior management team resigned en masse to protest the micromanaging blockheads on the Gunstock Area Commission (GAC), which oversees the county-owned mountain. The parallels between the intransigent GAC and the way that Wilson describes the five-person board of stay-off-my-lawn locals at Diamond Peak are eerie. Certainly we would have made an explicit comparison had it been available to make. Timing.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 78/100 in 2022, and number 324 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

On this freshly brewed episodic edition of COFFEE and VR, we talk about how Project Cambria is coming sooner than later, how it stacks up to the Lynx R1, some useful and ridiculous VR gear, and new VR games as always.

On this episode of the Hunting Gear Podcast, Dan talks with Dustin Knutson of Boyds Gunstocks about the importance of a well fitting gunstock. Dustin gives a brief history of Boyds as a company and his role within the company. He also talks about how their products work, the material they use and how easy it is to find a stock customized to fit your size and shooting style. This is an excellent episode with tons of great information. Enjoy!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Organizations can email skiing@substack.com to add multiple users on one account at a per-subscriber enterprise rate.WhoErik Barnes, General Manager of Ragged Mountain, New HampshireRecorded onApril 26, 2022About Ragged MountainClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Pacific Group ResortsSummit elevation: 2,286 feet at the top of Pinnacle PeakVertical drop: 1,240 feet Skiable Acres: 250Average annual snowfall: 100 inchesSnowmaking coverage: 85%Trail count: 57 (40% expert/advanced, 30% intermediate, 30% beginner)Terrain parks: 3Lift count: 5 (1 high-speed six-pack, 1 high-speed quad, 1 triple, 2 surface lifts - view Lift Blog’s  inventory of Ragged’s lift fleet)Why I interviewed himI usually start with the mountain, but this time I’ll start with the man. Barnes spent 33 years at Mount Snow before landing at Ragged last October. That makes him one of the most seasoned ski area heads in a region where experience matters a hell of a lot. As Vail struggled to fully open and manage its New Hampshire properties last year, little, little-known Ragged seemed to do just fine. Outside of a four-day lift failure in early January, the ski area was staffed up and moving all season, in spite of warm December temps and a stubborn rain-snow line that sopped Ragged while its neighbors just to the north tallied a foot-plus in a series of storms. The ski area’s stability in the maw of all this instability demonstrates the importance of appointing experienced leaders such as Barnes to captain this temperamental region’s ships.And this is a pretty nice little ship. Not a super-yacht or anything, but a solid pleasure cruiser. Ragged has all of the things: glades, detachables, that indie vibe, reasonable prices, and an experienced snowmaking and management team that can keep the boat sailing through the Northeast’s it’s-raining-lava-and-elephant-poop winters.It’s pretty easy for a ski area to get lost in New Hampshire. It’s a great ski state with a lot of great ski areas: Waterville Valley, Loon, Cannon, Bretton Woods, Attitash, Wildcat, Black Mountain, Cranmore, Mount Sunapee, Gunstock. King Pine and Pats Peak are two of the best-run small ski areas in New England. So Ragged has some standing-out to do. It’s doing its best, but it’s one of the state’s least-appreciated spots, and I figured it was time to do some appreciating.What we talked aboutRagged’s 2021-22 weather short straw; back when everyone used to learn on a ropetow and how that went; how you get from ski instructor to general manager of Mount Snow; ski school camaraderie and culture; the distinct culture of Mount Snow and why the ski area has been such an incubator of industry talent; how Mount Snow evolved as it was passed along from SKI to American Skiing Company to Peak Resorts to Vail Resorts; 251 fanguns will change your day; building Mount Snow’s Attack of The Planets snowmaking system and what makes it so powerful; what it takes to open a mountain in October in southern Vermont; Barnes’ reaction when Peak Resorts sold their entire portfolio to Vail; “what do you think?” versus “this is what we’re doing”; the East is a different game, Kids; what Vail needs to do to bring its Northeast ski areas up to standards; the particular challenges of running oft-bankrupted and frequently shuffled Ragged Mountain; Ragged’s unique snowmaking and snow-management systems; why Ragged didn’t suffer the same staffing challenges as other New England resorts this past season; how the ski area will respond to Vail’s new $20-an-hour minimum wage; a primer on Ragged owner Pacific Resorts Group and its five ski areas; the insane expenses of lift maintenance; an update on the Pinnacle Peak and beginner area expansions; how much land Ragged owns and what the eventual expansion options look like; Ragged’s big-bomber high-speed lift fleet; the importance of redundancy; whether we could ever see a surface lift serving the Wildside terrain park; Ragged’s extensive, wildly fun, and ever-growing glade network; whether we could ever see night skiing at Ragged; long-term snowmaking upgrades; the ski area’s Mission: Affordable season pass; whether Ragged could ever add reciprocal season pass partner deals, as its sister resort, Powderhorn in Colorado, has done; and whether Ragged has considered joining the Indy Pass.     Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewBecause it’s been nagging at me for years: this “FUTURE EXPANSION” promised on two sides of the ski area on Ragged’s old trailmaps:I see something like this and I become 7 years old. When will it happen? When will it happen? When will it happen? When will it happen? When will it happen? When will it happen? When will it happen? It’s insane. I won’t say that this particular expansion nag is why I started the podcast, but I will say that things like this are exactly why The Storm exists: I am obsessed with the long-term evolution of lift-served ski areas, more immersed, at times, in what a thing could be than what it actually is. This one is particularly compelling, for a number of reasons. First, the trails are already cut, and have been for years:Second, Ragged has done a better job than just about any ski area in New England outside of northern Vermont in developing a balanced ski experience. Loon is a big, well-appointed mountain, but it lacks a strong glade network (which is odd, considering Boyne’s strength in this area up at Sugarloaf). Okemo and Mount Snow host the largest collection of intermediate groomers on planet Earth. Ragged could be a smaller version of this, a glide-and-fly bump for families and the opening-bell groomer brigades. But the ski area makes the most of its two little mountains, and it’s fun to assume that it would develop Pinnacle Peak in the same manner.Ragged is interesting in a lot of other ways. What’s with this weird little conglomerate that owns ski areas in New Hampshire, Maryland, Virginia, Colorado, and coastal BC? That sounds more like a rich person’s inventory of second homes than a logical network of ski resorts. And what’s with the cheapo season pass? And why doesn’t it have a network of reciprocals like sister resort Powderhorn? And oh by the way when will Pinnacle Peak happen? When? When, man? JUST TELL ME AND I’LL STOP ASKING!He didn’t tell me.Questions I wish I’d askedYou know, I didn’t ask what it felt like to leave Mount Snow after 33 years, and I should have. I didn’t ask why Barnes left the mountain, because it was pretty obvious. The new owners, Vail, shuffled executives, as new corporate owners of new corporate things often do. I figured there was no point in dwelling on it. The Storm is sometimes deferential to or critical of the past, but it is mostly about the now and the what’s-to-come (I said mostly, Annoyingly Correct Bro). But it was obvious – in the way Barnes talked about Mount Snow and his time there and the people he worked with and the modern machine that he had helped evolve it into – that this was a man connected to his mountain in a way you might be connected to a kid or a home or a really great dog. He would not have left it on purpose. That was a story that would have been worth getting into, and it was a failure on my part not to.What I got wrongI mentioned the power of Mount Snow’s snowmaking system, and intimated that they were “the first in the Northeast to really build out” such a system. There’s a lot of nuance to that statement, and the way I framed it in the podcast wasn’t clear at all. Here’s what I meant: while every large resort in the Northeast has a snowmaking system that could blow the doors off of any 5,000-acre western rambler, Mount Snow’s is one of the most modern and efficient, able to make the most of its water in a way that is more advanced than many of its competitors (though that gap shrinks yearly as all of the big Northeast mountains continuously upgrade their snowmaking arsenals).I also stated that this was Vail’s fourth season of operating the former Peak Resorts, when it was actually their third, after acquiring the portfolio in July 2019. I also asked Barnes to tell us about Pacific Resorts Group and the five different ski areas that it owns “around the country.” Only four of their resorts are in the United States, however – the other is in British Columbia, Canada.I didn’t get this wrong, but a lot of New England people will accuse me of doing so: I stated that the region did not have the rabid night-skiing culture that the Midwest does. This is true. While Southern New England does feature several extensive night-skiing operations, the total number of ski areas, and the total hours that they operate after dark, are far less numerous than in the Midwest, where nearly 100 percent of the ski areas offer night skiing across 100 percent of their terrain seven nights per week from December to March.Why you should ski Ragged MountainSecrets are a little easier to come by in the West, where bigness is the default and out-of-staters fly by the off-brands to cash in their Epkon coupons at the headliners. Take Sunlight, Colorado, for example, 2,000 vertical feet fading into the rear-views of the Aspen-bound. Or Sugar Bowl, 1,650 acres and 500 inches of snow served by five high-speed quads half an hour closer to San Fran than Palisades Tahoe or Northstar. That’s a little tougher in the East, where the drop-off is fairly severe between the chest-thumbing 2,000-foot bad boy bristling with detachables and the family-owned 500-footer served by a single double chair that’s older than plant life.But there are a few big-but-mine-all-mine-evil-cackling-laugh ski areas dotted around the East. Burke, 2,000 empty vertical feet of goldmine glades served by two high-speed quads just a few miles off (a very remote section of) I-91. Saddleback, modernized and re-opened and glorious with fall lines and glades of all kinds, but far enough out in the wilderness that you have to be careful you don’t turn the wrong way off the edge of the planet on your way to the hill.And Ragged. For 20 years, there has been exactly one six-place detachable chairlift in New Hampshire, and it’s at Ragged Mountain, serving one of two glade-laced peaks. Serving the other, exactly adjacent glade-laced peak is an eight-year-old high-speed quad. There’s a whole complex of beginner lifts at the bottom for kids or whatever you call them. Lift tickets sit comfortably below triple digits. The season pass is one of the cheapest in New England, debuting this year at just $379 (it’s now $479 through Sept. 5). All this sits about equidistant between Interstates 89 and 93.So what gives? How come skiers tend to blow right past Ragged on their way to Waterville Valley or Loon or Cannon? Well, those ski areas are bigger and, despite being farther from Boston, easier to get to, as they’re mostly right off Interstate 93. Each of them tops 2,000 feet of vert and tends to draw more snow than Ragged. Either state- or corporate-owned for decades, New Hampshire’s big resorts have been well-tended-to and well-taken care of, stable wintertime draws for basically the entire history of lift-served skiing.But Pacific Resorts Group, which added Ragged to its far-flung, five-resort network back in 2007, has brought much-needed stability to this rad little mountain. The company has continued to improve the property, cutting new glades and upgrading the lifts. Long-term, they intend to expand onto a third mountain, Pinnacle Peak (as I may have mentioned above), and trails are already cut (also mentioned above). In Barnes, Ragged has one of the most experienced and well-liked ski area managers in the region. As megapass mania transforms the character of many of New Hampshire’s beloved ski areas, sending refugees scrambling for alternatives, Ragged is poised to become something big. Go there before that happens.More RaggedThe excellent New England Ski History website has pages on just about any operating or lost ski area in the region, including Ragged.New England Ski Journal TV visited Ragged back in 2016:Ragged’s dense glade network speaks to the mountain’s long-established identity. Decades before thinned tree runs became ski area mainstays, Ragged called out a cluster of upper-mountain glades on this 1969 trailmap:This has nothing to do with Ragged, but while researching this article, I came across this amazing trailmap of nearby (and now lost) King Ridge ski area. I really have no idea what the hell is going on here, but it makes me vaguely miss the ‘90s, the last decade before the world hyper-connected itself into a bottomless information and ridicule machine and it was possible for absurd things like this to exist in glorious obscurity:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 46/100 in 2022. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer. You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

On this episode of the Hunting Gear Podcast, Dan talks with Dustin Knutson of Boyds Gunstocks about the importance of a well fitting gunstock. Dustin gives a brief history of Boyds as a company and his role within the company.  He also talks about how their products work, the material they use and how easy it is to find a stock customized to fit your size and shooting style. This is an excellent episode with tons of great information. Enjoy!  

On this episode of the Hunting Gear Podcast, Dan talks with Dustin Knutson of Boyds Gunstocks about the importance of a well fitting gunstock. Dustin gives a brief history of Boyds as a company and his role within the company.  He also talks about how their products work, the material they use and how easy it is to find a stock customized to fit your size and shooting style. This is an excellent episode with tons of great information. Enjoy!  

We chat with our new friend Ben Ruhl about his experience as a ski instructor at Gunstock and we help him get an "A" in his "Human Dimensions of Natural Environments" class.

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.WhoShaun Sutner, snowsports columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Telegram.comRecorded onNovember 22, 2021Why I interviewed himBecause for skiing to thrive, it needs ski media to help tell its story. And I mean actual reporting-based journalism. Yes, it needs the hype – the cliff drops, the pow shots, the flippidy-doodle park brahs, this:But it also needs writers who can tell the story of the more approachable lift-served skiing world in which most of us dwell. Writers who know the local markets and local owners and local skiers and local idiosyncrasies. In the great ski media wipeout that swept away the bulk of our U.S. magazines, we also lost a lot of local ski beats. This matters. Good journalism, grounded in relationships and research, can counterbalance the noisy and atrocious swirl of social-media garbage that has become many skier’s primary information source about the sport.Sutner provides this corrective. In a snowsports column he has written for nearly two decades, he explores the world of New England skiing from his Worcester, Massachusetts base. He knows the people who run the ski areas, understands the market dynamics driving the sport’s evolution, and skis 80 days a year on the mountains he writes about. He knows the uphill and the downhill, the groomers and the backcountry, the people who can show him the stashes in all of them. There is nobody better equipped to help us understand what New England skiing is, how it became that, and what it might be in the future.What we talked aboutI can’t pronounce “Worcester”; the appeal of New England skiing; Southeast and Mid-Atlantic ski culture; Sutner’s long-running Telegram snowsports column; it’s beef time, snowshoers; what skiing loses when local journalism shrivels; the amazing snowy ski town that is Worcester; the slick operation at Wachusett; journalism’s rough transition to digital; newspaper paywalls; how to ski 80 days a year with a full-time job; surveying the Massachusetts ski landscape; the rise of Berkshire East; the renaissance at Catamount; the art of dodging large crowds at Stowe, Mount Snow, Loon, Cannon, and other busy mountains; regional ski passes; the Berkshire East-Wachusett French fry beef; you won’t believe which Massachusetts ski area has the highest base elevation in the state; thoughts on the state’s lost ski areas – Mount Tom, Pine Ridge, Brodie, Blandford, Mt. Watatic; the most endangered ski area in Massachusetts; the resilience of the Connecticut ski scene; Worcester’s cross-country ski park; the fate of Worcester’s once-thriving network of ropetow bumps; how Ski Ward endures; the distinct ski areas of North Conway; the explosion of the Mount Washington backcountry ski scene; the North Conway-Worcester connection; the appeal and frustrations of Attitash; brainstorming solutions for the atrocious summit triple; Vail Resorts’ evolving uphill policies; the odds that currently proposed expansions at Gunstock, Ragged, Sunapee, and Waterville Valley succeed; the buzz around Ragged; thoughts on Loon’s new eight-pack; the right balance between uphill and downhill capacity; Loon’s undersized gondola; the twisted history and fate of Tenney; whether Les Otten’s huge ski area development at The Balsams could succeed; the secret behind Magic’s comeback; beef with Mad River Glen; thoughts on the evolution of Stowe under Vail; how the Indy, Epic, and Ikon passes have changed New England skiing for the better; whether Vail’s crowd-management efforts will be enough to offset exploding Epic Pass sales; why the success of Hermitage Club matters to the average skier; whether the club will succeed this time; Boyne’s purchase of Shawnee Peak; the revitalizations of Saddleback and Bosquet under socially conscious investment groups; and Vail Mountain versus Beaver CreekWhy I thought that now was a good time for this interviewBecause Sutner’s column begins every year on Thanksgiving week, just as the Northeast ski season (typically) ramps up in earnest. It seemed like a good time to survey the happenings of New England skiing, from the concussive impacts of the Epic and Ikon Passes to New Hampshire resort expansions to the diligent multi-generational families running Massachusetts ski areas. And I wanted to help promote his column, a fine piece of weekly journalism that will make your ski season better.What I got wrongDuring the interview, I estimated the number of ski areas in New England to be “80 or 90 or maybe more.” The correct number is 90, according to the National Ski Areas Association.Why you should read Sutner’s columnBecause it’s focused, intelligent, researched, fact-checked, spell-checked, and generally just the sort of professional-level writing that is increasingly subsumed by the LOLing babble of the emojisphere. That’s fine – everyone is lost in the scroll. But as the pillars of ski journalism burn and topple around us, it’s worth supporting whatever’s left. Gannett, the parent company of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, has imposed fairly stringent paywalls on his work. While I think these local papers are best served by offering a handful of free articles per month, the paper is worth supporting if it’s your local – in the same way you might buy a local ski pass to complement your Epkon Pass. Good, consistent writing is not so easy to find. Sutner delivers. Support his craft.Where you can read Sutner’s columnSutner’s column kicks off Thanksgiving week each year and runs until April. This season’s inaugural edition, released yesterday, starts, as usual, close to his home base of Worcester. A preview:The last time I checked in with Chris Stimpson in this column he was a University of Vermont student on a barnstorming van tour of Western ski areas with a band of fellow collegiate free skiers.Stimpson, now 28, is the new media spokesman and public relations manager for Wachusett Mountain Ski Area as of this season, and also serves as the ski area’s terrain park manager. He’s part of a group of third-generation Crowley family members who occupy key roles at the thriving family business founded by their grandfather, Ralph Crowley, in 1969.Stimpson’s cousin David Crowley Jr. is the operations manager, and cousin Courtney Crowley is the new head of group sales. …What this generational shift in the making means for Wachusett customers is that the independent ski area is in solid, experienced family hands for the future and is not likely to ever be sold off to a big corporate chain.Read more…A few of Sutner’s past columns:Earliest Ski-Area Opening in Northeast Goes to Wachusett (Nov. 27, 2020)Winchester a Fresh Voice on Northeast Ski Scene (Dec. 9, 2020)New Hampshire’s Black Mountain ‘Is Like a Trip into the Past’ (Feb. 17, 2021)Ski Industry Makes Strides Toward Inclusion (March 31, 2021)Follow up on stuff we talked about in the interviewFollow Shaun on Twitter, Instagram, and FacebookShaun and I discussed this lost ski area in Van Cortland Park in The Bronx. A ropetow operation may have also briefly existed in Queens.We also talked about the story I had yet to write about a new owner buying Woodbury ski area in Connecticut – that story is here.Shaun talked about the lost Mt. Atatic Ski area - it looks like a cool little operation. Here’s a great write-up about the backcountry scene there on Lift Line Blog.Shaun references the Wa-Wa-Wachusett theme song in our interview. Here you go:Support The Storm by shopping at our partners:Patagonia | Helly Hansen | Rossignol | Salomon | Utah Skis | Berg’s Ski and Snowboard Shop | Peter Glenn | Kemper Snowboards | Gravity Coalition | Darn Tough | Skier's Peak | Hagan Ski Mountaineering | Moosejaw | Skis.com |The House | Telos Snowboards | Christy Sports | Evo | Hotels Combined | Black Diamond | Eastern Mountain Sports Subscribe at www.stormskiing.com

‘Sustainable Future Initiatives‘ is a series of podcast interviews with people who are responding to Climate Change by actively taking steps towards a more sustainable future.     Three years ago Howard Gunstock was an HR professional working in people development. It was the start of the worst year of his life. In the space months, all of Howard's close relationships ended or changed leaving him bereft and believing his life had become meaningless.  Our conversation explores Howard's ‘Road to Damascus', the background to his project ‘Carbon Kapture' and his personal shift in consciousness that made it all possible.     My full introduction for this podcast along with Howard's website and social links are all available at: http://www.lifepassionandbusiness.com/sustainable-future-initiatives-carbon-kapture     Life Passion & Business is dedicated to exploring what it takes to be Extraordinary, to face challenges and rejoice in the opportunities they bring, and expand our vision into new ways of thinking and living. There is a lot to gain from listening to other people's stories, however the real work begins by taking action in your own life. For full details of Events, Resources and Services visit: www.lifepassionandbusiness.com     Support For Podcasters: Running a podcast is fun, but it takes time and dedication. Whenever you enjoy a podcast please share your appreciation with comments, likes, shares and reviews. It helps other listeners find good content and supports the content creators and their guests. Another way you can support the Life Passion & Business podcast is with small donations: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/lifeandpassion    

Michael Kent Jr joined Andrew Bensley on Winners to chat about I'm Thunderstruck in the Golden Eagle and Gunstock in the Victoria Derby

David Mouad's Import Racing will be represented by Gunstock in the G1 VRC Derby

Star trainer Michael Kent Jnr joined the Next Gen of Racing boys, Damien Ractliffe and Hayden Byrne, to preview Derby day and the Golden Eagle. He's saddling up I'm Thunderstruck, Gunstock, Extreme Warrior and Quantum Mechanic on a huge day for the stable.

Trainer Mick Price joins Andrew Bensley to wrap what was a huge Caulfield Cup week for the Price/Kent team with a stack of winners. We touch on their handy bunch of 3YOs including GUNSTOCK, EXTREME WARRIOR and PROFITEER.

Meghan and her donut short shorts along with other friends rocking them as well showed up to Gunstock trail festival and set out the race to a fun positive atmosphere while still kicking butts! Meghan has been on the trail scene for only a few years now and this was her first official 50k trail race where she won overall with 4:12hrs

We've all tried it sometime, or at least thought about it. DIY gunstock refinishing is one of those things that seems really simple but the end result is often lacking. To help the next time you want to breathe new life into an old gun, Host Brent T. Wheat talks with Roy Huntington for his insider tips on the best tools, materials and techniques for refinishing old stocks and grips. Episode Sponsors:  The GUNS Magazine is presented by 1791 Gunleather and supported by Hodgdon.  1791 Gunleather — Our appreciation of the Second Amendment fuels our passion for gunleather and its representation of the original patriots of this great nation. 100% Certified American Steerhide, and four generations of professional leather artisans creating the perfect firearm holsters. Carry your firearm with pride knowing that each 1791 Gunleather holster is handcrafted to be the best holster for your firearm. See our full product lineup at 1791gunleather.com. Established in 1947, Hodgdon Powder Company has grown into the nation's largest supplier of smokeless, blackpowder and blackpowder substitute propellants. Distributed under the Hodgdon, IMR, Winchester, Ramshot, Accurate, Pyrodex, Triple Seven, Blackhorn 209 and GOEX brands, learn more about and shop Hodgdon powders at hodgdon.com. Read and subscribe to GUNS Magazine at gunsmagazine.com. 

On this special episode, we are joined by Germany's finest, Sebastian Ang, from MRTV. We will be talking about all the recent leaks of the new Quest, how Sebastian likes the G2, and much much more. Patreon Link https://www.patreon.com/RenderedReality MRTV: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2mg... Mamut Apto 2.0 Gunstock: https://www.mamutvr.com/products/mamu... Use Discount code: RENDEREDREALITY ------------------------------------------------- Oculus Quest 64gb - https://amzn.to/2LYe51w Oculus Quest 128gb - https://amzn.to/2KnaEy1 Deluxe Audio Strap - https://amzn.to/2yBlScO Rift S - https://amzn.to/2YFDxdK Stream Deck (Tyler) - https://amzn.to/2YCbjRq Blue Yeti (Shawns) - https://amzn.to/2YKkxew Vuze XR VR 180 Camera - https://amzn.to/2yB5tFq Bionik Mantis - https://amzn.to/2Yn5UCh -------------------------------------------------------- Rendered Reality Merch https://teespring.com/stores/rendered... Business or contact us at: RenderedRealityvr@gmail.com Come join us on our discord server: https://discord.gg/nCEV7kG Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/renderedrea... Twitter: Check out RenderedReality (@RealityRendered): https://twitter.com/RealityRendered?s=09 Hit that like and subscribe button, keep up with all the VR action RenderedReality can throw at you!! #coffeeandvr #RenderedReality #VRpodcast

If you like this episode, check out https://otrpodcasts.com for even more classic radio shows! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 09. Show Title: Legalize Or Decriminalize Featuring Hosts: Matthew Carano, Nick Boyle, and Cord Blomquist Engineered by: Matthew Carano Produced by:Matthew Carano, Nick Boyle, and Cord Blomquist Show Summary (used for RSS & iTunes Summary): On this episode of The Freecast, the NH house passes death penalty repeal, Nick defines involuntary admission, an update on Red and Shorty's, and the pros and cons of legalization vs. decriminalization. News NH house passes death penalty repeal bill, heads to NH senate (MC) https://www.fosters.com/news/20190307/nh-house-passes-death-penalty-repeal-bill Involuntary admissions (NIck) RSA 135-C:27 person has inflicted serious bodily injury on himself or has attempted suicide or serious self-injury and there is a likelihood the act or attempted act will recur if admission is not ordered the person has threatened to inflict serious bodily injury on himself and there is likelihood that an act or attempt of serious self-injury will occur if admission is not ordered The person's behavior demonstrates that he so lacks the capacity to care for his own welfare that there is a likelihood of death, serious bodily injury, or serious debilitation if admission is not ordered. The person meets all of the following criteria: The person has been determined to be severely mentally disabled The person has had at least one involuntary admission, within the last 2 years The person has no guardian of the person appointed The person is not subject to a conditional discharge The person has refused the treatment determined necessary by a mental health program approved by the department A psychiatrist at a mental health program approved by the department has determined, based upon the person's clinical history, that there is a substantial probability that the person's refusal to accept necessary treatment will lead to death, serious bodily injury, or serious debilitation if admission is not ordered. Some NH stats 35,449 people with serious mental illness 848 adults with serious mental illness incarcerated 158 public psychiatric beds http://www.drcnh.org/commitment.html https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/browse-by-state/new-hampshire http://www.gencourtmobile.com/RSA/Section/135 Seabrook Nuclear Plant license extended until at least 2050 (Cord) https://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20190312/nrc-approves-seabrook-plants-license-extension Follow up: Red and Shorty's closes for good (Nick) https://www.fosters.com/news/20190312/dovers-red-and-shortys-closes-for-good NH House votes to legalize sports betting (Matt) https://nh1.com/nh1/new-hampshire-house-approves-legalizing-sports-betting/?fbclid=IwAR2RApVwGWzKQ5ZJViuOTndd2IWcQ_BVRg6jWJKYrPCyWL64NAFP2LaTBiA Events Freecoast Liberty Outreach Meetup Rochester - 3rd Thursday   Discussion: Decriminalize or Legalize? (MC) NH History New Hampshire Ski History 34 active ski areas 21 of them have chair lifts http://newenglandskimuseum.org/new-hampshire-ski-history-for-4rth-graders/ New Hampshire was the center of skiing in the United States from the 1930s into the 1950s. Skiing first became popular in northern Europe then crossed the Atlantic to the cities of New York and Boston. Because New Hampshire was so close to Boston, skiing became very important to New Hampshire. Three groups of people were important to skiing growing in New Hampshire. First, the workers from Scandinavia who moved to the paper mills around Berlin. Second, college students from Dartmouth College who were part of the Dartmouth Outing Club. And third, people who were members of the Boston-based Appalachian Mountain Club. New Hampshire was the first place in America to have many things you see now at every ski resort. New Hampshire was the first to have trails cut just for downhill skiing. The Granite State was the first to have overhead wire-rope ski tows and an aerial tramway. Many famous races and styles of racing took place in New Hampshire. Professional ski patrols and ski schools began in New Hampshire. These new ideas, plus ski villages, started a whole new tourism industry. Rope Tows and Chairlifts Even though the first rope tow in the United States was in Woodstock, Vermont, many new ideas for getting skiers up a mountain were developed in New Hampshire. Two new style rope tows opened in 1936. The Dartmouth Outing Club built one on Oak Hill in Hanover and the second one was built at Moody's Farm in Jackson. These used wire instead of fiber to make the rope. This rope was then suspended above the skiers' heads rather than at waist level. The skier grabbed a J-shaped handle that was attached to the rope and was pulled up the mountain. The first chairlift in New Hampshire was built in 1937 on Rowe Mountain in Gilford, just a year after chairlifts were invented in Idaho. The next year, 1938, two exciting and new ski lifts were built. One was at Cannon Mountain in Franconia and the other was at Mount Cranmore in North Conway. The first chairlift in the Eastern U.S. at Belknap Mountain, now called Gunstock. Cannon Mountain built the Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway. A tramway is a large box that hangs from a cable. Many people can board a tram and travel to the top of the mountain together. Many people thought that trams would be the most popular ski lifts in America, but chairlifts became cheaper to run and easier to fix. New Hampshire's Legacy New Hampshire was a hub for skiing through the 1930s through the 1950s. The state helped promote the state through colorful maps, posters, and brochures. Later, Vermont and ski areas further west became more popular than New Hampshire. Even so, skiing is still very important to New Hampshire today. In 2006-7 people spent over 700 million dollars in the state because of skiing. Ski resorts also employed over 17,000 people during that year. It isn't surprising that New Hampshire lost its early lead in the development of skiing in America. What is remarkable is that New Hampshire played such a large role in the rise of skiing. Ski resorts and areas might be very different if it wasn't for the ideas and inventions of New Hampshire skiers.   Suggestions/Feedback Do you have a topic that you would like for us to discuss? A correction and additional piece of information that we may have overlooked, please send it in to freecastpodcast@gmail.com While you are here, follow us on Twitter @freecastpodcast and like our Facebook page.  

Original series regular Ashley Gunstock (PC Robin Frank 1984-89) takes us back to the first five series of "The Bill", with memories of being the first Sun Hill copper to get shot, comedy magic with a leg of lamb, on starring in several other series at the same time and making the decision to move on. All that plus Bill Murray, Suggs, John Thaw, the stage and a copper in the family! Ashley's nominated charity is https://www.crisis.org.uk/