Podcasts about holiday valley

WhoWes Kryger, President and Ayden Wilbur, Vice President of Mountain Operations at Greek Peak, New YorkRecorded onJune 30, 2025About Greek PeakClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: John MeierLocated in: Cortland, New YorkYear founded: 1957 – opened Jan. 11, 1958Pass affiliations: Indy Pass, Indy+ Pass – 2 daysClosest neighboring U.S. ski areas: Labrador (:30), Song (:31)Base elevation: 1,148 feetSummit elevation: 2,100 feetVertical drop: 952 feetSkiable acres: 300Average annual snowfall: 120 inchesTrail count: 46 (10 easier, 16 more difficult, 15 most difficult, 5 expert, 4 terrain parks)Lift count: 8 (1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 3 doubles – view Lift Blog's inventory of Greek Peak's lift fleet)Why I interviewed themNo reason not to just reprint what I wrote about the bump earlier this year:All anyone wants from a family ski trip is this: not too far, not too crowded, not too expensive, not too steep, not too small, not too Bro-y. Terrain variety and ample grooming and lots of snow, preferably from the sky. Onsite lodging and onsite food that doesn't taste like it emerged from the ration box of a war that ended 75 years ago. A humane access road and lots of parking. Ordered liftlines and easy ticket pickup and a big lodge to meet up and hang out in. We're not too picky you see but all that would be ideal.My standard answer to anyone from NYC making such an inquiry has been “hahaha yeah get on a plane and go out West.” But only if you purchased lift tickets 10 to 16 months in advance of your vacation. Otherwise you could settle a family of four on Mars for less than the cost of a six-day trip to Colorado. But after MLK Weekend, I have a new answer for picky non-picky New Yorkers: just go to Greek Peak.Though I'd skied here in the past and am well-versed on all ski centers within a six-hour drive of Manhattan, it had not been obvious to me that Greek Peak was so ideally situated for a FamSki. Perhaps because I'd been in Solo Dad tree-skiing mode on previous visits and perhaps because the old trailmap presented the ski area in a vertical fortress motif aligned with its mythological trail-naming scheme:But here is how we experienced the place on one of the busiest weekends of the year:1. No lines to pick up tickets. Just these folks standing around in jackets, producing an RFID card from some clandestine pouch and syncing it to the QR code on my phone.2. Nothing resembling a serious liftline outside of the somewhat chaotic Visions “express” (a carpet-loaded fixed-grip quad). Double and triple chairs, scattered at odd spots and shooting off in all directions, effectively dispersing skiers across a broad multi-faced ridge. The highlight being this double chair originally commissioned by Socrates in 407 B.C.:3. Best of all: endless, wide-open, uncrowded top-to-bottom true greens – the only sort of run that my entire family can ski both stress-free and together.Those runs ambled for a thousand vertical feet. The Hope Lake Lodge, complete with waterpark and good restaurant, sits directly across the street. A shuttle runs back and forth all day long. Greek Peak, while deeper inland than many Great Lakes-adjacent ski areas, pulls steady lake-effect, meaning glades everywhere (albeit thinly covered). It snowed almost the entire weekend, sometimes heavily. Greek Peak's updated trailmap better reflects its orientation as a snowy family funhouse (though it somewhat obscures the mountain's ever-improving status as a destination for Glade Bro):For MLK 2024, we had visited Camelback, seeking the same slopeside-hotel-with-waterpark-decent-food-family-skiing combo. But it kinda sucked. The rooms, tinted with an Ikea-by-the-Susquehanna energy, were half the size of those at Greek Peak and had cost three times more. Our first room could have doubled as the smoking pen at a public airport (we requested, and received, another). The hill was half-open and overrun with people who seemed to look up and be genuinely surprised to find themselves strapped to snoskis. Mandatory parking fees even with a $600-a-night room; mandatory $7-per-night, per-skier ski check (which I dodged); and perhaps the worst liftline management I've ever witnessed had, among many other factors, added up to “let's look for something better next year.”That something was Greek Peak, though the alternative only occurred to me when I attended an industry event at the resort in September and re-considered its physical plant undistracted by ski-day chaos. Really, this will never be a true alternative for most NYC skiers – at four hours from Manhattan, Greek Peak is the same distance as far larger Stratton or Mount Snow. I like both of those mountains, but I know which one I'm driving my family to when our only time to ski together is the same time that everyone else has to ski together.What we talked about116,000 skier visits; two GP trails getting snowmaking for the first time; top-to-bottom greens; Greek Peak's family founding in the 1950s – “any time you told my dad [Al Kryger] he couldn't do it, he would do it just to prove you wrong”; reminiscing on vintage Greek Peak; why Greek Peak made it when similar ski areas like Scotch Valley went bust; the importance of having “hardcore skiers” run a ski area; does the interstate matter?; the unique dynamics of working in – and continuing – a family business; the saga and long-term impact of building a full resort hotel across the street from the ski area; “a ski area is liking running a small municipality”; why the family sold the ski area more than half a century after its founding; staying on at the family business when it's no longer a family business; John Meier arrives; why Greek Peak sold Toggenburg; long-term snowmaking ambitions; potential terrain expansion – where and how much; “having more than one good ski season in a row would be helpful” in planning a future expansion; how Greek Peak modernized its snowmaking system and cut its snowmaking hours in half while making more snow; five times more snowguns; Great Lakes lake-effect snow; Greek Peak's growing glade network and long evolution from a no-jumps-allowed old-school operation to today's more freewheeling environment; potential lift upgrades; why Greek Peak is unlikely to ever have a high-speed lift; keeping a circa 1960s lift made by an obscure company running; why Greek Peak replaced an old double with a used triple on Chair 3 a few years ago; deciding to renovate or replace a lift; how the Visions 1A quad changed Greek Peak and where a similar lift could make sense; why Greek Peak shortened Chair 2; and the power of Indy Pass for small, independent ski areas.What I got wrongOn Scotch Valley ski areaI said that Scotch Valley went out of business “in the late ‘90s.” As far as I can tell, the ski area's last year of operation was 1998. At its peak, the 750-vertical-foot ski area ran a triple chair and two doubles serving a typical quirky-fun New York trail network. I'm sorry I missed skiing this one. Interestingly, the triple chair still appears to operate as part of a summer camp. I wish they would also run a winter camp called “we're re-opening this ski area”:On ToggenburgI paraphrased a quote from Greek Peak owner John Meier, from a story I wrote around the 2021 closing of Toggenburg. Here's the quote in full:“Skiing doesn't have to happen in New York State,” Meier said. “It takes an entrepreneur, it takes a business investor. You gotta want to do it, and you're not going to make a lot of money doing it. You're going to wonder why are you doing this? It's a very difficult business in general. It's very capital-intensive business. There's a lot easier ways to make a buck. This is a labor of love for me.”And here's the full story, which lays out the full Togg saga:Podcast NotesOn Hope Lake Lodge and New York's lack of slopeside lodgingI've complained about this endlessly, but it's strange and counter-environmental that New York's two largest ski areas offer no slopeside lodging. This is the same oddball logic at work in the Pacific Northwest, which stridently and reflexively opposes ski area-adjacent development in the name of preservation without acknowledging the ripple effects of moving 5,000 day skiers up to the mountain each winter morning. Unfortunately Gore and Whiteface are on Forever Wild land that would require an amendment to the state constitution to develop, and that process is beholden to idealistic downstate voters who like the notion of preservation enough to vote abstractly against development, but not enough to favor Whiteface over Sugarbush when it's time to book a family ski trip and they need convenient lodging. Which leaves us with smaller mountains that can more readily develop slopeside buildings: Holiday Valley and Hunter are perhaps the most built-up, but West Mountain has a monster development grinding through local permitting processes: Greek Peak built the brilliant Hope Lake Lodge, a sprawling hotel/waterpark with wood-trimmed, fireplace-appointed rooms directly across the street from the ski area. A shuttle connects the two.On the “really, really bad” 2015 seasonWilbur referred to the “really, really bad” 2015 season. Here's the Kottke end-of-season stats comparing 2015-16 snowfall to the previous three winters, where you can see the Northeast just collapse into an abyss:Month-by-month (also from Kottke):Fast forward to Kottke's 2022-23 report, and you can see just how terrible 2015-16 was in terms of skier visits compared to the seasons immediately before and after:On Greek Peak's old masterplan with a chair 6I couldn't turn up the masterplan that Kryger referred to with a Chair 6 on it, but the trailmap did tease a potential expansion from around 2006 to 2012, labelled as “Greek Peak East”:On Great Lakes lake-effect snow This is maybe the best representation I've found of the Great Lakes' lake-effect snowbands:On Greek Peak's Lift 2What a joy this thing is to ride:An absolute time machine:The lift, built in 1963, looks rattletrap and bootleg, but it hums right along. It is the second-oldest operating chairlift in New York State, after Snow Ridge's 1960 North Hall double chair, and the fourth-oldest in the Northeast (Mad River Glen's single, dating to 1948, is King Gramps of the East Coast). It's one of the 20-oldest operating chairlifts in America:As Wilbur says, this lift once ran all the way to the base. They shortened the lift sometime between 1995 and '97 to scrape out a larger base-area novice zone. Greek Peak's circa 1995 trailmap shows the lift extending to its original load position:Following Pico's demolition of the Bonanza double this offseason, Greek Peak's Chair 2 is one of just three remaining Carlevaro-Savio lifts spinning in the United States: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.WhoTrent Poole, Vice President and General Manager of Hunter Mountain, New YorkRecorded onMarch 19, 2025About Hunter MountainClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Hunter, New YorkYear founded: 1959Pass affiliations:* Epic Pass, Epic Local Pass – unlimited access* Epic Northeast Value Pass – unlimited access with holiday blackouts* Epic Northeast Midweek Pass – unlimited access with holiday and midweek blackouts* Epic Day Pass – All Resorts, 32 Resorts tiersClosest neighboring ski areas: Windham (:16), Belleayre (:35), Plattekill (:49)Base elevation: 1,600 feetSummit elevation: 3,200 feetVertical drop: 1,600 feetSkiable acres: 320Average annual snowfall: 120 inchesTrail count: 67 (25% beginner, 30% intermediate, 45% advanced)Lift count: 13 (3 six-packs, 1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 2 doubles, 1 platter, 3 carpets)Why I interviewed himSki areas are like political issues. We all feel as though we need to have an opinion on them. This tends to be less a considered position than an adjective. Tariffs are _______. Killington is _______. It's a bullet to shoot when needed. Most of us aren't very good shots.Hunter tends to draw a particularly colorful basket of adjectives: crowded, crazy, frantic, dangerous, icy, frozen, confusing, wild. Hunter, to the weekend visitor, appears to be teetering at all times on the brink of collapse. So many skiers on the lifts, so many skiers in the liftlines, so many skiers on the trails, so many skiers in the parking lots, so many skiers in the lodge pounding shots and pints. Whether Hunter is a ski area with a bar attached or a bar with a ski area attached is debatable. The lodge stretches on and on and up and down in disorienting and disconnected wings, a Winchester Mansion of the mountains, stapled together over eons to foil the alien hordes (New Yorkers). The trails run in a splintered, counterintuitive maze, an impossible puzzle for the uninitiated. Lifts fly all over, 13 total, of all makes and sizes and vintage, but often it feels as though there is only one lift and that lift is the Kaatskill Flyer, an overwhelmed top-to-bottom six-pack that replaced an overwhelmed top-to-bottom high-speed quad on a line that feels as though it would be overwhelmed with a high-speed 85-pack. It is, in other words, exactly the kind of ski area you would expect to find two hours north of a 20-million-person megacity world famous for its blunt, abrasive, and bare-knuckled residents.That description of Hunter is accurate enough, but incomplete. Yes, skiing there can feel like riding a swinging wrecking ball through a tenement building. And I would probably suggest that as a family activity before I would recommend Hunter on, say, MLK Saturday. But Hunter is also a glorious hunk of ski history, a last-man-standing of the once-skiing-flush Catskills, a nature-bending prototype of a ski mountain built in a place that lacks both consistent natural snow and fall lines to ski on. It may be a corporate cog now, but the Hunter hammered into the mountains over nearly six decades was the dream and domain of the Slutsky family, many of whom still work for the ski area. And Hunter, on a midweek, when all those fast lifts are 10 times more capacity than you need, can be a dream. Fast up, fast down. And once you learn the trail network, the place unfolds like a picnic blanket: easy, comfortable, versatile, filled with delicious options (if occasionally covered with ants).There's no one good way to describe Hunter Mountain. It's different every day. All ski areas are different every day, but Hunter is, arguably, more more different along the spectrum of its extremes than just about any other ski area anywhere. You won't get it on your first visit. You will show up on the wrong day, at the wrong time, in the wrong parking lot, and the whole thing will feel like playing lasertag with hyenas. Alien hyenas. Who will for some reason all be wearing Jets jerseys. But if you push through for that second visit, you'll start to get it. Maybe. I promise. And you'll understand why one-adjective Hunter Mountain descriptions are about as useful as the average citizen's take on NATO.What we talked aboutSixty-five years of Hunter; a nice cold winter at last; big snowmaking upgrades; snowmaking on Annapurna and Westway; the Otis and Broadway lift upgrades; Broadway ripple effects on the F and Kaatskill Flyer lifts; supervising the installation of seven new lifts at three Vail Resorts over a two-year period; better liftline management; moving away from lettered lift names; what Otis means for H lift; whether the Hunter East mountaintop Poma could ever spin again; how much of Otis is re-used from the old Broadway lift; ski Ohio; landing at Vail Resorts pre-Epic Pass and watching the pass materialize and grow; taking over for a GM who had worked at Hunter for 44 years; understanding and appreciating Hunter madness; Hunter locals mixed with Vail Resorts; Hunter North and the potential for an additional base area; disappearing trailmap glades; expansion potential; a better ski connection to Hunter East; and Epic Local as Hunter's season pass.Questions I wish I'd askedI'd wanted to ask Poole about the legacy of the Slutzky family, given their founding role at Hunter. We just didn't have time. New York Ski Blog has a nice historical overview.I actually did ask Poole about D lift, the onetime triple-now-double parallel to Kaatskill Flyer, but we cut that segment in edit. A summary: the lift didn't run at all this past season, and Poole told me that, “we're keeping our options open,” when I asked him if D lift was a good candidate to be removed at some near-future point.Why now was a good time for this interviewThe better question is probably why I waited five-and-a-half years to feature the leader of the most prominent ski area in New York City's orbit on the podcast. Hunter was, after all, the first mountain I hit after moving to the city in 2002. But who does and does not appear on the podcast is grounded in timing more than anything. Vail announced its acquisition of Hunter parent company Peak Resorts just a couple of months before I launched The Storm, in 2019. No one, including me, really likes doing podcast interviews during transitions, which can be filled with optimism and energy, but also uncertainty and instability. The Covid asteroid then transformed what should have been a one-year transition period into more like a three-year transition period, which was followed by a leadership change at Hunter.But we're finally here. And, as it turns out, this was a pretty good time to arrive. Part of the perpetual Hunter mess tied back to the problem I alluded to above: the six-pack-Kaatskill-Flyer-as-alpha-lift muted the impact of the lesser contraptions around it. By dropping a second superlift right next door, Vail appears to have finally solved the problem of the Flyer's ever-exploding liftline.That's one part of the story, and the most obvious. But the snowmaking upgrades on key trails signal Hunter's intent to reclaim its trophy as Snow God of the New York Thruway. And the shuffling of lifts on Hunter East reconfigured the ski area's novice terrain into a more logical progression (true green-circle skiers, however, will be better off at nearby Belleayre, where the Lightning Quad serves an incredible pod of long and winding beginner runs).These 2024 improvements build on considerable upgrades from the Peak and Slutzky eras, including the 2018 Hunter North expansion and the massive learning center at Hunter East. If Hunter is to remain a cheap and accessible Epic Pass fishing net to funnel New Yorkers north to Stowe and west to Park City, even as neighboring Windham tilts ever more restrictive and expensive, then Vail is going to have to be creative and aggressive in how the mountain manages all those skiers. These upgrades are a promising start.Why you should ski Hunter MountainThink of a thing that is a version of a familiar thing but hits you like a completely different thing altogether. Like pine trees and palm trees are both trees, but when I first encountered the latter at age 19, they didn't feel like trees at all, but like someone's dream of a tree who'd had one described to them but had never actually seen one. Or horses and dolphins: both animals, right? But one you can ride like a little vehicle, and the other supposedly breathes air but lives beneath the sea plotting our extinction in a secret indecipherable language. Or New York-style pizza versus Domino's, which, as Midwest stock, I prefer, but which my locally born wife can only describe as “not pizza.”This is something like the experience you will have at Hunter Mountain if you show up knowing a good lot about ski areas, but not much about this ski area. Because if I had to make a list of ski areas similar to Hunter, it would include “that Gwar concert I attended at Harpos in Detroit when I was 18” and “a high-tide rescue scene in a lifeguard movie.” And then I would run out of ideas. Because there is no ski area anywhere remotely like Hunter Mountain.I mean that as spectacle, as a way to witness New York City's id manifest into corporeal form. Your Hunter Mountain Bingo card will include “Guy straightlining Racer's Edge with unzipped Starter jacket and backward baseball cap” and “Dude rocking short-sleeves in 15-degree weather.” The vibe is atomic and combustible, slightly intimidating but also riotously fun, like some snowy Woodstock:And then there's the skiing. I have never skied terrain like Hunter's. The trails swoop and dive and wheel around endless curves, as though carved into the Tower of Babel, an amazing amount of terrain slammed into an area that looks and feels constrained, like a bound haybale that, twine cut, explodes across your yard. Trails crisscross and split and dig around blind corners. None of it feels logical, but it all comes together somehow. Before the advent of Google Maps, I could not plot an accurate mental picture of how Hunter East, West, North, and whatever the hell they call the front part sat in relation to one another and formed a coherent single entity.I don't always like being at Hunter. And yet I've skied there more than I've skied just about anywhere. And not just because it's close. It's certainly not cheap, and the road in from the Thruway is a real pain in the ass. But they reliably spin the lifts from November to April, and fast lifts on respectable vert can add up quick. And the upside of crazy? Everyone is welcome.Podcast NotesOn Hunter's lift upgradesHunter orchestrated a massive offseason lift upgrade last year, moving the old Broadway (B) lift over to Hunter East, where the mountain demolished a 1968 Hall Double named “E,” and planted its third six-pack on a longer Broadway line. Check the old lines versus the new ones:On six-packs in New York StateNew York is home to more ski areas than any other state, but only eight of them run high-speed lifts, and only three host six-packs: Holiday Valley has one, Windham, next door to Hunter, has another, and Hunter owns the other three.On five new lifts at Jack Frost Big BoulderPart of Vail Resorts' massive 2022 lift upgrades was to replace eight old chairlifts at Jack Frost and Big Boulder with five modern fixed-grip quads.At Jack Frost, Paradise replaced the E and F doubles; Tobyhanna replaced the B and C triples; and Pocono replaced the E and F doubles:Over at Big Boulder, the Merry Widow I and II double-doubles made way for the Harmony quad. Vail also demolished the parallel Black Forest double, which had not run in a number of years. Blue Heron replaced an area once served by the Little Boulder double and Edelweiss Triple – check the side-by-side with Big Boulder's 2008 trailmap:Standing up so many lifts in such a short time is rare, but we do have other examples:* In 1998, Intrawest tore down up to a dozen legacy lifts and replaced them with five new ones: two high-speed quads, two fixed-grip quads, and the Cabriolet bucket lift (basically a standing gondola). A full discussion on that here.* American Skiing Company installed at least four chairlifts at Sugarbush in the summer of 1995, including the Slide Brook Express, a two-mile-long lift connection between its two mountains. More here.* Powder Mountain installed four chairlifts last summer.* Deer Valley built five chairlifts last summer, including a bubble six-pack, and is constructing eight more lifts this year.On Mad River Mountain, OhioMad River is about as prototypical a Midwest ski area as you can imagine: 300 vertical feet, 144 acres, 36 inches of average annual snowfall, and an amazing (for that size) nine ski lifts shooting all over the place:On Vail Resorts' acquisition timelineHunter is one of 17 U.S. ski areas that Vail purchased as part of its 2019 acquisition of Peak Resorts.On Hunter's 2018 expansionWhen Peak opened the Hunter West expansion for the 2018-19 ski season, a number of new glades appeared on the map:Most of those glades disappeared from the map. Why? We discuss.On Epic Pass accessHunter sits on the same unlimited Epic Local Pass tier as Okemo, Mount Snow, Breckenridge, Keystone, Crested Butte, and Stevens Pass. Here's an Epic Pass overview:You can also ski Hunter on the uber-cheap 32 Resorts version of the Epic Day 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

It's been a great winter at Holiday Valley, where they're gearing up for a busy week with kids off from school. Dash Hegeman joins us.

It's been a great winter for Holiday Valley. Now as February break begins, families are heading down to Ellicottville for what will be a busy and exciting week, says Dash Hegeman, Marketing Director for Holiday Valley.

This week on The Mismatched Podcast, Kristin checks in from San Antonio, Texas, where she's attending the American Farm Bureau annual conference. She gushes about the city's charm, rich history, and famous Hotel Emma (spoiler: it's fancy!). Meanwhile, Danna holds down the fort back home, surviving icy roads and a fun weekend skiing at Holiday Valley—complete with liquid courage in the form of Fireball shots. Other highlights include a $35,000 Farm Bureau prize for Ohio, a cat saga involving litter box victories and faux pregnancy scares, and a truly harrowing tale of flying with a vomit-prone feline. Oh, and some questionable Airbnb pricing leads to a late-night family road trip instead of an extra night in luxury. With laughter, mishaps, and a touch of Tex-Mex, this episode has all the mismatched energy you love. Until next time—stay warm and mismatched!  Get Social with Danna and Kristin ! @localfarmmom | @dannageraci183 | @themismatchedpodcast on  Instagramhttps://youtube.com/@themismatchedpodcast4078

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 30. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 7. To receive future episodes as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoMike Taylor, Owner of Holiday Mountain, New YorkRecorded onNovember 18, 2024About Holiday MountainClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Mike TaylorLocated in: Monticello, New YorkYear founded: 1957Pass affiliations: NoneClosest neighboring ski areas: Villa Roma (:37), Ski Big Bear (:56), Mt. Peter (:48), Mountain Creek (:52), Victor Constant (:54)Base elevation: 900 feetSummit elevation: 1,300 feetVertical drop: 400 feetSkiable acres: 60Average annual snowfall: 66 inchesTrail count: 9 (5 beginner, 2 intermediate, 2 advanced)Lift count: 3 (1 fixed-grip quad, 1 triple, 1 carpet - view Lift Blog's inventory of Holiday Mountain's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himNot so long ago, U.S. ski areas swung wrecking ball-like from the necks of founders who wore them like amulets. Mountain and man fused as one, each anchored to and propelled by the other, twin forces mirrored and set aglow, forged in some burbling cauldron and unleashed upon the public as an Experience. This was Killington and this was Mammoth and this was Vail and this was Squaw and this was Taos, each at once a mountain and a manifestation of psyche and soul, as though some god's hand had scooped from Pres and Dave and Pete and Al and Ernie their whimsy and hubris and willfulness and fashioned them into a cackling live thing on this earth. The men were the mountains and the mountains were the men. Everybody knew this and everybody felt this and that's why we named lifts and trails after them.This is what we've lost in the collect-them-all corporate roll-up of our current moment. I'm skeptical of applying an asteroid-ate-the-dinosaurs theory to skiing, but even I'll acknowledge this bit. When the caped founder, who stepped into raw wilderness and said “here I will build an organized snowskiing facility” and proceeded to do so, steps aside or sells to SnowCo or dies, some essence of the mountain evaporates with him. The snow still hammers and the skiers still come and the mountain still lets gravity run things. The trails remain and the fall lines still fall. The mountain is mostly the same. But nobody knows why it is that way, and the ski area becomes a disembodied thing, untethered from a human host. This, I think, is a big part of the appeal of Michigan's Mount Bohemia. Ungroomed, untamed, absent green runs and snowguns, accessible all winter on a $109 season pass, Boho is the impossible storybook of the maniac who willed it into existence against all advice and instinct: Lonie Glieberman, who hacked this thing from the wilderness not in some lost postwar decade, but in 2000. He lives there all winter and everybody knows him and they all know that this place that is the place would not exist had he not insisted that it be so. For the purposes of how skiers consider the joint, Lonie is Mount Bohemia. And someday when he goes away the mountain will make less sense than it does right now.I could write a similar paragraph about Chip Chase at White Grass Touring Center in West Virginia. But there aren't many of those fellas left. Since most of our ski areas are old, most of our founders are gone. They're not coming back, and we're not getting more ski areas. But that doesn't mean the era of the owner-soul keeper is finished. They just need to climb a different set of monkey bars to get there. Rather than trekking into the mountains to stake out and transform a raw wilderness into a piste digestible to the masses, the modern mountain incarnate needs to drive up to the ski area with a dump truck full of hundred dollar bills, pour it out onto the ground, and hope the planted seeds sprout money trees.And this is Mike Taylor. He has resources. He has energy. He has manpower. And he's going to transform this dysfunctional junkpile of a ski area into something modern, something nice, something that will last. And everyone knows it wouldn't be happening without him.What we talked aboutThe Turkey Trot chairlift upgrade; why Taylor re-engineered and renovated a mothballed double chair just to run it for a handful of days last winter before demolishing it this summer; Partek and why skiing needs an independent lift manufacturer; a gesture from Massanutten; how you build a chairlift when your chairlift doesn't come with a bottom terminal; Holiday Mountain's two new ski trails for this winter; the story behind Holiday Mountain's trail names; why a rock quarry is “the greatest neighbors we could ever ask for”; big potential future ski expansion opportunities; massive snowmaking upgrades; snowmaking is hard; how a state highway spurred the development of Holiday Mountain; “I think we've lost a generation of skiers”; vintage Holiday Mountain; the ski area's long, sad decline; pillage by flood; restoring abandoned terrain above the Fun Park; the chairlift you see from Route 17 is not actually a chairlift; considering a future when 17 converts into Interstate 86; what would have happened to Holiday had the other bidders purchased it; “how do we get kids off their phones and out recreating again?”; advice from Plattekill; buying a broken ski area in May and getting it open by Christmas (or trying); what translates well from the business world into running a ski area; how to finance the rebuild and modernization of a failing ski area; “when you talk to a bank and use the word ‘ski area,' they want nothing to do with it”; how to make a ski area make money; why summer business is hard; Holiday's incredible social media presence; “I always thought good grooming was easy, like mowing a lawn”; how to get big things done quickly but well; ski racing returns; “I don't want to do things half-assed and pay for it in the long run”; why season two should be better than season one; “you can't make me happier than to see busloads of kids, improving their skills, and enjoying something they're going to do for the rest of their life”; why New York State has a challenging business environment, and how to get things done anyway; the surprise labor audit that shocked New York skiing last February – “we didn't realize the mistakes we were making”; kids these days; the State of New York owns and subsidizes three ski areas – how does that complicate things?; why the state subsidizing independent ski areas isn't the answer; the problem with bussing kids to ski areas; and why Holiday Mountain doesn't feel ready to join the Indy Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewI met Taylor in a Savannah bar last year, five minutes after he'd bought a ski area and seven months before he needed to turn that ski area into a functional business. Here was the new owner of Holiday Mountain, rolling with the Plattekill gang, more or less openly saying, “I have no idea what the hell I'm doing, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to save Holiday Mountain.”The National Ski Areas Association's annual show, tucked across the river that week, seemed like a good place to start. Here were hundreds of people who could tell Taylor exactly how hard it was to run a ski area, and why. And here was this guy, accomplished in so many businesses, ready to learn. And all I could think, having skied the disaster that was Holiday Mountain in recent years, was thank God this dude is here. Here's my card. Let's talk.I connected with Taylor the next month and wrote a story about his grand plans for Holiday. Then I stepped back and let that first winter happen. It was, by Taylor's own account, humbling. But it did not seem to be humiliating, which is key. Pride is the quickest path to failure in skiing. Instead of kicking things, Taylor seemed to regard the whole endeavor as a grand and amusing puzzle. “Well let's see here, turns out snowmaking is hard, grooming is hard, managing teenagers is hard… isn't that interesting and how can I make this work even though I already had too much else to do at my other 10 jobs?”Life may be attitude above all else. And when I look at ski area operators who have recycled garbage into gold, this is the attribute that seems to steer all others. That's people like Rick Schmitz, who talked two Wisconsin ski areas off the ledge and brought another back from its grave; Justin Hoppe, who just traded his life in to save a lost UP ski area; James Coleman, whose bandolier of saved ski areas could fill an egg carton; and Danielle and Laszlo Vajtay, who for 31 years have modernized their ridiculously steep and remote Catskills ski area one snowgun at a time.There are always plenty of people who will tell you why a thing is impossible. These people are boring. They lack creativity or vision, an ability to see the world as something other than what it is. Taylor is the opposite. All he does is envision how things can be better, and then work to make them that way. That was clear to me immediately. It just took him a minute to prove he could do it. And he did.What I got wrong* Mike said he needed a chairlift with “about 1,000 feet of vertical rise” to replace the severed double chair visible from Route 17. He meant length. According to Lift Blog, the legacy lift rose 232 vertical feet over 1,248 linear feet.* We talk a bit about New York's declining population, but the real-world picture is fuzzier. While the state's population did fall considerably, from 20.1 million to 19.6 million over the past four years, those numbers include a big pandemic-driven population spike in 2020, when the state's population rose 3.3 percent, from 19.5 million to that 20.1 million number (likely from city refugees camping out in New York's vast and bucolic rural reaches). The state's current population of 19,571,216 million is still larger than it was at any point before 2012, and not far off its pre-pandemic peak of 19,657,321.* I noted that Gore's new Hudson high-speed quad cost “about $10 million.” That is probably a fair estimate based upon the initial budget between $8 and $9 million, but an ORDA representative did not immediately respond to a request for the final number.Why you should ski Holiday MountainI've been reconsidering my television pitch for Who Wants to Own a Ski Area? Not because the answer is probably “everybody reading this newsletter except for the ones that already own a ski area, because they are smart enough to know better.” But because I think the follow-up series, Ski Resort Rebuild, would be even more entertaining. It would contain all the elements of successful unscripted television: a novel environment, large and expensive machinery, demolition, shouting, meddlesome authorities, and an endless sequence of puzzles confronting a charismatic leader and his band of chain-smoking hourlies.The rainbow arcing over all of this would of course be reinvention. Take something teetering on apocalyptic set-piece and transform it into an ordered enterprise that makes the kids go “wheeeeee!” Raw optimism and self-aware naivete would slide into exasperation and despair, the launchpad for stubborn triumphalism tempered by humility. Cut to teaser for season two.Though I envision a six- or eight-episode season, the template here is the concise and satisfying Hoarders, which condenses a days-long home dejunking into a half-hour of television. One minute, Uncle Frank's four-story house is filled with his pizza box collection and every edition of the Tampa Bay Bugle dating back to 1904. But as 15 dumpster trucks from TakeMyCrap.com drive off in convoy, the home that could only be navigated with sonar and wayfinding canines has been transformed into a Flintstones set piece, a couch and a wooly mammoth rug accenting otherwise empty rooms. I can watch these chaos-into-order transformations all day long.Roll into Holiday Mountain this winter, and you'll essentially be stepping into episode four of this eight-part series. The ski area's most atrocious failures have been bulldozed, blown-up, regraded, covered in snow. The two-seater chairlift that Columbus shipped in pieces on the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria has finally been scrapped and replaced with a machine that does not predate modern democracy. The snowguns are no longer powered by hand-cranks. A ski area that, just 18 months ago, was shrinking like an island in rising water is actually debuting two brand-new trails this winter.But the job's not finished. On your left as you drive in is a wide abandoned ridge where four ski lifts once spun. On the open hills, new snowguns glimmer and new-used chairlifts and cats hum, but by Taylor's own admission, his teams are still figuring out how to use all these fancy gadgets. Change is the tide climbing up the beach, but we haven't fully smoothed out the tracked sand yet, and it will take a few more hours to get there.It's fun to be part of something like this, even as an observer. I'll tell you to visit Holiday Mountain this winter for the same reason I'll tell you to go ride Chair 2 at Alpental or the triple at Bluewood or the Primo and Segundo Riblet doubles at Sunlight. By next autumn, each of these lifts, which have dressed their mountains for decades, will make way for modern machines. This is good, and healthy, and necessary for skiing's long-term viability. But experiencing the same place in different forms offers useful lessons in imagination, evolution, and the utility of persistence and willpower. It's already hard to picture that Holiday Mountain that teetered on the edge of collapse just two years ago. In two more years, it could be impossible, so thorough is the current renovation. So go. Bonus: they have skiing.Podcast NotesOn indies sticking togetherDespite the facile headlines, conglomerates are not taking over American skiing. As of my last count, about 73 percent of U.S. ski areas are still independently operated. And while these approximately three-quarters of active ski areas likely account for less than half of all skier visits, consumers do still have plenty of choice if they don't want to go Epkonic.New York, in particular, is a redoubt of family-owned and -operated mountains. Other than Vail-owned Hunter and state-owned Belleayre, Gore, and Whiteface, every single one of the state's 51 ski areas is under independent management. Taylor calls out several of these New York owners in our conversation, including many past podcast guests. These are all tremendous conversations, all streaked with the same sincere determination and grit that's obvious in Taylor's pod.Massachusetts is also a land of independent ski areas, including the Swiss watch known as Wachusett:On PartekPartek is one of the delightful secrets of U.S. skiing. The company, founded in 1993 by Hagen Schulz, son of the defunct Borvig lifts President Gary Schulz, installs one or two or zero new chairlifts in a typical year. Last year, it was a fixed-grip quad at Trollhaugen, Wisconsin and a triple at Mt. Southington, Connecticut. The year before, it was the new Sandy quad at Saddleback. Everyone raves about the quality of the lifts and the experience of working with Partek's team. Saddleback GM Jim Quimby laid this out for us in detail when he joined me on the podcast last year:Trollhaugen owner and GM Jim Rochford, Jr. was similarly effusive:I'm underscoring this point because if you visit Partek's website, you'll be like “I hope they have this thing ready for Y2K.” But this is your stop if you need a new SKF 6206-2RS1, which is only $17!On the old Catskills resort hotels with ski areasNew York is home to more ski areas (51) than any state in America, but there are still far more lost ski areas here than active ones. The New York Lost Ski Areas Project estimates that the ghosts of up to 350 onetime ski hills haunt the state. This is not so tragic as it sounds, as the vast majority of these operations consisted of a goat pulling a toboggan up 50 vertical feet beside Fiesty Pete's dairy barn. These operated for the lifespan of a housefly and no one missed them when they disappeared. On the opposite end were a handful of well-developed, multi-lift ski areas that have died in modernity: Scotch Valley (1988), Shu Maker (1999), Cortina (mid-90s), and Big Tupper (2012). But in the middle sat dozens of now-defunct surface-tow bumps, some with snowmaking, some attached to the famous and famously extinct Borsch Belt Catskills resorts.It is this last group that Taylor and I discuss in the podcast. He estimates that “probably a dozen” ski areas once operated in Sullivan County. Some of these were standalone operations like Holiday, but many were stapled to large resort hotels like The Nevele and Grossingers. I couldn't find a list of the extinct Catskills resorts that once offered skiing, and none appeared to have bothered drawing a trailmap.While these add-on ski areas are a footnote in the overall story of U.S. skiing, an activity-laying-around-to-do-at-a-resort can have a powerful multiplier effect. Here are some things that I only do if I happen across a readymade setup: shoot pool, ice skate, jet ski, play basketball, fish, play minigolf, toss cornhole bags. I enjoy all of these things, but I won't plan ahead to do them on purpose. I imagine skiing acted in this fashion for much of the Bortsch Belt crowd, like “oh let's go try that snowskiing thing between breakfast and our 11:00 baccarat game.” And with some of these folks, skiing probably became something they did on purpose.The closest thing modernity delivers to this is indoor skiing, which, attached to a mall – as Big Snow is in New Jersey – presents itself as Something To Do. Which is why I believe we need a lot more such centers, and soon.On shrinking Holiday MountainSome ski areas die all at once. Holiday Mountain curdled over decades, to the husk Taylor purchased last year. Check the place out in 2000, with lifts zinging all over the place across multiple faces:A 2003 flood smashed the terrain near the entrance, and by 2007, Holiday ran just two lifts:At some indeterminant point, the ski area also abandoned the Turkey Trot double. This 2023 trailmap shows the area dedicated to snowtubing, though to my knowledge no such activity was ever conducted there at scale.On the lift you see from Route 17Anyone cruising NY State 17 can see this chairlift rising off the northwest corner of the ski area:This is essentially a billboard, as Taylor left the terminal in place after demolishing the lower part of the long-inactive lift.Taylor intends to run a lift back up this hill and re-open all the old terrain. But first he has to restore the slopes, which eroded significantly in their last life as a Motocross course. There is no timeline for this, but Taylor works fast, and I wouldn't be shocked to see the terrain come back online as soon as 2025.On NY 17's transformation into I-86New York 17 is in the midst of a decades-long evolution into Interstate 86, with long stretches of the route that spans southern New York already signed as such. But the interstate designation comes with standards that define lane number and width, bridge height, shoulder dimensions, and maximum grade, among many other particulars, including the placement and length of exit and entrance ramps. Exit 108, which provides direct eastbound access to and egress from Holiday Mountain, is fated to close whenever the highway gods close the gap that currently splits I-86 into segments.On Norway MountainHoliday is the second ski area comeback story featured on the pod in recent months, following the tale of dormant-since-2017 Norway Mountain, Michigan:On Holiday's high-energy social media accountsTaylor has breathlessly documented Holiday's comeback on the ski area's Instagram and Facebook accounts. They're incredible. Follow recommended. On Tuxedo RidgeThis place frustrates me. Once a proud beginners-oriented ski center with four chairlifts and a 450-foot vertical drop, the bump dropped dead around 2014 without warning or explanation, despite a prime location less than an hour from New York City.I hiked the place in 2020, and wrote about it:On Ski Areas of New YorkSki Areas of New York, or SANY, is one of America's most effective state ski area organizations. I've hosted the organization's president, Scott Brandi, on the podcast a couple of times:Compulsory mention of ORDAThe Olympic Regional Development Authority, which manages New York State-owned Belleayre, Gore, and Whiteface mountains, lost $47.3 million in its last fiscal year. One ORDA board member, in response to the report, said that it's “amazing how well we are doing,” according to the Adirondack Explorer. Which makes a lot of the state's independent ski area operators say things like, “Huh?” That's probably a fair response, since $47.3 million would likely be sufficient for the state to simply purchase every ski area in New York other than Hunter, Windham, Holiday Valley, and Bristol.On high-speed ropetowsI'll keep writing about these forever because they are truly amazing and there should be 10 of them at every ski area in America:Welch Village, Minnesota. Video by Stuart Winchester.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 82/100 in 2024, and number 582 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Dash Hegeman from Holiday Valley, as the ski resort in Ellicottville opens on Friday full 398 Fri, 06 Dec 2024 11:50:35 +0000 DONTDoDgyjguMACrJ2ga0JbQ65YNhA9J snowboarding,news,weather,wben,skiing,holiday valley,ellicottville A New Morning snowboarding,news,weather,wben,skiing,holiday valley,ellicottville Dash Hegeman from Holiday Valley, as the ski resort in Ellicottville opens on Friday Collection of LIVE interviews from Buffalo's Early News on WBEN 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. News False https://

12-2 Dash Hegeman on Holiday Valley Opening Dec. 6th full 206 Tue, 03 Dec 2024 03:16:09 +0000 mRJ2F3cN3Nr7vFqh0ceBGhSQfK0u5sHv news WBEN Extras news 12-2 Dash Hegeman on Holiday Valley Opening Dec. 6th Archive of various reports and news events 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. News False https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?f

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 10. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 17. To receive future episodes as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoJohn Melcher, CEO of Crystal Mountain, MichiganRecorded onOctober 14, 2024About Crystal Mountain, MichiganClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Petritz FamilyLocated in: Thompsonville, MichiganYear founded: 1956Pass affiliations: Indy Pass & Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackoutsReciprocal partners: 1 day each at Caberfae and Mount Bohemia, with blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Caberfae (:37), Hickory Hills (:45), Mt. Holiday (:50), Missaukee Mountain (:52), Homestead (:51)Base elevation: 757 feetSummit elevation: 1,132 feetVertical drop: 375 feetSkiable Acres: 103Average annual snowfall: 132 inchesTrail count: 59 (30% black diamond, 48% blue square, 22% green circle) + 7 glades + 3 terrain parksLift count: 8 (1 high-speed quad, 3 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Crystal Mountain's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himThe biggest knock on Midwest skiing is that the top of the hill is not far enough away from the bottom of the hill, and this is generally true. Two or three or four hundred vertical feet is not a lot of vertical feet. It is enough to hold little pockets of trees or jumps or a racer's pitch that begs for a speed check. But no matter how fun the terrain, too soon the lift maze materializes and it's another slow roll up to more skiing.A little imagination helps here. Six turns in a snowy Michigan glade feel the same as six turns in Blue Sky Basin trees (minus the physiological altitude strain). And the skillset transfers well. I learned to ski bumps on a 200-vertical-foot section of Boyne Mountain and now I can ski bumps anywhere. But losing yourself in a 3,000-vertical-foot Rocky Mountain descent is not the same thing as saying “Man I can almost see it” as you try to will a 300-footer into something grander. We all know this.Not everything about the lift-served skiing experience shrinks down with the same effect, is my point here. With the skiing itself, scale matters. But the descent is only part of the whole thing. The lift maze matters, and the uphill matters, and the parking matters, and the location of the lift ticket pick-up matters, and the availability of 4 p.m. beers matters, and the arrangement base lodge seating matters. And when all of these things are knotted together into a ski day that is more fun than stressful, it is because you are in the presence of one thing that scales down in any context: excellence.The National Ski Areas Association splits ski areas into four size categories, calculated by “vertical transportation feet per hour.” In other words: how many skiers your lifts can push uphill in an ideal hour. This is a useful metric for many reasons, but I'd like to see a more qualitative measurement, one based not just on size, but on consistent quality of experience.I spend most of my winter bouncing across America, swinging into ski areas of all sizes and varieties. Excellence lives in unexpected places. One-hundred-and-sixty-vertical-foot Boyce Park, Pennsylvania blows thick slabs of snow with modern snowguns, grooms it well, and seems to double-staff every post with local teenagers. Elk Mountain, on the other side of Pennsylvania, generally stitches together a better experience than its better-known neighbors just south, in the Poconos. Royal Mountain, a 550-vertical-foot, weekends-only locals' bump in New York's southern Adirondacks, alternates statuesque grooming with zippy glades across its skis-bigger-than-it-is face.These ski areas, by combining great order and reliable conditions with few people, are delightful. But perhaps more impressive are ski areas that deliver consistent excellence while processing enormous numbers of visitors. Here you have places like Pats Peak, New Hampshire; Wachusett, Massachusetts; Holiday Valley, New York; and Mt. Rose, Nevada. These are not major tourist destinations, but they run with the welcoming efficiency of an Aspen or a Deer Valley. A good and ordered ski day, almost no matter what.Crystal Mountain, Michigan is one of these ski areas. Everything about the ski experience is well-considered. Expansion, upgrades, and refinement of existing facilities have been constant for decades. The village blends with the hill. The lifts are where the lifts should be. The trail network is interesting and thoughtfully designed. The parks are great. The grooming is great. The glades are plentiful. The prices are reasonable. And, most important of all, despite being busy at all times, Crystal Mountain is tamed by order. This is excellence, that thing that all ski areas should aspire to, whatever else they lack.What we talked aboutWhat's new for Crystal skiers in 2024; snowmaking; where Crystal draws its snowmaking water; Peek'n Peak, New York; why Crystal is a good business in addition to being a good ski area; four-seasons business; skiing as Mother; what makes a great team (and why Crystal has one); switching into skiing mid-career; making trails versus clearcutting the ski slope; ownership decided via coinflip; Midwest destination skiing's biggest obstacle; will Crystal remain independent?; room to expand; additional glading opportunities; why many of Crystal's trails are named after people; considering the future of Crystal's lift fleet; why Crystal built a high-speed lift that rises just 314 vertical feet; why the ghost of the Cheers lift lives on as part of Crystal's trailmap; where Crystal has considered adding a lift to the existing terrain; that confusing trailmap; a walkable village; changes inbound at the base of Loki; pushing back parking; more carpets for beginners; Crystal's myriad bargain lift ticket options; the Indy Pass; why Crystal dropped Indy Pass blackouts; the Mt. Bohemia-Crystal relationship; Caberfae; Indy's ultimatum to drop Ski Cooper reciprocals or leave the pass; and why Crystal joined Freedom Pass last year and left for this coming winter.  Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe Storm's mission is to serve all of American lift-served skiing. That means telling the stories of ski areas in every part of the country. I do this not because I have to, but because I want to. This newsletter would probably work just fine if it focused always and only on the great ski centers of the American West. That is, after all, the only part of U.S. ski country that outsiders travel to and that locals never leave. The biggest and best skiing is out there, at the top of our country, high and snowy and with a low chance of rain.But I live in the East and I grew up in the Midwest. Both regions are cluttered with ski areas. Hundreds of them, each distinct, each its own little frozen kingdom, each singular in atmosphere and arrangement and orientation toward the world. Most remain family-owned, and retain the improvisational quirk synonymous with such a designation. But more interesting is that these ski areas remain tethered to their past in a way that many of the larger western destination resorts, run by executives cycled in via corporate development programs, never will be again.I want to tell these stories. I'm aware that my national audience has a limited tolerance for profiles of Midwest ski centers they will never ski. But they seem to be okay with about a half-dozen per year, which is about enough to remind the wider ski community that this relatively flat but cold and hardy region is home to one of the world's great ski cultures. The Midwest is where night-skiing rules, where blue-collar families still ski, where hunting clothes double as ski clothes, where everything is a little less serious and a little more fun.There's no particular big development or project that threw the spotlight on Crystal here. I've been trying to arrange this interview for years. Because this is a very good ski area and a very well-run ski area, even if it is not a very large ski area in the grand landscape of American ski areas. It is one of the finest ski areas in the Midwest, and one worthy of our attention.What I got wrong* I said that “I forget if it's seven or nine different tree areas” at Crystal. The number of glades labeled on the trailmap is seven.* I said Crystal had been part of Indy Pass “since the beginning or near the beginning.” The mountain joined the pass in May, 2020, ahead of the 2020-21 ski season, Indy's second.Why you should ski Crystal Mountain, MichiganCrystal's Loki pod rises above the parking lots, 255 vertical feet, eight trails down, steep on the front, gentler toward the back. These days I would ski each of the eight in turn and proceed next door to the Clipper lift. But I was 17 and just learning to ski and to me at the time that meant bombing as fast as possible without falling. For this, Wipeout was the perfect trail, a sweeping crescent through the trees, empty even on that busy day, steep but only for a bit, just enough to ignite a long sweeping tuck back to the chairs. We lapped this run for hours. Speed and adrenaline through the falling snow. The cold didn't bother us and the dozens of alternate runs striped over successive hills didn't tempt us. We'd found what we'd wanted and what we'd wanted is this.I packed that day in the mental suitcase that holds my ski memories and I've carried it around for decades. Skiing bigger mountains hasn't tarnished it. Becoming a better skier hasn't diminished it. Tuck and bomb, all day long. Something so pure and simple in it, a thing that bundles those Loki laps together with Cottonwoods pow days and Colorado bump towers and California trees. Indelible. Part of what I think of when I think about skiing and part of who I am when I consider myself as a skier.I don't know for sure what Crystal Mountain, Michigan can give you. I can't promise transformation of the impressionable teenage sort. I can't promise big terrain or long runs because those don't have them. I'm not going to pitch Crystal as a singular pilgrimage of the sort that draws western Brobots to Bohemia. This is a regional ski area that is most attractive to skiers who live in Michigan or the northern portions of the states to its immediate south. Read: it is a ski area that the vast majority of you will never experience. And the best endorsement I can make of Crystal is that I think that's too bad, because I think you would really like it, even if I can't exactly explain why.Podcast NotesOn Peek'n PeakThe most difficult American ski area name to spell is not “Summit at Snoqualmie” or “Granlibakken” or “Pomerelle” or “Sipapu” or “Skaneateles” or “Bottineau Winter Park” or “Trollhaugen,” all of which I memorized during the early days of The Storm. The most counterintuitive, frustrating, and frankly stupid ski area name in all the land is “Peek'n Peak,” New York, which repeats the same word spelled two different ways for no goddamn reason. And then there's the apostrophe-“n,” lodged in there like a bar of soap crammed between the tomato and lettuce in your hamburger, a thing that cannot possibly justify or explain its existence. Five years into this project, I can't get the ski area's name correct without looking it up.Anyway, it is a nice little ski area, broad and varied and well-lifted, lodged in a consistent little Lake Erie snowbelt. They don't show glades on the trailmap, but most of the trees are skiable when filled in. The bump claims 400 vertical feet; my Slopes app says 347. Either way, this little Indy Pass hill, where Melcher learned to ski, is a nice little stopover:On Crystal's masterplanCrystal's masterplan leaves room for potential future ski development – we discuss where, specifically, in the podcast. The ski area is kind of lost in the sprawl of Crystal's masterplan, so I've added the lift names for context:On Sugar Loaf, MichiganMichigan, like most ski states, has lost more ski areas than it's kept. The most frustrating of these loses was Sugar Loaf, a 500-footer parked in the northwest corner of the Lower Peninsula, outside of Traverse City. Sunday afternoon lift tickets were like $12 and my high school buddies and I would drive up through snowstorms and ski until the lifts closed and drive home. The place went bust around 2000, but the lifts were still standing until some moron ripped them out five years ago with fantasies of rebuilding the place as some sort of boutique “experience.” Then he ran away and now it's just a lonely, empty hill.On Michigan being “littered with lost ski areas”Michigan is home to the second-most active or semi-active ski areas of any state in the country, with 44 (New York checks in around 50). Still, the Midwest Lost Ski Areas project counts more than 200 lost ski areas in the state.On Crystal's backside evolution and confusing trailmapBy building pod after pod off the backside of the mountain, Crystal has nearly doubled in size since I first skied there in the mid-90s. The Ridge appeared around 2000; North Face came online in 2003; and Backyard materialized in 2015. These additions give Crystal a sprawling, adventurous feel on par with The Highlands or Nub's Nob. But the trailmap, while aesthetically pleasant, is one of the worst I've seen, as it's very unclear how the three pods link to one another, and in turn to the front of the mountain:This is a fixable problem, as I outlined in my last podcast, with Vista Map founder Gary Milliken, who untangled similarly confusing trailmaps for Mt. Spokane, Washington and Lookout Pass, Idaho over the past couple of years. Here's Lookout Pass' old and new maps side-by-side:And here's Mt. Spokane:Crystal – if you'd like an introduction to Gary, I'm happy to make that happen.On resort consolidation in the MidwestThe Midwest has not been sheltered from the consolidation wave that's rolled over much of the West and New England over the past few decades. Of the region's 123 active ski areas, 25 are owned by entities that operate two or more ski areas: Vail Resorts owns 10; Wisconsin Resorts, five; Midwest Family Ski Resorts, four; the Schmitz Brothers, three; Boyne, two; and the Perfect Family, which also owns Timberline in West Virginia, one. But 98 of the region's ski areas remain independently owned and operated. While a couple dozen of those are tiny municipal ropetow bumps with inconsistent operations and little or no snowmaking, most of those that run at least one chairlift are family-owned ski areas that, last winter notwithstanding, are doing very well on a formula of reasonable prices + a focus on kids and night-skiing. Here's the present landscape of Midwest skiing:On the consolidation of Crystal's lift fleetCrystal once ran five frontside chairlifts:Today, the mountain has consolidated that to just five, despite a substantively unchanged trail footprint. While Crystal stopped running the Cheers lift around 2016, its shadowy outline still appears along the Cheers To Lou run.Crystal is way out ahead of the rest of the Midwest, which built most of its ski areas in the age of cheap fixed-grip lifts and never bothered to replace them. The king of these dinosaurs may be Afton Alps, Minnesota, with 15 Hall chairlifts (it was, until recently, 17) lined up along the ridge, the newest of them dating to 1979:It's kind of funny that Vail owns this anachronism, which, despite its comic-book layout, is actually a really fun little ski area.On Crystal's many discounted lift ticket optionsWhile Crystal is as high-end as any resort you'll find in Michigan, the ski area still offers numerous loveably kitschy discounts of the sort that every ski area in the country once sold:Browse these and more on their website.On Indy Pass' dispute with Ski CooperLast year, Indy Pass accused Ski Cooper of building a reciprocal resort network that turned the ski area's discount season pass into a de facto national ski pass that competed directly with Indy. Indy then told its partners to ditch Cooper or leave Indy. Crystal was one of those resorts, and found a workaround by joining the Freedom Pass, which maintained the three Cooper days for their passholders without technically violating Indy Pass' mandate. You can read the full story here:On Bohemia and CaberfaeCrystal left Freedom Pass for this winter, but has retained reciprocal deals with Mount Bohemia and Caberfae. I've hosted leaders of both ski areas on the podcast, and they are two of my favorite episodes: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 73/100 in 2024, and number 573 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 Sept. 13. It dropped for free subscribers on Sept. 20. 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:WhoChip Seamans, President of Windham Mountain Club, New YorkRecorded onAugust 12, 2024About Windham Mountain ClubClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Majority owned by Beall Investment Partners and Kemmons Wilson Hospitality Partners, majority led by Sandy BeallLocated in: Windham, New YorkYear founded: 1960Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 7 days* Ikon Base Pass: 5 days, holiday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Hunter (:17), Belleayre (:35), Plattekill (:48)Base elevation: 1,500 feetSummit elevation: 3,100 feetVertical drop: 1,600 feetSkiable Acres: 285Average annual snowfall: 100 inchesLift count: 11 (1 six-pack, 3 high-speed quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 5 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Windham's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himThe Catskills are the closest thing to big-mountain skiing in my immediate orbit. Meaning the ski areas deliver respectable vertical drops, reasonably consistent snowfall, and an address reachable for first chair with a 6 to 7 a.m. departure time. The four big ski areas off I-87 – Belleayre, Plattekill, Hunter, and Windham – are a bit farther from my launchpad than the Poconos, than Mountain Creek, than Catamount or Butternut or the smaller ski areas in Connecticut. But on the right day, the Catskills mountains ski like a proto-Vermont, a sampler that settles more like a main course than an appetizer.I'm tremendously fond of the Catskills, is my point here. And I'm not the only one. As the best skiing within three hours of New York City, this relatively small region slings outsized influence over North American ski culture. Money drives skiing, and there's a lot of it flowing north from the five boroughs (OK maybe two of the boroughs and the suburbs, but whatever). There's a reason that three Catskills ski areas (Belleayre, Hunter, and Windham), rock nearly as many high-speed chairlifts (nine) as the other 40-some ski areas in New York combined (12). These ski areas are cash magnets that prime the 20-million-ish metro region for adventures north to New England, west to the West, and east to Europe.I set this particular podcast up this way because it's too easy for Colorad-Bro or Lake Ta-Bro or Canyon Bro to look east and scoff. Of course I could focus this whole enterprise on the West, as every ski publication since the invention of snow has done. I know the skiing is better out there. Everyone does. But that doesn't mean it's the only skiing that matters. The Storm is plenty immersed in the West, but I can also acknowledge this reality: the West needs the East more than the East needs the West. After all, there's plenty of good skiing out here, with a lot more options, and without the traffic hassles (not to mention the far smaller Brobot:Not Brobot ratio). And while it's true that New England ski areas have lately benefitted from capital airdrops launched by their western overlords, a lot of that western money is just bouncing back east after being dropped off by tourists from Boston, New York, Philly, and D.C. Could Colorado have skiing without eastern tourism? Yes, but would Summit and Eagle counties be dripping with high-speed lifts and glimmering base villages without that cash funnel, or would you just have a bunch of really big Monarch Mountains?None of which tells you much about Windham Mountain Windham Mountain Club, which I've featured on the podcast before. But if you want to understand, rather than simply scoff at, the New Yorkers sharing a chair with you at Deer Valley or Snowmass or Jackson, that journey starts here, in the Catskills, a waystation on many skiers' pathway to higher altitudes.What we talked aboutChip is the new board chairman of the National Ski Areas Association; searching for a new NSAA head; the difference between state and national ski organizations; the biggest challenge of running a ski area in New York; could New York State do more to help independent ski areas?; how the ski area's rebrand to Windham Mountain Club “created some confusion in the market, no doubt”; the two-day weekend lift ticket minimum is dead; “our plan has always been to stay open to the public and to sell passes and tickets”; defining “premium”; what should a long liftline look like at WMC?; lift ticket and Ikon Pass redemption limits for 2024-25; the future of Windham on the Ikon Pass; rising lift ticket prices; free season passes for local students; who owns WMC, and what do they want to do with it?; defining the “club” in WMC; what club membership will cost you and whether just having the cash is enough to get you in; is Windham for NYC or for everyone?; how about a locals' pass?; a target number of skiers on a busy day at Windham; comparing Windham to Vermont's all-private Hermitage Club; how about the Holimont private-on-weekends-only model?; some people just want to be angry; the new owners have already plowed $70 million into the bump; snowmaking updates; a badass Cat fleet; a more or less complete lift fleet; the story behind K lift; the Windham village and changes to parking; and the dreaded gatehouse.   Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewRather than right now, maybe the best time for this interview would have been a year ago, or six months ago, or maybe all three. It's been a confusing time at Windham, for skiers, for employees, for the people running the place. No one seems to understand exactly what the bump is, what it plans to be, and what it wants to be.Which doesn't stop anyone from having an opinion, most of them wildly misinformed. Over the past year, I've been told, definitively, by a Saturday liftline's worth of casual skiers that Windham had “gone private.” The notion is pervasive, stubborn, immune to explanations or evidence to the contrary. So, very on brand for our cultural moment.Which doesn't mean I shouldn't try. I'm more than willing to bang on ski areas for their faults. In Windham's case, I've always thought that they groom too much, that the season is too short, that the season pass price (currently $2,000!), is beyond insane. But it's not really fair to invent a problem and then harangue the operators about it. Windham is not a private ski area, it is not shut off from locals, it does not require a $200,000 handshake to pass through the RFID gates. Inventing a non-existent problem and then taking offense to it is a starter kit for social media virtue signaling, but it's a poor way to conduct real life.But honestly, what the hell is going on up there? How can Windham Mountain Club justify a larger initiation fee than Vermont's truly private Hermitage Club for a ski experience that still involves half of Manhattan? Why is it so hard to make a weekend Ikon Pass reservation? Does anyone really go to the Catskills in search of the “rarified reality” that WMC insists it is somehow providing? What is the long-term vision here?All fair questions, all spun from WMC's self-inflicted PR tornado. But the answers are crystalizing, and we have them here.What I got wrong* I said that “Gore's triple chair,” which was only a “12, 13-year-old lift” was going to McCauley. I was referring to the Hudson triple, a 2010 Partek (so 14 years old), which will replace nearby but much smaller McCauley's 1973 Hall double, known as “Big Chair,” for the coming ski season.  * I said that the club fees for Windham were roughly the same as Hermitage Club. This is drastically untrue. WMC's $200,000 initiation fee is double Hermitage Club's $100,000 number. Windham's annual dues, however, are much lower than HC's $18,500.* I said that Windham was automating its first snowmaking trail this year. That is incorrect, as Seamans points out in our conversation. Windham is installing its first automated snowmaking on the east side of the mountain this year, meaning that 40 percent of the mountain's snowmaking system will now be automated.* I said that Windham had a water-supply-challenge, which is not accurate. I was confusing water supply (adequate), with snowmaking system pumping capacity (room for improvement). I think I am covering too many mountains and sometimes the narratives cross. Sorry about that.Why you should ski Windham Mountain ClubIf you really want an uncrowded Catskills ski experience, you have exactly one option: go to family-owned Plattekill, 40 minutes down the road. It has less vert (1,100 feet), and half Windham's acreage on paper, but when the glades fill in (which they often do), the place feels enormous, and you can more or less walk onto either of the mountain's two chairlifts any day of the season.But Plattekill doesn't have high-speed lifts, it's not on the Ikon Pass, and it's not basically one turn off the thruway. Windham has and is all of those things. And so that's where more skiers will go.Not as many, of course, as will go to Hunter, Windham's Vail-owned archnemesis 15 minutes away, with its unlimited Epic Pass access, Sahara-sized parking lots, and liftlines that disappear over the curvature of the Earth. And that has been Windham's unspoken selling point for decades: Hey, at least we're not Hunter. That's true not only in relative crowd size, but in attitude and aesthetic; Hunter carries at least a 10:1 ratio* over Windham in number of LongIsland Bros straightlining its double-blacks in baseball caps and Jets jerseys.In that context, Windham's rebrand is perfectly logical – as Hunter grows ever more populist, with a bargain season pass price and no mechanism to limit visitors outside of parking lot capacity (they ski area does limit lift ticket sales, but not Epic Pass visits), the appeal of a slightly less-chaotic, more or less equally scaled option grows. That's Windham. Or, hey, the much more exclusive sounding “Windham Mountain Club.”And Windham is a good ski area. It's one of the better ones in New York, actually, with two peaks and nice fall line skiing and an excellent lift system. It doesn't sprawl like Gore or tower like Whiteface, and those fall lines do level off a bit too abruptly from the summit, but it feels big, especially when that Catskills snowbelt fires. On a weekday, it really can feel like a private ski area. And you can probably score an Ikon Pass slot without issue. So go now, before WMC jumps off that mainstream pass, and the only way in the door is a triple-digit lift ticket.*Not an actual statistic^^Probably though it's accurate.Podcast NotesOn New York having more ski areas than any other state in the countryIt's true. New York has 51. The next closest state is Michigan, with 44 (only 40 of which operated last winter). Here's a list:On the three New York state-owned ski areas that “have been generously funded by the state”It's basically impossible to have any honest conversation about any New York ski area without acknowledging the Godzilla-stomping presence of the state's three owned ski areas: Belleayre, Gore, and Whiteface. These are all terrific ski areas, in large part because they benefit from a firehose of taxpayer money that no privately owned, for-profit ski area could ever justify. As the Adirondack Explorer reported in July:The public authority in charge of the state's skiing, sliding and skating facilities saw expenses and losses jump in the past year, its annual financial report shows.The Lake Placid-based Olympic Regional Development Authority [ORDA], whose big-ticket sites are the Belleayre Mountain, Gore Mountain and Whiteface Mountain alpine centers, disclosed operating losses of $47.3 million for the last fiscal year. That compared with losses of $29.3 million for the same period a year earlier.It's important to acknowledge that this budget also covers a fun park's worth of skating rinks, ski jumps, luge chutes (or whatever), and a bunch of other expensive, unprofitable crap that you need if you ever want to host an Olympics (which New York State has done twice and hopes to do again). Still, the amount of cash funneled into ORDA in recent years is incredible. As the Adirondack Explorer reported last year:“The last six years, the total capital investment in the Olympic Authority was $552 million,” [now-fomer ORDA President and CEO Mike] Pratt told me proudly. “These are unprecedented investments in our facilities, no question about it. But the return on investment is immediate.”Half a billion dollars is a hell of a lot of money. The vast majority of it, more than $400 million, went to projects in the Lake Placid region, home to some 20,000 year-round residents—and it turns out, that breathtaking sum is only part of the story.Adirondack Life found New York State has actually pumped far more taxpayer dollars into ORDA since Pratt took the helm than previously reported, including a separate infusion of subsidies needed to cover the Olympic Authority's annual operating losses. Total public spending during Pratt's six-year tenure now tops $620 million.… Taken together that's more money than New York spent hosting the 1980 Winter Olympics. It's also more money than the state committed, amid growing controversy, to help build a new NFL stadium in Buffalo, a city with a population more than 10 times that of the Lake Placid region.There's also no sign ORDA's hunger for taxpayer cash will shrink anytime soon. In fact, it appears to be growing. The Olympic Authority is already slated to receive operating subsidies and capital investments next year that total another $119 million.To put that amount in context, the entire Jay Peak Resort in Vermont sold last year for $76 million. Which means New York State's spending on the Olympic Authority in 2024 would be enough to buy an entire new ski mountain, with tens of millions of dollars left over.It now appears certain the total price tag for Pratt's vision of a new, revitalized ORDA will top $1 billion. He said that's exactly what the organization needed to finally fulfill its mission as keeper of New York's Olympic flame.More context: Vail resorts, which owns and operates 42 ski areas – more than a dozen of which are several times larger than Belleayre, Gore, and Whiteface combined – is allocating between $189 and $194 million for 2024 capital improvements. You can see why New York is one of the few states where Vail isn't the Big Bad Guy. The state's tax-paying, largely family-owned ski areas funnels 95 percent of their resentment toward ORDA, and it's easy enough to understand why.On New York's “increasingly antiquated chairlift fleet”Despite the glimmer-glammer of the lift fleets at ORDA resorts, around the Catskills, and at Holiday Valley, New York is mostly a state of family-owned ski areas whose mountains are likely worth less than the cost of even a new fixed-grip chairlift. Greek Peak's longest chairlift is a Carlevaro-Savio double chair installed in 1963. Snow Ridge runs lifts dating to 1964, '60, and '58(!). Woods Valley installed its three lifts in 1964, '73, and '75 (owner Tim Woods told me last year that the ski area has purchased at least two used chairlifts, and hopes to install them at some future point). Intermittently open (and currently non-operational) Cockaigne's two double chairs and T-bar date to 1965. These lifts are, of course, maintained and annually inspected, and I have no fear of riding any of them, but in the war for customers, lifts that predate human space travel do make your story a bit trickier to tell.On Holiday Valley selling a chairlift to CatamountI noted that a lift had moved from Holiday Valley to Catamount – that is the Catamount quad, Holiday Valley's old Yodeler quad. Catamount installed the new lift in 2022, the year after Holiday Valley pulled out the 20-year-old, 500-vertical-foot fixed-grip lift to replace it with a new high-speed quad.On Windham's pass price in comparison to othersWindham's season pass price is the eighth most expensive in America, and the most expensive in the East by an enormous amount (Windham also offers a Monday through Friday, non-holiday season pass for $750, and a Sunday through Friday, non-holiday pass for $1,300). Here's how WMC compares nationally:And here's how it stacks up in the East:On WMC's ownershipWe talk a bit about Windham's ownership in the pod. I dug into that a bit more last year, when they bought the place in April and again when the mountain rebranded in October.On Blackberry Farms Lodged between Windham and New York City is a hilltop resort called Mohonk Mountain House. In its aesthetic and upscale cuisine, it resembles Blackberry Farm, the Tennessee resort owned by Windham majority owner Sandy Beall, which The New York Times describes as “built on a foundation of simple Tennessee country life as reinterpreted for guests willing to pay a premium to taste its pleasures without any of its hardships.” In other words, an incredibly expensive step into a version of nature that resembles but sidesteps its wild form. I think this is what WMC is going for, but on snow.On the location of Windham's tubing hillI frankly never even realized that Windham had a tubing hill until Seamans mentioned it. Even though it's marked on the trailmap, the complex sits across the access road, well removed from the actual ski area. Tubing is not really something I give a damn about (sorry #TubeNation), other than to acknowledge that it's probably the reason many small ski areas can continue to exist, but I usually at least notice it if it's there. Circled in red below:On Hermitage ClubWe talk a bit about how Hermitage Club is similar in size to Windham. The southern Vermont ski area sports a slightly smaller vertical drop (1,400 feet to Windham's 1,600), and skiable acreage (200 to Windham's 285). Here's the trailmap:On Holimont, Buffalo Ski Club, and Hunt HollowNew York is home to three private, chairlift-served ski areas that all follow a similar business model: the general public is welcome on weekdays, but weekends and holidays are reserved for members. Holimont, right next door to Holiday Valley, is the largest and most well-known:Hunt Hollow is smaller and less-renowned, but it's a nice little bump (my favorite fact about HH is that the double chair – the farthest looker's left – is Snowbird's old Little Cloud lift):Buffalo Ski Center is the agglomeration of three side-by-side, formerly separate ski areas: Sitzmarker Ski Club, Ski Tamarack and Buffalo Ski Club. The trail network is dense and super interesting:On Windham in The New York TimesI referred to a feature story that The Times ran on Windham last December. Read that here.On Vail's pay bumpWhen Vail Resorts raised its minimum wage to $20 an hour in 2022, that presented a direct challenge to every competing resort, including Windham, just down the road from Vail-owned Hunter.On Windham's village expansionWindham will build a new condominium village over some portion of its current parking lots. Here's a concept drawing: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 57/100 in 2024, and number 557 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

(PHOTO: Getty Images)

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on June 4. It dropped for free subscribers on June 11. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:Who* Scott Bender, operations and business advisor to Blue Knob ownership* Donna Himes, Blue Knob Marketing Manager* Sam Wiley, part owner of Blue Knob* Gary Dietke, Blue Knob Mountain ManagerRecorded onMay 13, 2024About Blue KnobClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Majority owned by the Wiley familyLocated in: Claysburg, PennsylvaniaYear founded: 1963Pass affiliations: Indy Pass and Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackouts (access not yet set for 2024-25 ski season)Closest neighboring ski areas: Laurel (1:02), Tussey (1:13), Hidden Valley (1:14), Seven Springs (1:23)Base elevation: 2,100 feetSummit elevation: 3,172 feetVertical drop: 1,072 feetSkiable Acres: 100Average annual snowfall: 120 inchesTrail count: 33 (5 beginner, 10 intermediate, 4 advanced intermediate, 5 advanced, 9 expert) + 1 terrain parkLift count: 5 (2 triples, 2 doubles, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Blue Knob's lift fleet)Why I interviewed themI've not always written favorably about Blue Knob. In a state where shock-and-awe snowmaking is a baseline operational requirement, the mountain's system is underwhelming and bogged down by antiquated equipment. The lower-mountain terrain – Blue Knob's best – opens sporadically, sometimes remaining mysteriously shuttered after heavy local snows. The website at one time seemed determined to set the world record for the most exclamation points in a single place. They may have succeeded (this has since been cleaned up):I've always tried to couch these critiques in a but-damn-if-only context, because Blue Knob, considered purely as a ski area, is an absolute killer. It needs what any Pennsylvania ski area needs – modern, efficient, variable-weather-capable, overwhelming snowmaking and killer grooming. No one, in this temperamental state of freeze-thaws and frequent winter rains, can hope to survive long term without those things. So what's the holdup?My goal with The Storm is to be incisive but fair. Everyone deserves a chance to respond to critiques, and offering them that opportunity is a tenant of good journalism. But because this is a high-volume, high-frequency operation, and because my beat covers hundreds of ski areas, I'm not always able to gather reactions to every post in the moment. I counterbalance that reality with this: every ski area's story is a long-term, ongoing one. What they mess up today, they may get right tomorrow. And reality, while inarguable, does not always capture intentions. Eventually, I need to gather and share their perspective.And so it was Blue Knob's turn to talk. And I challenge you to find a more good-natured and nicer group of folks anywhere. I went off format with this one, hosting four people instead of the usual one (I've done multiples a few times before, with Plattekill, West Mountain, Bousquet, Boyne Mountain, and Big Sky). The group chat was Blue Knob's idea, and frankly I loved it. It's not easy to run a ski area in 2024 in the State of Pennsylvania, and it's especially not easy to run this ski area, for reasons I outline below. And while Blue Knob has been slower to get to the future than its competitors, I believe they're at least walking in that direction.What we talked about“This was probably one of our worst seasons”; ownership; this doesn't feel like PA; former owner Dick Gauthier's legacy; reminiscing on the “crazy fun” of the bygone community atop the ski hill; Blue Knob's history as an Air Force station and how the mountain became a ski area; Blue Knob's interesting lease arrangement with the state; the remarkable evolution of Seven Springs and how those lessons could fuel Blue Knob's growth; competing against Vail's trio of nearby mountains; should Vail be allowed to own eight ski areas in one state?; Indy Pass sales limits; Indy Pass as customer-acquisition tool; could Blue Knob ever upgrade its top-to-bottom doubles to a high-speed quad?; how one triple chair multiplied into two; why Blue Knob built a mile-long lift and almost immediately shortened it; how Wolf Creek is “like Blue Knob”; beginner lifts; the best ski terrain in Pennsylvania; why Mine Shaft and Boneyard Glades disappeared from Blue Knob's trailmap, and whether they could ever return; unmarked glades; Blue Knob's unique microclimate and how that impacts snowmaking; why the mountain isn't open top-to-bottom more and why it's important to change that; PA snowmaking and how Blue Knob can catch up; that wild access road and what could be done to improve it; and the surprising amount of housing on Blue Knob's slopes.    Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewSo here's something that's absolutely stupid:That's southeastern Pennsylvania. Vail Resorts operates all of the ski areas in blue font. Ski areas in red are independent. Tussey, a local bump serving State College and its armies of sad co-eds who need a distraction because their football team can't beat Michigan, is not really relevant here. Blue Knob is basically surrounded by ski areas that all draw on the same well of out-of-state corporate resources and are stapled to the gumball-machine-priced Epic Pass. If this were a military map, we'd all say, “Yeah they're fucked.” Blue Knob is Berlin in 1945, with U.S. forces closing in from the west and the Russians driving from the east. There's no way they're winning this war.How did this happen? Which bureaucrat in sub-basement 17 of Justice Department HQ in D.C. looked at Vail's 2021 deal to acquire Seven Springs, Hidden Valley, and Laurel and said, “Cool”? This was just two years after Vail had picked up Whitetail, Liberty, and Roundtop, along with Jack Frost and Big Boulder in eastern Pennsylvania, in the Peak Resorts acquisition. How does allowing one company to acquire eight of the 22 public ski resorts in one state not violate some antitrust statute? Especially when six of them essentially surround one independent competitor.I don't know. When a similar situation materialized in Colorado in 1997, Justice said, “No, Vail Resorts, you can not buy Keystone and Breckenridge and Arapahoe Basin from this dog food company. Sell one.” And so A-Basin went to a real estate conglomerate out of Toronto, which gut-renovated the mountain and then flipped it, earlier this year, to Vail arch-frenemy Alterra. And an independent ski area operator told me that, at some point during this ongoing sales process, the Justice Department reached out to ask them if they were OK with Alterra – which already operates Winter Park, owns Steamboat, and has wrapped Copper, Eldora, and the four Aspen mountains into its Ikon Pass – owning A-Basin (which has been on the Ikon Pass since 2019). Justice made no such phone call, Blue Knob officials tell me on this podcast, when Vail was purchasing the Seven Springs resorts.This is where Colorad-Bro reminds me that Pennsylvania skiing is nothing compared to Colorado. And yes, Colorado is unquestionably the epicenter of American skiing, home to some of our most iconic resorts and responsible for approximately one in four U.S. skier visits each winter. But where do you suppose all those skiers come from? Not solely from Colorado, ranked 21st by U.S. population with just 5.9 million residents. Pennsylvania, with Philly and Pittsburgh and dozens of mid-sized cities in-between, ranks fifth in the nation by population, with nearly 13 million people. And with cold winters, ski areas near every large city, and some of the best snowmaking systems on the planet, PA is a skier printing press, responsible not just for millions of in-state skier visits annually, but for minting skiers that drive the loaded U-Haul west so they can brag about being Summit County locals five minutes after signing their lease. That one company controls more than one-third of the ski areas – which, combined, certainly account for more than half of the state's skier visits – strikes me as unfair in a nation that supposedly maintains robust antitrust laws.But whatever. We're locked in here. Vail Resorts is not Ticketmaster, and no one is coming to dismantle this siege. Blue Knob is surrounded. And it's worse than it looks on this map, which does not illuminate that Blue Knob sits in a vast wilderness, far from most population centers, and that all of Vail's resorts scoop up skiers flowing west-northwest from Philadelphia/Baltimore/D.C. and east from Pittsburgh.  So how is Blue Knob not completely screwed? Answering that question was basically the point of this podcast. The mountain's best argument for continued existence in the maw of this Epic Pass blitzkrieg is that Blue Knob is a better pure ski area than any of the six Vail mountains that surround it (see trailmap above). The terrain is, in fact, the best in the State of Pennsylvania, and arguably in the entire Mid-Atlantic (sorry Elk Mountain partisans, but that ski area, fine as it is, is locked out of the conversation as long as they maintain that stupid tree-skiing ban). But this fact of mountain superiority is no guarantee of long-term resilience, because the truth is that Blue Knob has often, in recent years, been unable to open top to bottom, running only the upper-mountain triple chairs and leaving the best terrain out of reach.They have to fix that. And they know it. But this is a feisty mountain in a devilish microclimate with some antiquated infrastructure and a beast of an access road. Nothing about this renovation has been, or likely will be, fast or easy.But it can be done. Blue Knob can survive. I believe it after hosting the team on this podcast. Maybe you will too once you hear it.What I got wrong* When describing the trail network, I said that the runs were cut “across the fall line” in a really logical way – I meant, of course, to say they were cut down the fall line.* I said that I thought the plants that sprouted between the trees in the mothballed Mine Shaft and Boneyard Glades were positioned “to keep people out.” It's more likely, however, based upon what the crew told us, that those plants are intended to control the erosion that shuttered the glades several years ago.* I mentioned “six-packs going up in the Poconos at the KSL-owned mountains.” To clarify: those would be Camelback and Blue Mountain, which each added six-packs in 2022, one year before joining the Ikon Pass.* I also said that high-speed lifts were “becoming the standard” in Pennsylvania. That isn't quite accurate, as a follow-up inventory clarified. The state is home to just nine high-speed lifts, concentrated at five ski areas. So yeah, not exactly taking over Brah.* I intimated that Blue Knob shortened the Beginners CTEC triple, built in 1983, and stood up the Expressway triple in 1985 with some of the commandeered parts. This does not appear to be the case, as the longer Beginners lift and Expressway co-exist on several vintage trailmaps, including the one below from circa 1989. The longer lift continues to appear on Blue Knob trailmaps through the mid-1990s, but at some point, the resort shortened the lift by thousands of linear feet. We discuss why in the pod.Why you should ski Blue KnobIf we took every mountain, fully open, with bomber conditions, I would rank Blue Knob as one of the best small- to mid-sized ski areas in the Northeast. From a rough-and-tumble terrain perspective, it's right there with Berkshire East, Plattekill, Hickory, Black Mountain of Maine, Ragged, Black Mountain (New Hampshire), Bolton Valley, and Magic Mountain. But with its Pennsylvania address, it never makes that list.It should. This is a serious mountain, with serious terrain that will thrill and challenge any skier. Each trail is distinct and memorable, with quirk and character. Even the groomers are interesting, winding nearly 1,100 vertical feet through the trees, dipping and banking, crisscrossing one another and the lifts above. Lower Shortway, a steep and narrow bumper cut along a powerline, may be my favorite trail in Pennsylvania. Or maybe it's Ditch Glades, a natural halfpipe rolling below Stembogan Bowl. Or maybe it's the unmarked trees of East Wall Traverse down to the marked East Wall Glades. Or maybe it's Lower Extrovert, a wide but ungroomed and mostly unskied trail where I found wind-blown pow at 3 p.m. Every trail is playful and punchy, and they are numerous enough that it's difficult to ski them all in a single day.Which of course takes us to the reality of skiing Blue Knob, which is that the ski area's workhorse top-to-bottom lift is the 61-year-old Route 66 double chair. The lift is gorgeous and charming, trenched through the forest on a narrow and picturesque wilderness line (until the mid-station, when the view suddenly shifts to that of oddly gigantic houses strung along the hillside). While it runs fast for a fixed-grip lift, the ride is quite long (I didn't time it; I'll guess 10 to 12 minutes). It stops a lot because, well, Pennsylvania. There are a lot of novice skiers here. There is a mid-station that will drop expert skiers back at the top of the best terrain, but this portal, where beginners load to avoid the suicidal runs below, contributes to those frequent stops.And that's the reality when that lift is running, which it often is not. And that, again, is because the lower-mountain terrain is frequently closed. This is a point of frustration for locals and, I'll point out, for the mountain operators themselves. A half-open Blue Knob is not the same as, say, a half-open Sugarbush, where you'll still have access to lots of great terrain. A half-open Blue Knob is just the Expressway (Lift 4) triple chair (plus the beginner zone), mostly groomers, mostly greens and blues. It's OK, but it's not what we were promised on the trailmap.That operational inconsistency is why Blue Knob remains mostly unheralded by the sort of skiers who are most drawn to this newsletter – adventurous, curious, ready for a challenge – even though it is the perfect Storm mountain: raw and wild and secretive and full of guard dog energy. But if you're anywhere in the region, watch their Instagram account, which usually flashes the emergency lights when Route 66 spins. And go there when that happens. You're welcome.Podcast NotesOn crisscrossing chairliftsChairlifts are cool. Crisscrossing chairlifts are even cooler. Riding them always gives me the sense of being part of a giant Goldbergian machine. Check out the triple crossing over the doubles at Blue Knob (all videos by Stuart Winchester):Wiley mentions a similar setup at Attitash, where the Yankee Flyer high-speed quad crosses beneath the summit lift. Here's a pic I took of the old Summit Triple at the crossover junction in 2021:Vail Resorts replaced the triple with the Mountaineer high-speed quad this past winter. I intended to go visit the resort in early February, but then I got busy trying not to drop dead, so I cancelled that trip and don't have any pics of the new lift. Lift Blog made it there, because of course he did, and his pics show the crossover modified but intact. I did, however, discuss the new lift extensively with Attitash GM Brandon Swartz last November.I also snagged this rad footage of Whistler's new Fitzsimmons eight-pack flying beneath the Whistler Village Gondola in February:And the Porcupine triple passing beneath the Needles Gondola at Snowbasin in March:Oh, and Lift 2 passing beneath the lower Panorama Gondola at Mammoth:Brah I could do this all day. Here's Far East six-pack passing beneath the Red Dog sixer at Palisades Tahoe:Palisades' Base-to-Base Gondola actually passes over two chairlifts on its way over to Alpine Meadows: the Exhibition quad (foreground), and the KT-22 Express, visible in the distance:And what the hell, let's make it a party:On Blue Knob as Air Force baseIt's wild and wildly interesting that Blue Knob – one of the highest points in Pennsylvania – originally hosted an Air Force radar station. All the old buildings are visible in this undated photo. You can see the lifts carrying skiers on the left. Most of these buildings have since been demolished.On Ski Denton and LaurelThe State of Pennsylvania owns two ski areas: Laurel Mountain and Ski Denton (Blue Knob is located in a state park, and we discuss how that arrangement works in the podcast). Vail Resorts, of course, operates Laurel, which came packaged with Seven Springs. Denton hasn't spun the lifts in a decade. Late last year, a group called Denton Go won a bid to re-open and operate the ski area, with a mix of state and private investment.And it will need a lot of investment. Since this is a state park, it's open to anyone, and I hiked Denton in October 2022. The lifts – a double, a triple, and a Poma – are intact, but the triple is getting swallowed by fast-growing trees in one spot (top two photos):I'm no engineer, but these things are going to need a lot of work. The trail network hasn't grown over too much, and the base lodge looks pristine, the grasses around it mowed. Here's the old trailmap if you're curious:And here's the proposed upgrade blueprint:I connected briefly with the folks running Denton GO last fall, but never wrote a story on it. I'll check in with them soon for an update.On Herman Dupre and the evolution of Seven SpringsBender spent much of his career at Seven Springs, and we reminisce a bit about the Dupre family and the ski area's evolution into one of the finest mountains in the East. You can learn more about Seven Springs' history in my podcast conversation with the resort's current GM, Brett Cook, from last year.On Ski magazine's top 20 in the EastSki magazine – which is no longer a physical magazine but a collection of digital bits entrusted to the robots' care – has been publishing its reader resort rankings for decades. The list in the West is fairly static and predictable, filled largely with the Epkonic monsters you would expect (though Pow Mow won the top place this year). But the East list is always a bit more surprising. This year, for example, Mad River Glen and Smugglers' Notch claimed the top two spots. They're both excellent ski areas and personal favorites, with some of the most unique terrain in the country, but neither is on a megapass, and neither owns a high-speed lift, which is perhaps proof that the Colorado Machine hasn't swallowed our collective souls just yet.But the context in which we discuss the list is this: each year, three small ski areas punch their way into an Eastern lineup that's otherwise filled with monsters like Stowe and Sugarbush. Those are: Seven Springs; Holiday Valley, New York; and Wachusett, Massachusetts. These improbable ski centers all make the list because their owners (or former owners, in Seven Springs' case), worked for decades to transform small, backwater ski areas into major regional destinations.On Vail's Northeast Value Epic PassesThe most frightening factor in the abovementioned difficulties that Blue Knob faces in its cagefight with Vail is the introduction, in 2020, of Northeast-specific Epic Passes. There are two versions. The Northeast Value Pass grants passholders unlimited access to all eight Vail Resorts in Pennsylvania and all four in neighboring Ohio, which is a crucial feeder for the Seven Springs resorts. It also includes unlimited access to Vail's four New Hampshire resorts; unlimited access with holiday blackouts at Hunter, Okemo, and Mount Snow; and 10 non-holiday days at Stowe. And it's only $613 (early-bird price was $600):The second version is a midweek pass that includes all the same resorts, with five Stowe days, for just $459 ($450 early-bird):And you can also, of course, pick up an Epic ($1,004) or Epic Local ($746) pass, which still includes unlimited Pennsylvania access and adds everything in the West and in Europe.Blue Knob's season pass costs $465 ($429 early-bird), and is only good at Blue Knob. That's a very fair price, and skiers who acted early could have added an Indy Pass on at a pretty big discount. But Indy is off sale, and PA skiers weighing their pass options are going to find that Epic Pass awfully tempting.On comparisons to the liftline at MRGErf, I may have activated the Brobots at Mad Brother Glen when I compared the Route 66 liftline with the one beneath their precious single chair. But I mean it's not the worst comparison you could think of:Here's another Blue Knob shot that shows how low the chairs fly over the trail:And here's a video that gives a bit more perspective on Blue Knob's liftline:I don't know if I fully buy the comparison myself, but Blue Knob is the closest thing you'll find to MRG this far south.On Wolf Creek's old summit PomaHimes reminisced on her time working at Wolf Creek, Colorado, and the rattletrap Poma that would carry skiers up a 45-degree face to the summit. I was shocked to discover that the old lift is actually still there, running alongside the Treasure Stoke high-speed quad (the two lifts running parallel up the gut of the mountain). I have no idea how often it actually spins:Lift Blog has pics, and notes that the lift “very rarely operates for historic purposes.”On defunct gladesThe Mine Shaft and Bone Yard glades disappeared from Blue Knob's trailmap more than a decade ago, but this sign at the top of Lower Shortway still points toward them:Then there's this sign, a little ways down, where the Bone Yard Glade entrance used to be:And here are the glades, marked on a circa 2007 trailmap, between Deer Run and Lower Shortway:It would be rad if Blue Knob could resurrect these. We discuss the possibility on the podcast.On Blue Knob's base being higher than Killington'sSomewhat unbelievably, Blue Knob's 2,100-foot base elevation is higher than that of every ski area in New England save Saddleback, which launches from a 2,460-foot base. The five next highest are Bolton Valley (2,035 feet), Stowe (2,035), Cannon (2,034), Pico (2,000), and Waterville Valley (1,984). Blue Knob's Vail-owned neighbors would fit right into this group: Hidden Valley sits at 2,405 feet, Seven Springs at 2,240, and Laurel at 2,000. Head south and the bases get even higher: in West Virginia, Canaan Valley sits at 3,430 feet; Snowshoe at 3,348-foot base (skiers have to drive to 4,848, as this is an upside-down ski area); and Timberline at 3,268. But the real whoppers are in North Carolina: Beech Mountain sits at 4,675, Cataloochee at 4,660, Sugar Mountain at 4,100, and Hatley Pointe at 4,000. I probably should have made a chart, but damn it, I have to get this podcast out before I turn 90.On Blue Knob's antique snowmaking equipmentLook, I'm no snowmaking expert, but some of the stuff dotting Blue Knob's slopes looks like straight-up World War II surplus: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 41/100 in 2024, and number 541 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

Welcome to WNY Brews! On this week's episode, Scott and Brian talk about some exciting events and news in the Western New York beer scene.First up, 42 North Brewing presents the Fourth Annual HillTAP Festival at Holiday Valley in Ellicottville on July 27. The event kicks off with a chair lift ride to Spruce Lake and features a day filled with music, craft beer from 42 North, and a variety of outdoor activities. Enjoy live music from Smilo & the Ghost (1-4 pm, Spruce Lake Cabin Stage), Miller & The Other Sinners (4-5:30 pm, Tannenbaum Stage), and Workingmans' Dead (6-8:30 pm, Tannenbaum Stage). Tickets are available now, with early bird pricing at $35, advance tickets at $45, and day-of tickets at $50.In other news, BTR Brews in the Village of Angola has announced it will be closing its doors on July 31. In a heartfelt Facebook post, owner Brandy Lombardo expressed gratitude for the support over the past 2.5 years, explaining the closure as a necessary decision for her family's well-being.Buffalo is set to welcome Iron Cedar Brewery & Meadery at 4345 Genesee Street, near the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. The brewery plans to offer a variety of meads, including unique flavors like Dragons Breath and Maiden Voyage, as well as honey-infused beers. They aim to open later this summer and will also provide food options.The Genesee Country Village & Museum is hosting History on Tap on June 7, featuring local craft beers, wines, and ciders, including the museum's own historical brews. The event will include live music, food, magic lantern shows, and more. Participants include OSB Ciderworks, Eli Fish Brewing, and Rohrbach Brewing with their historical beers. Tickets are $30, with a discount for members.Big Ditch Brewing is set to re-release two beers on Friday, May 24. Stark White Dad Shoes IPA, featuring Riwaka and Galaxy hops, and West Coast Burner, a variant of Hayburner IPA with added grapefruit and pine bitterness, will be available on tap and in 4-pack cans at Big Ditch's taproom.Maifest at Spring Garden Park in East Aurora will feature a specially brewed Maibock from Buffalo Brewing Company. The event, taking place on May 25, includes a keg tapping ceremony, performances by The Caledonian Pipe Band and SGTV Edelweiss Dancers, and live music from The Polka Boys. The park opens at noon with food available starting at 1 pm. Admission is $6.Mortalis Brewing is releasing nearly half a dozen new beers this week. On May 23, look out for Hydra: Sangria Fruited Smoothie Sour, Depths of Hydra (a collaboration with Homes Brewery), Happy Learned How To Putt IPA (a collab with Frequentem Brewing), Pomona: Banana & Peanuts Imperial Stout, and Barrel Aged Pomona. These releases will be available in various formats, including cans and bottles.For more details on these stories, visit BuffaloBeerLeague.com. You can reach us at (716) 486-BEER or email us at Scott@WNYBrews.com or Brian@BuffaloBeerLeague.com. Cheers! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is the bassist, songwriter, bandleader and all around awesome human being Karina Rykman.  A self-taught bassist and guitarist, Karina started playing in bands in and around New York City when she was barely a teenager, and was touring as a member of legendary keyboardist Marco Benevento's band while still attending college.  The stint in Benevento's band prepared Karina for forming her own trio and hitting the road, a period during which she caught the eyes and ears of some major players, among them Phish guitarist and band-leader Trey Anastasio.  Last year, she released her debut album, ‘Joyride,' a dizzying collection of psychedelic indie, alternative and jam-based tunes that made my top 10 list of rock albums for 2023. Anastasio co-produced the album, and lent his inimitable guitar stylings to half of the tracks.  Throughout ‘Joyride,', Karina's bass playing reveals the depth and breadth of her musical influences, and her always vibrant, sometimes playful, and occasionally dreamy vocals lead the listener on a journey through her colorful imagination.  Listeners in the Buffalo, NY area will be able to catch Karina and her trio as part of the Rail Rider Jamboree Festival on Saturday, March 23, at Holiday Valley in Ellicottville. Learn more and grab your tickets at railriderjam.com.  Welcome to Why Music Matters, Karina Rykman!

Holiday Valley's Dash Hegeman on the ski season winding down

Dash Hageman of Holiday Valley on the snow helping the slopes

It hasn't been the ideal start to the season for Holiday Valley, but there's optimism for a bounce-back in January.

Merry Christmas, folks! This week, we are joined by Help Get it Up from Dayton, Ohio. We talk about making babies, special trail marks, and our favorite albums of the year.  We even get a sneak peak as to what Santa is bringing us for Christmas... Send us an email: halfmindspodcast@gmail.comFind us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091468766616Be sure to vote for your favorite name from this week's episode.NYC's 26th Polar Bear Hash (January 14th, 2024 on Coney Island): https://hashnyc.com/Wisconsin Wintrahash (February 2nd, 2024 in Bangor, Wisconsin): https://hashrego.com/events/wintrahash-9Skash (February 3rd, 2024 at Holiday Valley): https://hashrego.com/events/rch3-oh-this-is-a-hash-on-skis-or-boards-fol-2024PA Interhash (October 18 - 20 in Scranton) - Details pending, but save the date!

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Oct. 2. It dropped for free subscribers on Oct. 9. 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 Grider, General Manager of Great Bear, South DakotaRecorded onSeptember 25, 2023About Great Bear Ski ValleyOwned by: The City of Sioux FallsLocated in: Sioux Falls, South DakotaYear founded: 1966Pass affiliations: NoneReciprocal partners:* 3 days at Seven Oaks* 2 days at Mont du Lac* 1 day each at Buck Hill, Powder Ridge MN, Snowstar* Discounts at several other local ski areasClosest neighboring ski areas: Mt. Crescent (2:37), Mount Kato (2:16)Base elevation: 1,352 feetSummit elevation: 1,534 feetVertical drop: 182 feetSkiable Acres: 20Average annual snowfall: 49 inchesTrail count: 15 (7 most difficult, 5 more difficult, 3 easiest)Lift count: 3 (1 fixed-grip quad, 1 ropetow, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Great Bear's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himFrequent Storm readers have probably started to notice the pattern: every fourth or fifth podcast swerves off Megapass Boulevard and takes four state highways, a gravel path, a Little Caesars pit-stop, and ends in the Wal-Mart-sized parking lot of a Midwest ski area. Which often sits next to a Wal-Mart. Or a car dealership. Or, in the case of Great Bear, between a construction supply depot and the Sioux Falls chapter of the Izaak Walton League, a conservation society.Why do I do this? My last three podcasts featured the leaders of Killington, Keystone, and Snowbird. The next one to drop into your inbox will be Northstar, a Vail Resorts staple that is the ninth-largest ski area in America. If you're reading this newsletter, there is a high probability that you either already have skied all four of those, or plan to at some future point. Most of you will probably never ski Great Bear or anywhere else in South Dakota. Many of you will never ski the Midwest at all.Which I understand. But there are several reasons I've worked Midwest ski areas into the podcast rotation, and why I will continue to do so for as long as The Storm exists:* The episodes with the leaders of Caberfae, Boyne Mountain, The Highlands, and Nub's Nob are for 18-year-old me. Or whatever version of 18-year-old me currently sits restlessly in the ski-mad but ignored flatlands between Ohio and the Dakotas. I devoured every ski magazine on the drugstore shelves of the 1990s, but if I could scrub 500 words of Midwest content from their combined catalogue each winter, I was lucky. I was dying – dying – for someone, anyone, to say something, anything, about the Midwest or Midwest skiing. Even a list of the top 10 ski areas in Michigan, with 50 words on each, would have made my year. But the ski mags, great as they were in those days, barely covered the rich and varied ski culture of New England, let alone the Midwest. I would have lost my goddamn mind had someone published a 90-minute conversation with the owner of the mysterious (to me at the time) Caberfae, with its hills upon hills of abandoned lifts and ever-changing footprint. * The Midwest is home to one of the world's great ski cultures. If you don't believe me, go ski there. The region hosts 122 ski areas across 10 states, most of them in Michigan (43), Wisconsin (33), and Minnesota (21). But the volume matters less than the attitude: Midwest skiers are absolutely unpretentious. They'll ski in hunting gear and Carhartts. They'll ski on 25-year-old sticks they found at a yard sale for five dollars. They'll ski when it's 25 below zero. They'll ski at night, in the rain, on a 200-vertical-foot bump running 60-year-old chairlifts. These are skiers, Man. They do it because it's fun, because it's right there, and because this is one of the few regions where skiing is still accessible to the masses. If you want to understand why every third Colorado liftie you meet is from Grand Rapids or Madison or Duluth, go ski Canonsburg or Cascade or Spirit Mountain. It will make sense in about five seconds.* Because the Midwest has so many owner-operators, and because it takes a certain sort of swaggering competence to run something as temperamental and wild as a 300-vertical-foot, city-adjacent ski area with 17 chairlifts all built before the Reagan Administration, these tend to be very good interviews. The top five most-downloaded Storm Skiing Podcasts of 2023 are Alterra CEO Jared Smith, Holiday Valley President Dennis Eshbaugh, Pacific Group Resorts CMO Christian Knapp, Indy Pass President Doug Fish, and Whitecap Mountains owner David Dziuban. Those first four are fairly predictable (Holiday Valley is a bit of an outlier, as the resort heavily shared the conversation), but the last one is remarkable. Both because only five people have actually skied at Whitecap, and because the 33 podcasts that I've pushed out this year include many prominent and popular megapass headliners with well-known and highly respected leaders. Why did the Whitecap podcast land so hard? I can't say for certain, but I suspect because it is completely raw, completely authentic, and absolutely unconcerned with what anyone will think or how they will react to it. Dziuban, an industry veteran on a mission to salvage a dying business from the scrapyard, has no boss, nothing to lose, and no one to impress. It's an incredible conversation (listen for yourself). And while Dziuban is a special character, bolstered by a fearless Chicago moxie and the accent to match, every single guest I have on from the Midwest brings some version of that no-b******t attitude. It's fun.* I'm from there. I grew up in Michigan. Many of my best friends still live there. I return frequently, hold Michigan football season tickets, camp in the UP every April, still rock the Old English “D” ballcap. I moved to the East Coast in 2002, but the longer I'm gone, the more I admire the region's matter-of-fact work ethic, the down-to-earth worldview, the way Midwesterners simplify the complicated (next time you ride a chairlift with a Michigander at Keystone or Breckenridge, ask them how they got to Colorado – there's a better than 50 percent chance that they drove). Midwest skiing is the reason I love skiing, and I will always be grateful for these hills, no matter how small they are. Plus, I gotta represent.So, there you go. Skip this ep if you want. But you shouldn't, because it's very good.What we talked aboutGreat Bear's record-shattering 2022-23 ski season for skier visits; how the ski area has been able to recruit and retain staff in a difficult labor market; staying open into April; the importance of Christmas Week; memorializing Roxie Johnson; Great Bear in the 1970s; the quirks of running a city-owned ski area; the appeal of working at a small ski area for decades; what it means to a flatland city to have a ski area; the best age to make skiers; “if you can sit, you can tube”; “The nice thing about our profitability is that there's no owner here, so our money just stays in the bank”; contemplating a new chalet; the location, size, and timeline for Great Bear's potential expansion; the glacial phenomenon that left Great Bear in its wake; reflecting on the Covid season; what it means for a small municipal Midwestern ski area to put in a brand-new chairlift; why the outgoing Borvig quad had to go, even though it was “a tank”; the brilliance and cost-effectiveness of high-speed ropetows; scarves and ropetows don't mix; the story behind the “Children's Dental Center Beginner Area”; the power of tubing; Keeping season pass and lift ticket prices low; the story behind the season passholders-only timeslot on Sunday; holding strong on wicket tickets; free buddy tickets for passholders; Flurry the mascot; and the Indy Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewLike many small ski areas, Great Bear publishes a periodic newsletter to complement its social media presence. I subscribe to as many of these email digests as I am aware of, as they often contain nuggets that larger resorts would celebrate with a big campaign and press release. Great Bear's April newsletter hooked me with this:We are excited to finally start sharing with you our plans for future expansion! Efforts to expand have been in the works since 2013. Our top priority is adding another 7-acres of skiable downhill terrain with a second chairlift. Additionally, we are working on plans to significantly expand the lodge.As a city park, our next step is presenting a detailed plan to the Parks Board next month. We appreciate all your enthusiasm for a bigger and better Great Bear. Projects of this size take an enormous amount of work and collaboration. We are so grateful for our partnership with the City of Sioux Falls and all the community support!An expansion project at a municipal ski area marooned in a state with a population of fewer than 900,000 people is a big deal. It means the place is well-run and well-cared-for, and most likely a community staple worthy of some national attention. The fact that Great Bear was served not by a collection of ropetows and a 60-year-old Hall double, but by a carpet and a brand-new Skytrac quad, complemented with a high-speed Park Brah ropetow, were further evidence of a highly capable management team.Intrigued, I reached out. It took a minute, but we set up the podcast with Grider, who's been running the bump since 1992. He's a great storyteller with an upbeat disposition and a good mind for business, and he convincingly lays out a long-term future for Great Bear that will ensure the mountain's status as a skier assembly line for many generations to come. If you love skiing, you'll enjoy this one.Questions I wish I'd askedI'd meant to ask about this “I Ski 182 Vert Campaign,” which profiles locals who have put Great Bear at the center of their recreational lives:Why you should ski Great BearThere are different ways to think about yourself as a skier. One is as a sort of progressionist. Like a student working their way through school, you graduate from one grade to the next. Always forward, never back. So a Jersey kid may learn at Campgaw as a 6-year-old, join after-school ski bus trips to Mountain Creek in junior high, take weekend trips to Mount Snow in high school, and spend college spring breaks at Palisades Tahoe. But by the time he moves to the Upper East Side and has two kids of his own, he only skis on his annual trips to Deer Valley. He sits on his laptop in the lodge as the kids run beginner-chair laps at Thunder Ridge. He's not going to bother with this little stuff – he's graduated.But this is a strange way to think about skiing. We don't apply such logic to other facets of our lives. Consider food – sometimes you have the inch-thick porterhouse on a special-occasion outing, sometimes you have Taco Bell, and sometimes you eat Pop-Tarts on your drive to work. But I don't know anyone who, once they've dined at Peter Luger, never deigns to eat a hotdog again. Sometimes you just need to fuel up.I approach skiing in the same way. A dozen or so days per season, I'm eating steak: Snowbird or Big Sky or Vail or Heavenly. But since I'm not content to ski 12 days per winter, I also eat a lot of pasta. Let's call that New England and the Catskills on their best days, or just about anyplace with fresh snow. And I snack a lot, skiing's equivalent of a bag of Doritos: a half-open Poconos bump, a couple hours on a Sunday morning at Mountain Creek, a Michigan T-bar when I'm visiting family for Christmas. My 6-year-old son is in a seasonal program at 250-vertical-foot Mt. Peter in New York. The vast majority of the parents sit in the lodge on their phones while the kids ski. But I ski, lapping the Ol' Pete double chair, which accesses the whole mountain and rarely has a line. When his lesson is over, we often ski together. It's fun.Everyone funnels the joys of skiing through different lenses. The lift or the freefall, the high-altitude drama, the après electricity of crowded places and alcohol. For me, the draw is a combination of dynamic movement and novelty, an exploration of new places, or familiar places under the changing conditions wrought by weather and crowds. Even though Mt. Peter is familiar, it's a little different place every week.Which takes us to Great Bear, a 182-foot bump that is, most likely, nowhere near you. I'm not suggesting you cancel your Tahoe reservations and book yourself into the Sioux Falls Best Western. But there are two groups of skiers who ought to consider this place: locals, and cross-country road-trippers.If you live in Sioux Falls and are over the age of 16, you probably consider yourself a progressionist. Maybe you learned to ski at Great Bear, but now it's too small for you to bother with. You'll ski your five days per year at Copper Mountain and be content with it. But why? You have a ski area right there. The season pass is $265. Why ski five days per year when you can ski 25? With that Great Bear season pass, you can ski every Saturday morning and two nights a week after work. Consider it your gym. The runs are short, but the sensation of dynamic movement is still there. It's skiing. And while it's (typically) a materially a worse form of skiing than your high-altitude Colorado version of the sport, it's also in many ways better, with less attitude, less pretense, less entitlement, less ego. Just kids having fun. It's fulfilling in a different way.The second group is those of us who live east of America's best versions of skiing. Most East Coast skiers will fly west, but the most adventurous will drive. You see them on Facebook, posting elaborate three- or six-week Google maps dotted all over the west. But why wait until you arrive in Colorado or Wyoming or Montana to start skiing? There are ski areas all along your route. Great Bear sits two miles from Interstate 90, the 3,021-mile-long route that runs from Boston to Seattle. So why not scoot through Kissing Bridge, Buffalo Ski Center, and Peek'N Peak, New York; Alpine Valley, Boston Mills, and Brandywine in Ohio; Swiss Valley, Michigan; Four Lakes and Villa Olivia, Illinois; and Cascade, Devil's Head, and LaCrosse, Wisconsin en route? Yes, you want to hurry west. But the drive will take several days no matter what. Why not mix in a little novelty along the way?My first trip west was over Christmas break in the mid-90s, a 22-hour bender from Michigan to Summit County, Colorado with my buddy Andy. We'd booked a Super 8 or some similar thing in Lincoln, Nebraska, at our approximate halfway point. We rode into Nebraska sometime after dark, but early enough for a night session at Nebraski, a run-down hundred-footer between Omaha and Lincoln. The chairlift coughed up the bump like a cartoon contraption and skiers yard-saled all over the hill and it was just about the most amazing scene you could imagine. Four days later a two-footer hammered Copper, dropping an exclamation-point powder day onto our first Rocky Mountain adventure. Nearly three decades later, when we reminisce on that trip, we talk about that Copper pow day, but long-gone Nebraski (I don't think the place made it out of the ‘90s alive), is an equal part of the legend.A Great Bear stop would be a little different, of course. This is a modern ski area, with a 2021 Skytrac quad and modern snowmaking and solid financial backing. It will make you feel good about skiing and about its future. It may even be a highlight of your trip.Podcast NotesOn the remoteness of Great BearIt is impossible to overstate how important Great Bear is to curating skiers among the 300,000-ish residents of greater Sioux Falls. There are two other ski areas in South Dakota – Terry Peak and resurgent, probably semi-private Deer Mountain – but they sit nearly six hours west, in the Black Hills. Mt. Crescent, Iowa, sits two-and-a-half hours down I-29. Mt. Kato, Minnesota is two hours east. And that's about it. If you're a teenager in Sioux Falls without Great Bear, you may as well be a teenager in Fort Lauderdale. You're probably never going to ski.That wasn't always true. A 175-vertical-foot (at most) bump with the amazing name of Hole In The Mountain once operated with up to three ropetows near Lake Benton, an hour north, according to the Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project. But that's been gone for decades.  On Great Bear's potential expansionGreat Bear is in the process of a sizeable expansion, which could add a second chairlift and several more trails. Great Bear provided this preliminary map, which shows a new lift sitting adjacent to the learning area and a new entrance road and chalet:On the outcome of the Sept. 25 masterplan meetingGrider referenced a meeting he had coming up “later this week,” which means last week, since we recorded this on Sept. 25. I followed up on Sunday to see if the meeting had thrown any landmines in the way of Great Bear's potential expansion. It had not. The reception from local officials had been optimistic and enthusiastic, Grider said.“What we've got to do here in the next six weeks is they're going to formalize the plans and we'll get some drawings, we'll get a rendering,” Grider told me. “Then we go in front of the park board and we just keep our foot on the gas pedal.”On the stem in the middle of Great Bear's old Borvig chairGreat Bear's spanking-new Skytrac replaced a gorgeous but problematic Borvig centerpole quad. Luckily, Lift Blog documented the old lift before the ski area demolished it.On high-speed ropetows and Hyland HillsI remain obsessed with high-speed ropetows as the ultimate solution to terrain park-driven congestion. They're fast, they're cheap, and they tamp down liftlines by drawing Parkbrahs away from the workhorse chairlifts. Here's one I documented at Spirit Mountain, Minnesota last season:And here's one at Hyland Hills, which Grider mentions:On me not knowing who Mary Hart isAt one point in the podcast, Dan Grider asked me if I knew who Mary Hart was. I said I did not, which was true. It turns out that she is quite famous. She was Miss South Dakota 1970 and hosted a show called Entertainment Tonight for 29 years. I have never watched that show, nor was I aware of its existence until I looked up Ms. Hart on Wikipedia.This probably sounds dubious to you. But there is something wrong with my brain. I simply do not process information having to do with pop culture or celebrities. I say this not out of proud ignorance, but as a matter of observable fact. I have always been this way. Hit me with a well-known movie quote, and I will stare at you as though you just spoke to me in Elvish.An anecdote to illustrate the larger void in which I exist: my wife and I began watching a show called Suits the other day. She asked me if I recognized the young woman who plays a paralegal on this show. I said no. She asked if I knew who Meghan Markle was. I said no. She asked if I knew who Prince [can't remember the name] was. I said no. Because apparently they're married. And that matters somehow. Though I'm not exactly sure why. Though I am curious why we still have princes in this world, because I thought we got rid of them when we exiled the dragons back in like 1502 or whenever.We all have gaps, right? Or shortcomings. One of mine, and there are many, is aggressive indifference to things that I find boring. It's probably how some of you feel when I write about skiing in Ohio. Like, Man, get me to the next thing.On charging the same for kids as adultsMost ski areas kick you a discount for a kids' lift ticket. And why not? Expenses add up for a family, and when you start multiplying everything by three or four, you get to a scary price range pretty quickly. So some of you may have been surprised when Grider mentions, during our interview, that Great Bear doesn't offer discounted lift tickets for kids.There's a simple reason for that. A discounted kids ticket doesn't do much for you when most of your clientele is children. Great Bear is one of our skier factories, where busloads of kids prime themselves for roadtrips to Colorado 10 years from now. So the parents don't need the incentive – they're just signing the waiver to get the kid on the ski bus.Plenty of ski areas follow a similar model. Mount Peter, where my 6-year-old participates in a seasonal program, is currently selling adult season passes for $499, and kids' passes for $479. Nearby Campgaw posts similar rates: $389 for adults, $359 for kids. But it makes sense to minimize the discount: both are 300-ish-foot bumps that are dwarfed by nearby Mountain Creek, a thousand-footer with a killer terrain park and high-speed lifts (and, incidentally, a less-expensive season pass). They can't compete from a terrain point of view, but they can offer something that Creek can't: an unintimidating atmosphere to learn in. And the skiers who mostly need such a thing is kids. And if Mt. Peter and Campgaw discount kids too much, their whole model falls apart.In the case of Great Bear, well, the season pass is currently $265. This winter's lift ticket price will be $38. So, really, who cares?On Flurry the MascotIf your ski area doesn't have a mascot, it should: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 81/100 in 2023, and number 467 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

Dash Hegeman on Holiday Valley's new chair lifts

Hope to have work done in time for Fall Fest in October

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.WhoDennis Eshbaugh, President and General Manager of Holiday Valley, New YorkRecorded onFebruary 13, 2023About Holiday ValleyClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Win-Sum Ski Corp, which Holiday Valley's website describes as “a closely held corporation owned by a small number of stockholders.”Year founded: 1958Pass affiliations: NoneLocated in: Ellicottville, New YorkClosest neighboring ski areas: Holimont (3 minutes), Kissing Bridge (38 minutes), Cockaigne (45 minutes), Buffalo Ski Center (48 minutes), Swain (1 hour, 15 minutes), Peek'N Peak (1 hour, 15 minutes)Base elevation: 1,500 feetSummit elevation: 2,250 feetVertical drop: 750 feetSkiable Acres: 290Average annual snowfall: 180 inchesTrail count: 84 (4 glades, 1 expert, 21 advanced, 21 intermediate, 32 beginner, 5 terrain parks) – the official glade number is a massive undercount, as nearly all of the trees at Holiday Valley are well-spaced and skiable (the trailmap below notes that “woods are available to expert skiers and riders and are not open, closed, or marked”).Lift count: 13­­ (4 high-speed quads, 7 fixed-grip quads, 2 surface lifts) – a high-speed six-pack will replace the Mardis Gras high-speed quad this sumer.Uphill capacity: 23,850 people per hourWhy I interviewed himWestern New York is one of the most important ski markets in America. Orbiting a vast wilderness zone of hilly lake-effect are the cities of Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, and, farther out but still relevant to the market, Pittsburgh. That's more than 20 million people, as Eshbaugh notes in our conversation. They all need somewhere to ski. They don't have big mountains, but they do have options. In Western New York alone: Peek'n Peak, Cockaigne, Kissing Bridge, Buffalo Ski Club, Bristol, Hunt Hollow, Swain, Holiday Valley, Holimont, and a half-dozen-ish surface-lift outfits hyper-focused on beginners.It's one of the world's great new-skier factories. Skiers learn here and voyage to the Great Out There. From these metro regions, skiers can get anywhere else quickly. At least four daily flights connect Cleveland and Denver – you can leave your house in the evening and catch first chair at Keystone or Copper the following morning. But sometimes local is good, especially when you start stacking kids in the backseat and your airplane bill ticks past four digits.Set the GPS for Holiday Valley. In a region of ski areas, this is a ski resort. The terrain is varied and expansive. Downtown Ellicottville, a Rust Belt industrial refugee that has remade itself as one of the East's great resort towns, is minutes away. The mountain is easy enough to get to (in the way that anything off-interstate is an easy-ish pain in the ass requiring some patience with two-lane state highways and their poke-along drivers). And lift tickets are affordable, topping out at $87 for an eight-hour session.As a business, Holiday Valley is one of the most well-regarded independent ski areas in the country, on the level of Wachusett or Whitefish or Smugglers' Notch. But it wasn't the inevitable King of Western New York. When Eshbaugh showed up in 1975, the place was a backwater, with a handful of double chairs and T-bars and a couple dozen runs. It took decades to build the machine. But for at least the past 20 years, Holiday Valley has led all New York ski areas in annual visits, keeping company with New England monsters Mount Snow and Sunday River at around half a million skiers per season. That's incredible. I wanted to learn how they did it, and how they keep doing it, even as the ski world evolves rapidly around them.What we talked aboutThe wild Western New York winter; what's driving record business to Holiday Valley; the busiest ski area in New York State; learning from Sam Walton in the best possible way; competing with Colorado; the history and remaking of Ellicotville; from ski school instructor to resort president; staying at one employer for nearly five decades; who owns Holiday Valley and how committed they are to independence; a brief history of the ski area; setting season pass prices at $1,000 in the megapass era – “we have 10,000 buyers of these other pass programs as well”; the importance of night-skiing; the bygone days of skiing all-nighters; why Holiday Valley hasn't joined the Epic, Ikon, or Indy Passes, and whether it ever would; thoughts on reciprocal coalitions and why the Ski Cooper partnership went away; a picture of Holiday Valley in the mid-1970s; the landmine of too much real-estate development; going deep on the new Mardi Gras Express six-pack; why they're building the lift over two years; how and why Holiday Valley self-installs chairlifts (one of the few ski areas to do so); remembering 20-minute double-chair rides on Mardi Gras; the surprising potential destination of the Mardi Gras quad; long-term potential upgrades for Sunrise, Eagle, Cindy's, and Chute; the next lift that Holiday Valley will likely upgrade to a detachable; why Holiday Valley upgraded the 20-year-old Yodeler fixed-grip quad to a detachable quad two years ago; how much more it costs to maintain a detachable lift than a fixed-grip lift, and whether Holiday Valley could one day get to an all-high-speed fleet; “you have to keep a balance between what your customer base wants and what your customer base can support”; Dave McCoy's thumbprint on Mammoth Mountain; potential expansion opportunities; where the next all-new liftline could sit; potential glade expansion; remembering when insurance carriers were paranoid of glade-skiing and why they backed off that notion; and why Holiday Valley implemented RFID but didn't install gates.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewHoliday Valley is one of the few large regional destination ski areas that continues to stand alone. No pass allegiance. No reciprocal deals. The pass is good here and only here.And it works. Like Wolf Creek or Baker or Mount Rose or Smugglers' Notch or Bretton Woods, Holiday Valley is proving that the one-mountain model isn't dead just yet. Even with a headliner season pass that runs $1,049*, just $30 cheaper than the good-at-63-mountains Ikon Pass and a couple hundred dollars more than the equally expansive Epic Pass. Many of the mountain's passholders do also purchase these passes, Eshbaugh told me, but they keep buying the Holiday Valley Pass too.Why? My guess is the constant, conspicuous investment. A new high-speed quad to replace a 20-year-old fixed-grip quad in 2021. Holiday Valley's first six-pack – to replace a 27-year-old high-speed quad – next season. And the place is pristine. Everything looks new, even if it isn't. The lodges – and it feels like there are lodges everywhere – are expansive and attractive. Snowguns all over. I haven't walked around the joint opening closet doors or anything, but I bet it I did, I'd find the towels sorted by color and shelves labelled accordingly.In the era of sprawling and standardized, there is still a lot to like in this hyper-local approach to ski resort management. Eshbaugh is in no hurry to chase his peers over the horizon. He admits there may be vast treasure and security waiting there, but there may also be a bottomless void. Holiday Valley and its eclectic and somewhat secretive group of owners will wait and see. In the meantime, we may as well enjoy the place for what it is.*Holiday Valley offered several more affordable pass options for the 2022-23 ski season, including a nights-only version for $504, a Sundays pass for $313, a pass good for 10 weekdays or evenings for $285, and a nine-use night pass for $213.Questions I wish I'd askedI'd wanted to get a bit into Holimont, and ask my usual stupid question about whether the two resorts had ever discussed some sort of lift or ski connection. From a pure engineering standpoint, it wouldn't be an especially difficult project: the hill that rises from the far side of the Holiday Valley parking lot is the backside of Holimont. You would just need trails down from the top of Holimont's Exhibition Express or Sunset double to the bottom of Holiday Valley's Tannenbaum lift, then a return lift up the mountain to Holimont. Here's a crappy concept sketch I put together:Of course, there are problems with my elaborate plans, starting with the fact that I have no idea who owns the property that I just designated for new trails and chairlifts. The bigger issue, however, is that Holimont is a private ski club, and it's closed to the public on weekends and holidays. That won't change. But if you're curious, you can roll up and buy a lift ticket midweek, which is pretty cool. The place is substantial, with 56 trails and eight lifts, including a high-speed quad:A union of these two ski areas seems highly improbable. But it would create an enormous ski area, and it was fun to fantasize about for a few minutes.Why you should ski Holiday ValleyHoliday Valley skis far larger than the trailmap would suggest. Rolling from Spruce Lake over to Snowpine can take all morning. There's lots of little offshoots, quirks and nooks to explore. Glades everywhere. Lifts everywhere. Most runs are substantially shorter than the advertised 750 vertical feet, but they cling to the fall line, and there are a lot of them: 84 trails feels like an undercount.I said in the podcast that Holiday Valley felt like a half dozen or so ski areas stitched together, and it does. Creekside and Sunrise feel like that town bump, with gentle wide-open meadows. Morningstar is big broadsides, park kids and a speedy lift. Yodeler and Chute are raw and steep, tight glades between groomed-out boomers. Eagle is restless and wild and underdeveloped. And Tannenbaum is a sort-of idyll, a rich glen dense with towering pines, a detachable lift line threading low and fast through the trees.It's just a very good ski area, with everything except a headline vertical drop. But the sprawling lift system makes fastlaps easy, and if the snow is deep, pretty much all the trees between the trails are skiable. The place is likely to wear you out before you wear it out, and then you can head down the street for a beer and a pillow.Podcast NotesOn operating hoursI guessed on the podcast that Holiday Valley was open more hours per week than most other ski areas in the country. Their regular schedule is 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. That adds up to 89 hours per week. I'm not sure exactly where that ranks among U.S. American ski areas, but its in the upper five percentile.On Mountains of DistinctionEshbaugh mentions the Mountains of Distinction program. This is a discount program started by Jiminy Peak before the megapass craze. It currently includes Jiminy, Wachusett, Cranmore, Holiday Valley, Bromley, and Crystal Mountain, Michigan. Passholders at any of these ski areas generally get half off on weekdays and $15 off on weekends and holidays at any of the other resorts. The program was far larger at one time, but it's lost many members – such as Seven Springs – to consolidation.On the incredible migrating chairliftI mentioned a chairlift at Hunt Hollow – a ski area that operates on the same public/private model as Holimont – that relocated one of Snowbird's old chairs. The chair was Snowbird's old Little Cloud double, which they removed in 2012 to make way for a high-speed quad. You can read more about it here (pages 13 to 14). Lift Blog documented the lift when it stood at Snowbird, and then again at Hunt Hollow.On lost ski areas of Western New YorkIn the podcast intro, I mention a pair of onetime competitors to Holiday Valley that failed to evolve in the same way and went bust. One was Wing Hollow, a 750-footer just 20 minutes south of Holiday Valley that is now best known for a never-solved 1975 double-murder. Here's the 1978 trailmap, showing two T-bars and a double chair - about the same setup that Holiday Valley had in that period.I also mention Bluemont, which was just half an hour north of Holiday Valley and claimed an 800-foot-vertical drop, a double chair, a T-bar, and two ropetows. Here it is around 1980:The land that Bluemont sat on is currently for sale for $5.95 million. I wrote about this in May:Man I don't know what happens to these places. Eight hundred vertical feet would make this the second-tallest ski area in Western New York, after Bristol, and poof. Just gone. NELSAP says that the last investors “never received enough capital to get their idea off the ground.” The chairlifts are apparently long gone. Who knows if you would even be able to build on the land if you owned it – everything is impossible these days, especially in New York. But here it is if you have the money and the gumption to try.These were just the two largest of many lost ski areas in Western New York. You can poke around the lost New York ski areas page on the New England Lost Ski Areas project for more info.On Holiday Valley's evolutionEshbaugh talks about the deliberate way they've built out Holiday Valley over the decades. The oldest trailmap I can find for the ski area is from 1969 – 11 years after the resort opened, and six years before Eshbaugh arrived. It shows what is currently the area from Mardi Gras over to Tannenbaum, including Yodeler and Chute:The mountain added the first Cindy's lift – a double chair – in 1978. Here's the trailmap circa 1981 - Cindy's is lift 3:Morning Star – a triple – arrived in 1983. The Snowpine double came the following year. This circa 1988 trailmap shows both (Morning Star is lift 5; Snowpine lift 6), and also teases the Eagle quad, which was slated to open the following year (it did, but as a quad, rather than as the triple teased below):The Sunrise quad rose in 1992. Here it is on a circa 1997 trailmap (lift 10):The Spruce Lake quad arrived for the 2007-08 season (lift 11):Which basically takes us to modern Holiday Valley, though the ski area continues to upgrade lifts regularly. Impressive as this growth has been, I don't think they're anywhere near finished.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 13/100 in 2023, and number 399 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 Dec. 29. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 1. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoRob Clark, CEO of Aspenware, an e-commerce and software company   Recorded onDecember 12, 2022About AspenwareAspenware's website declares that it's time to “modernize your mountain.” As far as corporate sloganeering goes, this is a pretty good one. Skiers – like everyone – live on their phones. Ski areas need to meet them there – to sell them lift tickets, process their lunch order, sign their liability waivers, and rent them skis. This is what Aspenware does. “Close your ticket windows,” one of the company's ad campaigns insists, “you don't need them.” Alterra and Aspen Skiing Company agree. Earlier this year, the companies formed a joint venture to purchase Aspenware.Why I interviewed himI spend a lot of time rambling about lifts and terrain and passes – the meat of the lift-served skiing world; how resorts shape an interesting experience, and how skiers access it and move through it. But a modern ski experience does not just mean fast lifts and great snowmaking and diverse terrain offerings and passes that include the nine moons of Endor. It also means mitigating the ski day's many built-in points of misery, which mostly have to do with lines. Everything we need to do that is already built into your smartphone. Ski areas just have to figure out how to tap that technology to streamline the experience. Aspenware is doing that.What we talked aboutRelocating to New England after nearly two decades in Colorado; Peek'N Peak; Holiday Valley; an Ohio boy goes West; 1-800-SKI-VAIL; running the Vail Mountain ticket windows in the pre-Epic Pass, everyone-buys-a-walk-up-ticket days; the Epic Pass debuts; RFID debuts; RTP in its heyday; a brief history of Aspenware and its evolution into a ski industry technology powerhouse; one of the largest organisms in the world; what it means to modernize a ski area with technology; how United Airlines inspired a pivot at Aspenware; how the ski industry went from an early tech adopter to a laggard; the problem with legacy tech systems; what happens when people ask me where they should go skiing; what happened when Covid hit; why some resorts ticket windows “will never open again”; tech resistance; “I'm on a mission to get technology considered in the same breath as lifts and snowmaking”; do ski areas need tech to survive?; what skiing is competing against; why Alterra and Aspen formed a joint venture to purchase Aspenware; which bits of tech it makes sense to develop in-house; the Shopify of skiing?; which tech skiers should expect in the future; Vail's decision to move Epic Passes to phones next year; I still don't think trailmaps belong on phones (exclusively); interactive trailmaps are terrible; why skiers should own their resort data; the evolution of dynamic pricing; and the one thing that actually makes skiers purchase lift tickets.        Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewAs we all know, Covid supercharged the skiing tech cycle. In the eight months between the March 2020 shutdowns and the November-ish re-openings, the nation's 470-odd ski areas had to figure out how to keep people as far away from each other as possible without blowing up the entire industry. The answer, largely, was by digitizing as much of the experience as possible. Aspenware met that moment, and its momentum has continued in the two years since.Podcast Notes* Rob and I guessed a bit at the debut price of the Epic Pass back in 2008 – it was $579 for adults and $279 for children.* Rob referenced Start with Why, a business leadership book by Simon Sinek – you can buy it here.* I'll make the same disclaimer with Aspenware as I did with OpenSnow: while Aspenware is a Storm advertising partner, this podcast was not part of, and is not related to, that partnership. Aspenware did not have any editorial input into the content or editing of this podcast - which is true of any guest on any episode (Rob did request one non-material cut in our conversation, which I obliged). I don't do sponsored content. The Storm is independent ski media, based on reporting and independently verified facts - any opinion is synthesized through that lens, as it is with any good journalism outlet.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 139/100 in 2022, and number 385 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 is exploring 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

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 23. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 26. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoDaren Cole, President of Leitner-Poma of AmericaRecorded onNovember 10, 2022About Leitner-Poma of AmericaHere's the website boilerplate:Leitner-Poma of America offers a complete line of cable transport systems, including surface lifts, chairlifts, gondolas, MiniMetro® urban transport, trams, inclined elevators, and industrial trams.And this, which makes me go cross-eyed:Leitner-Poma of America, Inc. is a North American subsidiary of Poma S.A., a corporation with headquarters in Voreppe, France and a sister company of Leitner AG, a corporation with headquarters in Sterzing, Italy. Leitner–Poma of America engineers, manufactures, installs and services all types of ropeway systems for the ski industry, amusement parks, and urban transport.Cole and I sort through all of this on the podcast. What you need to understand though is that Leitner-Poma is basically one half of the U.S. ski-lift industry. The company also owns Skytrac, which only builds fixed-grip lifts. The other half of the industry is Doppelmayr, though saying “half” is not exactly correct: Doppelmayr claims more market share than Leitner-Poma. Other companies also claim a handful of lift projects most years - MND is building Waterville Valley's new six-pack, for example, and Partek is building the new Sandy quad at Saddleback.Why I interviewed himThe Storm is built around a very specific ethos: that machines are good, and that we should allow them to transport us to mountaintops. I respect and admire Uphill Bro. If I lived in the mountains, perhaps I would be him. But I do not and I am not. I am a tourist. Always and everywhere. I want to arrive to an organized experience. Uphilling is too much work, too much gear, too much risk for my coddled city soul.And so I ride lifts, and I've very specifically focused this newsletter and podcast on the world of lift-served skiing. This is the disconnect between 99 percent of skiers and 99 percent of ski writers. The former live in cities and suburbs and ski Seven Springs three to eight days per year and take a weeklong trip to Park City in February. The latter live in ski towns and hunt the novel by trade, normalizing the fringe. And while I enjoy the occasional Assault Mission recap of the skin up Mount Tahoe Grizzly Ridge, I don't really care (though I do enjoy following - and highly recommend - the WFG on Twitter or simpleskiing.com).What I care about is The Machine: how is this sprawling, tangled world of lift-served skiing continuously morphing into the wintertime realms of the 21st century, in which a relatively unchanging number of ski areas must accommodate a megapass-driven increase in skiers armed with rectangular megaphones capable of instantly broadcasting #LiftFails to Planet Earth's 5 billion internet users? How will an industry still spinning a not-immaterial number of Borvig, Hall, Riblet, and Yan lifts that pre-date the invention of written language modernize without bankrupting the hundreds of family-owned ski areas that still dot the continent? How far can technology push these simple but essential machines, and how high can that technology push their pricetags? How far can ski areas tap them to suck skiers out of the base before they multiply, Midwest cityhill-style, like ants across the mountain and create something more dangerous than congested liftlines – congested, and perilous, trails?This podcast does not really answer any of those questions, though all are recurring themes within The Storm. Instead, it acts as a primer on what is essentially one half of the U.S. ski industry: what is Leitner-Poma (and how, for God's sake, do you pronounce it)? What do they build, and where and how? Why are ski areas building so many lifts all of a sudden, and why are those projects encountering so many and so varied delays, from labor shortages to supply chain knots to permitting issues to locals rocking their pitchfork-and-bag-of-rotten-tomatoes NIMBY starter kits to town meetings? Is all this construction sustainable, and can Leitner-Poma and their main competitor, Doppelmayr, adapt to this demand and streamline their processes to forestall future construction delays?Lift design, construction, and installation is a fascinating, complicated world tucked into - and a fundamental component of - the fascinating, complicated world of lift-served skiing. And it is evolving as fast as skiing itself. Here's a peek inside.What we talked aboutThe wild and unexpected travel routes of an old-school salesman for Purgatory-Durango ski resort; working for Vail Associates in the Arrowhead/pre-Summit County days; Wild West days at Crested Butte; the insane, rapid evolution of the U.S. lift industry; the days when you could order a lift in August and have it spinning by Christmas; how Covid changed the lift game; when you take over a giant company just before a global pandemic; U.S.A.!; the legacies Leitner and Poma, and why the companies merged in 2000; Grand Junction as old-school ski hub and why it's a great place for manufacturing; how the Leitner-Poma subsidiary-parent company relationship works between Europe and America; Direct Drive; U.S. America hates mass transit; “a chairlift or a gondola is essentially an electric vehicle”; what it will take to spur greater urban lift development in America; what Leitner-Poma of America (LPOA) builds in Grand Junction, and what's imported from Europe; why LPOA bought Skytrac; expansion time; why the fixed-grip lift persists in our era of bigger-faster-better; how long can America's antique lift fleet last?; what may finally push independent ski areas rocking ancient Halls and Riblets to upgrade; a record year for LPOA; the changing culture around chairlift permits; breaking down the delays in Jackson Hole's Thunder lift as a mirror for lift-installation delays around the country; why haul ropes aren't made in America, and whether they could be; “at the end of the day, I own those delays”; building a better supply chain; are two-year lift builds the future?; labor shortages and building a better place to work; examining the lifts that are on time and why; building the Palisades Tahoe Base-to-Base Gondola; the differences between building on an all-new liftline versus building a replacement lift; how LPOA, the ski area, and the ski area planner work together to decide which lifts to put where; the return of the high-speed quad; and designing a better 2023 lift-construction season.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewWe are witnessing one of the busiest lift-construction seasons in modern times: 66 new or relocated lifts are rising across North America, according to Lift Blog. Some monsters, too: new gondolas at Palisades Tahoe, Whistler, and Steamboat; eight-packs at Boyne Mountain and Sunday River; 13 high-speed six-packs. Here's an overview of the 25 (or 26, if you insist) lifts that Leitner-Poma of America and its subsidiary, fixed-grip specialists Skytrac, are building:Cole joined Leitner-Poma of America in 2014. The company built six lifts that year (Skytrac, then an independent company, built another six). Scaling up any business is challenging, but scaling up amidst a re-ordering of the global economy and geopolitical environment, and in the midst of a pandemic, is flipping the game to MAXIMUM CHALLENGE mode.The modern world is both miraculous and mysterious. Where does all this crap come from? An incomprehensible network of mines and foundries and factories and warehouses and tools and vehicles and fuel and laborers and engineers and designers transform the raw materials of planet Earth into medicine and chairs and soccer balls and televisions and Broncos and yard furniture and suitcases and Thule boxes and Hanukkah candles and plastic dinosaurs and Optimus Prime toys. And chairlifts. A book documenting that journey would be an atlas of modern life and this spinning ball it occupies. It would also expose the enormous risks and faults in this impossibly far-flung system, and how a haul rope spun out of a European factory can impact construction on a lift rising up a Wyoming mountainside.Questions I wish I'd askedCole said that LPOA had re-sourced all the materials it had been getting in China to U.S. suppliers. I should have followed up to get a clearer understanding of why the company pulled out of China, and which parts had been flowing from that country.What I got wrong* In our discussion of urban gondola networks and whether we could ever see one in the United States, I pointed to how well existing systems had worked in “South America, Central America, and Mexico.” While such networks exist throughout South America (in Colombia, Bolivia, and Venezuela), and Mexico, none yet exist in Central America, as far as I can tell. While such systems have been proposed for Panama and Honduras, the one that appears closest to approval is an 8.9-kilometer, 11-station network in Guatemala City that would be built by Doppelmayr.* I stated that only seven of New York's 51 ski areas ran high-speed chairlifts. The correct number is eight: Belleayre (1), Windham (4), Hunter (3), Gore (2), Whiteface (1), Holiday Valley (4), Bristol (2), and Holimont (1).* I pronounced the name of the company as “Lee-tner-Poma” several times throughout the interview. I actually butchered it so bad that I re-recorded Cole's introduction – during which I included the name four times – after we spoke. Sorry dudes.Podcast NotesCole, in discussing his time with what was then known as “Vail Associates,” referred to the “Arrowhead days.” This is a reference to what is now the Arrowhead section of Beaver Creek, but was for a short time in the 1980s and ‘90s a separate ski area. Here's the 1988 trailmap:The modern Beaver Creek retains some of the old trailnames on what tends to be a very empty part of the resort:Additional thoughts on urban gondolasIt took about four seconds from the invention of the chairlift for engineers to realize they could attach a little house to the overhead cable instead of a chair. Tada: the gondola. Let's go skiing.But a gondola, it turns out, is a pretty efficient means of transit just about anywhere. It just took the world a while to realize it. Since 2014, La Paz, the high-altitude (12,000 feet!) Bolivian capital city, has built a massive gondola network stringing together its far-flung districts:While Mi Teleférico – as the system is known – was not the world's first urban gondola system, it is the first to consist solely of cable cars – other systems complement trains or buses. It is also the longest and most extensive. And it is getting longer – at full buildout, the system could consist of 11 lines and 30 stations. The only thing more astonishing than the speed with which this network has materialized is how incredibly inexpensive it has been to build: gondolaproject.com puts the total cost of the 11-line network at around $1.4 billion. For comparison's sake, New York City's three-station expansion of the Q subway line, which opened in 2017, ran $4.5 billion.Gondolas are relatively cheap, efficient, environmentally friendly, and insanely easy to build compared to new roads or rails. Which of course means U.S. Americans are terrified of them. It's true that the nation, as a whole, is allergic to mass transit, preferring to tool around in 18-wheel-drive F-950s. Fighting anything new is the U.S. American way (where were these NIMBYs when we were punching interstate highways through city centers in the 1950s?). But generations raised in the backs of minivans seem especially horrified by gondolas. The hysteria around the proposed Little Cottonwoods gondola – which would substantially mitigate atrocious powder-day and weekend traffic on a road that probably never should have been built to begin with – is indicative of U.S. American reaction toward non-ski gondolas in general. Everywhere such systems – or even simple, two-station lines – are proposed, they meet instant and widespread resistance.There are practical reasons why the U.S. has not yet developed an urban gondola network: most of our cities are too sprawling to tie together with anything other than surface transportation (i.e. buses). La Paz, the Bolivian model city cited above, is hilly and tight, laced with narrow webs of centuries-old roads that would be difficult to widen. But there are places such systems would make sense, either as standalone networks or as complements to existing train-and-bus lines: Chicago, Portland (Oregon), New York City, many college towns. A forthcoming gondola connecting a Paris suburb to the city's metro, soaring over a “hellish carscape” of highways, demonstrates the potential here.Any such proposal in U.S. America, however, will have to overcome the reflexive opposition that will attend it. In Utah, Little Cottonwood gondola proponents are fighting a basket of idiotic arguments ranging from aesthetic concerns over the height of the towers (as though a car-choked paved road is not atrocious) to indignance over taxpayer funding for the machine (as though tax dollars don't build roads) to warped arguments that mass transit is somehow elitist (instead insisting that we all need personal vehicles equipped with $1,000 sets of winter tires). It's all a little pathetic. And that's for a simple, three-station line way up in the mountains. Just wait until some Portland resident launches a Save Our Cats campaign because a rider in a passing gondola car might glimpse Fluffy pissing in her litterbox.I'm cynical, but Cole, fortunately, is far more optimistic and diplomatic, suggesting that it will really only take one successful instance of a non-ski, non-tourist-attraction gondola for the notion to take hold in America. I hope he's right.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 126/100 in 2022, and number 372 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, which, given the Little Cottonwood take above, I fully expect). 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. 7. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 10. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoBill Cairns, President and General Manager of Bromley Mountain Resort, VermontRecorded onOctober 24, 2022About BromleyClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Joseph O'DonnellOperated by: The Fairbank GroupPass affiliations: NoneReciprocal pass partners: 1 day each at Jiminy Peak, CranmoreLocated in: Peru, VermontClosest neighboring ski areas: Magic Mountain (14 minutes), Stratton (19 minutes)Base elevation: 1,950 feetSummit elevation: 3,284 feetVertical drop: 1,334 feetSkiable Acres: 300Average annual snowfall: 145 inchesTrail count: 47 (31% black, 37% intermediate, 32% beginner)Lift count: 9 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 4 doubles, 1 T-bar, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Bromley's lift fleet)Uphill capacity: 10,806 skiers per hourWhy I interviewed himVermont is one of those states where you can see a lot of ski areas from the tops of other ski areas. I find this thrilling. I love all ski areas. Relish them. That such machines, so similar yet so distinct, could be so concentrated sparks within me some thrill of exotic immersion, of adventuring into zones dense and wild and compelling.Of these peak-to-peak views, none is more dramatic than south-facing Bromley viewed from north-facing Stratton. In Vermont, which manages sprawl better than the rest of U.S. America, your view is most often of mountains, the endless Greens, treed and rippling toward Canada, radio towers blinking against the sky. But Bromley, etched magnificently into the expanse, owns the view from its larger neighbor.Bromley and Stratton are two points of Southern Vermont's so-called Golden Triangle. The third is Magic. The three ski areas have a weird joint history. Of owning and buying and selling and sometimes closing one another. Right now they're all friends. Or so they say. They're each so different that it's hard to even think of them as competitors. Ultimate Indie Magic gets the beards and the FTW narrative. Ultimate Corporate Six-pack-a-tron Stratton gets the Ikon Pass-toting New Yorkers.And what is Bromley? Bromley is Ultimate Bromley. I'm not sure how else to describe it. And Bromley skiers ski Bromley. And they love the place. And why wouldn't they? The front side is blue square glory, fall lines straight and steady, cut New England narrow through the woods. There are chairlifts everywhere, flying in all directions from the base. Old doubles mostly. How ski areas once were before they simplified and streamlined. The Blue Ribbon side (like Pabst Blue Ribbon, like PBR – get it guys*), is a slightly shorter, black-diamond version of the frontside.All of this oriented gloriously toward the sun. When there's sun. In Vermont, in the winter, when it's a thousand degrees below zero, that matters a lot. This is not a great position for snowpack. Most North American ski areas face north for a reason: shadows block the sun, preserving snow depth. But skiing into May is not the point of Bromley, or its goal. The place gets enough snow, and has a good enough snowmaking system, that it can usually make the first weekend in April. Which is when Bromley skiers are tired of skiing.Or maybe they buy the Killington spring pass and keep going into June. In Vermont, you have options. The state has the same number of ski areas (26) as California, which is 17 times its size by area and 60 times larger by population. To succeed here, a ski area needs something compelling. Thirty miles south of Bromley lies the Hermitage Club, formerly Haystack, 1,400 vertical feet and 200 acres, a near Bromley clone size-wise. Yet the ski area has closed at least three times since its 1964 founding. No one could ever figure out how to compete with – or be little brother to – Mount Snow, the snowmaking Godzilla four and a half miles up the road. And yet Bromley, half the size of Stratton, which sits gigantic in the vista from Sun Mountain's frontside trails, has operated for 85 consecutive seasons. It's not like Bromley skiers don't know they have choices. They just don't care. Ultimate Bromley, with its little base village and its one high-speed lift and its zillion low-speed lifts and its sunshiney aspect, is home.*That sound you hear is every hipster in Brooklyn simultaneously mounting their single-speed banana-seat bicycles and riding north toward Vermont.What we talked aboutThe accidental career; Snow Valley, Vermont; Bromley in the ‘80s; the complex and interesting challenge of the ski business; where loyalty comes from; “our efforts are the same on a Tuesday in January as they are on a holiday Saturday at Christmas”; Vermont's first chairlift; the incredible puzzle of modernizing Bromley's snowmaking in the ‘90s; the importance of water pressure; “summer's always been a big deal at Bromley”; grab a PBR and pop a tab for this Bromley Mountain origin story; Fred Pabst's unlikely skiing legacy; snowmaking in the 1960s; Stig Albertsson buys the mountain; the arrival of the current owner, Joe O'Donnell, and his legacy and style as an owner; that one time Bromley owned Magic, or Magic owned Bromley, or Stratton owned Bromley, or something; why Bromley closed Magic; the return of The Golden Triangle; what happened when a fire hit Bromley 10 days before Christmas; the Fairbank Group arrives; last year's massive upgrade to the Sun Mountain Express; why Bromley upgraded rather than replaced the lift; the incredible resilience of Hall chairlifts; the biggest challenge in running a fleet of decades-old lifts; where else a detachable lift might make sense on the mountain; a thought experiment in what would make sense to upgrade the Plaza chairlift and Lord's Prayer T-bar; the utility and future of the old double-double; the incredible efficiency of modern snowmaking and the concomitant rise in lift-maintenance costs; managing snow quality with Bromley's southern exposure; the Bromley snow pocket; Bromley's lost trails; potential future glade and trail development; backcountry access now and in the future; the challenges of Forest Service expansion; “in some respects, the very best skiing at Bromley is not cut”; the base village; pricing season passes in the Epic and Ikon era and how Bromley has maintained its pricing power; rethinking the mountain's lift-ticket pricing structure; why we're unlikely to see a Bromley-Jiminy Peak-Cranmore joint pass anytime soon.         Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe Epic Pass hit New England like a tsunami. For decades, season pass prices had ticked upward like post-IPO Google stock. Then Vail bought Stowe, and everything instantly changed. As I wrote in March 2020 (a few days before I had something more urgent to write about), in an article headlined “The Era of the Expensive Single-Mountain Season Pass Is Over in the Northeast”:  For the 2016-17 season, the last before the Broomfield Big Boys scooped up Stowe, a season pass at that most classic of New England rough-and-tumble mountains was $2,313, according to New England Ski History. Pass prices to the other large Vermont resorts were similarly outlandish: $1,779 for Sugarbush, $1,619 for Okemo, $1,486 for Killington, $1,199 for Stratton, $1,144 for Bromley (!), $999 for Mount Snow, $992 for Mad River Glen, $974 for Jay Peak, $899 for Burke, and on and on.Granted, these were probably not early season prices, and these are presumably adult no-blackout passes. But price differential from just four seasons ago – four! – is remarkable. And none of these passes, with the exception of Killington, which gave you Pico access, came with additional days at any other mountains as far as I am aware [2022 note: the Mount Snow pass, as I'm now aware, was a Peak Pass, which would have been good for unlimited access at three New Hampshire ski areas, Hunter, and all of Peak's smaller ski areas in Pennsylvania and the Midwest]. In 2020, you can now get full unrestricted access to Stowe, Mount Snow, and Okemo for $979 on an Epic Pass [2022 note: this was the season before Vail lowered Epic Pass prices by 20 percent]. You get full Sugarbush and Stratton access for a $999 Ikon Pass, and a Beast 365 pass would be $1,344 and get you unlimited Killington and access to Sugarbush and Stratton every day of the season outside of a few blackout days.In other words, for less than the price of a Stowe season pass four years ago, you can now have season passes to six of Vermont's largest mountains. If you don't mind dealing with blackout days, you could pick up a $729 Epic Local Pass and a $699 Ikon Base Pass and ski Vermont every day of the season for $1,428 (and Okemo and Mount Snow are still not even blacked out on the Epic Local Pass). And you can further reduce this by, say, picking up a $599 Northeast Epic Pass and a (if you're renewing), $649 Ikon Base pass, which would give you blacked-out season passes to Okemo, Mount Snow, Stratton, and Sugarbush, and 10 days at Stowe and five at Killington, for all of $1,248.I could go on. There is no need to. Skiers will figure this out for themselves, and quickly. Anyone buying a season pass in Vermont just four years ago was more or less locked into that mountain for the season, as the number of ski days required to justify the pass purchase was significant, and any days invested elsewhere probably seemed excessive and indulgent. In the three-year instant it took Vail to buy Stowe and Okemo and Peak and integrate them into a regional pass, and Alterra to buy Stratton and Sugarbush and introduce the Ikon Pass and then significantly expand access in the region, the consumer expectation has shifted from season pass as an aspirational indulgence reserved for locals and second-home owners to a bargain product that offers limitless access to not one but multiple high-quality mountains, not just across the East, but in the snowy towering West.I then called out Bromley in particular:In this environment, not even the burliest mountains can stand alone. Killington just conceded that. Boyne did something similar with its New England Pass last week, tossing an Ikon Base Pass in with its $1,549 Platinum-tier product, which provides unlimited access to its standout trio of Sugarloaf, Sunday River, and Loon.All of this leaves skiers – especially mountain-hopping skiers like myself – in the best pass-shopping position imaginable. No matter which pass we buy, it will come not just with limitless days at our local mountain, but bonus or unlimited days at at least half a dozen other mountains that we can easily travel to.All of which creates a very difficult reality for independent mountains: skiers now expect access far beyond their core mountain when purchasing a season pass, and they expect those passes to be massively discounted from what they were less than one presidential election cycle ago.On both price and additional access, many independent ski areas are far behind. Bromley's season pass, for example, is $925 (all prices are for adult, no-blackout passes, unless otherwise indicated). That's early-bird pricing. It includes no free days at any other mountains, even though its parent company also owns or operates Jiminy Peak in Massachusetts and Cranmore in New Hampshire [2022 note: Bromley, Cranmore, and Jiminy Peak passes now include one day at each of their sister mountains]. It does offer some non-holiday discounts of up to half off day tickets at partner resorts, including Jay Peak.This is a completely untenable position. Bromley is a fine mountain. It is terrific for families. It has some fun terrain off the Blue Ribbon Quad. It is very easy to get to. But it is right down the road from Stratton, which is far larger, has a far more sophisticated lift network, and is on the Ikon Pass, meaning a pass to Stratton is only $74 more than a pass to Bromley and also includes a pass to Sugarbush, days at Killington, etc., etc. Unless you have a condo on the mountain and you ski there and only there and have for years and years and have no aspirations or intentions of going anywhere else ever, there is no way to justify that pass price with no access to any mountain other than your own in today's competitive ski pass environment.One of two things needs to happen in order for independent mountains to remain competitive in the season pass realm: they need to join a coalition of other independent ski areas to offer reciprocal free days at one another's mountains for passholders, or the price needs to come way down. And in most cases, the answer is probably some combination of both of those things.Well I was wrong. Bromley never joined a pass coalition and its pass price keeps increasing, and yet every year, the mountain sells more passes. So I'll own my mistake. My template was too simplistic, too focused on price and variety and size as a skier's primary motivating factors, too anchored to the assumption that all skiers were like me, seeking the most mountains for the lowest cost. It would have been like saying Whole Foods business model sucks because Kroger has larger stores and sells groceries for less money. Consumers will pay a premium for exclusivity and quality. And Bromley offers both: good snow, fewer people. A predictable, repeatable experience for a tight community of families and condo owners. These things matter more than I had supposed.Select independent ski areas all over the country are thriving in the megapass era by snubbing the trends of the megapass era: Wolf Creek, Mt. Baker, Bear Valley, Whitefish, Bretton Woods, Wachusett, Plattekill, Holiday Valley. Part of this is Epkon burnout, refugees seeking respite from the crowds. Part of it is atmosphere and community, skiers buying into a gestalt as much as a place or activity. Bromley operates in one of the toughest neighborhoods in skiing, seated within a two-hour's drive of dozens of competitors, many of them bigger and cheaper, with more terrain variety and more snowfall and more and faster lifts. And yet the Sun Mountain keeps winning. There's a reason for that, and I wanted to figure out what it was.What I got wrongI stated in the interview that Joseph O'Donnell had purchased Bromley in 1990, intimating that marked the start of his involvement with the ski area. Cairns points out that O'Donnell had worked with Bromley beginning in the 1980s.Why you should ski BromleyMount Snow and Stratton, nice as they are, tricked out as they are, have downsides. Especially on weekends. Especially midwinter. Neither does a great job managing skier volume, and neither seems particularly interested in trying. I don't know how much that really matters. It's New England, and skiers expect crowds. It's all part of the experience, like overgrooming and boilerplate and safety bars dropped on your dome before the chair is out of the barn.How to escape the human anthill ski experience? Well, you could join the Hermitage Club, which at last check-in cost $50,000 upfront and $15,000 annually thereafter. You could ski Magic, which is uncrowded but snowmaking-challenged, with just 50 percent of the mountain covered and one fixed-grip double to the top (though the Black Quad may finally be close to launch). Or you could ski Bromley, with the snowmaking and grooming firepower of its bigger corporate neighbors, but without the mosh-pit atmosphere. Unlike most of Vermont, the place is tolerable even at its busiest.And the sunshine effect is real. Stratton is often abandoned after 2:30 p.m. The sun dips, the snow bricks up, and everyone leaves. When the clouds aren't bunching heavy over New England and the wind stays down, Bromley is just a more pleasant place to be. It doesn't have the tough-guy terrain like Killington or the expanses of glades like Stratton. And it doesn't need them. Bromley, the Ultimate Bromley, is just fine being exactly what it knows it has to be.Podcast notes* We go deep on Bromley's long history, but New England Ski History has a great overview of the ski area's development, going back to the wild early days of recorded Vermont history.* Bill and I discuss the lost Snow Valley ski area extensively. Though this little spot, parked off Vermont state highway 30 between Bromley and Stratton, closed in 1984, it remains popular among backcountry skiers. Someone still maintains several runs, and the property was recently listed for sale (it was scheduled for auction in September, but I'm uncertain how that went). While it's highly unlikely that anyone could redevelop Snow Valley as a lift-served ski area, it could become New England's version of the uphill-only Bluebird Backcountry ski area in Colorado. Here's a 1982 trailmap:* Bill discusses the rising cost of everything, but point in particular to the exploding price of chairlifts. He notes that the Sun Mountain Express cost Bromley $2.7 million in 1997, and estimates that it would run $7 million to install a similar lift today. Had chairlifts followed general inflationary trends, the lift would run around $5 million today.* Bill references a 1950s trail called “Bromley Run,” that ran off the summit and didn't return to the lifts. You can see it marked as trail 10 on this “Big Bromley” trailmap from 1950:* Bill and I discuss potential terrain expansions (unlikely), and the possibility of backcountry skiing – possibly guided – from the summit down to Peru, to the east, and East Dorset, to the northwest. He also refers to the Best Farm quite a bit, which is the large circled area off highway 11. The Fairbank Group's website currently has this space scoped for real estate development. Here's the ski area in relation to these various 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 120/100 in 2022, and number 366 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

Hegeman of Holiday Valley on the Ellicottville Fall Fest

Gisele explains her amazing weekend with her boyfriend.  They went on a ropes course at Holiday Valley in Ellicottville, NY. After they struggled through the course they were able to discuss all the business analogies they had seen.Andy shared that when he took students through ropes courses when he was a camp counselor they would teach about the three zones of personal challenge.The green zone is too easy.  The red zone is too difficult and overwhelming.  The yellow zone is where you are challenged and probably a little scared but with the right encouragement and help one can push him/herself to over come the obstacle.Are you living in the yellow zone?Please let us know if you are enjoying this podcast and ask us any question you like.To learn more about what Andy does and more of his content go to:AndyKerrCoaching.comFacebook: @andykerrcoachingPurchase Andy's Book A Story and A PointTo find more awesome content from Gisele, visit:Honest.CEOFacebook: @HonestCEOvlogInstagram: @HonestCEOvlog

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.WhoNick Mir, co-owner and general manager of Snow Ridge, New YorkRecorded onMarch 29, 2022About Snow RidgeClick here for a mountain stats overviewMoney quote: If you want western powder, the best place to find it in the east is the Tug Hill Plateau in New York, and upland region east of Lake Ontario. They should coin the phrase “Greatest Snow in the East.” They get tons of lake effect and most of this snow is high quality. Unfortunately, they lack an essential ingredient for powder skiing: mountains! There is, however, one ski area on the Tug Hill Plateau’s steeper eastern face, Snow Ridge, which offers up about [500] vertical feet of skiing. As a kid growing up in upstate NY, my first true deep-powder experiences were at Snow Ridge.- From a 2015 Washington Post interview with Jim Steenburgh, “professor of atmospheric science at the University of Utah, an expert on mountain weather and climate, and a die-hard skier,” and author of Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth: Weather, Climate Change, and Finding Deep Powder in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains and around the World.Owned by: The mother-son team of Cyndy Sisto and Nick MirBase elevation: 1,350 feetSummit elevation: 1,850 feetVertical drop: 500 feetAverage annual snowfall: 230 inchesTrail count: 31 (14% expert, 48% advanced, 27% intermediate, 11% beginner)Lift count: 5 (3 doubles, 1 T-bar, 1 carpet) - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Snow Ridge’s lift fleetWhy I interviewed himThe perception is hard-wired and widespread, intractable and exasperating: the East is ice. Inclines paved like a boat launch. Volcanic. Like skiing on the surface of the moon. It is meant as a jab from the high-altitude West, but the East believes it too. The Born from Ice crowds tut-tuts about the internet, “if you can ski the East, you can ski anywhere,” casting the whole of it as a kind of marine-camp proving ground, the bent-rimmed backyard hoop to the glorious Rockies, skiing’s NBA.This whole story is sort of true and it’s sort of not. Lacking the West’s high alpine, New England and New York are vulnerable to season-long freeze-thaw cycles, to bands of rain and ice storms and sleet and hail. Mix in high skier density, narrow trails, and the impossible predominance of windshield-wiper turns, and you get trails skied off by 11 on weekends, hardboiled moguls, concrete layers set like booby traps at the well of spring slush turns. It can be an amazing mess.But some regions are tidier than others. The Northeast is like Manhattan, a city of neighborhoods, each one distinct. As with the West, altitude matters, as does aspect and shape of the mountain. And water, or proximity to it. There are two places in the Northeast where some combination of these elements combines to produce outsized snowfall: the Green Mountain Spine in Northern Vermont (especially Sugarbush north to Jay Peak), and the Tug Hill Plateau, seated just east of Lake Ontario in Upstate New York. Snow Ridge hangs off the eastern edge of this geologic feature, in the bullseye of the lake effect snowtrain. Observe:The result is something special, a microclimate more typical of the world’s high-mountain redoubts. “We could get two feet of snow here, and literally 15 minutes down the road they could have gotten a dusting,” Mir told me in the interview.Snow Ridge is not the only New York ski area floating in this nirvana zone. McCauley – 633 vertical feet of snow-choked boulder fields and glades parked 32 miles to the east – and 300-foot Dry Hill are also hooked up to nature’s firehose. Woods Valley catches a lot of it as well. It’s a fun little foursome, undersized and overserved, and, for the wily and adventurous among us, fortunately overlooked.What we talked aboutThoughts on pushing Snow Ridge’s closing date into April if conditions ever allow; I admit I don’t really understand what a rail jam is - sue me; the complexity and expense of building a good terrain park; growing up at Toggenburg; ski racing and its frustrations; fleeing West to ski-bum Colorado and Oregon and the eventual pull of home; how a long-time ski family came to own their own ski area; “we actually did this” – what it felt like to get the keys to the kingdom; the condition of Snow Ridge when Mir arrived in 2015; the intense commitment and effort necessary to run a family ski area; resilience in the maw of a break-even business; how long it took to turn a profit; how much a guy who owns a ski area actually get to ski; why Snow Ridge removed and did not replace the Snowy Meadows double; how much it costs to run a chairlift; possible future consolidation of Ridge Runner and North Chair; the natural-snow, mostly ungroomed hideaway of the Snow Pocket terrain and T-bar; the anomaly of fresh-powder laps at a modern lift-served U.S. ski resort and how Snow Ridge delivers; whether Snow Pocket could ever get a chairlift; whether we could ever see a lift return to South Slope; the eventual fate of the retired top T-bar terminal; where and why Snow Ridge expanded its trail network for the 2021-22 ski season; why Snow Ridge moved the progression park from the carpet area to the top of the mountain; where we can expect to see additional new trails next season; potential future expansion skier’s right off the top of the Pocket T-bar and skier’s left off the top of North; the gnarly existing terrain cut through North; Snow Ridge’s powder bullseye on the edge of the Tug Hill Plateau; the quality of Lake Ontario lake effect snow; plans to amp up the snowmaking system; grooming and the art of crafting an interesting mountain; why Snow Ridge joined the Indy Pass; the mountain’s budget season pass; new reciprocal partners for 2022-23; reaction to Toggenburg closing; whether Mir would have bought the ski area had he had the chance; competing against enormous state-owned ski areas as a family-owned small business; and New York’s rebate program for high-efficiency snowguns.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIt’s too early to say which forces will capsize the next wave of yet-to-be lost ski areas. After nominal or nonexistent snowmaking drove hundreds of mountains to failure in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, the number of lift-served bumps has stayed relatively stable since around 2005, hovering between a high of 485 for the 2006-07 season to a pandemic-induced low of 462 last year (a handful of ski areas voluntarily suspended operations to pass on the complications of socially distant skiing).With the exception of a few dozen snow-choked Western mountains and some ropetow bumps that survive by the sky, pretty much all of today’s survivors built their way into resilience one mile of pipe and snowgun at a time. That, more than anything, stabilized the ski landscape, giving us the rough U.S. ski area footprint we know today.But it won’t be enough forever. As well-capitalized standouts such as Holiday Valley, Windham, and state-owned Gore have modernized their lift fleets and snowmaking systems, many of New York’s family-owned ski areas have languished. Dozens of chairlifts that predate the moon landing still spin across the state*. Antique snowguns - electricity hogs that blow marginal snow and under very specific conditions - are still in widespread use. No one’s, like, pulling a snowcat with oxen or anything, but they are really rubberbanding this thing together in many cases.Fortunately, there is a hack. All you need is an individual with the energy of a nuclear reactor and the patience of tectonic plates. The person has to love owning a ski area more than they love skiing – because they’ll hardly ever get to ski – and be willing to compete against ski areas 10 times their size that their own tax dollars subsidize. And they have to believe in their own vision more than the slaughterhouse of weather gutting their life’s work outside all winter long.This is the reality at Snow Ridge. The lift fleet was installed before the breakup of Pangea. When Mir and his mother arrived in 2015, pretty much everything was gassed out: those lifts, the snowmaking, the buildings, the groomer. The place was a museum. And not in the way that Mad River Glen is a museum, intentionally funky and camouflaging newness beneath a vintage sheen. Snow Ridge was falling apart.Seven years later, those lifts are still there, but they’ve been overhauled and fixed up. Much of the snowmaking plant is new. Two modern groomers buff the slopes. The bar is beautiful, and Mir and Sisto and the rest of their family are rehabbing the rest of the buildings room by room – when I stopped by in January, the ski area had re-opened a remodeled bathroom that day.Mir is young, outspoken, determined, smart. And he saved Snow Ridge. Not every back-of-the-woods bump is going to survive the great modernization, with its rush to ecommerce and D-line detachables and snowguns activated from an app. But many will, and those that do are going to have leaders like him to guide them through it.*Don’t do it, Identifies-Solutions-In-Need-Of-A-Problem-Bro. New York is one of the most highly regulated states in the country, and these lifts are inspected by a state agency annually. Ski Areas of New York also runs one of the most well-regarded lift-safety programs in the country, and serious chairlift accidents are remarkably rare here, in spite of more than 4 million annual skier visits.Why you should ski Snow RidgeNew York has a lot of ski areas. It does not have a lot of wild ski areas, with the sort of yeah-maybe-this-was-a-terrible-idea runs that slug you like a car crash. Snow Ridge is an exception, with a little slice of madness christened North Ridge that will smash your face in without asking permission. Think Paradise at Mad River Glen, but without the vert or the waterfall, a half-dozen tangled lines spiraling in and around a matrix of drainages. Amazing Grace is the truly feral one, a Pinocchio-down-the-whale’s-throat plunge into the bristling abyss.Snow Ridge only gives you 500 vertical feet, but it’s a big 500. It’s all fall-line, for starters, like skiing the edge of a pyramid. The terrain tames out in the evacuation from North Ridge, but it’s still straight down, expansive, and empty. On MLK Day last year I lapped the Snow Pocket T-bar nine times as foot-deep powder stood in untouched fields visible from the lift line. I feasted. In and out of the glades, along the tree-lined plunge of Kuersteiner off the top of South, down the narrow swordfight of the unmarked abandoned South T-bar line. All day long like this, 34 runs and no liftlines, lapping that New York natural to exhaustion.Snow Ridge is one of six Indy Pass partners scattered across New York. It floats in a Bermuda Triangle between Greek Peak to the south, Titus to the north, and Catamount to the east. While, as Mir told me in our conversation, it’s getting busier, Snow Ridge is still a hideaway, the back-pocket secret you can save for a holiday powder day, when the masses throttle the Northeast giants with the kind of meme-spawning liftlines their big-time marketing and megapass affiliations bring. Or watch the weather and sneak up when everyone else gets skunked and that little circle of pink hovers near the top of America.More Snow RidgeNew York Ski Blog’s interview with Mir last year.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 35/100 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

1. 滑雪Ski vs. Snowboard的不同 2. 美國和日本雪的特色 3. 美國各地的雪場經驗分享 Holiday Valley, NY; Seven Spring, PA; Napa Valley, CA; Vail, Breckenridge, or Winter Park, CO. 4. 各地雪場的套票 (Epic Pass) 5. 滑雪不同等級線道 (綠線、藍線、黑線、Double Black Dimond) 6. 給初學者的建議 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode Nicole and Sarah host ski mom Melanie Drouin, an administrator and ski club advisor at an all girls school in Akron, Ohio. Melanie talks to us about giving back to her local community by getting girls on snow for the first time.Melanie tell us about some of the barriers the girls face - primarily financial barriers like program costs and the expense of quality ski clothes.  We were surprised to learn that after Melanie's local mountain (Boston Mills Brandywine) was bought by Vail Resorts, the school ski club program was cut down from 2 months to only 5 ski days. Melanie guides the girls and their families through every step from finding the right gear (base layers, mittens) to walking in ski boots for the first time. Another challenge Melanie shared is that the girls have trouble finding ski helmets that fit over their braids, beads and other hairstyles that do not seem to be even considered by helmet manufacturers. Melanie's family loves skiing at Holiday Valley in Ellicottville, New York which sounds like an amazing family owned ski area and community that we hope to visit some day!Resources:Holiday Valley Ski ResortBoston Mills BrandywinePlease support our sponsor!Mabels Labels at www.mabelslabels.com and use code SKIMOMS for 15% off your first orderJoin the Ski Moms Fun Community!Follow us on Instagram @skimomsfunCheck out the Ski Moms Fun Store Get your copy of the Ski Moms CookbookEmail us at sarah@skimomsfun.com

In this episode, we talk about beer obviously... along with cars we would buy for $2,500, $5000, and $10K and why. Dave goes to Holiday Valley and comes back in one piece along with doing some RC projects, Kevin makes poor financial decisions, Will finished the Miata but can't do anything else for now and Mike blows fuses on the 944. 

The Blade Dive Episode 38 - We are joined by the man who has zero stage fright and thrives on the mic when the music is loud and the vibes are elevated. All jokes aside, Pat Morgan is in the Virtual Booth and we're talking about all things him. Morgan is currently the Marketing & Brand Manager for Mountain Creek, New Jersey and is responsible for curating ideas that support his brand and benefit the snow industry as a whole. Now before you say “WTF”, as an industry that sells an experience, name the department that seldom interacts with Mountain Operations… and which department always has ideas they'd like to make happen…. You get my point…! Morgan is one of the few dudes that  gets it and can help Marketing worlds speak the operations language. Yes, we open that can of worms! Pat Morgan is originally from Ellicottville, New York, grew up riding Holiday Valley, New York and landed a job washing dishes at 15 years of age.  Morgan also worked as a Snowboard Instructor at HoliMont, New York. Morgan's personal investment in the snow industry culture is best described as “time well spent”.  He has landed jobs at Red Bull, Forum Snowboards, Big Boulder, Pennsylvania and as afore mentioned,  currently is at Mountain Creek, New Jersey….all I might add, while being authentic and being himself. Episode 38 is a fun chat! It is really an effort to cross pollinate and expand on previous conversations. I'd never met Pat Morgan until we connected to create this episode.  We discuss the Marketing language and whether Mountain Operations teams will ever be able to speak a language that seems to have an endless amount of dialects. We unpack what the core ideals of the snow industry culture needs to thrive. We talk about what it's like to have something you've built be stripped from you. We dive into having boots on the ground and that this is the best way to effectively communicate as well as empathize with co workers, especially in this digital world we live in now, with emailing, text messaging, Zoom and the likes!Enjoy! And if you're in the machine… Turn up the volume!Follow us on:https://www.instagram.com/thebladedive/https://www.facebook.com/thebladedive

Hello skiers and riders here is your ski report podcast for Friday December 17th. A nice sunny day of skiing and riding is ahead on Friday. Greek Peak and Holiday Valley re-opens today and this weekend Oak Mountain will start their season while Titus And Royal Mountain's re-open as well. Plan on skipping the shopping frenzy and going skiing, riding or tubing!

Hello skiers and riders here is your ski report podcast for Friday December 10th. Bristol Mountain opens their 57th season today and Holiday Valley starts night skiing too. Also some ski areas got some fresh snow as well.

Hello skiers and riders here is your ski report podcast for Saturday December 4th. It was a great opening day for Greek Peak and Holiday Valley. Today Royal Mountain in Caroga Lake and Titus Mountain in Malone start their seasons. Also the snowmaking window is open and many ski areas are pumping out the snow and we'll have more ski areas opening next weekend too.

Hello skiers and riders here is your ski report podcast for Friday December 3rd. Greek Peak in Virgil and Holiday Valley in Ellicottville start their seasons today! Also Holiday Valley will open their new Yodeler Express Quad lift as well! Also we wanted to remind you that we have our brand new ski poster for sale in time for the Holidays. Head to iskiny.com to check it out on our front page and to purchase today. Some previous season posters are for sale as well. In addition we also have the Gold Pass available for $2000 and that gets you one lift ticket a day at each of our member ski areas and you can give it to someone else to use for the day too as it's fully transferable. Learn more at iskiny.com under the Deals menu.

"If we stop creating and stop dreaming - things go away"Marketing & Brand Manager for Snow Operating - Mountain Creek/Big SNOW American Dream

In the historically male-centric culture of ski patrolling, women are finding a better place in the community. We sit down with Kolina Coe, the Assistant Director and a dog handler at Northstar California, and Kristen Russo, the Assistant Patrol Director at Holiday Valley in New York state. We discuss their experiences as being women ski patrollers, what has changed over the years, and what still needs to be improved.

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored in part by:Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.Helly Hansen - Listen to the podcast to learn how to get an 18.77 percent discount at the Boston and Burlington, Vermont stores.WhoSara Montgomery, General Manager of West Mountain and Spencer Montgomery, Co-Owner and Operator of West Mountain, New YorkRecorded onApril 12, 2021Sara and Spencer Montgomery took over West Mountain, N.Y. prior to the 2013-14 ski season. They have since led a $17 million transformation of the ski area.Why I interviewed themBecause West Mountain is one of the best stories in New York skiing. A decade ago, the place was falling apart. Trails-in-name-only had become overgrown and were rarely open. A handful of homemade mobile snowguns serviced the mountain. A trio of doddering antique chairlifts rose from a cluster of ramshackle or abandoned buildings. Night-lighting was inconsistent and covered only portions of the mountain. The place puttered along on 30,000 skier visits per year. Then the Montgomerys arrived with a new vision and energy, moving their family of six to the base of the mountain and initiating a $17 million gut renovation. Eight years after their arrival, the place is transformed, with a forest of tower guns that can bury the full trail network in a few days, three new lifts, 100 percent night skiing, widened and consistently open ski runs, renovated lodges and cafeterias, and reinvigorated race and after-school programs. And that’s just phase one. The long-term aspiration is to transform West into the sort of ski-and-stay destination that New York is desperately lacking, build an affordable ski academy, and continue expanding the lift and trail network. I wanted to speak with the Montgomerys to understand how they did all this and how they were going to stretch toward the future.West is divided into two distinct pods: the Main trails, left, where the race programs are centered, and the Northwest section, right.What we talked aboutGrowing up skiing at West; how they came to own and operate the ski area; living on the mountainside; what West looked like when they took over in 2013 and where they invested $17 million to completely overhaul the ski area; why they widened the front trails beneath the main summit lift; how to raise $17 million; transforming West into a true resort with ski-and-stay condos and a pedestrian village; where we could see ski expansion and new lifts on the mountain; the great missed opportunity of New York skiing; mirroring the Holiday Valley or Jiminy Peak model; the topography and future of the mountaintop; the growth and future of the race program; ramping up customer service; the overhauled cafeteria and Northwest lodge; amping up the night-skiing operation; the growth of after-school programs; balancing strong race programs with a good ski experience for the public; making race programs affordable; growing the college and twenty-something demos; why West bought Hermitage Club’s old summit triple and why they added a loading carpet; selling off the old Riblet chairs; upgrading the Facelift chair to a quad; West’s steep terrain; choosing a new triple chair for the Northwest side and shifting it onto a different location than the lift it replaced; why stationary guns are superior to mobile guns; why a 10-inch pipe can carry three times the water of a six-inch pipe; ditching the habit of having trails-in-name-only and making sure the full trailmap was open for the majority of the winter; clearing out the warren of narrow trails beneath the main lift; why West eliminated a number of Northwest-side runs listed on old trailmaps; the potential to thin more glades; long-term expansion potential; the logic behind the $499 season pass; surging pass sales; why West ditched the midweek pass; the chances of West joining the Indy Pass; and Covid-era adaptations that may stick around beyond the 2020-21 ski season.West on a snowy night.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewFor all the reasons itemized above. If you haven’t been to West since 2012 or so, you’re not going to recognize the place. It looks different. It skis different. It feels different. West circa 2010 was not throwback in the man-this-is-what-skiing-used-to-be-this-is-so-quaint-and-idyllic kind of way. It was throwback in the am-I-going-to-die-falling-off-this-jalopy-of-a-chairlift kind of way. Like what Holiday Mountain or Spring Mountain feel like today. When a ski area hits that point it either withers like a forgotten Jack-o’-lantern – still somewhat resembling the thing it once proudly was but clearly not that thing anymore either – or it finds some path to reinvention and reinvigoration. We’re seeing it elsewhere in the Northeast, where formerly beaten- down ski areas lost in the poor decisions, bad luck, and underinvestment of past decades are suddenly resurgent: Saddleback and Magic, Greek Peak and Bousquet. West has climbed aboard that list, though with less fanfare and fireworks outside of their local market, and I wanted to throw a spotlight on what’s become a remarkable little ski area.Before the Montgomerys took over, this trail, known as The Cure, was “a snowcat’s-width wide” and rarely open.What I got wrongAt one point I referred to the portion of I-87 from which you can see West Mountain’s 1,000 vertical feet blazing in the winter night as the “Thruway.” No doubt many of you are eager to inform me that this section of I-87 is actually called the “Northway.” I am aware of this and simply misspoke, mostly because I do not actually give a s**t what this particular section of I-87 is called because what I call this highway from top to bottom is I-87. I do not understand this Northeast habit of naming your expressways as though they are family pets, particularly when they ALREADY HAVE A F*****G NAME. I still remember the sense of rage and confusion inspired by a road sign announcing “Closures on the Deegan” as I exited the Tappan Zee Bridge one day several years ago, and all I could think is “What the f**k is the ‘Deegan’ and why would anyone call it that when any interstate traveler like say a trucker or tourist attempting to navigate cityward by map would identify this road as Interstate 87?” But hey why not disrupt the flow of commerce and confuse the s**t out of people by tossing out some colloquialism that makes sense to exactly four dozen people running the local road commission. This may just be some hokey Midwest sensibility but I generally prefer the simplest solution to most problems and the solution here is to give one road that has already been assigned an easily identifiable numeral that syncs logically with the naming conventions of the 46,876-mile United States Interstate system one name and exactly one name and that is the name it already has: I-87. But no instead New Yorkers have to give it not one or two but three separate additional special names along its 333-mile route. And this all seems confusing and unnecessary, like if I called my cat “Spike” while he was in the basement and “Fiddles” while he was upstairs and “Pokeypoo” when he was out in the yard. But it’s all the same cat you see and his real name is Number 9 but really my main goal in life is to confuse the s**t out of people for no good reason and I can see that it’s working so you’re welcome.Why you should go thereBecause you drive past it on your way to Gore or Whiteface or perhaps Vermont depending upon your route and as you do so you look up off of the road universally known as Interstate 87 and say, “Oh look a ski area I wonder what it’s called?” Well it’s called West Mountain and it is worth your time. It has a thousand vertical feet and all new everything and a cool community vibe. And it’s a family business, a place worth supporting, the kind of ski area we need to print new skiers who will one day fly their three kids out to Colorado for spring breaks. It’s not a bumps-and-glades kind of place, at least not yet, but it has good steady pitch and an interesting trail layout. And it has a big future. Go now to see what it’s like so you can follow along while it becomes what it will be.Additional readingCoverage of West in the Glens Falls Chronicle, Spectrum Local News, Daily Gazette, Saratogian, and WNYT.The Montgomerys have overhauled the trail network - compare this 2011 map to the current iteration, below.West released this new trailmap for the 2020-21 ski season.- Get on the email list at www.stormskiing.com

February 18th is National Drink Wine Day, and we're celebrating with Sam & Beth Sheehy, owners of The Winery of Ellicottville in New York State. This little gem sits in downtown Ellicottville, just a few miles away from the slopes of Holiday Valley. This ski town (and winery) is one of Rich's favorites. The food and drinks are delicious, and the people are welcoming and wonderful, especially if you're a ginger. The next time you're in Ellicottville, stop into the winery and say hello. And if you'd like to see the vineyard, it's out back... next to the Toyota Corolla. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/beyondtheapres/message

Ellicottville has been called "the Aspen of the East." Frankly, I find that embarrassing for Ellicottville, which is way more chill, real and fun than the elitist, douche-rocket utopia that is Aspen. Want to hear about it? Join us for Part 2 of the recap as Brian and our buddy Rich, from All About Après, recap their trip to Holiday Valley and Ellicottville, New York.

Part 1: Lauren & Emily recap a wedding in Ellicottville at Holiday Valley, Dinner at the New Resurgence location on Chicago Street, Inizio, and Halal Guys. Part 2: Coming up this weekend... Light the Night Buffalo Curtain Up! Buffalo Beer Week events Borderland Music + Arts Festival Mean Girls at Shea's 2019 Ballpark Brew Bash Harvest Festival Niagara BBQ Brew Fest

1 ~ Gorilla Man by Condry Ziqubu 2 ~ Afe Ato Yen Bio by De Frank Professionals 3 ~ Hlabalaza by The Bees 4 ~ Open Your Heart (Vula) by Bayete 5 ~ Zanzibar by Helen 6 ~ New Mexico by Sammy Bardot 7 ~ Holiday by Madonna 8 ~ Time To Move by Carmen 9 ~ The Best Is Rhythm by Club Des Belugas 10 ~ Watch Them Come!!! by Roy Davis & Jay Juniel, Men From The Nile, Peven Everett 11 ~ Mi Swing Es Tropical by Quantic Nickodemus Ft Tempo 12 ~ Toda Menina Bahiana by Gilberto Gil

Smuggler's Notch is the best ski resort in Vermont. I said it. This weekend just bolstered my stance on this. Last weekend's storm DUMPED feet of snow in Vermont and I was fortunate to take full advantage. I skied the most powder I have ever skied! Family owned and operated with the best terrain and awesome vibe, it's no wonder Smuggler's was the feature in a huge ski magazine article in one of the recent editions. In this episode I talk about: Last weekend at Smuggs (it was DEEP) and my first time skiing in the backcountry.Mike Loucy's tips for skiing powder.Discounted lift tickets and finding the deals that make skiing affordable. Ski Cheap in Upstate New York with These Deals: For those of you in Upstate New York, here are some cheap ski dates that you can take advantage of. Labrador Mountain south of Syracuse has $7.99 lift tickets on February 17 and a $20 Saturday night on February 2. Pick up ticket vouchers at the Ski Company prior to the event.Song Mountain south of Syracuse has $9 Friday nights on January 25 and February 2nd. They also have a carpool day where it is $50 per vehicle on March 16. Lastly, Song Mountain has a Rochester day where you can get $20 vouchers at the ski company (Rochester or Bloomfield locations). Pick up all other ticket vouchers at the Ski Company prior to the event.Hunt Hollow in Naples south of Rochester has $15 tickets for the first ticket and $10 tickets for every ticket purchased after that for the following Sundays: February 3, February 17, and March 3. Pick up ticket vouchers at the Ski Company prior to the event.Swain Resort in the Southern tier has $15 lift tickets available at the resort itself for Saturdays February 9 and March 2.Holiday Valley in Ellicottville has $25.99 lift tickets for Thursday February 7 and Tuesday March 12. Tickets are available at The Ski Company one week prior to the events.Bristol Mountain in Naples south of Rochester has Weekend Family and Friends Fun Nights throughout the season. Pay $79 for 3 people and $30 for each additional person and ski 4PM to close any Saturday and Sunday throughout the season. Support TSU and Make a Difference: If you want to support the podcast and graduate from freeloader to a full-on supporter, there are a few ways you can help out. First is through https://www.patreon.com/tosummitup, which allows listeners to contribute as little as $1 to help cover the costs of putting the podcast together. Secondly, you can check out the bumper stickers and apparel at tosummitup.com/shop. Hats, shirts, and patches…grab your swag and represent the community as you create your story in the outdoors. Thank You: Music for this episode was brought to you by Scott Holmes. Scott’s music is throughout many of the podcast episodes and is brought to you courtesy of free music archive. His music can be found at http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Scott_Holmes/ . The To Summit Up Theme Song was composed and produced by my good friend Jordan Wolf. Jordan can be found on instagram @jwolfy3.

1 ~ Now Now Now - Problem (Abyss Version Edit) 2 ~ Smoke City - Underwater Love 3 ~ Space Dimension Controller - The Love Quadrant 4 ~ Axel Boman - Barcelona 5 ~ Soulphiction And Move D - In The Limelight 6 ~ My Mine - Hypnotic Tango (Extended Version) 7 ~ Bandolero - Paris Latino (1983) 8 ~ Tom Jarmey - Beach Jazz (ft. MarBlu) 9 ~ MA QUALE IDEA - Pino D'Angiò 10 ~ Zé Roberto - Lotus 72D (1973) 11 ~ Gilberto Gil - Palco

Family Stuff to Keep You Busy in Da Burgh plus 16 segments of Burgh Good News, sponsored by JoAnn Forrester, Author, "The Gift of Holiday Valley," Darlene Kruth of Northwood Realty Upper St. Clair: Mrs.Cardiology, BlackTie-Pittsburgh and PositivePittsburghers.com

PPL Co-Host: Sunita Pandit, Mrs. Cardiology to talk about her launch of Mrs. Cardiology's Laughter Club. Learn how it can boost your immune system| WHERE IN THE WORLD IS TECHNOGRANNY? Alihan's Restaurant, 6th St. Downtown Pittsburgh| Thrift Shop Tour: Salvation Army Southside, Good Will McKnight Road, Treasure House Fashions, Red White & Blue Rt 51| ACN International Conference Philadelphia| Reading Terminal in Philadelphia| CULTURAL CLUES: Fall Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District | Pittsburgh CLO to Hold Auditions for "Pump Boys & Dinettes| Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre Studios Ribbon Cutting| Verdiâ??s La Traviata at Pittsburgh Opera| FashionAFRICANA, Costumes of the Wiz Live| Russian Grand Ballet Tchaikovskyâ??s "Sleeping Beauty" Elvis Costello & The Imposters| KIDZ KORNER SPONSORED BY "The Gift of Holiday Valley" by JoAnn Forrester: Homeless Children's Education Fund: Homeless Children's Awareness Week Girls on the Run WOMEN AND GIRLS ADVANCEMENT : Balancing the Scales: Boards, Authorities, and Commissions| Women for a Healthy Environment: Creating Healthy Communities 2016 Conference| CORO Pittsburgh: Women in Leadership Cohort | Top SBA officials visit Chatham Women Business Center| AmericanBusinessWomensDay| BUSINESS BUZ: Kiva Matching Fund Spotlight| Kiva Community and Small Business Resources| HIGH SCHOOL and UNIVERSITY NEWS: 2016 International Day of the Girl: Girls Speak Out| PITTSBURGH HISTORICAL HITS: Wild & Scenic Film Festival| Penn-Liberty Walking Tours| NON-PROFIT PUSH SPONSORED BY BLACKTIE PITTSBURGH: Treasure House Purse Bash| Pittsburgh Foundation Launches "100 percent Pittsburgh"| NHCO Winter Coat Drive North Hills Community Outreach | Garden Produce Accepted at NHCOâ??s Pantries| Ask the Attorney Sessions for Low-Income Families| NHCO General Volunteer Orientations| Rotary Chicken BBQ Dinner Westminster Presbyterian Church| NEIGHBORHOOD NUGGETS SPONSORED BY DARLENE KRUTH, NORTHWOOD REALTY, UPPER ST. CLAIR: Night Orienteering with Map and Compass,Blue Spruce Park| NEW Festival| WaterFire Shenango Riverside| Applefest Mt. Washington| Foxburg Food, Art & Wine Festival| POSITIVE PITTSBURGHERS SPONSORED BY POSITIVEPITTSBURGHERS.COM: Vince Ornato, "They Were Not Anonymous" Art Exhibit| Mt. Lebanonâ??s Joe Manganiello Bad Guy in Batman| ROVING PITTSBURGHER REPORT : Alihan's Restaurant, 6th St. Downtown Pittsburgh| Thrift Shop Tour: Salvation Army Southside, Good Will McKnight Road, Treasure House Fashions, Red White & Blue Rt 51| ACN International Conference Philadelphia| Reading Terminal in Philadelphia| PITTSBURGH GOOD NEWS FORUM SPONSORED BY MRS. CARDIOLOGY PODCAST AND MRS. CARDIOLOGY.COM: C & J Indusstries Expanding Production Center in Meadville| STEELTOWN HERO: Volunteer Princesses | HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS: A Christmas Story, The Musical

Co-Host Jo Ann Forrester Author of "The Gift of Holiday Valley" will talk about two Women's History Month Events | WHERE IN THE WORLD IS TECHNOGRANNY? Beauty and the Beast| Peppi's Old Tyme Sandwhich Shoppe on Northside| Bella Notte Pizza in the Strip District| POSITIVELY PITTSBURGH SPONSORED EVENTS: New Year New You Workshop Win-Pitt| CULTURAL CLUES: Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra BNY Mellon Grand Classics: Stravinskyâ??s Firebird| Tiempo Libre | Silk Road Ensemble with cellist Yo-Yo Ma| Celtic Woman Celebrates 10th Anniversary World Tour at Benedum| Pittsburgh Opera announces its 77th Season| Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's BeethovenFest | MythBusters Jamie & Adam UNLEASHED| KIDZ KORNER: The Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh Launches Project Ready| Camp Broadway EXP| Fiddlesticks Family Concert| WOMEN AND GIRLS ADVANCEMENT : 3rd Annual Martin Luther King Essay Contest | HIGH SCHOOL and UNIVERSITY NEWS: Jewish Healthcare Foundation's HPV Vaccination Initiative| WQED Announces August Wilson Education Project Contest| PITTSBURGH HISTORICAL STUFF: Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh Grant| NON-PROFIT EVENTS SPONSORED BY BLACKTIE PITTSBURGH: Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Awards at the New Hazlett Theater| 2015 Tribute to Women Leadership Award| NEIGHBORHOOD HI-LIGHTS: Free Coffe and Tech Workshop at East Liberty Branch, Carnegie Library| POSITIVE PITTSBURGHERS: Pittsburgh Native Christina Wren to Appear in â??Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justiceâ??| ROVING PITTSBURGHER REPORT SPONSORED BY PITTSBURGH TRADE ALLIANCE: Winter Gallery Crawl| PITTSBURGH LOCAL SPORTS: Babe Ruth's 120th birthday| STEELTOWN HERO: Akirah Robinson| VETERANS VET and MILITARY : Where These Phrases Came From| VALENTINE'S DAY HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS: Sojourns of the Soul: One Womanâ??s Journey around the World and into Her Truth, and her new novel, The Third Muse