Podcasts about lenawee

WhoAlan Henceroth, President and Chief Operating Officer of Arapahoe Basin, Colorado – Al runs the best ski area-specific executive blog in America – check it out:Recorded onMay 19, 2025About Arapahoe BasinClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Alterra Mountain Company, which also owns:Pass access* Ikon Pass: unlimited* Ikon Base Pass: unlimited access from opening day to Friday, Dec. 19, then five total days with no blackouts from Dec. 20 until closing day 2026Base elevation* 10,520 feet at bottom of Steep Gullies* 10,780 feet at main baseSummit elevation* 13,204 feet at top of Lenawee Mountain on East Wall* 12,478 feet at top of Lazy J Tow (connector between Lenawee Express six-pack and Zuma quad)Vertical drop* 1,695 feet lift-served – top of Lazy J Tow to main base* 1,955 feet lift-served, with hike back up to lifts – top of Lazy J Tow to bottom of Steep Gullies* 2,424 feet hike-to – top of Lenawee Mountain to Main BaseSkiable Acres: 1,428Average annual snowfall:* Claimed: 350 inches* Bestsnow.net: 308 inchesTrail count: 147 – approximate terrain breakdown: 24% double-black, 49% black, 20% intermediate, 7% beginnerLift count: 9 (1 six-pack, 1 high-speed quad, 3 fixed-grip quads, 1 double, 2 carpets, 1 ropetow)Why I interviewed himWe can generally splice U.S. ski centers into two categories: ski resort and ski area. I'll often use these terms interchangeably to avoid repetition, but they describe two very different things. The main distinction: ski areas rise directly from parking lots edged by a handful of bunched utilitarian structures, while ski resorts push parking lots into the next zipcode to accommodate slopeside lodging and commerce.There are a lot more ski areas than ski resorts, and a handful of the latter present like the former, with accommodations slightly off-hill (Sun Valley) or anchored in a near-enough town (Bachelor). But mostly the distinction is clear, with the defining question being this: is this a mountain that people will travel around the world to ski, or one they won't travel more than an hour to ski?Arapahoe Basin occupies a strange middle. Nothing in the mountain's statistical profile suggests that it should be anything other than a Summit County locals hang. It is the 16th-largest ski area in Colorado by skiable acres, the 18th-tallest by lift-served vertical drop, and the eighth-snowiest by average annual snowfall. The mountain runs just six chairlifts and only two detachables. Beginner terrain is limited. A-Basin has no base area lodging, and in fact not much of a base area at all. Altitude, already an issue for the Colorado ski tourist, is amplified here, where the lifts spin from nearly 11,000 feet. A-Basin should, like Bridger Bowl in Montana (upstream from Big Sky) or Red River in New Mexico (across the mountain from Taos) or Sunlight in Colorado (parked between Aspen and I-70), be mostly unknown beside its heralded big-name neighbors (Keystone, Breck, Copper).And it sort of is, but also sort of isn't. Like tiny (826-acre) Aspen Mountain, A-Basin transcends its statistical profile. Skiers know it, seek it, travel for it, cross it off their lists like a snowy Eiffel Tower. Unlike Aspen, A-Basin has no posse of support mountains, no grided downtown spilling off the lifts, no Kleenex-level brand that stands in for skiing among non-skiers. And yet Vail tried buying the bump in 1997, and Alterra finally did in 2024. Meanwhile, nearby Loveland, bigger, taller, snowier, higher, easier to access with its trip-off-the-interstate parking lots, is still ignored by tourists and conglomerates alike.Weird. What explains A-Basin's pull? Onetime and future Storm guest Jackson Hogen offers, in his Snowbird Secrets book, an anthropomorphic explanation for that Utah powder dump's aura: As it turns out, everyone has a story for how they came to discover Snowbird, but no one knows the reason. Some have the vanity to think they picked the place, but the wisest know the place picked them.That is the secret that Snowbird has slipped into our subconscious; deep down, we know we were summoned here. We just have to be reminded of it to remember, an echo of the Platonic notion that all knowledge is remembrance. In the modern world we are so divorced from our natural selves that you would think we'd have lost the power to hear a mountain call us. And indeed we have, but such is the enormous reach of this place that it can still stir the last seed within us that connects us to the energy that surrounds us every day yet we do not see. The resonance of that tiny, vibrating seed is what brings us here, to this extraordinary place, to stand in the heart of the energy flow.Yeah I don't know, Man. We're drifting into horoscope territory here. But I also can't explain why we all like to do This Dumb Thing so much that we'll wrap our whole lives around it. So if there is some universe force, what Hogen calls “vibrations” from Hidden Peak's quartz, drawing skiers to Snowbird, could there also be some proton-kryptonite-laserbeam s**t sucking us all toward A-Basin? If there's a better explanation, I haven't found it.What we talked aboutThe Beach; keeping A-Basin's whole ski footprint open into May; Alterra buys the bump – “we really liked the way Alterra was doing things… and letting the resorts retain their identity”; the legacy of former owner Dream; how hardcore, no-frills ski area A-Basin fits into an Alterra portfolio that includes high-end resorts such as Deer Valley and Steamboat; “you'd be surprised how many people from out of state ski here too”; Ikon as Colorado sampler pack (or not); local reaction to Alterra's purchase – “I think it's fair that there was anxiety”; balancing the wild ski cycle of over-the-top peak days and soft periods; parking reservations; going unlimited on the full Ikon Pass and how parking reservations play in – “we spent a ridiculous amount of time talking about it”; the huge price difference between Epic and Ikon and how that factors into the access calculus; why A-Basin still sells a single-mountain season pass; whether reciprocal partnerships with Monarch and Silverton will remain in place; “I've been amazed at how few things I've been told to do” by Alterra; A-Basin's dirt-cheap early-season pass; why early season is “a more competitive time” than it used to be; why A-Basin left Mountain Collective; Justice Department anti-trust concerns around Alterra's A-Basin purchase – “it never was clear to me what the concerns were”; breaking down A-Basin's latest U.S. Forest Service masterplan – “everything in there, we hope to do”; a parking lot pulse gondola and why that makes sense over shuttles; why A-Basin plans a two-lift system of beginner machines; why should A-Basin care about beginner terrain?; is beginner development is related to Ikon Pass membership?; what it means that the MDP designs for 700 more skiers per day; assessing the Lenawee Express sixer three seasons in; why A-Basin sold the old Lenawee lift to independent Sunlight, Colorado; A-Basin's patrol unionizing; and 100 percent renewable energy.What I got wrong* I said that A-Basin was the only mountain that had been caught up in antitrust issues, but that's inaccurate: when S-K-I and LBO Enterprises merged into American Skiing Company in 1996, the U.S. Justice Department compelled the combined company to sell Cranmore and Waterville Valley, both in New Hampshire. Waterville Valley remains independent. Cranmore stayed independent for a while, and has since 2010 been owned by Fairbank Group, which also owns Jiminy Peak in Massachusetts and operates Bromley, Vermont.* I said that A-Basin's $259 early-season pass, good for unlimited access from opening day through Dec. 25, “was like one day at Vail,” which is sort of true and sort of not. Vail Mountain's day-of lift ticket will hit $230 from Nov. 14 to Dec. 11, then increase to $307 or $335 every day through Christmas. All Resorts Epic Day passes, which would get skiers on the hill for any of those dates, currently sell for between $106 and $128 per day. Unlimited access to Vail Mountain for that full early-season period would require a full Epic Pass, currently priced at $1,121.* This doesn't contradict anything we discussed, but it's worth noting some parking reservations changes that A-Basin implemented following our conversation. Reservations will now be required on weekends only, and from Jan. 3 to May 3, a reduction from 48 dates last winter to 36 for this season. The mountain will also allow skiers to hold four reservations at once, doubling last year's limit of two.Why now was a good time for this interviewOne of the most striking attributes of modern lift-served skiing is how radically different each ski area is. Panic over corporate hegemony power-stamping each child mountain into snowy McDonald's clones rarely survives past the parking lot. Underscoring the point is neighboring ski areas, all over America, that despite the mutually intelligible languages of trail ratings and patrol uniforms and lift and snowgun furniture, and despite sharing weather patterns and geologic origins and local skier pools, feel whole-cut from different eras, cultures, and imaginations. The gates between Alta and Snowbird present like connector doors between adjoining hotel rooms but actualize as cross-dimensional Mario warpzones. The 2.4-mile gondola strung between the Alpine Meadows and Olympic sides of Palisades Tahoe may as well connect a baseball stadium with an opera house. Crossing the half mile or so between the summits of Sterling at Smugglers' Notch and Spruce Peak at Stowe is a journey of 15 minutes and five decades. And Arapahoe Basin, elder brother of next-door Keystone, resembles its larger neighbor like a bat resembles a giraffe: both mammals, but of entirely different sorts. Same with Sugarbush and Mad River Glen, Vermont; Sugar Bowl, Donner Ski Ranch, and Boreal, California; Park City and Deer Valley, Utah; Killington and Pico, Vermont; Highlands and Nub's Nob, Michigan; Canaan Valley and Timberline and Nordic-hybrid White Grass, West Virginia; Aspen's four Colorado ski areas; the three ski areas sprawling across Mt. Hood's south flank; and Alpental and its clump of Snoqualmie sisters across the Washington interstate. Proximity does not equal sameness.One of The Storm's preoccupations is with why this is so. For all their call-to-nature appeal, ski areas are profoundly human creations, more city park than wildlife preserve. They are sculpted, managed, manicured. Even the wildest-feeling among them – Mount Bohemia, Silverton, Mad River Glen – are obsessively tended to, ragged by design.A-Basin pulls an even neater trick: a brand curated for rugged appeal, scaffolded by brand-new high-speed lifts and a self-described “luxurious European-style bistro.” That the Alterra Mountain Company-owned, megapass pioneer floating in the busiest ski county in the busiest ski state in America managed to retain its rowdy rap even as the onetime fleet of bar-free double chairs toppled into the recycling bin is a triumph of branding.But also a triumph of heart. A-Basin as Colorado's Alta or Taos or Palisades is a title easily ceded to Telluride or Aspen Highlands, similarly tilted high-alpiners. But here it is, right beside buffed-out Keystone, a misunderstood mountain with its own wild side but a fair-enough rap as an approachable landing zone for first-time Rocky Mountain explorers westbound out of New York or Ohio. Why are A-Basin and Keystone so different? The blunt drama of A-Basin's hike-in terrain helps, but it's more enforcer than explainer. The real difference, I believe, is grounded in the conductor orchestrating this mad dance.Since Henceroth sat down in the COO chair 20 years ago, Keystone has had nine president-general manager equivalents. A-Basin was already 61 years old in 2005, giving it a nice branding headstart on younger Keystone, born in 1970. But both had spent nearly two decades, from 1978 to 1997, co-owned by a dogfood conglomerate that often marketed them as one resort, and the pair stayed glued together on a multimountain pass for a couple of decades afterward.Henceroth, with support and guidance from the real-estate giant that owned A-Basin in the Ralston-Purina-to-Alterra interim, had a series of choices to make. A-Basin had only recently installed snowmaking. There was no lift access to Zuma Bowl, no Beavers. The lift system consisted of three double chairs and two triples. Did this aesthetic minimalism and pseudo-independence define A-Basin? Or did the mountain, shaped by the generations of leaders before Henceroth, hold some intangible energy and pull, that thing we recognize as atmosphere, culture, vibe? Would The Legend lose its duct-taped edge if it:* Expanded 400 mostly low-angle acres into Zuma Bowl (2007)* Joined Vail Resorts' Epic Pass (2009)* Installed the mountain's first high-speed lift (Black Mountain Express in 2010)* Expand 339 additional acres into the Beavers (2018), and service that terrain with an atypical-for-Colorado 1,501-vertical-foot fixed-grip lift* Exit the Epic Pass following the 2018-19 ski season* Immediately join Mountain Collective and Ikon as a multimountain replacement (2019)* Ditch a 21-year-old triple chair for the mountain's first high-speed six-pack (2022)* Sell to Alterra Mountain Company (2024)* Require paid parking reservations on high-volume days (2024)* Go unlimited on the Ikon Pass and exit Mountain Collective (2025)* Release an updated USFS masterplan that focuses largely on the novice ski experience (2025)That's a lot of change. A skier booted through time from Y2K to October 2025 would examine that list and conclude that Rad Basin had been tamed. But ski a dozen laps and they'd say well not really. Those multimillion upgrades were leashed by something priceless, something human, something that kept them from defining what the mountain is. There's some indecipherable alchemy here, a thing maybe not quite as durable as the mountain itself, but rooted deeper than the lift towers strung along it. It takes a skilled chemist to cook this recipe, and while they'll never reveal every secret, you can visit the restaurant as many times as you'd like.Why you should ski Arapahoe BasinWe could do a million but here are nine:1) $: Two months of early-season skiing costs roughly the same as A-Basin's neighbors charge for a single day. A-Basin's $259 fall pass is unlimited from opening day through Dec. 25, cheaper than a Dec. 20 day-of lift ticket at Breck ($281), Vail ($335), Beaver Creek ($335), or Copper ($274), and not much more than Keystone ($243). 2) Pali: When A-Basin tore down the 1,329-vertical-foot, 3,520-foot-long Pallavicini double chair, a 1978 Yan, in 2020, they replaced it with a 1,325-vertical-foot, 3,512-foot-long Leitner-Poma double chair. It's one of just a handful of new doubles installed in America over the past decade, underscoring a rare-in-modern-skiing commitment to atmosphere, experience, and snow preservation over uphill capacity. 3) The newest lift fleet in the West: The oldest of A-Basin's six chairlifts, Zuma, arrived brand-new in 2007.4) Wall-to-wall: when I flew into Colorado for a May 2025 wind-down, five ski areas remained open. Despite solid snowpack, Copper, Breck, and Winter Park all spun a handful of lifts on a constrained footprint. But A-Basin and Loveland still ran every lift, even over the Monday-to-Thursday timeframe of my visit.5) The East Wall: It's like this whole extra ski area. Not my deal as even skiing downhill at 12,500 feet hurts, but some of you like this s**t:6) May pow: I mean yeah I did kinda just get lucky but damn these were some of the best turns I found all year (skiing with A-Basin Communications Manager Shayna Silverman):7) The Beach: the best ski area tailgate in North America (sorry, no pet dragons allowed - don't shoot the messenger):8) The Beavers: Just glades and glades and glades (a little crunchy on this run, but better higher up and the following day):9) It's a ski area first: In a county of ski resorts, A-Basin is a parking-lots-at-the-bottom-and-not-much-else ski area. It's spare, sparse, high, steep, and largely exposed. Skiers are better at self-selecting than we suppose, meaning the ability level of the average A-Basin skier is more Cottonwoods than Connecticut. That impacts your day in everything from how the liftlines flow to how the bumps form to how many zigzaggers you have to dodge on the down.Podcast NotesOn the dates of my visit We reference my last A-Basin visit quite a bit – for context, I skied there May 6 and 7, 2025. Both nice late-season pow days.On A-Basin's long seasonsIt's surprisingly difficult to find accurate open and close date information for most ski areas, especially before 2010 or so, but here's what I could cobble together for A-Basin - please let me know if you have a more extensive list, or if any of this is wrong:On A-Basin's ownership timelineArapahoe Basin probably gets too much credit for being some rugged indie. Ralston-Purina, then-owners of Keystone, purchased A-Basin in 1978, then added Breckenridge to the group in 1993 before selling the whole picnic basket to Vail in 1997. The U.S. Justice Department wouldn't let the Eagle County operator have all three, so Vail flipped Arapahoe to a Canadian real estate empire, then called Dundee, some months later. That company, which at some point re-named itself Dream, pumped a zillion dollars into the mountain before handing it off to Alterra last year.On A-Basin leaving Epic PassA-Basin self-ejected from Epic Pass in 2019, just after Vail maxed out Colorado by purchasing Crested Butte and before they fully invaded the East with the Peak Resorts purchase. Arapahoe Basin promptly joined Mountain Collective and Ikon, swapping unlimited-access on four varieties of Epic Pass for limited-days products. Henceroth and I talked this one out during our 2022 pod, and it's a fascinating case study in building a better business by decreasing volume.On the price difference between Ikon and Epic with A-Basin accessConcerns about A-Basin hurdling back toward the overcrowded Epic days by switching to Ikon's unlimited tier tend to overlook this crucial distinction: Vail sold a 2018-19 version of the Epic Pass that included unlimited access to Keystone and A-Basin for an early-bird rate of $349. The full 2025-26 Ikon Pass debuted at nearly four times that, retailing for $1,329, and just ramped up to $1,519.On Alterra mountains with their own season passesWhile all Alterra-owned ski areas (with the exception of Deer Valley), are unlimited on the full Ikon Pass and nine are unlimited with no blackouts on Ikon Base, seven of those sell their own unlimited season pass that costs less than Base. The sole unlimited season pass for Crystal, Mammoth, Palisades Tahoe, Steamboat, Stratton, and Sugarbush is a full Ikon Pass, and the least-expensive unlimited season pass for Solitude is the Ikon Base. Deer Valley leads the nation with its $4,100 unlimited season pass. See the Alterra chart at the top of this article for current season pass prices to all of the company's mountains.On A-Basin and Schweitzer pass partnershipsAlterra has been pretty good about permitting its owned ski areas to retain historic reciprocal partners on their single-mountain season passes. For A-Basin, this means three no-blackout days at Monarch and two unguided days at Silverton. Up at Schweitzer, passholders get three midweek days each at Whitewater, Mt. Hood Meadows, Castle Mountain, Loveland, and Whitefish. None of these ski areas are on Ikon Pass, and the benefit is only stapled to A-Basin- or Schweitzer-specific season passes.On the Mountain Collective eventI talk about Mountain Collective as skiing's most exclusive country club. Nothing better demonstrates that characterization than this podcast I recorded at the event last fall, when in around 90 minutes I had conversations with the top leaders of Boyne Resorts, Snowbird, Aspen, Jackson Hole, Sun Valley, Snowbasin, Grand Targhee, and many more.On Mountain Collective and Ikon overlapThe Mountain Collective-Ikon overlap is kinda nutso:On Pennsylvania skiingIn regards to the U.S. Justice Department grilling Alterra on its A-Basin acquisition, it's still pretty stupid that the agency allowed Vail Resorts to purchase eight of the 19 public chairlift-served ski areas in Pennsylvania without a whisper of protest. These eight ski areas almost certainly account for more than half of all skier visits in a state that typically ranks sixth nationally for attendance. Last winter, the state's 2.6 million skier visits accounted for more days than vaunted ski states New Hampshire (2.4 million), Washington (2.3), Montana (2.2), Idaho (2.1). or Oregon (2.0). Only New York (3.4), Vermont (4.2), Utah (6.5), California (6.6), and Colorado (13.9) racked up more.On A-Basin's USFS masterplanNothing on the scale of Zuma or Beavers inbound, but the proposed changes would tap novice terrain that has always existed but never offered a good access point for beginners:On pulse gondolasA-Basin's proposed pulse gondola, should it be built, would be just the sixth such lift in America, joining machines at Taos, Northstar, Steamboat, Park City, and Snowmass. Loon plans to build a pulse gondola in 2026.On mid-mountain beginner centersBig bad ski resorts have attempted to amp up family appeal in recent years with gondola-serviced mid-mountain beginner centers, which open gentle, previously hard-to-access terrain to beginners. This was the purpose of mid-stations off Jackson Hole's Sweetwater Gondola and Big Sky's new-for-this-year Explorer Gondola. A-Basin's gondy (not the parking lot pulse gondola, but the one terminating at Sawmill Flats in the masterplan image above), would provide up and down lift access allowing greenies to lap the new detach quad above it.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

Bill Amadeo talks Homer Simpson and speaks on Lenawee vs. Flint.

Justin Gifford, Executive Director of the Lenawee County and Monroe Convention and Visitors Bureaus, previews Summer events in Southeast Michigan.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication (and my full-time job). To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.WhoChris Cushing, Principal of Mountain Planning at SE GroupRecorded onApril 3, 2025About SE GroupFrom the company's website:WE AREMountain planners, landscape architects, environmental analysts, and community and recreation planners. From master planning to conceptual design and permitting, we are your trusted partner in creating exceptional experiences and places.WE BELIEVEThat human and ecological wellbeing forms the foundation for thriving communities.WE EXISTTo enrich people's lives through the power of outdoor recreation.If that doesn't mean anything to you, then this will:Why I interviewed himNature versus nurture: God throws together the recipe, we bake the casserole. A way to explain humans. Sure he's six foot nine, but his mom dropped him into the intensive knitting program at Montessori school 232, so he can't play basketball for s**t. Or identical twins, separated at birth. One grows up as Sir Rutherford Ignacious Beaumont XIV and invents time travel. The other grows up as Buford and is the number seven at Okey-Doke's Quick Oil Change & Cannabis Emporium. The guts matter a lot, but so does the food.This is true of ski areas as well. An earthquake here, a glacier there, maybe a volcanic eruption, and, presto: a non-flat part of the earth on which we may potentially ski. The rest is up to us.It helps if nature was thoughtful enough to add slopes of varying but consistent pitch, a suitable rise from top to bottom, a consistent supply of snow, a flat area at the base, and some sort of natural conduit through which to move people and vehicles. But none of that is strictly necessary. Us humans (nurture), can punch green trails across solid-black fall lines (Jackson Hole), bulldoze a bigger hill (Caberfae), create snow where the clouds decline to (Wintergreen, 2022-23), plant the resort base at the summit (Blue Knob), or send skiers by boat (Eaglecrest).Someone makes all that happen. In North America, that someone is often SE Group, or their competitor, Ecosign. SE Group helps ski areas evolve into even better ski areas. That means helping to plan terrain expansions, lift replacements, snowmaking upgrades, transit connections, parking enhancements, and whatever built environment is under the ski area's control. SE Group is often the machine behind those Forest Service ski area master development plans that I so often spotlight. For example, Vail Mountain:When I talk about Alta consolidating seven slow lifts into four fast lifts; or Little Switzerland carving their mini-kingdom into beginner, parkbrah, and racer domains; or Mount Bachelor boosting its power supply to run more efficiently, this is the sort of thing that SE plots out (I'm not certain if they were involved in any or all of those projects).Analyzing this deliberate crafting of a natural bump into a human playground is the core of what The Storm is. I love, skiing, sure, but specifically lift-served skiing. I'm sure it's great to commune with the raccoons or whatever it is you people do when you discuss “skinning” and “AT setups.” But nature left a few things out. Such as: ski patrol, evacuation sleds, avalanche control, toilet paper, water fountains, firepits, and a place to charge my phone. Oh and chairlifts. And directional signs with trail ratings. And a snack bar.Skiing is torn between competing and contradictory narratives: the misanthropic, which hates crowds and most skiers not deemed sufficiently hardcore; the naturalistic, which mistakes ski resorts with the bucolic experience that is only possible in the backcountry; the preservationist, with its museum-ish aspirations to glasswall the obsolete; the hyperactive, insisting on all fast lifts and groomed runs; the fatalists, who assume inevitable death-of-concept in a warming world.None of these quite gets it. Ski areas are centers of joy and memory and bonhomie and possibility. But they are also (mostly), businesses. They are also parks, designed to appeal to as many skiers as possible. They are centers of organized risk, softened to minimize catastrophic outcomes. They must enlist machine aid to complement natural snowfall and move skiers up those meddlesome but necessary hills. Ski areas are nature, softened and smoothed and labelled by their civilized stewards, until the land is not exactly a representation of either man or God, but a strange and wonderful hybrid of both.What we talked aboutOld-school Cottonwoods vibe; “the Ikon Pass has just changed the industry so dramatically”; how to become a mountain planner for a living; what the mountain-planning vocation looked like in the mid-1980s; the detachable lift arrives; how to consolidate lifts without sacrificing skier experience; when is a lift not OK?; a surface lift resurgence?; how sanctioned glades changed ski areas; the evolution of terrain parks away from mega-features; the importance of terrain parks to small ski areas; reworking trails to reduce skier collisions; the curse of the traverse; making Jackson more approachable; on terrain balance; how megapasses are redistributing skier visits; how to expand a ski area without making traffic worse; ski areas that could evolve into major destinations; and ski area as public park or piece of art.What I got wrong* I blanked on the name of the famous double chair at A-Basin. It is Pallavicini.* I called Crystal Mountain's two-seater served terrain “North Country or whatever” – it is actually called “Northway.”* I said that Deer Valley would become the fourth- or fifth-largest ski resort in the nation once its expansion was finished. It will become the sixth-largest, at 4,926 acres, when the next expansion phase opens for winter 2025-26, and will become the fourth-largest, at 5,726 acres, at full build out.* I estimated Kendall Mountain's current lift-served ski footprint at 200 vertical feet; it is 240 feet.Why now was a good time for this interviewWe have a tendency, particularly in outdoor circles, to lionize the natural and shame the human. Development policy in the United States leans heavily toward “don't,” even in areas already designated for intensive recreation. We mustn't, plea activists: expand the Palisades Tahoe base village; build a gondola up Little Cottonwood Canyon; expand ski terrain contiguous with already-existing ski terrain at Grand Targhee.I understand these impulses, but I believe they are misguided. Intensive but thoughtful, human-scaled development directly within and adjacent to already-disturbed lands is the best way to limit the larger-scale, long-term manmade footprint that chews up vast natural tracts. That is: build 1,000 beds in what is now a bleak parking lot at Palisades Tahoe, and you limit the need for homes to be carved out of surrounding forests, and for hundreds of cars to daytrip into the ski area. Done right, you even create a walkable community of the sort that America conspicuously lacks.To push back against, and gradually change, the Culture of No fueling America's mountain town livability crises, we need exhibits of these sorts of projects actually working. More Whistlers (built from scratch in the 1980s to balance tourism and community) and fewer Aspens (grandfathered into ski town status with a classic street and building grid, but compromised by profiteers before we knew any better). This is the sort of work SE is doing: how do we build a better interface between civilization and nature, so that the former complements, rather than spoils, the latter?All of which is a little tangential to this particular podcast conversation, which focuses mostly on the ski areas themselves. But America's ski centers, established largely in the middle of the last century, are aging with the towns around them. Just about everything, from lifts to lodges to roads to pipes, has reached replacement age. Replacement is a burden, but also an opportunity to create a better version of something. Our ski areas will not only have faster lifts and newer snowguns – they will have fewer lifts and fewer guns that carry more people and make more snow, just as our built footprint, thoughtfully designed, can provide more homes for more people on less space and deliver more skiers with fewer vehicles.In a way, this podcast is almost a canonical Storm conversation. It should, perhaps, have been episode one, as every conversation since has dealt with some version of this question: how do humans sculpt a little piece of nature into a snowy park that we visit for fun? That is not an easy or obvious question to answer, which is why SE Group exists. Much as I admire our rough-and-tumble Dave McCoy-type founders, that improvisational style is trickier to execute in our highly regulated, activist present.And so we rely on artist-architects of the SE sort, who inject the natural with the human without draining what is essential from either. Done well, this crafted experience feels wild. Done poorly – as so much of our legacy built environment has been – and you generate resistance to future development, even if that future development is better. But no one falls in love with a blueprint. Experiencing a ski area as whatever it is you think a ski area should be is something you have to feel. And though there is a sort of magic animating places like Alta and Taos and Mammoth and Mad River Glen and Mount Bohemia, some ineffable thing that bleeds from the earth, these ski areas are also outcomes of a human-driven process, a determination to craft the best version of skiing that could exist for mass human consumption on that shred of the planet.Podcast NotesOn MittersillMittersill, now part of Cannon Mountain, was once a separate ski area. It petered out in the mid-‘80s, then became a sort of Cannon backcountry zone circa 2009. The Mittersill double arrived in 2010, followed by a T-bar in 2016.On chairlift consolidationI mention several ski areas that replaced a bunch of lifts with fewer lifts:The HighlandsIn 2023, Boyne-owned The Highlands wiped out three ancient Riblet triples and replaced them with this glorious bubble six-pack:Here's a before-and-after:Vernon Valley-Great Gorge/Mountain CreekI've called Intrawest's transformation of Vernon Valley-Great Gorge into Mountain Creek “perhaps the largest single-season overhaul of a ski area in the history of lift-served skiing.” Maybe someone can prove me wrong, but just look at this place circa 1989:It looked substantively the same in 1998, when, in a single summer, Intrawest tore out 18 lifts – 15 double chairs, two platters, and a T-bar, plus God knows how many ropetows – and replaced them with two high-speed quads, two fixed-grip quads, and a bucket-style Cabriolet lift that every normal ski area uses as a parking lot transit machine:I discussed this incredible transformation with current Hermitage Club GM Bill Benneyan, who worked at Mountain Creek in 1998, back in 2020:I misspoke on the podcast, saying that Intrawest had pulled out “something like a dozen lifts” and replaced them with “three or four” in 1998.KimberleyBack in the time before social media, Kimberley, British Columbia ran four frontside chairlifts: a high-speed quad, a triple, a double, and a T-bar:Beginning in 2001, the ski area slowly removed everything except the quad. Which was fine until an arsonist set fire to Kimberley's North Star Express in 2021, meaning skiers had no lift-served option to the backside terrain:I discussed this whole strange sequence of events with Andy Cohen, longtime GM of sister resort Fernie, on the podcast last year:On Revelstoke's original masterplanIt is astonishing that Revelstoke serves 3,121 acres with just five lifts: a gondola, two high-speed quads, a fixed quad, and a carpet. Most Midwest ski areas spin three times more lifts for three percent of the terrain.On Priest Creek and Sundown at SteamboatSteamboat, like many ski areas, once ran two parallel fixed-grip lifts on substantively the same line, with the Priest Creek double and the Sundown triple. The Sundown Express quad arrived in 1992, but Steamboat left Priest Creek standing for occasional overflow until 2021. Here's Steamboat circa 1990:Priest Creek is gone, but that entire 1990 lift footprint is nearly unrecognizable. Huge as Steamboat is, every arriving skier squeezes in through a single portal. One of Alterra's first priorities was to completely re-imagine the base area: sliding the existing gondola looker's right; installing an additional 10-person, two-stage gondola right beside it; and moving the carpets and learning center to mid-mountain:On upgrades at A-BasinWe discuss several upgrades at A-Basin, including Lenawee, Beavers, and Pallavicini. Here's the trailmap for context:On moguls on Kachina Peak at TaosYeah I'd say this lift draws some traffic:On the T-bar at Waterville ValleyWaterville Valley opened in 1966. Fifty-two years later, mountain officials finally acknowledged that chairlifts do not work on the mountain's top 400 vertical feet. All it took was a forced 1,585-foot shortening of the resort's base-to-summit high-speed quad just eight years after its 1988 installation and the legacy double chair's continued challenges in wind to say, “yeah maybe we'll just spend 90 percent less to install a lift that's actually appropriate for this terrain.” That was the High Country T-bar, which arrived in 2018. It is insane to look at ‘90s maps of Waterville pre- and post-chop job:On Hyland Hills, MinnesotaWhat an insanely amazing place this is:On Sunrise ParkFrom 1983 to 2017, Sunrise Park, Arizona was home to the most amazing triple chair, a 7,982-foot-long Yan with 352 carriers. Cyclone, as it was known, fell apart at some point and the resort neglected to fix or replace it. A couple of years ago, they re-opened the terrain to lift-served skiing with a low-cost alternative: stringing a ropetow from a green run off the Geronimo lift to where Cyclone used to land.On Woodward Park City and BorealPowdr has really differentiated itself with its Woodward terrain parks, which exist at amazing scale at Copper and Bachelor. The company has essentially turned two of its smaller ski areas – Boreal and Woodward Park City – entirely over to terrain parks.On Killington's tunnelsYou have to zoom in, but you can see them on the looker's right side of the trailmap: Bunny Buster at Great Northern, Great Bear at Great Northern, and Chute at Great Northern.On Jackson Hole traversesJackson is steep. Engineers hacked it so kids like mine could ride there:On expansions at Beaver Creek, Keystone, AspenRecent Colorado expansions have tended to create vast zones tailored to certain levels of skiers:Beaver Creek's McCoy Park is an incredible top-of-the-mountain green zone:Keystone's Bergman Bowl planted a high-speed six-pack to serve 550 acres of high-altitude intermediate terrain:And Aspen – already one of the most challenging mountains in the country – added Hero's – a fierce black-diamond zone off the summit:On Wilbere at SnowbirdWilbere is an example of a chairlift that kept the same name, even as Snowbird upgraded it from a double to a quad and significantly moved the load station and line:On ski terrain growth in AmericaYes, a bunch of ski areas have disappeared since the 1980s, but the raw amount of ski terrain has been increasing steadily over the decades:On White Pine, WyomingCushing referred to White Pine as a “dinky little ski area” with lots of potential. Here's a look at the thousand-footer, which billionaire Joe Ricketts purchased last year:On Deer Valley's expansionYeah, Deer Valley is blowing up:On Schweitzer's growthSchweitzer's transformation has been dramatic: in 1988, the Idaho panhandle resort occupied a large footprint that was served mostly by double chairs:Today: a modern ski area, with four detach quads, a sixer, and two newer triples – only one old chairlift remains:On BC transformationsA number of British Columbia ski areas have transformed from nubbins to majors over the past 30 years:Sun Peaks, then known as Tod Mountain, in 1993Sun Peaks today:Fernie in 1996, pre-upward expansion:Fernie today:Revelstoke, then known as Mount Mackenzie, in 1996:Modern Revy:Kicking Horse, then known as “Whitetooth” in 1994:Kicking Horse today:On Tamarack's expansion potentialTamarack sits mostly on Idaho state land, and would like to expand onto adjacent U.S. Forest Service land. Resort President Scott Turlington discussed these plans in depth with me on the pod a few years back:The mountain's plans have changed since, with a smaller lift footprint:On Central Park as a manmade placeNew York City's fabulous Central Park is another chunk of earth that may strike a visitor as natural, but is in fact a manmade work of art crafted from the wilderness. Per the Central Park Conservancy, which, via a public-private partnership with the city, provides the majority of funds, labor, and logistical support to maintain the sprawling complex:A popular misconception about Central Park is that its 843 acres are the last remaining natural land in Manhattan. While it is a green sanctuary inside a dense, hectic metropolis, this urban park is entirely human-made. It may look like it's naturally occurring, but the flora, landforms, water, and other features of Central Park have not always existed.Every acre of the Park was meticulously designed and built as part of a larger composition—one that its designers conceived as a "single work of art." Together, they created the Park through the practice that would come to be known as "landscape architecture."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

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Chapter 6 paragraph 5 Subtitle: THE CONFESSION Speaker: Dan White Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday School Date: 8/11/2024 Length: 44 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Elect Exiles: Order In the Household. Speaker: Micah Smith Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - AM Date: 8/4/2024 Bible: 1 Peter 3 Length: 73 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Submission to Authority Subtitle: Book of 1 Peter Speaker: Micah Smith Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday Afternoon Date: 7/28/2024 Bible: 1 Peter 2:18-25 Length: 37 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Submission to Authority Subtitle: Book of 1 Peter Speaker: Micah Smith Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday Afternoon Date: 7/28/2024 Bible: 1 Peter 2:18-25 Length: 37 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Submission to Authority Subtitle: Book of 1 Peter Speaker: Micah Smith Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday Afternoon Date: 7/21/2024 Bible: 1 Peter 2:13-3:6 Length: 44 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Of God and Of the Holy Trinity Part 7 Subtitle: THE CONFESSION Speaker: Cliff Middleton Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday Service Date: 6/11/2024 Length: 43 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: The Fear of God Speaker: Patrick Knight Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - PM Date: 6/9/2024 Bible: Psalm 130:3-4 Length: 27 min.

In this exciting episode, Rob sits down with Will Williamson, Business Development, and Dawn Awrey, Service Center Manager from Michigan Works Southeast. Discover the amazing grant programs available for businesses looking to hire! Tune in as we explore how Michigan Works Southeast is creating connections, meeting talent demands, and building a brighter future for the communities in Hillsdale, Jackson, Lenawee, Livingston, and Washtenaw. Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn how you can be part of a transformative movement in Southeast Michigan!    Show Links Learn more about the Brighton Chamber by visiting our website. Website: https://www.brightoncoc.org/   Guest Links Website: https://www.mwse.org/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michiganworkssoutheast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michiganworksse/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michigan-works-southeast-678007124 X: https://twitter.com/MichWorksSE

Charge to Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee

Charge to Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee

Charge to Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee

Andrew interviews their friend Liz Casselman. Liz is a Real estate attorney and partner at her family's law firm Halabu, P.C. She is also owner and Chief Operating Officer of Birmingham Title Agency and American Title Agency of Lenawee. She Earned her designation as a Certified Land Title Professional through the Michigan Land Title Association in 2023. Liz is also a licensed title producer agent in Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio.In addition to her work as a title agent, she founded Birmingham Exchange Company, a qualified intermediary facilitating 1031 exchanges all over the country, earning her designation as a Certified Exchange Specialist through the Federation of Exchange Accommodators. Lastly, Liz is also the Vice President of Gandol Inc., a construction and commercial door company.In 2023, she published her first book, “Not Just a Title: A Journey of Growth in the Title Industry

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: The Nazarite Vow Subtitle: Book of Judges Speaker: Dan White Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday Service Date: 11/5/2023 Bible: Numbers 6:1-21 Length: 48 min.

A little bit of Lansing love this week on Behind the Mitten, plus one last chance to get yourself out on the SCARE floor for Halloween.We caught up with our friend Tracy Padot, director of Lansing.org who explained that no matter whether you "Choose Lansing" or "Love Lansing", you are bound to have a fantastic time in the greater Lansing region. In fact, one of the biggest parties of the year will be happening in our capital city on November 17 when they host Silver Bells in the City, the kickoff to the holiday season. They typically have over 40,000 guests attend Silver Bells, coming to Lansing to see the lighted parade, the unveiling of the state holiday tree and an incredible fireworks display. A little more info on Silver Bells in the City from the website:From 5 to 9 p.m., visit the Silver Bells Village and start your holiday shopping! You can also get some refreshments and your commemorative Silver Bells ornament. The village is located on the 100 E. Block of Allegan Street between South Washington Square and Grand Avenue.Steps off at 6 p.m. and begins at the corner of Lenawee and S. Washington Sq. Grand Marshal is Lansing's own India Graham.More than 60 units and several high school marching bands will sparkle with thousands of lights as they make their way through the streets of downtown Lansing. The parade is a sight to behold, delighting people of every age.The participating high school marching bands will compete for the Best Illuminated Band awards during the parade.At approximately 7:25 p.m., Michigan's Official State Christmas Tree will be lit up! This year's tree is a beautiful 60-foot spruce from Onaway located in Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Vic Ruppert and his family donated the tree in honor of his late wife Shirley Ruppert. This is the first tree from Presque Isle County.And with a few last days to celebrate the Halloween holiday with a little bit of scary fun, we reconnected with Ed Terebus, owner and genius mastermind behind the award-winning, nationally known haunted house Erebus located in Pontiac. We discuss what it takes to put on a production of this size and professionalism, and how they'll start working on next year's house on November 1.Follow John and Amy:Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/behindthemittenTwitter at @BehindTheMittenInstagram at @BehindTheMitten

Sen. Joe Bellino was elected to the Michigan Senate in 2022, representing the 16th District, which includes most of Monroe, Lenawee and Hillsdale counties. Energy proposals are out of touch and out of reach

The search is on for a man suspected of killing his 64-year-old mother in Inkster on Labor Day. Michigan State Police identify the suspect as 25-year-old Joshua Hill. Officers were called to the home on Glenwood Street  after getting reports of suspicious activity. They found Hill's mother dead of multiple gunshot wounds. (Credit: Michigan State Police) More information about a Labor Day crash in Lenawee County that killed four people. Michigan State Police said four men -- ranging from 18 to 35 -- died in the crash. It happened around 10-30 yesterday morning when a truck hit a Ford F-150 on Britton Highway and Milwaukee Road, near Tecumseh. 

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Perseverance of the saints Subtitle: Doctrines of Grace Speaker: Bill Pickens Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday School Date: 8/28/2022 Length: 59 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Perseverance of the saints Subtitle: Doctrines of Grace Speaker: Bill Pickens Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday School Date: 8/28/2022 Length: 59 min.

The advisory covers Wayne, Monroe and Lenawee counties. Detroiters could see 6-8 inches of snow accumulation beginning Wednesday morning and throughout the day. Plus, Packard Plant demolition resumes, Wayne State expands debt forgiveness program and more. Do you have a community story we should tell? Let us know in an email at detroiteveningreport@wdet.org.

Lenawee county district 7 commissioner Kevon Martis joins us in the second segment to discuss local county issues, come listen to a new segment called the Martis Minutes.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Living in times of persecution Speaker: Bernard Ibrahim Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - AM Date: 1/1/2023 Bible: Daniel 6 Length: 88 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Contentment Speaker: Calvin Walden Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday Afternoon Date: 12/18/2022 Bible: Hebrews 13:5-6 Length: 52 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Gossip Subtitle: Small but dangerous Speaker: Calvin Walden Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday Afternoon Date: 9/25/2022 Bible: James 3:1-8 Length: 60 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: The Prophecy Speaker: Calvin Walden Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - AM Date: 12/4/2022 Bible: Isaiah 9:6-7 Length: 71 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Psalm 37 Speaker: John Gaskill Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday Afternoon Date: 10/9/2022 Bible: Psalm 37 Length: 56 min.

This month Barker & Broski talk with Lenawee county, Michigan local music professional (and Mike's guitar teacher) Andy Schiller. Andy shares lots of tips on how to make money as a musician including music lessons, self-publishing books, performing at weddings and local venues, YouTube videos, 3D printing miniature figures and more! He also extols the benefits of working positively with others for collaboration and constructive criticism. Learn more about Andy and even schedule a remote guitar lesson at https://andyschiller.com/

WHO IS DEE BLACK? THE JAIL VISIT STARTS NOW and Michigan Criminal Defense Attorney Bill Amadeo is talking Dee Black drama in Shiawassee, judicial elections in Lenawee, Washtenaw, Reid Techniques, Sister Hazel, cheesesteaks & more! It's a MUST-LISTEN tonight at ShiawasseeRadio.com! The Shiawassee Radio podcast is now on iHeart, Podchaser and Player FM! You can also find it on Apple, Google, Spotify, Anchor, Stitcher and in even more places! Get more at durandnow.podbean.com!

Join us for this awesome conversation with Kevon Martis.

Join us as we talk with candidate for Lenawee district court judge Christopher Fleming.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Perseverance of the saints Subtitle: Doctrines of Grace Speaker: Bill Pickens Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday School Date: 7/10/2022 Length: 56 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Unconditional Election Subtitle: Doctrines of Grace Speaker: Bill Pickens Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday School Date: 6/5/2022 Length: 59 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Total Depravity Subtitle: Doctrines of Grace Speaker: Bill Pickens Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday School Date: 5/29/2022 Length: 54 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Easter Sunday Speaker: Calvin Walden Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - AM Date: 4/17/2022 Bible: John 11:1-11 Length: 72 min.

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrading to a paid subscription is the only way to guarantee access to 100% of The Storm’s content.WhoAlan Henceroth, Chief Operating Officer of Arapahoe Basin, ColoradoRecorded onApril 12, 2022About Arapahoe BasinClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Dundee Resort DevelopmentBase elevation: 10,520 feetSummit elevation: 13,050 feetVertical drop: 2,530 feetSkiable Acres: 1,428Average annual snowfall: 350 inchesTrail count: 147 (24% double-black, 49% black, 20% intermediate, 7% beginner)Lift count: 9 (2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple [to be replaced with a high-speed six-pack this summer], 1 double, 2 carpets, 1 J-tow - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Arapahoe Basin’s lift fleet)Uphill capacity: 11,300 skiers per hourWhy I interviewed himThe Legend. Ski area taglines are typically rocket fuel for The Storm’s wiseass machine, but this one fits. Hard against the Continental Divide, Arapahoe Basin is the third-highest ski area in America, trailing only Monarch (10,790 feet) and Loveland (10,800) at its base, and Telluride (13,150) and Silverton (13,487), at its peak. Its legacy is 10th Mountain Division resourcefulness, an improbable place rising up and over the treeline, hacked out of the remote 1940s American wilderness. The ski area opens in October. It closes in June. Sometimes later (sometimes much later). In Conglomerate County USA, it is the rowdy independent, owned by Some Company Up In Canada, its extremes laced with ferocious double-blacks. There is no lodging. No phony village. No special rich-guy lanes. Just skiing.Damn good skiing, fed by 350 inches of average annual snowfall. This is a ski area, not a ski resort. And in approachable Summit County, with its green-blue acres appropriately tilted for destination-wired Texans and New Yorkers, its groves of high-speed super-lifts, its sprawling mountains perfectly divided by ability, we might assume that such a rowdy outfit, five miles past faux-village Keystone, half the size and with six fewer high-speed chairlifts, might wilt from the pressure. But A-Basin has a pull. Sort North America’s ski areas by size, and the bias is clear: just about any western resort under 2,000 acres was left off the Epic, Ikon, and Mountain Collective passes. But when Arapahoe Basin broke up with Vail in 2019, after a 22-year-partnership, Ikon and Mountain Collective were waiting in the driveway with a dozen roses and a ride to prom. Meanwhile, Loveland, just three miles away, 300 acres bigger, and infinitely easier to get to (its address is literally Interstate 70, Dillon, Colorado), continues to be shut out (or they’re just not interested).Anyone who’s skied there (and everyone has skied there), knows that Summit County is a special place. There’s a reason why it’s ground zero for America’s industrial snowsports machine. Copper, Breck, and Keystone have 79 lifts between them, including 10 six-packs, 16 high-speed quads, and four gondolas or chondolas. Eight and a half thousand acres of Epkonic terrain lurching within easy access of the interstate. And yet, there’s room for something different too. Something special. Something Legendary.What we talked aboutWhat the A-Basin crew does when Interstate 70 is closed and it’s dumping outside; the mountain’s 10th Mountain Division legacy; the audacity of 1946 A-Basin; what the ski area looked like when Henceroth showed up in 1988; the characters animating the mountain; ski-bumming and working in Summit County in the ‘80s; Arizona Snowbowl; yes a dog-food company used to own the ski area; The Legend’s terrain; recollections of rescues as Ski Patrol Director; the art of avalanche control; A-Basin’s unique position at the top of Summit County and at ground zero of every major issue in U.S. skiing; the hidden drama behind Vail’s purchase of Keystone, Breck, and A-Basin, and why the company had to pick one to sell; why and how A-Basin ended up on the Epic Pass; the historical inflection point that launched the large-scale ski season pass wars; the Epic Pass breaking point; breaking up with Vail – “it was a surprise to everyone”; the upsides of the Epic Pass; Vail’s stingy spring skiing legacy; how and why A-Basin joined the Ikon and Mountain Collective passes; what it meant for A-Basin to take its own pass back; how the skier experience has changed since the ski area left the Epic Pass; the parking problem; increasing uphill capacity while decreasing overall capacity by limiting ticket and pass sales; why A-Basin ditched its reservation system right after a two-week pilot in 2020; no more holiday blackouts on the Ikon Base Pass; why A-Basin finally installed a high-speed lift in 2010; why the ski area didn’t replace Pali with a higher-capacity lift; why A-Basin went with a fixed-grip quad at The Beavers even though it has twice the vertical rise of the high-speed Black Mountain lift; where you go once you have the newest lift fleet in the country; what the Montezuma Bowl expansion meant for the ski area; going deep on The Beavers expansion and why the lift is where it is; whether future terrain expansions are coming; the commitment to the long season; The Beach; and Al’s Blog.              Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewSummit County is, unfortunately, too convenient for its own good. It is the first stop on the Ski Express heading west out of metropolitan Denver, where the population has nearly doubled in 30 years. It was, along with Winter Park, where the multi-mountain season pass wars erupted in the late ‘90s. Starting around 1998, a couple hundred bucks and a junker could get you an eight-month ski season in the high alpine. At the same time, air travel continued to get cheaper and Denver’s airport continued to expand. Anyone from anywhere could get to Colorado pretty easily, and over time the expressway into the mountains became a parking lot with a view.A-Basin rode this tsunami for a long time. An inaugural member of the Epic Pass in 2008, the ski area was also part of the bargain-basement Summit County version of the product, which delivered unlimited access to Arapahoe Basin and Keystone (along with non-holidays at Breck), for around $500 (past prices are tough to nail down, but the pass was $419 in 2012 and appeared to rise to $549 by 2018; versions without Breck access were even cheaper). It was a hell of a deal, but it nearly broke the ski area. By 2019, when the mountain shocked Vail, skiers, and the whole industry by saying “yeah we’re done,” parking – the foundation of the whole U.S. American lift-served ski experience – was well beyond maxed-out for half of A-Basin’s eight-month season.Exhausted and nearly defeated, the ski area needed a breather. The mountain that A-Basin had become was not the mountain it wanted or imagined itself to be. So Henceroth and his team rethought everything. They started limiting day ticket and season pass sales. For next season, they will actually decrease the number of passes by 10 percent of 2021-22 totals. They joined the Ikon and Mountain Collective passes, but as limited-day partners. This season, they will yank the 21-year-old Lenawee triple and drop a high-speed six-pack in its place (the triple is headed down I-70 to Sunrise). All of this came on top of the 468-acre Beavers and Steep Gullies expansion in 2018, which considerably boosted the ski area’s size and came with a new quad.The headline here: Arapahoe Basin is decreasing overall capacity while increasing uphill capacity. It’s not a completely novel strategy: Deer Valley was built on limited tickets and fast, insanely numerous lifts. But A-Basin is doing this without the luxury sheen or high-dollar pricetag (their season pass is $559 for 2022-23, while Deer Valley’s clocks in at $2,675). And, more interestingly, it’s working: Henceroth tells me on the podcast that the ski area has never been in better fiscal shape, even as it’s shed 200,000 annual skier visits in the past four years. It’s a remarkable narrative, and one that many other ski areas, I suspect, will copy. Many other big-dogs – Alta, Jackson Hole, Aspen – are also aggressively adjusting pass products or tweaking parking or ramping up lift fleets. A-Basin, however, has been arguably the most aggressive and outspoken, a story told one blog post at a time, a real-time experiment in how big-time skiing in a big-time ski market can approach rationality in the megapass era and amid an exploding population. It was a story I had to hear.Questions I wish I’d askedI had a few questions prepared around the mountain’s long-term snowmaking plans, as well as a bit about why the ski area has no lodging (I think it’s the difficulty guests have sleeping at that altitude).What I got wrongWhen I referenced the elimination of Ikon Base holiday blackouts at A-Basin for next season, I said that there were no restrictions over “Christmas, New Year’s, and MLK.” That should have been the standard blackout periods of Christmas-to-New Year’s, MLK, and Presidents’ Day weekend, as outlined on the Ikon Pass website.Why you should ski Arapahoe BasinThere’s something special about the top of America, where the trees meet the snowfields and peaks rise stark and lonesome beyond. To have skiing up there – to have anything up there – is disorienting and marvelous, a triumph of spirit and will. This is not Europe, where you’ll ride packed tram cars to a mountain-top abutment more impossible-seeming to anchor into than the surface of the moon. But it’s dramatic nonetheless, a sense of yeah-so-this-is-Colorado that will linger forever once absorbed.A-Basin has a few greens, a small collection of blues, a pair of carpets wheeling along at the base. But this is an expert’s mountain. See the East Wall terrain on the map above, or anything off Pali, or the elevator shafts dropping from the Zuma Cornice. This is not Keystone, with its 10-mile cruisers and good stuff hidden three humps from the front-side. A-Basin’s gnar hangs there, looming and unmissable, a reach goal or psychological torture device for the groomer-bound or the uninitiated. It’s still Summit County: busy, pass-aligned, easy to get to, but it soars in a way that Copper, Keystone, and Breck – all incredible mountains – just don’t. It’s a little more Tahoe, a little more Jackson, a little more Cottonwoods than its Colorado neighbors, with a bit more edge and a bit more muscle, something both among and apart from them.More Arapahoe BasinAl’s Blog is one of the best ski-area blogs in the country. Posts exploring some of the items we discussed on the podcast:Why A-Basin replaced its “1978 YAN fixed grip double chairlift with a capacity of 1,200 people per hour for a 2020 Leitner Poma fixed grip double chairlift with a capacity of 1,200 people per hour.”Why the ski area exited the Epic PassNumbers-based breakdowns of A-Basin’s post-Epic life from 2020, and again from earlier this year.  A good breakdown (playing off the 2020 post above), by The Colorado Sun’s Jason Blevins: Arapahoe Basin’s effort to avoid overcrowding by leaving the Epic Pass may be working too wellHenceroth and I discussed Winter Park’s first buddy pass discount, which ignited the Colorado pass wars in 1998. This 2004 retrospective from The Summit Daily provides some good history, along with some funny-to-hear-now predictions from concerned ski industry veterans.On the podcast, Henceroth mentions a ski magazine cover that credited “Vail Resorts” with a 243-day season after A-Basin (which was then part of the Epic Pass), extended their season deep into summer. I mentioned that I would try and track this magazine (or an image of it online), down, but I was unable to. If anyone has this cover, please send me a photo and I’ll include it in a future newsletter.This trailmap of A-Basin, from 1967, is the oldest I could find:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 40/100 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

This week Stephanie K and Jay meet up with Melissa Ladd Patnode from Central Michigan 2-1-1.  Simply put - Central Michigan 2-1-1 connects people in need to health and human service resources in the community. Through an easy to remember number, available 24/7, 365 days within 9 counties in Central Michigan; Clinton, Eaton, Genesee, Hillsdale, Ingham, Jackson, Lenawee, Livingston, and Shiawassee Counties.Central Michigan 211.  Visit Central Michigan 2-1-1 (centralmichigan211.org) for more information!

Listen to Roxanne and Jacob talk about a tapestry of answered prayer. Listen to how the CPC of Lenawee has been encouraged by being faithful and is being called to be faithful. Video Version: https://youtu.be/KwoWWszzsXQ Sign up for email notifications … Continued

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Adultry Subtitle: Book of Deuteronomy Speaker: Calvin Walden Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - AM Date: 10/24/2021 Bible: Deuteronomy 5:18 Length: 84 min.

Are your ready to make the transition from single family to multifamily real estate investing? Hesitant to make the jump? Then today's episode is a must-listen for you. Johnny Lynum, an active duty Airforce veteran, joins Dan Handford to break down the first multifamily acquisition that he closed on during the height of COVID. This episode is packed with valuable tips for all investors. Listen in to learn how he creatively structured the equity to support majority ownership and a long-term hold, how he negotiated $300k off the purchase price, and why conservative underwriting always pays off.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Now is the time Speaker: Calvin Walden Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - PM Date: 3/14/2021 Length: 30 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Making the most of every opportunity Subtitle: Book of Colossians Speaker: Calvin Walden Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - AM Date: 12/6/2020 Bible: Colossians 4:5 Length: 47 min.

Jennifer Lewis of Jonesville was reelected at this Michigan Farm Bureau Annual Meeting to represent Branch, Hillsdale, Calhoun, Jackson, and Lenawee counties on the state Farm Bureau board. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Children, Obey Subtitle: Book of Colossians Speaker: Calvin Walden Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - AM Date: 10/18/2020 Bible: Colossians 3:20 Length: 41 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Wives, Submit Subtitle: Book of Colossians Speaker: Calvin Walden Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - AM Date: 9/27/2020 Bible: Colossians 3:18 Length: 51 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Husbands, Love your wives Subtitle: Book of Colossians Speaker: Calvin Walden Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - AM Date: 10/11/2020 Bible: Colossians 3:19 Length: 43 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Children, Obey Subtitle: Book of Colossians Speaker: Calvin Walden Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - AM Date: 10/18/2020 Bible: Colossians 3:20 Length: 41 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Husbands, Love your wives Subtitle: Book of Colossians Speaker: Calvin Walden Broadcaster: Reformed Baptist Church of Lenawee Event: Sunday - AM Date: 10/11/2020 Bible: Colossians 3:19 Length: 43 min.

Amanda Harsh is a Gold Award Girl Scout who became a Leader for her daughter's troop before becoming the Area Manager for Heart of Lenawee. Amanda is passionate about Girl Scouts and has made great strides as the Area Manager. In this episode, you will learn: • How the Heart of Lenawee area successfully brings people together, adding another layer to the Girl Scout Experience • Amanda's perspective on how leaders learn, experiment, and grow alongside the girls • What it's like to lead a troop with multiple levels in it Tune in to hear all of this and so much more!

1:00 - Season Overview 5:00 - Background and coaching at Mount Union 24:00 - Coming to Adrian 27:00 - Utilizing Lenawee County  30:00 - Adrian facilities and administrative support 35:00 - Creating a culture 43:00 - Women's program at Adrian 46:00 - Recruiting 52:00 - Ideal prospects for Adrian 55:00 - Overtime

1:00 - Season review 4:30 - Hudson/New Lothrop mystique 8:00 - Hudson team mindset 9:30 - When they turned the corner 11:30 - Marry family in Hudson 14:00 - Early years coaching + evolving 18:00 - Dundee and rival teams 24:30 - Importance of scheduling tough competition 29:00 - Hamdan-Weaver comparison 32:00 - The process 42:30 - Parenting as a coach 47:30 - Overtime    

This week Mr. David Palan and I throw a bunch of numbers and letters at you as we talk about cassettes, SRAM and Shimano both.  Hopefully it will help you understand but probably it will just confuse you more! Then of course questions!!!!! Thanks everyone for the amazing questions. Scott Dedenbach is on Twitter at @bikeshopcx @cyclocrossnet. Mr. David Palan is on Twitter at @mrdavidpalan. This podcast is also supported by Health IQ, a life insurance company that celebrates the health conscious, including cyclists. Visit healthiq.com/bikeshop to learn more & get a free quote, or check out their life insurance FAQ page to get your questions answered. If your on mobile and want to listen through Spotify: click here. Thanks as always for tuning in. If this is your first time listening, you can explore the rest of our episodes here. Bike Shop CX is part of the Wide Angle Podium podcast network. Check out  www.wideanglepodium.com, listen to the shows, and consider becoming a member. If you would like to donate to Re-bicycle Lenawee and help us keep this thing going check it out here.

We are back to talk about nothing.  Mr. David Palan and I chat about what we are working on, the bike co-op that I volunteer at and some gravel grinding stuff before we get on to viewer questions. Scott Dedenbach is on Twitter at @cyclocrossnet. Mr. David Palan is on Twitter at @mrdavidpalan. This podcast is also supported by Health IQ, a life insurance company that celebrates the health conscious, including cyclists. Visit healthiq.com/bikeshop to learn more & get a free quote, or check out their life insurance FAQ page to get your questions answered. If your on mobile and want to listen through Spotify: click here. Thanks as always for tuning in. If this is your first time listening, you can explore the rest of our episodes here. Bike Shop CX is part of the Wide Angle Podium podcast network. Check out  www.wideanglepodium.com, listen to the shows, and consider becoming a member. If you would like to donate to Re-bicycle Lenawee and help us keep this thing going check it out here.