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The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast likes it when ski areas are run by people who are good at running ski areas. Please subscribe to the email newsletter to get new posts the moment they're live. Thank you for supporting independent ski journalism.About CamelbackOwned by: EPR Properties, managed by Peregrine Hospitality (formerly KSL Resorts)Located in: Tannersville, PennsylvaniaYear founded: 1963Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts* Ikon Base Pass: 5 days, holiday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Shawnee Mountain (:24), Jack Frost (:26), Big Boulder (:27), Skytop Lodge (:29), Saw Creek (:37), Blue Mountain (:41), Pocono Ranchlands (:43), Montage (:44), Hideout (:51), Elk Mountain (1:05), Bear Creek (1:09), Ski Big Bear (1:16)Base elevation: 1,252 feetSummit elevation: 2,079 feetVertical drop: 827 feetSkiable Acres: 166Average annual snowfall: 50 inchesTrail count: 45, with three new trails for 2026-27 (not on the map below, but discussed on the podcast)Lift count: 12 (1 high-speed six-pack, 1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 2 doubles, 5 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Camelback's lift fleet)For reference:The Zoom transcript (click “transcript” above for the Substack transcript, then click on any text block to teleport to the associated point in the video; timestamps below DO NOT MATCH THE VIDEO)00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:37.000Stuart Winchester: Welcome to The Storm! I'm your host, Stuart Winchester. Today is Wednesday, September 16th, 2026, and I've got a really good show for you today.00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:45.000Stuart Winchester: we're going to talk some Pennsylvania skiing. And Pennsylvania skiing is a really interesting thing. As I travel around the country.00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:56.000Stuart Winchester: and ski at all these different places in the Midwest, and out West, and in New England, and in the Mid-Atlantic. Uh, and as I talk to folks who… who don't ski that much, or only ski at the big mountains.00:03:56.000 --> 00:04:05.000Stuart Winchester: I'll often bring up some experience I had at a Pennsylvania ski area. Pennsylvania has quite a few ski areas as 21.00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:20.000Stuart Winchester: public chairlift-served ski areas, and it does 2.6 million skier visits on average per year. That is more than any state except for Colorado, California, Utah, Vermont, and New York.00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:26.000Stuart Winchester: It's more than Washington, it's more than Oregon, it's more than Montana, it's more than New.00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:39.000Stuart Winchester: So, Pennsylvania is a really important ski state, which is probably why Vail Resorts owns 8 ski areas there, because it is really close to a lot of population centers. In western PA, you have Pittsburgh.00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:54.000Stuart Winchester: and Seven Springs, and Laurel, and Hidden Valley, and then you have Philadelphia on the east side, and you can also draw up from Baltimore and D.C. for Round Top and Whitetail. And uh…00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:57.000Stuart Winchester: And Jack Frost's Big Boulder up in the Poconos. So…00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:00.000Stuart Winchester: Vail has a big presence there.00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:15.000Stuart Winchester: Icon has a presence there with Camelback and Blue Mountain. Uh, and then Indy Pass just signed their 8th ski area in Pennsylvania with Spring Mountain, uh, down near Philadelphia. So, so it's, it's a place where a lot of skiers start.00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:19.000Stuart Winchester: And it's a little bit of a funny place to ski, because…00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:29.000Stuart Winchester: it tends to have an outsized number of novice skiers, which is great. They're very good at doing that. Uh, but it can make it a little chaotic.00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:38.000Stuart Winchester: And the lift lines can get a little crazy, and people are all over the hill, and sometimes they're walking down the hill because they're frustrated and they're giving up.00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:40.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, and…00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:44.000Stuart Winchester: You take that as your baseline in Pennsylvania.00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:49.000Stuart Winchester: And you had any sort of complications.00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:54.000Stuart Winchester: And things get out of hand really quickly. And in general.00:05:55.000 --> 00:06:00.000Stuart Winchester: For that reason, the ski areas that have survived in Pennsylvania.00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:07.000Stuart Winchester: are among the best operators in the world, and I would put that up against anyone.00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:14.000Stuart Winchester: It's a very, very challenging environment, not only because you have a high number of novice skiers.00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:17.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, but also because you have…00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:31.000Stuart Winchester: not a ton of snow, sometimes in the west part of the state, where there's higher elevation, they do get a lot of snow, but… but not as a rule, you couldn't count on it for natural snow. Uh, you get a lot of rain, you get a lot of warm-ups.00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:35.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, and… and you, in general, have to rely on…00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:42.000Stuart Winchester: a very short season, generally mid-December-ish to mid-March-ish.00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:45.000Stuart Winchester: And the skiers there…00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:52.000Stuart Winchester: They're they're accustomed to a pretty high standard, so.00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:57.000Stuart Winchester: So when things do get out of control, uh…00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:04.000Stuart Winchester: They really rebelled, and they really noticed. So, a couple years ago, this is what happened at Camelback. So, Camelback…00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:09.000Stuart Winchester: You know, I don't generally do ops stories, uh…00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:10.000Stuart Winchester: You know.00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:19.000Stuart Winchester: ski area didn't groom this run, or they haven't opened this lift, or, uh, you know, they usually let this bump up, but they don't, or, or…00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:27.000Stuart Winchester: you know, they… they are trying to save money, or they're being cheap. I generally don't bother with those, even though I get a lot of messages.00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:32.000Stuart Winchester: Complaining about things like that, because there's almost always a pretty good reason.00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:38.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, and it's almost always temporary, and it's really not worth the effort.00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:48.000Stuart Winchester: to write the story if I'm just writing about, you know, why Stratton or Mount Snow or Magic Mountain didn't open a certain lift on a certain day.00:07:48.000 --> 00:08:04.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, it's, it's a lot to track down and it's a lot of, uh, this person said this and the other person said that. It's just not the kind of thing that I'm want to cover with the storm, right? I want to do bigger stories. I want to do trend stories. I want to look at the culture and evolution of skiing.00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:11.000Stuart Winchester: And the passes, and all the infrastructure, and all the fun stuff. So I don't generally cover the day-to-day stuff, just because…00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:18.000Stuart Winchester: The ski areas that remain in 2026 are, for the most part, run by really good operators.00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:32.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, it… because… and they've survived. Most of the bad ski areas that were either mismanaged or were in the wrong places, they went out of business a long time ago, which is why the number of ski areas has been stable for around 25 years now in America.00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:35.000Stuart Winchester: So I but I started to notice.00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:45.000Stuart Winchester: several years ago that I was getting an outsized number of complaints around one ski area in particular in the Poconos.00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:47.000Stuart Winchester: And it was Camelback.00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:51.000Stuart Winchester: And Camelback had a long history of being an independent.00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:52.000Stuart Winchester: And…00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:54.000Stuart Winchester: Really…00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:59.000Stuart Winchester: the way it's been described to me by… by season pass holders, and I've skied…00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:04.000Stuart Winchester: some at Camelback, but I don't have that depth of knowledge of having grown up there.00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:20.000Stuart Winchester: That Camelback for a long time, for decades, set the standard on snowmaking, on grooming, on just general maintenance of lifts in the ski area in the Poconos. And that was why they had chosen to ski there all those years.00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:30.000Stuart Winchester: But things had started to fall apart when a new owner showed up in 2019. It was at the time KSL Capital, who was.00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:43.000Stuart Winchester: was managing it for EPR Properties, which is the entity that bought it, and they own a bunch of ski areas, EPR Properties, including a bunch owned by Vail, including North Star, and a lot of the old Peak Resorts in Ohio and such.00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:50.000Stuart Winchester: And KSL Resorts was a division of KSL Capital.00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:53.000Stuart Winchester: which is a part owner of Altera.00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:58.000Stuart Winchester: But for some reason, Altera, which is very good at running ski resorts.00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:00.000Stuart Winchester: did not…00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:15.000Stuart Winchester: get assigned as the… as the owner of Camelback. And when KSL Resorts purchased Blue Mountain, not in Ontario, the Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania, that's about 45 minutes from Camelback, two years later, in 2021.00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:26.000Stuart Winchester: That ski area also did not fall under Altera's ownership. And it was an odd choice to make, because Altera's really good at running ski areas, and they run…00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:35.000Stuart Winchester: Mammoth, and Deer Valley, and Steamboat, and Solitude, and Palisades Tahoe, and Stratton, and Sugarbush, and they definitely have.00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:41.000Stuart Winchester: the institutional knowledge and internal firepower to be able to run these ski areas in the Poconos.00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:43.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, Blue Mountain…00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:47.000Stuart Winchester: Had the benefit of a long time tenured management team.00:10:47.000 --> 00:11:02.000Stuart Winchester: That kept the place, by all accounts, running pretty well. Camelback, on the other hand, seemed to be falling apart before our eyes, and before the eyes of the loyalist skiers who loved the place so much. And they were really, really concerned, and I started to…00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:08.000Stuart Winchester: Because they had put, uh, a management team in place, it seemed.00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:10.000Stuart Winchester: that…00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:22.000Stuart Winchester: was not familiar with the… with the inner workings of a ski area. Uh, I… I hosted Dave Makarski, the former general manager of Kalenbach, on this podcast.00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:33.000Stuart Winchester: and very nice guy. We had a great conversation. Uh, he's not a skier. And, and, you know, sometimes you can be not a skier and run a great ski resort. Uh, look at Bill Stritzler up at Smuggler's Notch.00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:43.000Stuart Winchester: Bill hasn't skied in years, and he snowboarded for a little bit, but he's not a daily skier. Look at Shawnee.00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:54.000Stuart Winchester: that where the owner… that's one of the most modern, nice ski areas in the Poconos, uh, and the owner has not skied in decades. So, so it's not always necessary, uh, but…00:11:55.000 --> 00:12:10.000Stuart Winchester: It does help and it's certainly a benefit. So everyone I talked to, I was, I was gathering all this stuff for a story and I was gonna write about Camelback and, and it, it really seemed like it was the worst run ski area anywhere that I could find based on the amount of feedback I was getting.00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:25.000Stuart Winchester: I was gathering all this feedback from all these long-time pass holders, and then they hired a new general manager, and so I scrapped the story, but I still wanted to get it, and by all accounts, Jason Bays, who I'll bring on the podcast in a moment.00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:34.000Stuart Winchester: has really done a nice job of turning CamelBak around. So, so let's go to Jason now.00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:16.000Stuart Winchester: My guest today is the Vice President and General Manager of Camelback Ski Area in Pennsylvania.00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:26.000Stuart Winchester: Camelback runs six chairlifts, or maybe seven. I might have had a typo there. Serving 45 trails on an 827-foot vertical drop.00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:41.000Stuart Winchester: Prior to taking the top job at Camelback, he was general manager for Great Wolf Resorts around the United States. He also spent time as chief operating officer and general manager of Mountain Creek Ski Area in New Jersey and director of operations.00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:54.000Stuart Winchester: for Jay Peak, Vermont. His very first jobs as a teenager were as a lifeguard and ski instructor at Camelback. Jason Bay is my guest. Jason, welcome to the Storm. Awesome to have you. How you doing today?00:14:53.000 --> 00:15:00.000Jason Bays: Thank you, Stuart. Great to be here. I've been a listener from day one, so excited to join you.00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:14.000Stuart Winchester: I love that. I'm so hyped to hear that. I know I started with a little Northeast focus. You know, you're the… you probably know this already, but you're the second straight guest I've had on. There was a Mountain Creek alum, Chris Haggerty, on yesterday. Are you acquainted with Chris?00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:18.000Jason Bays: Yeah, Chris and I worked together, um, back in our days at Mountain Creek, great guy.00:15:17.000 --> 00:15:33.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah, I'm, uh, I'm not sure, I'm sure you're aware I'm based in New York City and Mountain Creek is one of my go-tos and, and was my home mountain before I started traveling all over the place for the storm. So, so, you know, Jason, I, I think it's awesome that you grew up at Camelback. Tal.00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:41.000Stuart Winchester: your childhood Camelback. What was the kingdom of Camelback like to you, uh, when you were growing up skiing there?00:15:40.000 --> 00:16:03.000Jason Bays: Yeah, look, I, you know, took, I grew up in Pocono Kid, born and raised 10 minutes from the resort. After school ski program was the first, you know, first sort of foray into life at Camelback and was immediately hooked in the summer as a swimming pool and two water slides. I thought that was the most awesome place in the world too.00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:45.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:55.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:04.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:21.000Jason Bays: And my parents thought it was a great babysitting service, you know, relative to that. So it was just an awesome, awesome place to grow up and, you know, be part of the small but mighty ski community that is Tannersville, Pennsylvania, in this area, in the Poconos.00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:39.000Jason Bays: um, you know, when it came to get a first job, uh, there's no place I was, uh, gonna consider other than Camelback. It's where all my friends were, it's where we all hung out all the time, and, um, you know, really just got introduced to, uh, to the sport, and, um, had some freedom. It was the first time I had some freedom, and it was to be at Camelback, so that's.00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:29.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:56.000Stuart Winchester: So you worked there, and you were part of the machine, so to speak, and I realized you were sort of on the peripheral of the machine, as opposed to in the center of it, as you are now. But, you know, you grew up in the Poconos, and had that experience, and you had this vision of Camelback in your head, right? Then you went off and had a big life, as…00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:57.000Jason Bays: Yes.00:16:56.000 --> 00:17:00.000Stuart Winchester: as people do, and you went and worked at all these places that I just mentioned.00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:03.000Stuart Winchester: And then you came back to Camelback.00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:06.000Stuart Winchester: When you, when you arrived.00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:10.000Stuart Winchester: How had the place changed? And I just want to tee this up. I, you know.00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:19.000Stuart Winchester: before you came on, I was talking about how I don't generally write operations stories, right? Because it… there's usually a good reason for why a trail is closed, a lift's not running.00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:26.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, but a few years ago, I started to get an outsized number of complaints about Camelback.00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:38.000Stuart Winchester: And so I started to write a story about it, and then when you came along, I shelved it, because honestly, everyone immediately was like, oh, this is so much better. So, you know, how had…00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:41.000Stuart Winchester: Camelback changed.00:17:41.000 --> 00:17:42.000Stuart Winchester: when you…00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:44.000Stuart Winchester: Came back to work there.00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:51.000Stuart Winchester: And what were the challenges facing the resort? What did you focus on immediately?00:17:50.000 --> 00:18:08.000Jason Bays: Yeah, I'll just back up to say, you know, just to contextualize, um, from when I was there as a teenager and, um, through college on the ski team, too, I would say that community was a really big word, um, that was used all the time. You, you felt like it was, it was the Camelback community, and there's a really big emphasis on the ski product.00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:28.000Jason Bays: Um, as a ski instructor, like, what we were putting out, how we were doing lessons, how many lessons we could do, and the experience that was surrounding that. And same thing on the water park side. And, you know, I think the, um, you know, some of the observations, um, coming back to Camelback was, um, I think there's a little bit of focus, um, focus direction for, for, like, to focus on the ski product.00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:44.000Jason Bays: and focusing on the water park product, and I sort of look at it as, like, a… as Disney World, right? Whereas we fill out… if we do the ski part well, we do the snow tubing part well, we do the water park well, that puts heads in beds, um, versus trying to put heads in beds.00:18:44.000 --> 00:19:01.000Jason Bays: And then have them do the activities. We're leading with an activity front and centered focus. And that means making the strategic investments in the ski product, in our recreational product, and making that the very best that it can be.00:19:01.000 --> 00:19:23.000Jason Bays: back in 2008 when I was here as a teenager, that was all there was. There was no hotel product, right? So the ski product got outsized attention just naturally because it was a 560-acre resort that identified as a ski area and a water park. And I think some of the context that was missing was that while there's been a great evolution of Camelback as a four-season resort.00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:16.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:40.000Jason Bays: It's really important that, to me, that each of those business units gets the time and attention that they would deserve if they were stand-alone units, particularly because a cog… it's a cog in the wheel, and that wheel is… it's a flywheel. It needs to… it all needs to turn at once, and so we lead with.00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:43.000Jason Bays: the recreational offerings first.00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:48.000Stuart Winchester: You know, you mentioned the community, and I wasn't aware…00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:59.000Stuart Winchester: that there was such a strong community around Camelback, and I'm not surprised, because most ski areas have that group of folks who, you know, they're retirees, and they boot up at 8am, and they take runs together.00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:14.000Stuart Winchester: But they were really passionate, and the running theme, Jason, in the emails and messages that I got from Camelback locals was that they loved Camelback. It wasn't that they hated Camelback, they hated to complain about Camelback.00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:18.000Stuart Winchester: They wanted to love it, but they couldn't. There was there was.00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:34.000Stuart Winchester: a lot of things they cited, uh, not making snowmaking when it's cold, understaffed grooming, uh, missed lift inspections. I don't know if this is true. This is what people were… they were reaching, I think, for answers. Uh, put it all together, and there was… it was definitely…00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:47.000Stuart Winchester: seemed as though the ski product was not the focus. So when you came in, what did you focus on right away and say, okay, this is what we gotta change, you know, we have to cover every trail 100% right away, or whatever it was?00:20:47.000 --> 00:21:09.000Jason Bays: Yeah, I think that's, look, I would start, you hit the nail on the head that there's a very passionate skiing community here at Camelback and in the Poconos and it means a lot to people. This is second, third generations that are learning to ski here, bring their families here and be part of this. And to your point, everyone wants to be prideful of Camelback, right?00:21:09.000 --> 00:21:24.000Jason Bays: This was the, this was family run for a really long time and, you know, very focused on sort of the, you know, season pass holders renewing year after year.00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:40.000Jason Bays: You know, a couple of things. One is I think that how we authentically tell our story isn't done in a way that is, you know, is done in a way that's authentic. A, bringing back the Camelback Mountain Facebook page that communicated ski related content.00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:39.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:21:40.000 --> 00:22:06.000Jason Bays: Right? I think that, you know, there's only so many things you can say about a hotel room and how exciting it is. Like, we really lead now first with authentically telling the story. Our snow report got a lot more detailed, gave granular information as to what was going on. So, you know, did we have a perfect winter last winter? By all means, no, but we communicated that authentically. And where we messed up, we took.00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:23.000Jason Bays: the blame for it, and said, hey, we didn't get this right, and where we were working to improve the experience, we communicated that… communicated that story. So, to me, it started from a communication standpoint, that we were authentic, that we were honest, that we were truthful, and that we were communicating on a medium that.00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:31.000Jason Bays: our guests would see, um, and relate to. So I think a big miss was, I think, admittedly, a big miss was removing the, um, Camelback Mountain.00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:53.000Jason Bays: social media pages, um, and bringing those back were really important so that, um, we could tell the story authentically. I think SKUs really appreciate, um, knowing what's going on, and to your point on, hey, there's sort of this rumor flying or that rumor flying, um, you know, we were able to, uh, sort of hone in and, and tell, tell that story. Secondarily, I think from an infrastructure standpoint.00:22:53.000 --> 00:23:09.000Jason Bays: um, we really needed to make sure that we had, um, the right team in place. And we have an amazingly talented team at Camelback, um, but we did not have key positions filled, um, in certain areas. Um, and so, we bolstered up the snowmaking. Snowmaking team went from.00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:05.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:08.000Stuart Winchester: Like, what areas?00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:30.000Jason Bays: you know, 3 to 4 to 30, um, this past winter, um, that makes a big difference, right? Our trail rollout was, um, you know, first to open in the East, uh, for Pennsylvania, um, and, uh, um, and, and focus on the core products. Um, same thing with lift operations. We brought in a really experienced lift, uh, maintenance manager.00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:13.000Stuart Winchester: Hey!00:23:13.000 --> 00:23:14.000Stuart Winchester: Wow.00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:16.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:21.000Stuart Winchester: Yep.00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:46.000Jason Bays: Um, to our team that really helped, um, support our Lyft, um, uh, operation. Um, decisions on when Lyfts ran and what time they ran, uh, you know, our thought was, let's, um, be more… like, you have to run the Terrain Park Lyft every day.00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:47.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:23:46.000 --> 00:24:06.000Jason Bays: to me, that's a commitment. We make that every day. We say we're running the Glen Lift every day. It services great novice terrain. It services the train park. And so, looking at the operational plan and saying, okay, what are ways that we can give back, you know, and make deposits back to our skiers? And in turn.00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:24.000Jason Bays: that builds momentum, right? People talk, and, like, the ski community is so connected, right? It's like, if you do something, like, people find out about it, because they're really, you know, they hear about it. And so, for us, focus on the core business was, um, you know, from a ski standpoint, was really important, and the infrastructure.00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:13.000Stuart Winchester: Right.00:24:17.000 --> 00:24:19.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:41.000Jason Bays: to be able to do it. And I would just, lastly, just say I go back to making sure that our team had the resources to do their job. We're supported, we're empowered, collaborative leadership, you know, we sat around the table and said, this is the operating plan, this is what we're going to do for our guests.00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:46.000Jason Bays: And then go out and execute it to the best we can.00:24:45.000 --> 00:25:03.000Stuart Winchester: You know, Jason, I, I, I think you could have run for governor with one of the first things that you did, which was get rid of paid parking. I, I, I don't think that I've ever, uh, heard people happier about anything. Now, now, and let me, let me qualify this, right? I think in, in some instances, paid parking and parking reservations.00:25:03.000 --> 00:25:05.000Stuart Winchester: make sense.00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:18.000Stuart Winchester: you know, super high volume days. Arapahoe Basin, I think, is a model in Colorado where they only charge for certain days and certain times, and they keep backing off which days as they learn when they really need it. Camelback was charging every day.00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:36.000Stuart Winchester: All day, you know, a Monday with, you know, 10 people on the mountain, they were charging for it. And, you know, acknowledging that sometimes it's appropriate, I think Camelback got pretty out of hand with it, and when I had Mr. Markowski on the podcast, great guy, we had a great conversation, but he was not backing off that. He said, nope, paid parking.00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:51.000Stuart Winchester: we're all in. You said no. So talk about that and how you sold. I'd imagine it was a revenue stream, right? And you had to sell management on that, and I don't know if I'm giving you credit for something someone else did, but talk to us about parking and the evolution there.00:25:51.000 --> 00:26:12.000Jason Bays: Yeah, that was a week one decision from the Camelback team when I got here made from our leadership team at Camelback that everyone was in alignment on our senior leadership team here at the property and myself to remove the paid parking. And I think definitely there's actually you have so many nice pictures behind you.00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:30.000Jason Bays: I have a picture of the old paid parking sign behind me there, if you can see it on the corner, and it actually serves to me as a reminder of the guest experience, because someone's put a sticker on that paid parking sign that you probably can't see there, but it says, Ski Camelback, we're not happy until you're not happy.00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:48.000Jason Bays: Um, and it's a reminder to, to me and our team, um, that we're here to have fun, and we're here for the guest experience, and we're here to live, live and breathe fun Camelback style. This is not a, um, you know, we want guests to look forward to, to being here. And I think, you know, yes, there was.00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:38.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:26:48.000 --> 00:27:05.000Jason Bays: So obviously we ran a financial model. We didn't just, you know, get rid of paid parking and not assume, you know, that there wasn't some revenue to be recaptured elsewhere with a strategy to do it. But I think more importantly, you know, think about it.00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:22.000Jason Bays: a non-busy day, it might even be raining, it's 40 degrees, the last thing you want is someone running around a parking lot telling you, like, hey, I need you to hand over $15, and by the way, then you're gonna schlep your stuff up two different levels of parking, um, you know, that might be even charged higher, and then get to.00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:19.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:38.000Jason Bays: uh, the mountain and go to guest services. You know, I have a 3-year-old. If my wife and I went skiing, that would be an incredible amount of friction, um, just to get to, uh, the front of the mountain. And so I think putting ourselves in the guest lens of saying, is that really what we want the guests to experience?00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:30.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:53.000Jason Bays: Um, it's not, and, and it was a burden to everyone at this, you know, you think I'm talking about, we talked to frontline associates too, like, the first thing that they had to tell people was that they had to pay for parking. You just imagine, sort of, the cascading effect that, that, that, uh, that that had, and we said, look, is there.00:27:53.000 --> 00:28:09.000Jason Bays: Um, is there a better way? Um, can we run shuttles to these lots and pick people up and bring them to the mountain and make them feel, um, you know, like our valued… like our valued guests? What does that arrival experience look like? Um, you know, that's really what we… what we looked at, and then said, okay.00:28:09.000 --> 00:28:25.000Jason Bays: can we… ultimately, will we drive more volume here? Will more people come because of a better guest experience? And I'll say that I would rather grow the sport, grow the industry. Our team would rather grow the sport and grow the industry than figuring out how to.00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:35.000Jason Bays: You know, sort of, you know, run a secondary ancillary business that's not to our core product and what we want our guests to experience here.00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:48.000Stuart Winchester: You know, it's a little counterintuitive, but sometimes, by removing a revenue stream, you get that less-is-more effect. Another example, your season pass, you know, according to my records.00:28:48.000 --> 00:29:04.000Stuart Winchester: Starting in 2020 to ‘21, the season pass was $599 at its early bird price, and it hovered between that and $649 for the next five years. This year, you put it on sale for $399. It's still at that price for unlimited Camelback.00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:20.000Stuart Winchester: That's a great bargain for, uh, for a season pass on the East Coast, and, you know, for the listeners, you are competing with the Epic Pass, which has Jack Frost, Big Boulder, right down the road, a couple exits down I-80, and their Northeast season pass is pretty affordable, and it's a pretty good deal.00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:33.000Stuart Winchester: So… so talk to us about that decision and… and… and how… how that $399 is worth it. You also wrote back, if you want to talk about, uh, the… the triple pack. I thought that was great, and I don't have the price right in front of me, but… but you've really done a lot to… to…00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:39.000Stuart Winchester: create more of a value experience for that loyal Camelback skier, from my point of view.00:29:39.000 --> 00:29:55.000Jason Bays: Yeah, thank you, and that's definitely the goal. Um, you know, I think our thought process here is let's get more people on Snow, um, and have them have a great experience while they're here. Um, I would love to tell you that there's some master business plan behind this.00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:52.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:29:55.000 --> 00:30:10.000Jason Bays: But, you know, truly, at the heart of what we do is, let's figure out how to get more people on snow, get them to a spot where they want to come back and learn and be part of it. And guess what I would just share to that is.00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:24.000Jason Bays: you know, we were charging a day ticket in 2025 of $169, um, at its highest point, right? And I would rather have a lifelong… I would rather have one per… I would much rather, I think from business proposition, we would rather have.00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:17.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:39.000Jason Bays: one person definitely not come and spend $15 to $40 to park and $169 and say, I'm never coming back, versus $399, now they're like, wow, this place is awesome, I'm getting a great value, I bring my family.00:30:32.000 --> 00:30:33.000Stuart Winchester: Damn.00:30:39.000 --> 00:31:01.000Jason Bays: I want to come enjoy food and beverage. And hey, by the way, we also have this great snow tubing park and this great water park. And would you like to stay at our hotel when you come with your season pass and enjoy Aquatopia? And we're debuting The Curse of Camelback this fall, right? Which is the Halloween, if you haven't heard, it's a Halloween 13 scare zones. Take a chair, lift up to it.00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:03.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:24.000Jason Bays: But I say all that to say we've got so many great cross marketing promotional opportunities at Camelback that that really becomes a super compelling business case for us. And I think it's the right thing to do for the sport is grow it, make it more accessible, allow more people to come here and see what we have to offer. I can't tell you how many people I meet, whether it's snow tubing, skiing.00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:41.000Jason Bays: water park, the hotel, whatever they're here for, CBKMA or Adventure Park, they have no idea that the other part exists to, um, the resort. And I'll share that that's been the case even in, like, when I was, uh, at Jay Peak running the water park.00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:34.000Stuart Winchester: Hmm. Okay.00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:43.000Jason Bays: People would come there, and they'd be like.00:31:43.000 --> 00:32:02.000Jason Bays: what is this mountain that is here? And it's Jay Peak, like, one of the most hardcore ski resorts in the world. And there were people that were coming there and were like, I had no idea there was a ski resort here. So, if it's true at Jay Peak, it certainly is true at Camelback, where.00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:49.000Stuart Winchester: Right.00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:52.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:31:52.000 --> 00:31:53.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:00.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:02.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, okay.00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:19.000Jason Bays: we have all these different offerings that people don't know about, maybe necessarily about all of them, so our fundamental business philosophy is make it accessible, make them lifelong, um, skiers and riders, and introduce them to everything that we have to offer here in the Poconos. And I would just argue, when I say Poconos.00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:41.000Jason Bays: Like go, like experience Shawnee and experience Jack Frost Big Boulder and experience, you know, the other great ski areas in this region and Mountain Creek and wherever else and get a flavor for it. I think that's, we could use more skiers in the industry and to grow the sport. So for us, that's sort of the long-term business model that we're using.00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:23.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:58.000Stuart Winchester: So, I just looked at the triple ticket, and it looks like $149, and I think that's no blackouts. $199 includes rentals. That's pretty amazing. So, talk about that product, and then you mentioned the $169 peak day ticket. Have you settled on prices yet for 2020?00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:03.000Stuart Winchester: 6, 27. I should have checked your site in advance, but I didn't. So I don't know if you've.00:33:03.000 --> 00:33:21.000Jason Bays: Yeah, we have not, uh, posted, uh, day ticket prices for this year. Last year, um, we didn't exceed around $110, um, on a day ticket. Uh, so we kept it, I think, pretty reasonable for, for, for a, for a Pocono offering. Um, triple tickets, massive, um, success, uh, for us.00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:12.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, okay.00:33:14.000 --> 00:33:15.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, yeah.00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:37.000Jason Bays: Um, and when we talk about, like, again, getting more people introduced to the sport, you don't necessarily pick up skiing on the first time. Um, you think about that rental product, which we, um, tremendously… whatever we had on the pro forma for that was, uh, blown by by, like.00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:30.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:53.000Jason Bays: 400% on the triple ticket with rentals. And what I really believe in is that, you know, you become a lifelong skier by getting repetition, not by going once a year. It's really hard to sustain as a skier going once a year.00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:52.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.00:33:53.000 --> 00:34:11.000Jason Bays: and saying, oh yeah, that was our trip. We're really trying to create a guest for life and get them to return visit. That's in many ways more important to us than, again, trying to get, like, the highest yield on that one day that they picked. Like, come back and visit our resort and, um, you know, again, the business side to this is.00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:28.000Jason Bays: we're cross-marketing across all of our other offerings here that we have on this campus to say, come and visit us again. And again, to us, that's more important than, you know, the highest yield that we can get to. So the triple ticket's really successful. And I think one last thing I would share.00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:46.000Jason Bays: a lot of season passes in the market right now, um, the triple ticket's a great opportunity for people to get a couple of days at Camelback, even if they've committed somewhere else, and particularly, you know, our long season, um, there's plenty of time to use it, um, as well, uh, from the, uh, long season that we established from last year.00:34:46.000 --> 00:34:50.000Stuart Winchester: Jason, I think that's a really smart way to look at it as…00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:57.000Stuart Winchester: a… creating a habit rather than pulling as much yield as possible. And a lot of the larger operators.00:34:57.000 --> 00:35:11.000Stuart Winchester: get frustrated with me and the rest of the ski media because they don't understand why we focus on that peak price, right? Because the peak lift ticket this year at Beaver Creek is $392, set to be. Probably almost no one will pay that price, but…00:35:11.000 --> 00:35:28.000Stuart Winchester: What it does is it acts as a, a billboard for the rest of the ski industry and especially so, so Camelback for, for people who don't know when you're driving on I 80 I mean, you see it, it looms right over the highway. It is one of the major interstates in America, especially at night. The thing is lit up.00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:46.000Stuart Winchester: And so, chances are, if people think about skiing, and they think about where to go, they're gonna think about the most obvious one, and that's Camelback, and that's why, for many years, it was that, or Seven Springs was the busiest ski area in Pennsylvania, traditionally. So I think that's a really smart way to look at it, because if people show up that one time, and.00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:59.000Stuart Winchester: cost them, you know, $500 for 2 people, they're just not gonna come back, and they're not gonna try Shawnee, or… or Blue Mountain, or Jack Frost, or Elk Mountain, or Montage. So, um, I wanna talk about… Jason, I wanna talk about Lyft.00:35:59.000 --> 00:36:16.000Stuart Winchester: And… can you see this trail map? This is an old trail map. I mentioned that I know this, so for those watching on StormSkiing.com or YouTube, you can see this. So there's been a ton of changes, and I want to break all these down with you. The first I want to talk about is, over the past couple years.00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:32.000Stuart Winchester: Mark Antony and Cleopatra, these two lifts right here, an old triple and an old double, have been removed. Can you talk about why you took those lifts out of service, and if you plan to replace them with anything, or what you planned, or what the rationale was behind it?00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:49.000Jason Bays: Yeah, I appreciate that. Uh, that does predate my time here, that they had reached the end of their, um, uh, ability to operate. Um, and so they have, um, both been, um, sort of partially disassembled. Um, there is unfortunately not.00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:37.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:36:39.000 --> 00:36:41.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:36:46.000 --> 00:36:47.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:36:49.000 --> 00:37:05.000Jason Bays: I, by the way, two of my favorite lifts when I was a ski instructor, because you could get right up and not wait in long lines on the weekends, so absolutely realizing and recognizing the capacity that they brought, but no opportunity for us to.00:37:01.000 --> 00:37:02.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:23.000Jason Bays: um, reinstate those lifts as presently, um, as presently, uh, uh, sort of, um, situated, um, and, and not, not, not able to, uh, um, not able to, uh, rerun them. It will require a, um, new, uh, chairlift to, um, to ultimately replace.00:37:23.000 --> 00:37:37.000Jason Bays: those two lifts. It saddens me to share that, but that is, in fact, what has happened there, and I've been very open with our season pass holders about that messaging and the why behind it.00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:41.000Stuart Winchester: So, so in fantasy ski resort world, Jason.00:37:41.000 --> 00:37:46.000Stuart Winchester: Would you put a new lift here, and what would you put, if you could?00:37:45.000 --> 00:38:04.000Jason Bays: Yeah, absolutely. Um, same thing. We've, uh, we've made clear, uh, with no time, no official time frame to share, um, but certainly, uh, we've, we've, um, had, uh, preliminary conversations, um, about a fixed grip, um, quad that would, uh, would be able to take the place of both of those lifts, uh, and create that.00:38:03.000 --> 00:38:04.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:10.000Jason Bays: original redundancy that those two lifts brought to the resort when they were in operation.00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:27.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, that would be really nice. So, so, so these are gone and I, I have a, a current trail map now. So, um, and, and it's not completely current. We'll discuss the new trails in a moment, but this is the most current posted on your website. So, uh, we go over, these are the lifts that remain and see, uh, yeah, I, I miscounted in my intro, so sorry about that.00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:42.000Stuart Winchester: So this one is Stevenson, and Stevenson was, uh, it's a high-speed quad, uh, for the listeners, and it… it was a real junker. It was always stop, stop, stop, and, you know, it was… it was really… seemed to be falling apart and have a lot of issues. Now, uh, in 2020…00:38:42.000 --> 00:38:51.000Stuart Winchester: 5, this year, or 2024, I believe, Camelback, uh, McCarthy, the GM at the time, sent out a letter saying it was due for a…00:38:51.000 --> 00:38:53.000Stuart Winchester: Waltz.00:38:53.000 --> 00:39:02.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, let me see what he said… like, a complete modernization of Stevenson. So, so did that happen? And talk to us about Stevenson, and what kind of shape it's in right now.00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:20.000Jason Bays: Yeah, great, um, yes, that was a, uh, look, an amazing, um, project that was completed by, uh, by Dave and team, um, to modernize that lift. Um, it has, essentially, Doppelmayr came in and put in an entire new, uh, minus the, uh, minus the, uh, uh, the terminals and the.00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:09.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:35.000Jason Bays: Um, uh, and the structure itself, um, essentially all new components, all new electrical, um, uh, wiring components to it, a lot of the things that had plagued it. Um, and last year, uh, it operated 138 days.00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:36.000Stuart Winchester: Unbelievable.00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:53.000Jason Bays: Uh, which for Pennsylvania, uh, that's pretty darn good. I think we recognize it's a workhorse, um, it's key to accessing some really, um, fantastic terrain for us, um, and that modernization project with Doppel… in, um, partnership with Doppelmeyer that was done in the summer and fall of 2025.00:39:53.000 --> 00:39:54.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:39:53.000 --> 00:40:08.000Jason Bays: um, was, uh, very, uh, so it's all immediate impact, um, with, uh, Stevenson Reliability this past year, and we expect that to, uh, you know, knock on wood, to, uh, to continue going forward. We essentially, again, have a brand new lift, minus the, uh.00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:10.000Jason Bays: Uh, minus the physical pieces.00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:26.000Stuart Winchester: That's a really smart way to do it because they are tremendously expensive, these new lifts. And for folks who are watching or listening, this Stevenson is really important because you walk out of this giant hotel that's right here, that's not on the trail map with 400 and some rooms, and that is how you get up the mountain. Otherwise you got to.00:40:26.000 --> 00:40:41.000Stuart Winchester: pull your way over, so when that lift is not running or has problems, it's a real big issue. So, the alternative was, over here, Black Bear 6, uh, you replaced an old high-speed quad that was there, and… and I love this Black Bear 6 lift. It is…00:40:41.000 --> 00:41:01.000Stuart Winchester: Freakin' Ferrari, man. I think the price they gave me was something like $12 million that they spent, or maybe it was $10 to put that in. So that's the alternative, right? If you don't just modernize that current lift, you replace it. So, uh, Black Bear is awesome. I love it. It has bubbles. Is it too much? I mean, I know that KSL Now Peregrine had reasons for.00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:16.000Stuart Winchester: for putting it in, but what have you learned from a couple of years of having BlackBerry around, which is, again, probably the nicest lift in the state of Pennsylvania and one of the nicest in the Northeast, but maybe a little heavier than what you need for CamelBak, but I don't know, you tell me.00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:41.000Jason Bays: Yeah, you know, you know what I would share to that, um, you know, we, we brought it back for scenic chairlift rides this summer, and I mean, it's a massive hit. The summer, summer guests love, uh, the bubbles, they put them down when it's sunny, they put them down, um, probably gets more use in the summer as a bubble lift than the winter, uh, but look, it's, it's nice to, uh, have on the days where, you know, there's some liquid precipitation out here. It certainly happens in the Poconos.00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:24.000Stuart Winchester: Hmm.00:41:34.000 --> 00:41:35.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:58.000Jason Bays: um, and, uh, and, and or, um, uh, you know, other, other weather events, it's, it's, it's a nice to have, um, and it certainly, it gets you up in, you know, a little bit over two minutes. Um, it's a smooth ride, it's a great ride. Um, you are not going to get any complaints from me that we have a, um.00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:48.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:41:51.000 --> 00:41:52.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:41:58.000 --> 00:42:11.000Jason Bays: bubble, D-line, six-pack, um, in place, uh, and able to operate as our main workhorse lift. Um, and, uh, I think the six-pack versus the quad was absolutely the right, uh, call. Um…00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:27.000Jason Bays: from my experience being here before with the Sullivan Express, um, with the four-seater, the six-seater, just the… the added, uh, ability, uh, there is, uh, is… is well worth it. So, uh, we're happy to have that… happy to have that lift. I… I wouldn't, uh… I wouldn't…00:42:27.000 --> 00:42:31.000Jason Bays: We won't be trading it in at this point. Let's put it that way.00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:38.000Stuart Winchester: It is a gorgeous machine, and I have to tell you, I'm that weird person who, if there's a line on one lift.00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:56.000Stuart Winchester: And no line on the lift next to it. Even if it's a slower lift, I'll take the slower lift, because I just would rather not deal with the hassle of the line. So right here, for those who are watching, is the Bailey Double, and this is an old chair lift. It's an old slow double, it runs almost exactly parallel to Black Bear 6, doesn't land quite as high.00:42:56.000 --> 00:43:16.000Stuart Winchester: on the mountain, but functionally, it does about the same thing for you. So I like Bailey, and I was glad to see that not only did you keep it, and it does run, and that was true even under the previous regime, but you got a new gearbox for it, which is a really big deal for a lift like this in several decades. Also, talk about the work you've done on Bailey, and how you hope to use that lift.00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:18.000Stuart Winchester: this year to complement Black Bear.00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:21.000Jason Bays: Yeah, so, um, Bailey Lift…00:43:21.000 --> 00:43:32.000Jason Bays: full disclosure, Bailey Lift, Meadows Lift, Raceway Lift, and our season pass holders are very aware of this. Um, unfortunately, uh, we're not, um…00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:41.000Jason Bays: ready for day one of last year, um, or even close. And so, uh, we had to do a lot of, um…00:43:34.000 --> 00:43:35.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:43:41.000 --> 00:43:57.000Jason Bays: normal PM maintenance, um, throughout the, um, end of fall and into winter to have all of them operational. Um, what I share to that is, um, we will run, just level set here really quickly, we will run all the lifts that we have on this trail map.00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:44.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:43:57.000 --> 00:44:02.000Jason Bays: Um, and take care of them, maintain them, operate them.00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:18.000Jason Bays: Staff them, everything that you would do to run the extra capacity, we certainly need it. We'd like more capacity, actually. So that being said, Bailey Lift is critical. We got it back online.00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:10.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:34.000Jason Bays: End of January, it ran for 2 or 3 weekends, and we had a failed gearbox, um, on it, which is really unfortunate. Um, this off-season, uh, we've replaced the gearbox, we've done a full PM over the course of the summer on it, which is…00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:50.000Jason Bays: the, as you, as everyone knows, the ideal time, uh, to be, um, conducting such work, um, so that it is ready on, uh, day one. Um, it is a critical backup lift. We will run it every weekend.00:44:50.000 --> 00:45:07.000Jason Bays: Um, that we're, you know, in season, I would say in the heart of season, we're gonna run it. Won't be shy to not run it. Um, same thing with the Meadows, same thing with the Glen, same thing with the Raceway, which, um, you know, I know that that was, um, certainly chief among the complaints of.00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:22.000Jason Bays: locals and guests who were visiting from out of town alike was Lyft availability, Lyft reliability. That was something that we focused as fast as we could on last year, but we're setting ourselves up this year to be.00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:39.000Jason Bays: um, very proactive to that, and recognizing the importance of, of each of, uh, uh, you know, each of these. And look, every once in a while, uh, if the, you always want to have, like, Bailey is critical because it's the only other, if there's Black Bear, without Black Bear, it's the only other thing left, right?00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:38.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:45:39.000 --> 00:45:55.000Jason Bays: Um, and so, uh, you know, I think the, you know, back in the, when I was here, like, every Lyft ran on the weekends. It was Camelback. Um, it was busy, right? Like, everything was going. That's, that's essentially our, our, our philosophy, um, will continue to be our philosophy going forward.00:45:46.000 --> 00:45:48.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:45:55.000 --> 00:46:11.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, Jason, I'll admit, I didn't come to Camelback last season, so I wasn't able to experience it firsthand. I really wanted to come to your May thing, which I'll talk about, I'll get to in a minute, but I had a shoulder surgery, so I wasn't able to do that. But I wasn't only basing my perceptions of C.00:46:11.000 --> 00:46:19.000Stuart Winchester: on locals' reactions. I had skied there myself in recent years, and the lift line management, I have to say.00:46:19.000 --> 00:46:21.000Stuart Winchester: It was…00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:33.000Stuart Winchester: really frustrating from a skier point of view, when you're waiting for the Stevenson lift, and there's a big line, and every chair is going up with one or two people, and this is not peak COVID or anything else, this is several years later.00:46:33.000 --> 00:46:50.000Stuart Winchester: So, you know, and I had a lot of locals tell me, oh, we walk up Sun Bowl because the lift line is just too chaotic. People come from both sides. No, no, again, that was all before. What's your philosophy of lift line management? How have you tried to tame that? And there's always, it's always going to be a little wild and hard in Pennsylvan.00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:56.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, but they could definitely have been managed better. Is that something that was important to you, that you focused on?00:46:56.000 --> 00:47:15.000Jason Bays: Yeah, we focused on that. We have a new lift operations manager that was hired in November of 2025, who took the bull by the horns. We developed a supervisor team in fairly short order to that as well, to build out a well-rounded team. And then I would just share that our lift attendants.00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:32.000Jason Bays: All hired locally within the community. And I think that we were fully staffed in LiftOps this year, which was a big, very big win. It starts there, right? A, the people, and then B, the right people.00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:23.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:47:32.000 --> 00:47:49.000Jason Bays: um, on the, uh, on the bus, um, as a catalyst to drive, uh, lift operations forward. Um, and then absolutely, uh, we focused on, uh, line management, queuing, um, we set new, in some cases, new queues. We had, um, uh, supervisors, in many cases, out.00:47:49.000 --> 00:48:04.000Jason Bays: um, putting up chairs, um, and, um, and managing the lift line. We added, once we got that right, and we felt like we were in a good spot, and we, you know, look, I think, admittedly, a couple technology hiccups here and there, it was not a perfect, uh.00:48:04.000 --> 00:48:17.000Jason Bays: we didn't, like, on opening day, it wasn't perfect, but, uh, we improved, it was a big focus for our team, and I think when we talk about fundamental ski operation, um, if we just were a ski area, we would absolutely be focusing on.00:48:06.000 --> 00:48:08.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:48:17.000 --> 00:48:36.000Jason Bays: lift queuing, but we have to do that, like, we have to execute that every day because we are a ski area, um, and that's core to our business, and so that's important. Um, then we added, once we got queuing, uh, uh, correct, we added surprise and delights. Lift, uh, chocolate chip cookies were massively popular.00:48:36.000 --> 00:49:04.000Jason Bays: We handed out over 15,000 chocolate chip cookies this winter at the Stevenson lift line. And so, you know, then it becomes fun, right? Then it's the hospitality side of the business of how do we engage with our guests now that we have full chairs going up for the most part off of the Stevenson and the Black Bear and the Sun Bowl. So we hired extra associates to do that, to surprise and delight, to help our guests.00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:42.000Stuart Winchester: Cool.00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:20.000Jason Bays: The one other thing I would just share is Sunbowl is a great example. How many people get down to the Sunbowl and have never ridden a lift before? And so you need that extra human touch to be able to help. It's not even just putting people in groups of four. It's just helping them with like, here's where you go to load the lift. Here's what you do.00:49:12.000 --> 00:49:14.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:21.000Stuart Winchester: Yep.00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:33.000Jason Bays: Um, I think that that investment in our people to provide that service to our guests is very well worth it, and it's the difference between someone having a bad experience getting on a lift and never coming back.00:49:33.000 --> 00:49:43.000Jason Bays: or having a great experience, feeling well cared for, and wanting to try again. Um, and so that, that, that was, um, you know, I think that's a core, um, focus for us.00:49:43.000 --> 00:50:02.000Stuart Winchester: So, one of the ways that I can tell the resort is being run by a skier, in addition to all the things you just said, and your passion for the minutiae of things like lift lines, which I share, is that you're cutting 3 new trails in a resort that's 60 years old, and I love that. So, talk us through these trails, Jason. I'll do my best to trace them.00:50:02.000 --> 00:50:08.000Stuart Winchester: on the trail map. I don't have the updated trail map, I don't know if you've created it yet, but talk us through these three trails.00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:25.000Jason Bays: Yeah, so we're really excited. Look, this, you know, came after, you know, the so many guests, new guests that visited us at Camelback this past season. We said, you know what, let's do something fun and exciting. And like, you know, you think about how.00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:43.000Jason Bays: Um, yeah, I just, you know, if someone said, anyone puts in a new trail, uh, the skier in me wants to drive to that resort, no matter how big or small, and be like, alright, like, let's do it. Um, and our team feels, uh, you know, much of the same way. So, um, that being said, uh, we had a lot of natural snowfall this year, so…00:50:32.000 --> 00:50:33.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:50:33.000 --> 00:50:36.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:37.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, sure. Yeah.00:50:43.000 --> 00:50:59.000Jason Bays: I was acutely paying attention to where people were skiing when we had natural snowfall, where they wanted to go, and then, you know, maybe following those lines, too, and seeing what the fun was about. So, my point to all of that is, we said, let's create some, and I think for Camelback, too.00:50:46.000 --> 00:50:48.000Stuart Winchester: Mm-hmm.00:50:59.000 --> 00:51:15.000Jason Bays: it's very, um, you know, we wanted to create something that was sort of unique. I didn't want to just put in, like, regular trails that, A, we don't have a lot of space for regular trails, and B, um, we really wanted to create sort of unique experience. So, right underneath Black Bear, um, in between Sullivan and John Bailey there.00:51:07.000 --> 00:51:09.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:30.000Jason Bays: um, there's a, um, there's a chute, um, where the old Alpine Slide used to go. Basculus goes back into Rocket, uh, but underneath there is some really fun rolling terrain. Like, it's, it's because the mountain, the, uh, Alpine Slide.00:51:26.000 --> 00:51:28.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, thank you.00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:54.000Jason Bays: back in the day did had several dips and curves and so we're going to lean into those dips and curves and create something sort of fun that you can get some you know launch some airtime off of if you want or carve a turn over it but it'll have some some really nice terrain variation in a way that most trails at Camelback don't have and they're coming off of an expert trail there so.00:51:54.000 --> 00:52:06.000Jason Bays: um, gives, uh, you know, anyone skiing Asp, Hump, Rocket, um, or Basilisk would be able to reach that trail, um, and, uh, and be able to, uh, just have a little bit more excitement on the way back down.00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:08.000Jason Bays: Um…00:52:08.000 --> 00:52:20.000Jason Bays: Upper Cleopatra there, if you go to the, uh, where the U is, uh, or where Upper is, we're gonna cut a trail through the woods there that's going to end up on the bottom of Big Pocono.00:52:19.000 --> 00:52:21.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:31.000Jason Bays: Um, so it's gonna go down and across. So, um, that… um, and I see where your cursor is. If you go to the… where it says Upper on Upper Cleopatra.00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:29.000Stuart Winchester: So, like, here? Or…00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:32.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, upper…00:52:32.000 --> 00:52:54.000Jason Bays: So, Big Pocono, that's Uncle B. Yeah, right there. Yep, we're going through there. Yeah, so that's gonna be, that's a narrow blue square. So, you know, I think one of the things that's fun for us is we're gonna create a blue square there. That used to be a trail back in the 60s and 70s, fun fact, when Walter Foger was designing Camelback.00:52:34.000 --> 00:52:37.000Stuart Winchester: Upper… oh, this one. Okay, so you're cutting through here?00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:39.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, cool. Okay.00:52:49.000 --> 00:52:51.000Stuart Winchester: Oh, cool.00:52:54.000 --> 00:53:09.000Jason Bays: Um, that being said, um, the… actually, it got filled in with pine trees, so it's gonna be really cool, because there's pine trees on both sides. Um, we made it narrow, so we kept the pine trees, um, and so that's gonna be a really fun, um, sort of narrow… I think about, like, the, um.00:52:58.000 --> 00:52:59.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:53:01.000 --> 00:53:03.000Stuart Winchester: That's cool. It's pretty.00:53:09.000 --> 00:53:26.000Jason Bays: the ending of Jay Peak with some of the blues at the very bottom there by Interstate. We're trying to sort of have that, obviously in a much smaller zone, have that same effect, though, where you're feeling like you're really in the trees, and you've got some nice twists and turns to it. It's not terribly steep.00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:13.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, okay.00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:44.000Jason Bays: Um, two things on that trail. One is, it takes traffic off of Honeymoon Lane, which is a main boulevard, it pushes it onto the Sphinx, which has much more trail capacity, which is great, um, comfortable carrying capacity, and secondarily, um, on weekends, we're gonna have a hot chocolate, um, hut that people can ski up to.00:53:31.000 --> 00:53:32.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:53:44.000 --> 00:53:52.000Jason Bays: Um, and get shots of hot chocolate, um, as well, so we're excited to, um, uh, to offer that to our guests. We think that'll be really fun.00:53:46.000 --> 00:53:47.000Stuart Winchester: That's cool.00:53:51.000 --> 00:53:53.000Stuart Winchester: That was awesome.00:53:53.000 --> 00:54:17.000Jason Bays: And then the Stevenson, it's going to drop on the cliffhanger side and drop down that lift line and go right down into the Faroe there and follow that lift line. Vermont skiing in a very short array but very much Vermont skiing, that's an intimidating drop. Stevenson for those that may not be familiar has a extremely.00:53:53.000 --> 00:53:55.000Stuart Winchester: And it.00:53:58.000 --> 00:53:59.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:54:08.000 --> 00:54:09.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah, I think so.00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:34.000Jason Bays: extremely tight, um, and high, uh, crest of the lift, because the mountain crests, um, really steeply. Well, we're gonna ski that, um, and, uh, and make snow on it, and, uh, and, and, uh, and allow our guests to, uh, um, and allow skiers to, uh, to, to, to test, um, you know, a more narrow.00:54:34.000 --> 00:54:44.000Jason Bays: um, uh, trail up there that has a really great expansive view ov
In this episode, Professor AG explores what it looks like to let go of the need to control every outcome and make life feel fun, magical, and meaningful again. She dives into the idea of embracing life as it unfolds, even when it looks different than what she had planned, and shares how surrender, curiosity, and releasing judgment can create more peace and aliveness. From reconnecting with the inner child and creating more whimsy in everyday life to embracing the concept of amor fati and seeing life's challenges as opportunities to learn and grow, she encourages us to stop taking everything so seriously, get curious about what life is showing us, and find our way back to the parts of ourselves that feel most alive.Spend the day with me!10.10 Portal day Pop-up Readings, dancing, and community in 30A BUY YOUR TICKET HEREAG's Book ClubThe Calamity Club by Kathryn StockettMY APP IS HERE!!Daily somatic classes to regulate your nervous system. Start your FREE trial today.Timestamps00:00 Introduction to Anna Grace's spiritual journey02:00 Praying to Mother Nature and divine feminine archetypes03:50 Balancing masculine and feminine energy in daily life05:58 Upcoming retreats and community events08:08 Making life more whimsical and intentional09:51 Using Pinterest to curate seasonal vibes12:03 Creating a sacred altar and connecting with ancestors17:04 The importance of inner child work and playful creativity20:00 Connecting with childhood memories through Pinterest22:55 Book recommendations for fall cozy reading24:51 The significance of somatic healing and nervous system regulation27:00 Join the AG University app for emotional regulation30:06 Acceptance, amor fati, and embracing life's challenges33:01 The journey of spiritual awakening and returning to presence35:58 Observing life without judgment for growth41:02 The mantra: It's not that serious41:52 Love, connection, and trusting life's divine designKeywords: feminine energy, inner child, spiritual practice, somatic healing, acceptance, love of fate, self-care, mindfulness, intuition, wellnessWhat is AGU? After launching an energy work practice rooted in the Akashic Records, AG uncovered so much information that she needs the world to hear! It's her duty and personal mission to help people get in touch with their intuition and energetic gifts, and ultimately become the brightest and boldest version of themselves! This is your official acceptance letter: WELCOME TO AG UNIVERSITY! Daily somatic classes to regulate your nervous system. Start your FREE trial today.AG's Energetic Protection CoursesAG's Book Club How To Read The Akashic Records CourseSign up for the newsletter if you are interested in doing a reading with Anna Grace, or learning more about her energy work practice. Sessions will ONLY become available here - her booking link will never be shared on any other platforms: Sign up hereIf you aren't already - you can connect with AG on Instagram and TikTok: @annagracenewell and @aguniversityapp
Super Bowl XLI Champion. Successful Business Leader. Dove Award Nominee. Brain Injury Ambassador. Author. Speaker. Husband. Father. Christ Follower. Ben Utecht, Linda's guest in this episode, is an example for all of us on how to overcome adversity, handle fame and success, and live out our faith authentically. Linda and Ben discuss the importance of building healthy cultures in families, businesses, and communities and the need for leaders to create strong bonds of communication with those they lead. He challenges listeners to not allow organizational – or national - culture to happen by default, but to intentionally design it through purpose, trust, and excellence. How can we do that? Ben says the secret is in the huddle. Listen today to discover the secret of the huddle and how you can apply it in your own life. ©Copyright 2026, Prosperity 101, LLC __________________________________________________________ For information about our online course and other resources visit: https://prosperity101.com To order a copy of Prosperity 101 – Job Security Through Business Prosperity® by Linda J. Hansen, click here: https://prosperity101.com/products/ Become a Prosperity Partner: https://prosperity101.com/partner-contribution/ If you would like to be an episode sponsor, please contact us directly at https://prosperity101.com. You can also support this podcast by engaging with our Strategic Partners using the promo codes listed below. Be free to work and free to hire by joining RedBalloon, America's #1 non-woke job board and talent connector. Use Promo Code P101 or go to RedBalloon.work/p101 to join Red Balloon and support Prosperity 101®. Connect with other Kingdom minded business owners by joining the US Christian Chamber of Commerce. Support both organizations by mentioning Prosperity 101, LLC or using code P101 to join. https://uschristianchamber.com Mother Nature's Trading Company®, providing natural products for your health, all Powered by Cranology®. Use this link to explore Buy One Get One Free product options and special discounts: https://mntc.shop/prosperity101/ Unite for impact by joining Christian Employers Alliance at www.ChristianEmployersAlliance.org and use Promo Code P101. Support Pro-Life Payments and help save babies with every swipe. Visit www.prolifepayments.com/life/p101 for more information. Maximize your podcast by contacting Podcast Town. Contact them today: https://podcasttown.zohothrive.com/affiliateportal/podcasttown/login Check out VAUSA, America's choice for virtual assistants- https://hirevausa.com/connect" Thank you to all our guests, listeners, Prosperity Partners, and Strategic Partners. You are appreciated! The opinions expressed by guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent those held or promoted by Linda J. Hansen or Prosperity 101, LLC.
The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Welcome to the Storm's short-form, news-focused podcast. Don't worry, I still write long-form newsletters. Paid subscribers can leave a comment in the article below, or by joining The Storm's chat (also below). I'll respond to some comments in the next episode, which is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 16.Transcript updateFollowing up on yesterday's feedback, there are now two transcripts available for each podcast:* Substack's transcript: This transcript is auto-generated when I upload the podcast file to Substack, which is the platform that hosts stormskiing.com. This one is cool because you can click on any block of text and the audio will jump to that point in the conversation. Click the “transcript” button above to access. * Zoom's transcript: Zoom automatically generates this transcript as I record. It should be more or less identical to Substack's transcript, but with names attached to each quote block. The downside of this transcript is that you can't teleport to that point in the pod by clicking on the text block, as you can with Substack's. Another downside: the timestamps are off, since I typically start recording prior to the start of the podcast. I'll work on cleaning this up.So until the robots get smarter, we're stuck with two different transcripts. Both are auto-generated, and I don't proofread either one, as that would be the fastest way to make sure my quick-turnaround, up-to-date podcast turns into a slow-turnaround, out-of-date one. My hope is that Substack will soon hire or invent or weld from raw iron a robot that's smart enough to know who's speaking when. I'll just keep following the robots around and using their hyper-intelligence until they decide to kill me.The Zoom transcript (click “transcript” above for the Substack transcript, which will zoom to any point in the video when you click on the associated text block; timestamps below DO NOT MATCH THE VIDEO)Stuart Winchester: Welcome to The Storm! I'm your host, Stuart Winchester. It is Tuesday, September 15th, 2026, and I am very excited today to bring you a conversation with the General Manager of Monarch Mountain, Colorado, Chris Haggerty. Now, I've never featured Monarch either on the long-form pod or on the short-form pod.00:09:57.000 --> 00:10:11.000Stuart Winchester: There's never really a reason behind that, other than this is just kind of when it happened. If you run an area, a ski area anywhere in America, I do want to talk to you. I've just never had the opportunity to feature Monarch before, so we will talk about Monarch in just a little bit here.00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:27.000Stuart Winchester: Part of the reason why we're talking about Monarch is because they were one of two Western Mountains to this year join Snow Operating's Snow Pass. Now, the Snow Pass, if you missed the news, it works a lot like the Indy Pass or the Mountain Collective Pass, where you get two days each.00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:37.000Stuart Winchester: at a set number of ski areas. In this case, it's planned to be 14 ski areas for the 2026-27 ski season. And…00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:45.000Stuart Winchester: That product went on sale last Tuesday. I had Snow Operating CEO Joe Heschen on the podcast to talk through it with us.00:10:45.000 --> 00:11:01.000Stuart Winchester: Couple days later, I got an email from Snow Operating saying, Hey, guess what? Our first round of Snow Operating and Snow Triple Play, which are two different products, and I'll explain the difference in a moment, sold out. So we're taking it off sale. We're putting it back on sale next Monday, September 21st.00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:13.000Stuart Winchester: at 10 a.m. Eastern. It will be $349.99 for Snowpass, and $184.99 for Snow Triple Play. Still a pretty good deal. Those products at full price.00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:24.000Stuart Winchester: the prices that Snow Partners gave me, and they anticipate selling both products through Christmas Eve, December 24th, just like they did last year with the first season of the Triple Play.00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:40.000Stuart Winchester: They, the final prices they anticipate will be 3 99 99 for snow pass and 1 99 99 for snow triple play. So you get a nice little discount, particularly with the snow pass, $50 off if you buy it in the next round. So let's talk a little bit about the snow pass because.00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:43.000Stuart Winchester: When this product debuted.00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:53.000Stuart Winchester: I… I've been saying for years, there's 4 national ski passes, right? There's obviously Epic and Icon, and those have some season pass unlimited tiers at certain mountains.00:11:53.000 --> 00:12:08.000Stuart Winchester: And a limited number of days at other partner mountains. And then you have Indian Mountain Collective, which essentially worked the same way, 2 days at each ski area that is on their roster. Uh, Mountain Collective is more expensive, tends to be your bigger, more high-end resorts, Snowbird, Jackson Hole.00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:23.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, Sun Peaks up in Canada. And Indy tended to be the lesser-known ski areas, but still some really dynamite stuff there, and a lot more ski areas. Mountain Collective always has around 30, and Indy is more like 250, not counting their cross-country.00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:36.000Stuart Winchester: ski areas. So, I always thought there was probably room for a fifth national pass, but I wasn't sure, and as time went on, and more and more mountains joined multi-mountain passes.00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:37.000Stuart Winchester: I…00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:41.000Stuart Winchester: I thought, okay, maybe there's not room for a fifth national pass. Maybe everyone who's…00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:44.000Stuart Winchester: who wants to join a pass has, because I know Indy, uh.00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:58.000Stuart Winchester: Now, I'm not saying they don't have standards, but they'll let just about anybody on the pass just to help them get that exposure and that national marketing. But Snow Operating, the outfit that owns Mountain Creek in New Jersey and the indoor big snow ski area in New Jersey, they launched.00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:15.000Stuart Winchester: their Snow Pass, and it's a pretty good roster. Here, I'm gonna share my screen for those of you watching on video, and if you're not watching on video, don't worry, I'm gonna talk through it. So, here's the Snow Triple Play East roster, and here's the Snow Pass roster. Now, the Snow Pass has 14 ski areas on it.00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:18.000Stuart Winchester: And you get 2 days at each ski area.00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:22.000Stuart Winchester: The Snow Triple Play has…00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:27.000Stuart Winchester: 23 total ski areas on it, and you get 3 days total.00:13:27.000 --> 00:13:43.000Stuart Winchester: across all 23 ski areas. That's why it's so much less expensive. The most days you can use at any ski area is 2, so you can't buy this as a 3-pack Force A Gore Mountain, alright? So, that's the first important.00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:59.000Stuart Winchester: distinction is that Snow Triple Play is a much more limited basket of days. You also don't want to assume that they have the same roster. Just because something's on Snow Pass doesn't mean it's on Snow Triple Play, and vice versa. Snow Triple Play right now has a pretty…00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:15.000Stuart Winchester: Big roster that I wish was on the, uh, Snow Pass, because it has Jiminy Peak in, uh, Massachusetts, and also Cranmore in New Hampshire, which is jointly owned. It has Platykill up in the New York Catskills.00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:30.000Stuart Winchester: It has all these summit ski areas around Quebec. It has Bromont, one of the great eastern townships ski areas. Uh, so that's Snow Triple Play. Snow Triple Play does not have anything in the west. It's all east. It's all east coast, either eastern Canada or eastern New York.00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:45.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, Snow Pass has… it's a pretty interesting roster, and it's a great roster for a very particular type of skier. Now, it does have two ski areas in the West, uh, Snow King, which has been controversial, I'm gonna set that aside, and Monarch, which we'll talk about in a moment.00:14:45.000 --> 00:15:00.000Stuart Winchester: The core of the Snow Pass, and the reason why it makes sense, is because of the south to north line of ski areas that it offers. So if you buy the Snow Pass, again, goes back on sale for $349.99 next Monday, September 21st.00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:05.000Stuart Winchester: You would get two days each at Bel Air, which is in New York's Catskills.00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:07.000Stuart Winchester: Gore.00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:16.000Stuart Winchester: higher up in the Adirondacks, and Whiteface, which are all owned and run and operated by the state, all fantastic ski areas. So it's 2 days at each of those, that alone would be worth $350.00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:33.000Stuart Winchester: Then you add in the fact that you get two days at Mountain Creek, which is right there in New Jersey, uh, two days at the indoor snow dome, big snow American dream. Uh, if you have kids, two days at Butternut and two days at Mount Southington in Connecticut. Uh, Butternut is in Massachusetts. They're both day drive distance from New York City.00:15:33.000 --> 00:15:42.000Stuart Winchester: Let them wander around, let them explore. They're both, uh, especially Butternut. It's very up-to-date, very modern lifts, very, very well-run ski area. So…00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:45.000Stuart Winchester: You have a really great little, you know.00:15:46.000 --> 00:16:03.000Stuart Winchester: 5, 6, 7 ski areas that really make sense. Now, Ski Martok doesn't really make sense. It's all the way up in the middle of nowhere in the, in the Atlantic provinces in, in Canada. Uh, and, and Pleasant Mountain makes less sense. It's, it's up in Maine and, uh, harder to get to from, from the folks who would likely buy this as.00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:13.000Stuart Winchester: But what you have to ask yourself is, okay, the snow pass, that's a pretty good deal, right? It's $349.99 for 2 days each of 14 mountains. Then you look at Indy.00:16:13.000 --> 00:16:16.000Stuart Winchester: And Indy Pass is 254.00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:34.000Stuart Winchester: uh, alpine ski areas, and it just went off sale for $429 for the base pass. So, it would be 2 days each at all of these, and the… the plus pass, the ND plus pass, was $469. It had no blackouts. Now, the other thing to know about Snow Triple Play.00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:50.000Stuart Winchester: and snow passes, there are a lot of blackouts, okay? So, a lot of these are holidays, you probably expect that. Uh, you know, here I see Big Snow, Oak Mountain, Plattekill, a lot of holiday blackouts, Butternut holiday blackouts, Gore, uh, Bel Air. Bel Air, though, you want to stop.00:16:50.000 --> 00:17:06.000Stuart Winchester: Bel Air is blacked out every Saturday and Sunday. That's a big deal, because when do you probably want to go to Bel Air if you're someone skiing around with your little kids? Probably on a Saturday or Sunday. So, you want to be really careful and really look at these, uh, these blackout dates before you pull the trigger.00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:09.000Stuart Winchester: on the snow pass. So…00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:14.000Stuart Winchester: So if you have a snow pass, I I'm calling it.00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:18.000Stuart Winchester: A national pass, kind of, uh…00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:24.000Stuart Winchester: out of anticipation, right? It's more of a, I think they'll get there, sort of designation, because right now.00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:40.000Stuart Winchester: it's not really a national pass, right? You have one small skier in Wyoming, one small skier in Colorado. Is someone who lives in New York's metro really going to travel to Colorado just to ski that because they have a snow pass, right? Because it's not cheap to get up to Colorado.00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:56.000Stuart Winchester: And there's a lot of much bigger mountains out there. So… so I think that Snow Pass, much like Indy did when it started in 2019, will grow into a national… a true national pass. Uh, for now, just based on the reputation of the operators, uh, the fact that I think that they will be able to grow this thing, the fact that I…00:17:56.000 --> 00:18:11.000Stuart Winchester: know their relationships with folks all around the country, and how much folks like working with them, I am assuming that this pass will grow up, and if it does, Monarch will be the OG Western partner. So, let's talk more about Monarch now, and I'm gonna bring.00:18:11.000 --> 00:18:13.000Stuart Winchester: Chris Haggerty in.00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:17.000Stuart Winchester: And we will, uh… Chris, how you doing?00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:20.000Chris Haggerty: I'm doing well today, Stuart. How are you?00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:37.000Stuart Winchester: I'm doing great. All right, you passed the sound check, so I'm going to give you an intro here. Joining us now is the general manager of Monarch Mountain, Colorado. Monarch has six chairlifts serving 1,017 acres of terrain, including the 377-acre no-name expansion that opened last winter.00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:44.000Stuart Winchester: Monarch's 10,727-foot base elevation is the third highest in American skiing.00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:59.000Stuart Winchester: Prior to taking the top job at Monarch in 2024, he spent 21 years as general manager of Mountain Creek, New Jersey. Chris Haggerty is my guest. Chris, welcome to The Storm. Awesome to connect with you. I've really been wanting to spotlight Monarch for a long time now, and I'm so hyped we get to.00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:10.000Chris Haggerty: Yeah. Thanks for having me, and I'm excited to be here and chat Monarch. It's a special place, so excited to share some discussion about it.00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:23.000Stuart Winchester: So, the New Jersey to Colorado pipeline is maybe not necessarily a well-trod one, although there are a surprising amount of IntraWest vets working in the ski industry because of its relationship with IntraWest, but talk to us about…00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:40.000Stuart Winchester: Getting to Monarch, and you were taking over for Randy Stroud, super experienced guy, he was retiring, uh, he'd been there 23 years, a decade as GM, and he stayed on, I believe, for, for a year. So, talk to us about going from New Jersey, where they have a lot of snowmaking, because they have to.00:19:39.000 --> 00:19:41.000Chris Haggerty: Mmhm.00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:47.000Stuart Winchester: to Monarch, where they have no snowmaking, and just what that adjustment period was like, and how you settled into the role.00:19:48.000 --> 00:20:07.000Chris Haggerty: Yeah, just a quick story is that, you know, as you mentioned, I was at Mountain Creek for a long time, and, you know, really where I found my love for the ski industry, and after college, I had taken a trip out to Colorado and got my first taste of, like.00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:12.000Chris Haggerty: the Rockies, right? So it's always been something in the back of my mind. Um…00:20:12.000 --> 00:20:28.000Chris Haggerty: And I ended up stumbling upon Monarch. I hadn't been to Monarch before, and I was like, oh, this place looks pretty cool. It definitely screamed the ski independent. I definitely wanted to.00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:50.000Chris Haggerty: you know, if I was going to relocate, wanted to find an area where the resort and the local community both had that kind of just feeling of community and stuff. So a monarch was it. And I was blessed to step in after Randy Stroud, and we shared a season together. So I got to learn a lot of institutional knowledge from him.00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:58.000Chris Haggerty: Um, but also bring my viewpoints coming from New Jersey in an area where, you know, we're not…00:20:58.000 --> 00:21:15.000Chris Haggerty: maybe blessed with natural snow. Um, so last year was, like, a challenging winter, and, um, I was ready for it, because I was like, man, 120 inches, like, if you gave me that in New Jersey, we'd be celebrating for years, right? So, um, you know, just kind of a unique perspective, but…00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:21.000Chris Haggerty: um, definitely happy to be here, and just pumped to keep the Monarch kind of spirit going forward.00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:37.000Stuart Winchester: So you've been there for a couple years, one full year as GM, and one of the… there's been tons of stuff coming out of Monarch, it's amazing for a small ski area, which is why I wanted to get you on. So you recently joined the Snow Pass, one of two Western partners to join the Snow Pass, which gives pass holders.00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:34.000Chris Haggerty: Thank you.00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:54.000Stuart Winchester: Two days at Monarch. I don't think there's blackouts on that, but correct me if I'm wrong now. Now, Multimon Pass has been around for years and almost everybody in Colorado is on either Epic or Icon if they're large and if they're small, a lot of them have joined Indy. So the option has been there for years.00:21:54.000 --> 00:22:00.000Stuart Winchester: Why was it finally time for Monarch to join a multi-mountain pass, and why the snow pass?00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:15.000Chris Haggerty: Yeah, two parts there. I think on the, I mentioned it before, we're ski independent as our tagline, right? Part of independence is like the definition is freedom.00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:11.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.000Chris Haggerty: Right? Like, you make your own choices. You do what you wanna do.00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:31.000Chris Haggerty: we've been approached in the past for IndyPass, and, you know, it wasn't right for us because it kind of went against our spirit of being independent. Like, we want to be able to work with who we…00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:43.000Chris Haggerty: who we choose at any given moment, um, and that just isn't something that, um, is available through the Unipass, so… so we've passed on that. Um, we were even approached about it this year. Um…00:22:43.000 --> 00:23:00.000Chris Haggerty: As far as Snowpass goes, they respect that. They're all about, hey, you want to work with XYZ Pass, go for it. And obviously, I've spent some time working with the Snow Partners group.00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:05.000Chris Haggerty: You know, from my perspective, that group is all about, um…00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:17.000Chris Haggerty: you know, rising tides lifts all boats, right? And, um, you know, for me personally, they've opened doors for me, right? And helped me throughout growing in my career, so, um…00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:40.000Chris Haggerty: We're down.00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:52.000Stuart Winchester: I want to share, because you've sort of created your own… I'm sharing my screen now, if you can see that, and hopefully the folks watching can as well, and if you're listening, I'll talk through it. So, Monarch has…00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:46.000Chris Haggerty: Thank you.00:23:52.000 --> 00:24:07.000Stuart Winchester: not joined a pass, necessarily, but you've kind of built your own pass, and what I have on the screen right now is a list of Monarch's reciprocals, and it's a pretty amazing pass all in and of itself, so if you buy a Monarch season pass, which I believe now is, what, $6.59, less if you renew.00:24:07.000 --> 00:24:24.000Stuart Winchester: It comes with a lot of reciprocal days. Some of the big ones that people probably are really attracted to, 3 days at A-Basin, 3 days at Copper. Now there's blackouts on that, but still, it's freaking Copper Mountain. Uh, 3 days at Purgatory. And then, uh, 3 days each at all of the Mountain Capital Partners-owned skiers, which Purgatory.00:24:07.000 --> 00:24:08.000Chris Haggerty: Mm-hmm.00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:16.000Chris Haggerty: I'll do that.00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:25.000Chris Haggerty: Yes.00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:39.000Stuart Winchester: Also, Arizona Snowball. And there's a bunch more. I don't want to list them all, given our time constraints here today. But talk about this reciprocal program, because essentially, you're saying you're going to give pass holders of all these mountains.00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:34.000Chris Haggerty: Yes.00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:38.000Chris Haggerty: Sure.00:24:39.000 --> 00:24:46.000Stuart Winchester: free visits to Monarch in exchange for your pass holders getting free visits there, so…00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:42.000Chris Haggerty: Oh.00:24:43.000 --> 00:24:44.000Chris Haggerty: Yes.00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:52.000Stuart Winchester: whatever you did or didn't like about IndyPass, it does pay per visit, so what was attractive about.00:24:47.000 --> 00:24:49.000Chris Haggerty: Just a second.00:24:52.000 --> 00:24:57.000Stuart Winchester: this, and why did it make sense to do these free visit exchanges with other ski areas?00:24:57.000 --> 00:25:15.000Chris Haggerty: We look at it as other skiers are not our competition, right? There's 350 million people roughly in the United States. Less than 5% actually ski or snowboard, right? So there's a lot of people out there that just need to be introduced into the sport.00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:17.000Chris Haggerty: Um…00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:23.000Chris Haggerty: rather than trying to fight for visits between resorts. So… so one of the things is just…00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:39.000Chris Haggerty: How do we get more people skiing and snowboarding, which is obviously a huge conversation you could talk about forever. But with this one, it's just like, hey, these are other resorts that are interested in also giving their pass holders as well as ours.00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:10.000Chris Haggerty: allow our pass holders to try each out while still knowing that, like most people that have a copper pass, they're not migrating to Monarch because they came here for two days.00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:28.000Chris Haggerty: they're bought a Copper Pass for a reason, they love that, and they're like, yeah, if I could get two days over at Monarch, cool. Same thing with our Monarch guests, like, they… they… they love Monarch, they want most of their days to be here, and if we could break it up for them, um, you know, a couple times a year, or they could go to A-Basin and Copper, then.00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:17.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah. Okay.00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:37.000Chris Haggerty: That adds a lot of value to them and gives them that flexibility to move around and go where it works for them.00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:52.000Stuart Winchester: You know, Monarch is small by Colorado standards, but it always surprised me to see that it actually does have a pseudo national following. And I get emails from people all over the country that say they buy the Monarch Pass because it gives them all those reciprocals and they come out and they like to support the small ski area.00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:59.000Stuart Winchester: I want to get your take on something here, Chris. I'm going to share my screen again, and I want to share a chart that I made.00:26:59.000 --> 00:27:14.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, so, so this is a chart of Monarch's skier visits since 1997, up to 2024 to 25, right? And I've compiled these from all kinds of different places, and I have a little bit of a gap there. But as you, as you see right here, they've been going steadily up, right?00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:29.000Stuart Winchester: So, so you were averaging below $200,000 for most of the, of the 2010s, you know, much lower some years, and now you're pretty steadily adding, averaging over $200,000. Now, last year, I don't have your numbers, I'm, I'm sure that they were, uh, pretty bad, but.00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:33.000Stuart Winchester: You know, in relation to what your past numbers were.00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:35.000Stuart Winchester: So here's my question.00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:48.000Stuart Winchester: Monarch was supposed to be one of the ski areas that got squeezed out by Epic, squeezed out by Icon. That was one of the big worries. Uh, independent ski areas can't compete. We're seeing the opposite, because I've put some things on this timeline.00:27:48.000 --> 00:28:04.000Stuart Winchester: So, for example, 2007, IntraWest buys Steamboat. Uh, 2008, the Epic Pass launches. 2009, Powder buys Copper. Uh, the Mountain Collective launched in 2012. Uh, Mountain Capital Partners bought Purgatory in 2015. Powder bought Eldora the following year.00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:21.000Stuart Winchester: Uh In 2017, Alterra combined Steamboat and Winter Park in 2018, they launched the icon pass. Uh And then we had the 20% epic price cut in 2022. So all these things you think, ok, Vale and Alterra putting their mountains on sale. These are big world famous mountains, Steamboat Vale Mountain.00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:25.000Stuart Winchester: Monarch must be getting crushed. No, it's not. Why?00:28:27.000 --> 00:28:45.000Chris Haggerty: I think it's a couple of reasons. Number one is we've just stayed true to who we are. And as the population has grown in the front range, like since 2010, Denver and Colorado Springs have grown by about 20%.00:28:45.000 --> 00:29:00.000Chris Haggerty: Right? So there's just more people, um, that are finding Monarch, and they're, they're like, wow, we like this, this is what we want. You know, you also throw in the fact that, um, I-70, for those in Colorado, are pretty familiar with, like, the traffic that is.00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:50.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:17.000Chris Haggerty: created there on the weekends and it's not for everybody. So thankfully the drive to Monarch currently is a pretty attractive one, a lot less traffic. And I give credit to our ownership group, our current ownership group. They bought the resort in.00:29:17.000 --> 00:29:33.000Chris Haggerty: 2002. And part of it was, you know, a little bit of a passion project. Right? Like, they had come here and just really liked the vibe at Monarch and and wanted to protect that. And what they've been able to do is, number one, protect it.00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:53.000Chris Haggerty: Um, by not selling, you know, to, to one of the larger players, um, to just investing into our, our core, um, like deferred maintenance projects and those types of things, and then being really committed to the no name project, which we talked about and, and making sure timing was right on that and.00:29:53.000 --> 00:30:11.000Chris Haggerty: Um, that we were a healthy company before we jumped into that, so we didn't need a lifeline from, you know, someone else. So, um, there's kind of a lot of pieces that go into it. Um, and it's also worth noting that, like, our pass holders, like, and I think this goes to the growth, like, once people find us.00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:25.000Chris Haggerty: Um, our pass holder, uh, renewal rate is about 85% every year. Um, and the industry standard, depending on where you, you know, who you ask, it's somewhere between, like, 55% and 62%.00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:42.000Chris Haggerty: Um, and, and most of the 15% that we lose as we've dug into it is because of, uh, we have a lot of season pass holders from Fort Carson, um, military base outside of Colorado Springs, and they've just moved out of the area, right? So, um, I think our growth is partly due to, like.00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:35.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:30:42.000 --> 00:30:49.000Chris Haggerty: Once people come here and they discover it and they love it and they just keep coming back and we're just building upon that.00:30:49.000 --> 00:31:06.000Stuart Winchester: So you have owners that are willing to invest and that's really important. And Randy Stroud, I interviewed him, not on the podcast, but just for an article a couple of years ago. And he told me, and I'm not sure if this ended up being true, but their intention was to pay for the entire no name expansion in cash, including a brand new SkyTrak.00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:22.000Stuart Winchester: triple chair, or Doppelmayr, I can't remember what it was offhand, but regardless, it spoke to a very stable operation. Now, meanwhile, you still have some pretty old lifts, some pretty old infrastructure on the front side of the mountain, and recently Monarch's.00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:36.000Stuart Winchester: Master Development Plan was accepted by the U.S. Forest Service, which, for the listeners, just means that they said, okay, we'll let you consider doing these things on a project-by-project basis in the future. I have a lot of questions about the Master Plan, but first.00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:52.000Stuart Winchester: I want to focus on one that you called out, that Monarch Mountain called out in its first blog post announcing acceptance of the Master Plan, and it was about snowmaking. And Dan Torsell, the longtime GM of Ski Cooper, told me a long time ago when he came on this pod that.00:31:52.000 --> 00:32:04.000Stuart Winchester: that Ski Cooper and Monarch were the only big lift-surf ski areas in Colorado that don't have snowmaking. I think Silverton is too, but that sometimes gets lost in the shuffle. So, uh, you have it in your master development plan.00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:19.000Stuart Winchester: to a sort of rudimentary snowmaking system that would allow you to open early. But, this is a quote from your blog, quote, Before anyone panics when they read about snowmaking, let me assure you that Monarch is committed to remaining 100% all natural.00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:37.000Stuart Winchester: Snowmaking has been a part of our previous MDPs, Master Development Plan, and we have chosen not to implement it as we truly believe that natural snow provides the best skiing experience. This continues to be the case as snowmaking is in the plan to cover all bases, but we will not implement anything unless Mother Nature gives us no other choice.00:32:37.000 --> 00:32:40.000Stuart Winchester: Care to expand upon that at all?00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:53.000Chris Haggerty: Definitely. And yeah, and we are committed to that. And I actually, last summer, I spoke in front of some of the locals and pass holders, and when I let them know that we were committed to.00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:43.000Stuart Winchester: Or elaborate.00:32:53.000 --> 00:33:09.000Chris Haggerty: 100% all natural. That was the loudest cheer we got all day. So, like, that's what our, that's what our guests want. That's what we want. Um, as far that, you know, snowmaking has come a long way, and, and it is a necessity for a bunch of resorts.00:33:09.000 --> 00:33:19.000Chris Haggerty: Um, we're not at that point, um, and we're gonna push as far as we can, um, leaning into, like, snow farming and everything else before we ever, um.00:33:19.000 --> 00:33:35.000Chris Haggerty: have snow… have snowmaking. But, you know, in the Master Development Plan, it's in there because, like, part of putting things into that document is because it's a conceptual document. It's, like, it's designed to be a 15-year document. If it's not in there.00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:51.000Chris Haggerty: The Forest Service really doesn't even consider something. So if 15 years from now we're like, we need to put snowmaking in and it's not in there, we'd have some challenges. I will say our base elevation being basically 10,800 feet.00:33:51.000 --> 00:34:02.000Chris Haggerty: has helped us out, right? Like, as weather patterns has changed, and temperatures have rised, and winters are, you know, different every year, um…00:34:02.000 --> 00:34:13.000Chris Haggerty: we've been pretty lucky because of that base elevation, where we're… we are seeing snow, where other resorts are seeing some of that other precipitation falling, right? So, um…00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:30.000Chris Haggerty: you know, and then I mentioned the snow farming, like, we're… we're gonna do everything we can, like, on that side of things, right? And that's all the way from, like, fences strategically placed throughout the mountain, whether they're permanent or temporary, to catch the snow when the winds are coming from whatever direction.00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:47.000Chris Haggerty: And we do early season, we take the snow in the parking lots and we plow it all up and get it into one of the corners and then our groomers take it from there and start to build our base in the base area. So we have some different techniques to try to insulate us as much as possible.00:34:47.000 --> 00:34:53.000Chris Haggerty: And we're going to keep going that way as long as Mother Nature allows us to.00:34:53.000 --> 00:35:09.000Stuart Winchester: So snowmaking, it sounds like, is Monarch's emergency parachute. Meanwhile, there are a lot of big chairlift upgrades outlined on the master development plan. So Monarch has had substantially the same footprint for decades until last season's snowmaking upgrade.00:35:09.000 --> 00:35:24.000Stuart Winchester: And like I said before, more and more skier visits, and you were still running, with the exception of the 1999 Pioneer lift, the quad that was put in, with a lot of older double chairs. So Breezeway is a 1968 hall, Garfield is a 1969 hall, Panorama is a 1980 hall.00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:40.000Stuart Winchester: Tumbling as a 1981 hall. Those are all doubles. Now they've all gotten new drive terminals. So I understand they're, they're more modern in their actual functioning than, than in their look. However, the capacity is probably not a whole lot more than maybe it would have been. The master development plan proposes.00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:43.000Stuart Winchester: Replacing all of these with.00:35:43.000 --> 00:35:54.000Stuart Winchester: is advanced of a lift as a high-speed quad. Now, I realize you wanna… maybe the same reason as somebody… you say high-speed quad because you can always take it down, easier to go down than up, but talk us through…00:35:54.000 --> 00:36:05.000Stuart Winchester: your lift upgrade plan, and whether you think that high speed would be good for Monarch, or if you think that maybe fixed grip is the way you want to stay.00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:09.000Chris Haggerty: Yeah, fixed script is, you know.00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:24.000Chris Haggerty: Well, let me back up. A lot of that is in there because it's got to be in there if we choose to do that. And with no name opening, there's a lot of unknowns as far as, like, how is that going to change skier traffic around the mountain, right?00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:15.000Stuart Winchester: Mmhm.00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:41.000Chris Haggerty: One of the things we worked with the SE group, so they're, you know, a company that helps ski areas, right, with all sorts of development projects, big and small. And one of the things that they do is they do this density analysis, right? And it's a complicated, you know.00:36:41.000 --> 00:36:57.000Chris Haggerty: Analysis that takes on a lot of different data, but basically it's like they look at your uphill capacity based on the speed of the lift, the size of the lift, the length of the trip up, the time, and then what terrain it accesses from that lift.00:36:57.000 --> 00:37:14.000Chris Haggerty: And, like, an optimal score where, like, you have, like, perfect harmony from uphill and downhill is, like, a hundred percent. If you're below that, you're actually putting fewer people up the hill, that the downhill terrain can handle.00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:34.000Chris Haggerty: Monarch, in our current state, sits at a 56%. So basically, like, when you ski the runs at Monarch, even on our busiest day, because of the capacity that we have at our lifts, like, you have, like, semi-private runs, right? If we were to do all of our lift upgrades in the 2025 MDP.00:37:34.000 --> 00:37:49.000Chris Haggerty: we would actually get to an 84% density analysis. So even still, you wouldn't feel overcrowded on the runs. So knowing that, we're like, wow, well, we don't need to right away push for any kind of high speed lifts.00:37:49.000 --> 00:37:58.000Chris Haggerty: Um, and in fact, again, things that our guests like about them is twofold. Number one, it's like…00:37:58.000 --> 00:38:11.000Chris Haggerty: that slow metering from a fixed grip lift just adds, like, this extra time, right? Like, part of why we ski and snowboard is because we like to just disconnect, right, from reality for a little while and, like, be out in nature and, like.00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:21.000Chris Haggerty: you know, our guests like taking a step back and slowing things down here, and it feels like things are just moving a little slower. And second, one thing that we feel is like a…00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:36.000Chris Haggerty: a strong differentiator for us is, um, having a fixed grip lift. Our lift operators have to be at, like, the load point, and, um, you know, bumping the chairs and helping our guests on, and.00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:40.000Chris Haggerty: It's this, like, human interaction piece that, like.00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:56.000Chris Haggerty: You don't get everywhere else, especially with some of the newer lifts where, you know, it's everything's so automated, um, which has its value, but for us, again, with who Monarch is and taking that step back in time a little bit like that, that face-to-face interaction.00:38:56.000 --> 00:39:14.000Chris Haggerty: like, so many of our reviews are constantly calling out our lift operators, like, oh, yeah, I remember so-and-so, like, he's awesome, he helped me on, or he just said hello, or he remembered what kind of skis I'm wearing, or told me about this secret powder stash, which… another benefit of a slower uphill capacity is, like.00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:23.000Chris Haggerty: Monarch, even though it's smaller in size, doesn't get tracked out. Like, you get powder turns at the end of the day on a powder day.00:39:23.000 --> 00:39:34.000Stuart Winchester: So the, I'm gonna share my screen to, to talk about this next bit. So those are the lift upgrades that you're proposing. There's also two, and I'm, I, so for those watching.00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:49.000Stuart Winchester: On YouTube or stormskiing.com, I have the master development plan, conceptual plan up. There's also two infill lifts. Okay, so there would be this planned NNB lift, which is a redundant lift in the No Name Basin expansion. This is the new lift that opened last year. And then there's this…00:39:49.000 --> 00:40:04.000Stuart Winchester: Plan, divide, express. So, again, it's two more lifts on the same footprint. And I didn't see in the master plan, maybe I missed it, that you do have all this cat skiing terrain over here, so…00:40:04.000 --> 00:40:10.000Stuart Winchester: So, talk us through the logic of putting in more lists to serve the same amount of terrain, and if you've considered.00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:18.000Stuart Winchester: moving lift surf skiing into the cat skiing, as Targi did with its peaked mountain expansion a couple of years ago.00:40:19.000 --> 00:40:37.000Chris Haggerty: Yeah, so no name is actually was a part of our cat skiing terrain. So we did take a little bit of that. That redundant lift out there is just because we'll see what happens, how many people just access the terrain and no name. And if we ever need a second lift there, then.00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:24.000Stuart Winchester: Hmm. Okay.00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:55.000Chris Haggerty: um, we'll consider it. As far as further into cat skiing terrain, um, you know, our current MDP outlines our next 15 years, so we're not looking to push any further into that. Um, we also have, um, the Mirkwood terrain, which is a little bit of a hike-to terrain.00:40:55.000 --> 00:41:04.000Chris Haggerty: Um, between, like, the front side and no name, and we get… that's… that's the area we most commonly get asked about a lift, and uh…00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:12.000Chris Haggerty: I will tell you from my, uh, initial conversations with owners, it's… it's not a, um…00:41:12.000 --> 00:41:27.000Chris Haggerty: the answer isn't no, we're not putting a lift there, it's a expletive no, we're not putting a lift there. Um, we take pride in having, like, being a small mountain, but still offering, like, all these other things, right? Which one being hike to terrain, um, which is pretty cool for…00:41:27.000 --> 00:41:31.000Chris Haggerty: a small mountain like this. And then that, um…00:41:31.000 --> 00:41:41.000Chris Haggerty: the Divide Express, right, that would get us all the way from the base area to the summit on the front side. Um, that… that is one that we've, you know, had some…00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:55.000Chris Haggerty: serious discussions about, and, um, you know, it probably… number one, it would just, you know, allow guests to not have to take two lifts to get to the… to the summit on the front side. Um, but also, if we…00:41:55.000 --> 00:42:06.000Chris Haggerty: explore, um, summer operations in the future. You know, having a high-speed, you know, detachable lift gives you more flexibility to do that.00:42:06.000 --> 00:42:13.000Chris Haggerty: So that kind of, you know, would add into that if we get to that point.00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:24.000Stuart Winchester: So let me ask a stupid question, because that's what I'm here for. So Garfield Lyft, as I said, was built in the 60s. Pioneer Lyft came along in 1999. So I would have thought, okay, they cross over each other.00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:41.000Stuart Winchester: Because they, they retroactively built Pioneer and didn't realize it. Uh, I would have thought, hey, the master plan is an opportunity to straighten those out so they don't have to cross over each other. Maybe I'm overthinking it and it's not that complicated, but, but talk about this interesting crisscross pattern you have here and, and why that's where Garfield and Pioneer are slated.00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:25.000Chris Haggerty: Mm-hmm.00:42:41.000 --> 00:42:45.000Stuart Winchester: to continue to exist, even if you were to upgrade their lifts.00:42:47.000 --> 00:43:05.000Chris Haggerty: Yeah, I mean, I don't know that I have the best answer. We do have a proposal to shift the base of the bottom terminal of Pioneer uphill a little bit, just because the terrain is a little more desirable there. And obviously, if we needed to add the Divide Express, we need to open that area up.00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:06.000Chris Haggerty: um…00:43:06.000 --> 00:43:21.000Chris Haggerty: but other than that, right, we just kind of… we like the terrain that they serve right now, we don't really have a better spot, so the lifts crisscrossing wasn't like a, oh man, we need to change this. It wasn't something that we were focused on solving, um, in a way.00:43:21.000 --> 00:43:24.000Chris Haggerty: I think it's kind of a little cool, I guess.00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:40.000Stuart Winchester: I do like criss-crossing lifts, so I'm glad we're doing this one a video, because every time I bring this up, I get tomatoes thrown at me. Uh, Monarch skier visits have gone up and up, as we said. However, as they've gone up and up, there's still nowhere to stay on the mountain. There never has been. Uh.00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:51.000Stuart Winchester: a philosophical choice? Is that just a practical matter of, hey, the Forest Service owns the land at the base? Is it both? Talk us through why there's nowhere to stay at Monarch as a drive ski area only.00:43:52.000 --> 00:43:55.000Chris Haggerty: Yeah, there's a couple of reasons.00:43:56.000 --> 00:44:02.000Chris Haggerty: And, you know, one of them, again, I'll say our pass holders and our guests, like…00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:18.000Chris Haggerty: are pretty vocal about not wanting that, right? Like that's what separates Monarch. We're not that resort that has the big base village. And again, that's not to knock those resorts. I think that that's, you know, I've gone to those resorts as a guest. I think it's awesome.00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:38.000Chris Haggerty: I think another side of it for us is we're really focused on our community, right? We're a small mountain ski area and there's a small mountain community 15 miles from where we are that has a really cool, the town of Salida has a really cool downtown, a main street.00:44:38.000 --> 00:44:52.000Chris Haggerty: Um, with a ton of restaurants, a ton of mom-and-pop-owned shops, right? And, um, you know, we're our largest, uh, driver for winter visits, and, and, you know, um…00:44:52.000 --> 00:45:01.000Chris Haggerty: in the wintertime, and we want to make sure we embrace that community. If we moved a village up onto the mountain, like.00:45:01.000 --> 00:45:16.000Chris Haggerty: Salida is going to suffer. All those guests now are going to stay in the lodging up at Monarch versus in town. And we want to be good community partners and be like, no, here, you guys should be the ones to have lodging. And we live.00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:35.000Chris Haggerty: all of us live in the community as well, and we want to see those restaurants, you know, stay active all year round, the mom-and-pop shops, like, you know, thrive. So part of it is just, like, wanting to be a part of something bigger, right, in that larger community, rather than.00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:38.000Chris Haggerty: moving everything up to… to Monarch.00:45:38.000 --> 00:45:53.000Stuart Winchester: So if Snowpass skiers do decide to come out and visit Monarch, they'll stay in Salida, most likely, and drive up that day. So leave us with this, Chris, because Joe Heschen, the CEO of Snow Partners.00:45:53.000 --> 00:45:58.000Stuart Winchester: Said we get so caught up on stats, but stats aren't aren't always the thing and and.00:45:58.000 --> 00:46:04.000Stuart Winchester: when you look statistically at Monarch, it's 1,100 vertical feet.00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:21.000Stuart Winchester: Lift serve drop. That's 25th in Colorado. Uh, 1017 acres that ranks 17th in Colorado is bigger than Aspen Mountain. I'll point, I'll point out, uh, it's 308 inch average annual snowfall is good, but it's, it's good for ninth best. It has the third highest base, as I said, but the 12th highest summ.00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:28.000Stuart Winchester: It has those older lifts in a state that has 120 high-speed lifts, and there's nowhere to stay on the mountain, so…00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:34.000Stuart Winchester: I'm just stating those facts, right? So what's your pitch to someone to come.00:46:34.000 --> 00:46:37.000Stuart Winchester: use that snow pass, and try out Monarch.00:46:39.000 --> 00:46:44.000Chris Haggerty: Yeah, the big one is to start with, we're 100% natural, right?00:46:44.000 --> 00:46:59.000Chris Haggerty: you want natural snow, it is a definitely a different feel, even as good as snowmaking is these days, like, come check it out. And this, and the second part is, um, the people that are at Monarch are a unique group, right? Like, we're, we're.00:46:59.000 --> 00:47:18.000Chris Haggerty: past the characters, whether you work here or you're a guest here. And, um, we're looking out for each other, right? Like, it's not, um, it's not judgmental, like, no matter what you show up wearing or what your ability is, like, we just want everyone here to have a fun day on the mountain.00:47:18.000 --> 00:47:37.000Chris Haggerty: whether you're the extreme person out in the cat skiing terrain, hiking Mirkwood, the Never Ever, or the SnowTuber, which I love SnowTubers, you know, I think that's who we all are at our core. Um, you know, it's just… it's just a cool vibe that you gotta just come check it out, and our track record's saying that.00:47:29.000 --> 00:47:31.000Stuart Winchester: Yeah.00:47:37.000 --> 00:47:40.000Chris Haggerty: People love it once they find it. So give it a shot.00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:51.000Stuart Winchester: I'm always telling my readers that these old lifts, these hauls, these riblets, they're not gonna be around for a whole lot longer, right? There's still hundreds in operation, but they don't last forever.00:47:51.000 --> 00:48:08.000Stuart Winchester: And the best thing you can do to memorialize them, you can't really preserve them forever because they're functional machines, right? But go ride them. And right now, Monarch, along with Lost Trail, is probably the best place in the West to go and ride all Old Hall Liftley. And I understand, again, they've been updated.00:48:08.000 --> 00:48:23.000Stuart Winchester: But the aesthetic is similar. So, alright, Chris, look, I gotta take my own advice and get out there and ride those hauls with you this winter. It was really great to talk to you. I really appreciate you coming on. I can't wait to catch up and hopefully make some turns together this winter.00:48:23.000 --> 00:48:27.000Chris Haggerty: Yeah, thanks a lot for the time and look forward to seeing you out here at Monarch.00:48:26.000 --> 00:48:29.000Stuart Winchester: All right. Talk to you soon. Thanks so much, Chris.00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:30.000Chris Haggerty: Thank you. Bye.00:48:31.000 --> 00:48:47.000Stuart Winchester: Alright, that was Chris Haggerty, the General Manager of Monarch Mountain. That was really fun, I'm really glad that he came on. Uh, Randy Stroud, just to be clear, the former GM, it's not that he ever didn't want to come on the podcast, it's just that.00:48:47.000 --> 00:49:00.000Stuart Winchester: I covered Monarch in a different way for the story about the expansion. So he was very good to the storm as well. I do want to tell you that today's podcast is brought to you by Profile Search International.00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:08.000Stuart Winchester: If you want to find a great leader for your mountain team, I want to introduce you to the pros at Profile Search International.00:49:08.000 --> 00:49:18.000Stuart Winchester: They are the ski industry talent acquisition experts, and they are the only executive search and recruitment firm in the entire world that is 100% focused on the ski industry.00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:31.000Stuart Winchester: ProfileSearch has used their intimate understanding of skiing and related industries, and of available candidates worldwide, to place hundreds of transformational leaders at the best and most progressive ski areas over the past 30 years.00:49:31.000 --> 00:49:44.000Stuart Winchester: Profile Search has offices in the US and Canada. They find and negotiate with the right leaders for your team, which sometimes you don't even know that you need in this era of online everything and big data. You can reach Profile Search.00:49:44.000 --> 00:49:59.000Stuart Winchester: Directly at ProfileSearch.com, where you will find their email or phone number. You can also send me a note. I will be happy to connect you directly with this expert team. My email address is skiing at substack.com. Alright, we are going to wrap up today.00:49:59.000 --> 00:50:05.000Stuart Winchester: With some reader reaction to yesterday's podcast on…00:50:06.000 --> 00:50:22.000Stuart Winchester: with Midwest skiers, Matt Zabranski, and there wasn't a lot of feedback. I think, number one, because the Midwest doesn't get as much feedback in general, but also because I published this one pretty late, I think I put it out at 8 or 9 at night, and so folks may just have not had a chance.00:50:24.000 --> 00:50:27.000Stuart Winchester: really process it yet. So…00:50:28.000 --> 00:50:30.000Stuart Winchester: Nell says…00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:41.000Stuart Winchester: Midwest Skiers, meaning MidwestSkiers.com, Matthew Zbrensky's site, is a regional treasure. The ride-throughs are so thorough, and what Nell means by that is.00:50:41.000 --> 00:50:52.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, Midwest Skiers puts up on their YouTube channel a, hey, look, here's the trail map at, say, Trollhagen, Wisconsin. Here's all 32 trails, whatever it is.00:50:52.000 --> 00:51:03.000Stuart Winchester: and then it rides the reach for the GoPro, and tells you about them, and gives you a really specific breakdown, uh, with some great graphs. So the production quality is really, really good. So, I second that now. Really good.00:51:03.000 --> 00:51:15.000Stuart Winchester: breakdowns of the ski areas from Midwest Skiers. Eric Morris says, great Midwest content, it'd be great to talk to the Dean of Southern Skiing, Randy Johnson, who wrote Southern Snow, the new guide to winter sports.00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:31.000Stuart Winchester: Couldn't agree more, Eric. If you know him, I would love an introduction. I am not acquainted with Mr. Randy Johnson, but I would love to meet him, as the South has certainly been an undercovered region from my point of view, and not on purpose, just because there's…00:51:31.000 --> 00:51:44.000Stuart Winchester: a little different culturally than the rest of the United States from a ski point of view, and I have not sunk as far of roots in there as I would like to, especially since I'm not too far from those ski areas. There was also…00:51:44.000 --> 00:51:47.000Stuart Winchester: We're not getting as much action on the chat, but here's one.00:51:47.000 --> 00:51:57.000Stuart Winchester: question on the chat, and this is not to do with the podcast from yesterday, but I want to talk about it a little. What will it take for Vail Resorts to turn around? That's from Saurabh Jain.00:51:57.000 --> 00:52:06.000Stuart Winchester: And commenter Slappy said, redefine what success looks like and suspend the dividend and stock buyback. Of course, those last two may be non-negotiable.00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:24.000Stuart Winchester: I'm not going to get out of my lane and talk too much about dividends and stock buybacks, though I do like stocks and follow that world nominally. It's certainly nothing that I'm an expert to speak on. What Vail needs to do to turn around, I think, is very simple, and I've said this many, many times.00:52:24.000 --> 00:52:25.000Stuart Winchester: And I've written about it.00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:37.000Stuart Winchester: many times, and we've talked about it on the podcast many times, is they need to treat every single ski resort like it's Vail Mountain, and every single guest like they're the President of the United States. They…00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:40.000Stuart Winchester: They need to make sure that.00:52:41.000 --> 00:52:48.000Stuart Winchester: the experience of a lifetime ethos is transferred to any Skiera, whether it's Beaver Creek.00:52:48.000 --> 00:53:03.000Stuart Winchester: or it's Mad River, Ohio. And that has not always seemed to be the case since Vail Resorts purchased Peak Resorts in 2019 and sort of doubled the size of its owned resort portfolio within a year's span. Now.00:53:03.000 --> 00:53:08.000Stuart Winchester: Certainly, Vail has recently recommitted to.00:53:08.000 --> 00:53:11.000Stuart Winchester: To that sort of quality, and we'll see how that plays out.00:53:11.000 --> 00:53:13.000Stuart Winchester: I think…00:53:13.000 --> 00:53:19.000Stuart Winchester: maybe a little more shuffling with the Epic Pass, uh, maybe a higher-priced.00:53:19.000 --> 00:53:22.000Stuart Winchester: Full pass to to.00:53:22.000 --> 00:53:37.000Stuart Winchester: help traffic some of the more popular ski areas, and maybe some more options. They do a really good job, actually, with the Epic Regionals, with the Tahoe Local, the Northeast Local, and the Summit County Local. So, I think Vail's done a nice job with that. And I think…00:53:38.000 --> 00:53:45.000Stuart Winchester: From my experience, Vail executives, and I've hosted many of them on this podcast. They're very receptive to criticism.00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:47.000Stuart Winchester: Uh, and they are…00:53:48.000 --> 00:53:53.000Stuart Winchester: Willing to listen and change and evolve. I'm not sure.00:53:53.000 --> 00:53:57.000Stuart Winchester: If that always comes through.00:53:57.000 --> 00:54:04.000Stuart Winchester: Outside of direct lines of questioning, if that makes sense. So, so the, the owning of mistakes and saying, okay, you know what?00:54:04.000 --> 00:54:19.000Stuart Winchester: we messed up because Paley Peaks was only open 25 days a year in 2021, or whatever it was. There was a year when a lot of its Midwest ski areas were extremely restricted, or the COVID restrictions and everyone else, but the local ski area operators there.00:54:19.000 --> 00:54:24.000Stuart Winchester: we're out competing them. Uh, you know, when Vail first bought Wilmot, Wisconsin.00:54:24.000 --> 00:54:27.000Stuart Winchester: In 2016, there…00:54:27.000 --> 00:54:38.000Stuart Winchester: their… or maybe that was 2012. They bought Afton Alps, Wilmot, and Mount Brighton in some order, two of them in 2012 and one in 2016. Anyway, there was a great article I read that said.00:54:38.000 --> 00:54:49.000Stuart Winchester: what Wilmot skiers can expect, and Wilmot's a small ski area outside of, well, it's broad, it has a lot of lifts, outside of Wisconsin and Chicago, uh, Milwaukee and Chicago.00:54:49.000 --> 00:54:56.000Stuart Winchester: And what they said was, we're gonna bring Western standards to the Midwest, right? And that was very out front. Dale spokespeople were saying that.00:54:56.000 --> 00:55:11.000Stuart Winchester: You never hear them say that anymore, and it's not clear that that is the standard, and I had a very nice time at Wilmot when I went two years ago, and super friendly staff, and all the lifts were running, even though clearly they didn't need to be, because it was a Monday, and hardly anyone was there, so I'm certain they were.00:55:11.000 --> 00:55:19.000Stuart Winchester: losing money on that day, and yet they still did their best to provide an experience. I'm just not…00:55:19.000 --> 00:55:21.000Stuart Winchester: It's just not always…00:55:21.000 --> 00:55:31.000Stuart Winchester: super clear throughout the portfolio, particularly in the Lower Midwest, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, uh, in some of the Pennsylvania ski areas, Mid-Atlantic.00:55:31.000 --> 00:55:36.000Stuart Winchester: that that this is their operating philosophy. So I think that.00:55:36.000 --> 00:55:38.000Stuart Winchester: I think Vail's better than most…00:55:38.000 --> 00:55:49.000Stuart Winchester: than you would think, scrolling through social media. Uh, in general, I've been to pretty much every Vail resort in North America, other than, I think, the two in Missouri and Paoli Peaks.00:55:49.000 --> 00:56:07.000Stuart Winchester: And I generally have a really good time and a positive experience, and I find the staff friendly, and that's a super important thing to me. I love that Vail puts bars on all the lifts. I love that they're focused on safety in general, that they help police speed. As someone who skis with my kids, that's important to me.00:56:07.000 --> 00:56:13.000Stuart Winchester: So I generally have a pretty good experience. I think…00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:29.000Stuart Winchester: there's a little too much gum in the machine, maybe, when it comes to communicating these things and owning and correcting mistakes. So, anyway, with that, I will leave Vel alone for today, and you're probably wondering why I haven't yet covered the new Slate.00:56:29.000 --> 00:56:44.000Stuart Winchester: of proposed board members by Oasis Capital for Vail Resorts. I don't want to get too into the weeds on stock stuff, but I do have some thoughts on that. I want to wait till I have a little bit more time to break it down.00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:50.000Stuart Winchester: So I thank you for coming today. I hope you enjoyed that podcast episode.00:56:50.000 --> 00:56:58.000Stuart Winchester: If you are not already subscribed to the Storm Skiing newsletter, please click over to stormskiing.com and subscribe.00:56:58.000 --> 00:57:14.000Stuart Winchester: That will come right to your inbox. It is not only podcasts, I do a ton of writing. And if you want to upgrade to a paid subscription to the Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast, that will give you everything below the paywall, which is a lot of really deep analysis.00:57:14.000 --> 00:57:29.000Stuart Winchester: that I do on the lift service ski industry, particularly in North America, and especially in the United States. Also, if you're a paid subscriber to The Storm at stormskiing.com, that is the only way to interact with the podcast, because I'm only reading comments from the.00:57:29.000 --> 00:57:30.000Stuart Winchester: Previous.00:57:31.000 --> 00:57:47.000Stuart Winchester: Day's podcast and only paid subscribers can comment. Only paid subscribers can join the chat, which is the second way that they can interact with the podcast. If you want to rep the storm, we have a swag store. You can buy shirts, hats, et cetera, at stormskiing.myshopify.com.00:57:47.000 --> 00:57:48.000Stuart Winchester: Okay.00:57:48.000 --> 00:57:52.000Stuart Winchester: Please follow me on YouTube. YouTube is…00:57:52.000 --> 00:57:55.000Stuart Winchester: Where we will increasingly.00:57:55.000 --> 00:58:02.000Stuart Winchester: It'll be increasingly important to us, and right now, we don't have that many subscribers there. Uh, everything is going there, but it's just not…00:58:02.000 --> 00:58:12.000Stuart Winchester: made it into the cultural fabric of that site just yet, so please follow me at Storm Ski Journal on YouTube. Also, Instagram, which I post on more during the winter season.00:58:12.000 --> 00:58:27.000Stuart Winchester: I will be back tomorrow, or I'm scheduled to be back tomorrow, with, and this is one a lot of people have asked me for, a conversation with the general manager of what I think was perhaps the most improved ski area in the country last year, Camelback.00:58:27.000 --> 00:58:38.000Stuart Winchester: Pennsylvania. If you're rolling your eyes, if you live out west, I encourage you to tune in anyway, because the story of Camelback is a really good story of how do we do things wrong?Stuff referenced in the pod:Monarch's amazing season pass reciprocal network:A full breakdown of Monarch's U.S. Forest Service masterplan:Conversation with Snow Partners' CEO Joe Hession: Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe
Ivan Carvalho takes us for a tour inside a tech-focused campus where greenery is also given its fair share of attention. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A trail closure sends Mary Stone and her rescue dog, Jolee, in another direction for a restful walk along the Paulinskill Valley Trail, where late-summer wildflowers, remnants of railroad history, and the reestablished Paulins Kill River offer a reflection on change and restoration.Along the way, an old mile marker brings a profound, spirited lift. And memories of the former Paulina Dam, the river, surrounding landscape, and wildlife finding their way again remind us of life's transitions.Sometimes a familiar path is closed, and all we can do is turn in another direction and keep walking to find our way again. Enjoy the Comanion Post: Finding Our Way Again Along the Paulins Kill Related Stories & Episodes:Ep 267 A Not-So-Peachy Gel Dilemma A Not-So-Peachy Gel Dilemma – Blog Post Connect with Mary Stone Visit: AskMaryStone.com Garden Dilemmas? AskMaryStone@gmail.com Thank you for listening and for sharing the Garden of Life.
Introducing a new podcast that explores the wonderful world of wildlife with each episode ending in a valuable life lesson. Mother Nature can teach us all a thing or two if only we would just stand still and listen to her. Gather the kids, sit back, and enjoy.
Purple Pants Podcast | Casual Tea: The Fake, The Fierce & The Forecast The tea is HOT, and Brice and Justin are back with another round of Casual Tea! This month, they're pouring into the wild story of a man allegedly faking his way into the NFL and scamming women out of more than a million dollars, plus a possible “Super El Niño” that has them wondering what in the world is going on with Mother Nature. Then it's time to celebrate Beyoncé turning 45 and 20 years of B'Day, Naomi Osaka serving up an Allen Iverson tribute at the US Open, and the serious legal allegations surrounding Kim Zolciak and Kroy Biermann's son. From fake football players to Queen Bey, the group chat is officially OPEN, so grab your cup and get into this month's Casual Tea! You can also watch along on Brice Izyah’s YouTube channel to watch us break it all down https://youtube.com/channel/UCFlglGPPamVHaNAb0tL_s7g LISTEN: Subscribe to the Purple Pants podcast feed WATCH: Watch and subscribe to the podcast on YouTube SUPPORT: Become a RHAP Patron for bonus content, access to Facebook and Discord groups plus more great perks! Previously on the Purple Pants Podcast Feed: Purple Pants Podcast Archives
Purple Pants Podcast | Casual Tea: The Fake, The Fierce & The Forecast The tea is HOT, and Brice and Justin are back with another round of Casual Tea! This month, they're pouring into the wild story of a man allegedly faking his way into the NFL and scamming women out of more than a million dollars, plus a possible “Super El Niño” that has them wondering what in the world is going on with Mother Nature. Then it's time to celebrate Beyoncé turning 45 and 20 years of B'Day, Naomi Osaka serving up an Allen Iverson tribute at the US Open, and the serious legal allegations surrounding Kim Zolciak and Kroy Biermann's son. From fake football players to Queen Bey, the group chat is officially OPEN, so grab your cup and get into this month's Casual Tea! You can also watch along on Brice Izyah's YouTube channel to watch us break it all down https://youtube.com/channel/UCFlglGPPamVHaNAb0tL_s7g Previously on the Purple Pants Podcast Feed:Purple Pants Podcast Archives LISTEN: Subscribe to the Purple Pants podcast feed WATCH: Watch and subscribe to the podcast on YouTubeSUPPORT: Become a RHAP Patron for bonus content, access to Facebook and Discord groups plus more great perks! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
From sweet peas and peaches as terms of endearment to squirrels stealing the only peach on the tree, Mary Stone starts this week's garden chat on a playful note. Then a jelly-like peach-tree dilemma leads to gummosis, Cytospora canker, peach scab, and how stress and wounds can leave trees vulnerable to disease.Mary revisits a similar weeping cherry dilemma and what trees can teach us about looking beneath the surface—where old wounds and stresses may affect what's trying to grow aboveground.Sometimes, despite all our careful tending, the squirrel gets the peach. But there will be other seasons and other sweetness still to come. The same is true in our own Garden of Life.Enjoy the Companion Blog Post: A Not-So-Peachy Gel DilemmaRelated Stories & Episodes:Ep 266 — It's Not Too Late to Plant Again, Sweet PeaIt's Not Too Late to Plant Again — Blog PostEp 250 — Weeping Cherry Dilemmas: Trees Tell a StoryWhen a Weeping Cherry "Bleeds": What Lies Beneath — Blog PostEp 176 — Revisiting Cicadas and How Gardens GlowEp 133. Ripening Fall Tomato Hand-me-DownsRipening Fall Tomato Hand-me-Downs – Blog PostConnect with Mary StoneVisit: AskMaryStone.comGarden Dilemmas? AskMaryStone@gmail.com Thank you for listening and for sharing the Garden of Life.
Futhark runes as well as their correspondences with deities, astrology, tarot, crystals, and plants. Each chapter begins by discussing the etymology, meanings, mythology, divination, correspondences, and magick of a particular rune and culminates with profiles of several herbs and plants that possess similar magickal energies. Each plant profile delves into the magickal, metaphysical, traditional, and medicinal applications as well as how to work with these incredible plant allies. Guiding the green witch through the benefits and strengths of synergistic magick, this book helps eclectic magickal practitioners advance their craft through folk magick and medicine, rituals, meditations, spells, and the soulful process of rewilding and connecting with Mother Nature.
This week on Hysteria 51, Mother Nature is acting strange... and one guy is acting much, much stranger.First, a massive floating island covered in trees suddenly appears in British Columbia's Williston Reservoir, drifts around like it forgot where it parked, disappears, and then turns up miles away. Scientists have explanations involving debris, rising water, and vegetation, but we prefer to believe Canada has finally developed migratory land.Then we head to England, where a peaceful dog walk through a nature reserve takes a horrifying turn when a man decides to demonstrate a use for a carrot that definitely isn't in the recipe book. Police get involved, court dates are scheduled, and somewhere a rabbit loses its appetite forever.From mysterious floating islands and disappearing landmasses to bizarre crime, public indecency, and produce abuse, this episode has everything you expect from weird news... plus at least one thing you absolutely did not.Links & Resources
Why does life sometimes feel better when there's no service?No notifications. No traffic. No endless scrolling. No climate-controlled room. No food showing up at your door.Just sunlight. Dirt. Cold water. Movement. Fire. Stars. Good food. Good people. And whatever Mother Nature decides to throw at you.In this solo episode of ALLSMITH, Bryce reflects on returning from time off the grid and explores a question that kept following him home:Have we made life so convenient that we've forgotten some of what makes us feel alive?This isn't an anti-technology episode. And it's definitely not Bryce telling everyone to sell their shit and move into the woods.
America is incredibly unique. Our system of government allows for wonderful real-time examples of what works and what doesn't when it comes to human flourishing, freedom, and citizen engagement. Each state can be viewed as a laboratory of democracy as policies promoted by state governments positively or negatively impact citizens. We have seen an incredible population redistribution happening in our country as highly populated states like New York or California are losing residents and other states like Florida or Texas are gaining residents. Why? As many individuals have decide to vote with their feet, we can see trends regarding the most successful policies for personal, corporate, and governmental prosperity. With Linda to explore the trends is Jonathan Williams, President of American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). They discuss the insights gleaned from data outlined in the ALEC Rich States, Poor States guide, which is published annually to provide comprehensive information on policies that truly lead to economic prosperity and freedom. Discover how your state ranks and listen today. ©Copyright 2026, Prosperity 101, LLC __________________________________________________________ For information about the Rich States, Poor States guide, visit www.RichStatesPoorStates.org For information about our online course and other resources visit: https://prosperity101.com To order a copy of Prosperity 101 – Job Security Through Business Prosperity® by Linda J. Hansen, click here: https://prosperity101.com/products/ Become a Prosperity Partner: https://prosperity101.com/partner-contribution/ If you would like to be an episode sponsor, please contact us directly at https://prosperity101.com. You can also support this podcast by engaging with our Strategic Partners using the promo codes listed below. Be free to work and free to hire by joining RedBalloon, America's #1 non-woke job board and talent connector. Use Promo Code P101 or go to RedBalloon.work/p101 to join Red Balloon and support Prosperity 101®. Connect with other Kingdom minded business owners by joining the US Christian Chamber of Commerce. Support both organizations by mentioning Prosperity 101, LLC or using code P101 to join. https://uschristianchamber.com Mother Nature's Trading Company®, providing natural products for your health, all Powered by Cranology®. Use this link to explore Buy One Get One Free product options and special discounts: https://mntc.shop/prosperity101/ Unite for impact by joining Christian Employers Alliance at www.ChristianEmployersAlliance.org and use Promo Code P101. Support Pro-Life Payments and help save babies with every swipe. Visit www.prolifepayments.com/life/p101 for more information. Maximize your podcast by contacting Podcast Town. Contact them today: https://podcasttown.zohothrive.com/affiliateportal/podcasttown/login Check out VAUSA, America's choice for virtual assistants- https://hirevausa.com/connect" Thank you to all our guests, listeners, Prosperity Partners, and Strategic Partners. You are appreciated! The opinions expressed by guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent those held or promoted by Linda J. Hansen or Prosperity 101, LLC.
Dirt Doctor this week with Howard Garrett - Bamboo, Fertlizer, and GolfThe August 29, 2026, Dirt Doctor Podcast with Howard Garrett answering listener questions regarding good forms of bamboo (that can grow in semi-shade), about how to get lavasand, about when to use fertilizers and what kinds to use, and some golf stories. Podcast HighlightsBamboo, Vinegar, Bad and Good Fertilizers, Lava sand, Sick Tree Treatment, Bad Fertlizers, Propagation Books, Howard's "air layering" propagation, golf annecdote, golf course design with Arnold PalmerAdvertisers:Crazy Water is the only mineral water bottled in Texas. Rich with Mother Nature-infused minerals, which are more readily absorbed by your body. https://drinkcrazywater.com/ Dr. Ohhira probiotics have been part of the Garrett family health regimen for years. https://drohhiraprobiotics.com/dr-ohhira-probiotics/Essential Formulas https://essentialformulas.com/https://www.dirtdoctor.com
https://jo.my/8adk9kBuilding A Business Continuity PlanWhen the sky turns black and the sirens wail, theory flies right out the door. Mother Nature does not check your production schedule. A severe storm or sudden flood hits hard. It hits fast. That is why a real safety culture is built long before the disaster strikes. It is the invisible backbone that brings every single worker home to their family at the end of a shift.Planning keeps panic from running the floor. It means your people know where to stand, who to call, and what to shut down. Lives depend on clear actions, not guesswork.Here are a few tips to assist you with your business continuity plan during a natural disaster:Identify and Train Safety Wardens: Pick clear-headed workers across every shift. Train them to sweep the floor, account for every person, and quickly guide the crew to safe zones.Map Primary and Alternate Shelter Areas: Keep routes clear of pallets and debris. Mark internal shelter zones away from exterior walls, high-bay racking, and skylights.Set Up Communication Backups: Cell towers fail during storms. Keep battery-powered two-way radios and hand-crank emergency broadcast receivers tested and ready.Build Power Redundancy for Critical Systems: Maintain backup generators for emergency lighting, fire suppression pumps, and data backups. Run load tests every month.Audit the Action Plan Quarterly: Walk the floor with your crew. Run practical drills. Fix the bottlenecks before real wind and water test them.As always, these are potential tips. Please be sure to follow the rules and regulations of your specific facility.A continuity plan is not just ink on paper. It is a promise to your team. Equipment can be replaced. Inventory can be reordered. Pallets of stock mean nothing without the crew running the lifts. Treat your emergency plans like standard operating muscle memory. When you take care of your people first, the operation will always weather the storm.Thank you for being part of another episode of Warehouse Safety Tips. Until we meet next time - have a great week, STAY SAFE, and here's a word from our sponsor.#Safety #5S #5S Methodology #Lean Manufacturing #SafetyCulture #StaySafe #SafetyFirst #SafetyTips #StayAlert #SafetyAwareness #FacilitySafety #WorkplaceSafety #NationalPreparednessMonth #WarehouseSafety #BusinessContinuity #FacilitySafety #EmergencyPreparedness #SafetyCulture
When Mt. Lassen erupted in May 1915 it caught the imagination of the American public. Nearby San Francisco was hosting the Panama Pacific Exhibition to celebrate the 1914 opening of the Panama Canal. It was also a statement to the world that San Francisco had fully recovered from the destructive 1906 earthquake. But the massive volcanic eruption reminded San Franciscans of the unpredictable power of Mother Nature. And in 1916 Lassen Volcanic became a National Park.
A neglected patch of vegetable garden, a disappointing spring harvest, and a few leftover seed packets inspire a late-season experiment—and a reminder that missed opportunities don't always mean the season is over. Mary Stone revisits an old “Sweet Pea” story while exploring fall crops of snow peas and beets, and discovers that sometimes we need to clear a little space, plant again, and see what happens in our gardens and in the Garden of Life. Enjoy the companion Blog Post: It's Not Too Late to Plant AgainRelated Episodes you will enjoy:Ep 265 - Tending What We Can in the Garden of LifeEp 254 - Leave Room for Wandering: Unexpected Greenhouse TreasuresEp 183 Honorable Harvest - Downsize Do-overHello Sweet Pea – Blog PostConnect with Mary StoneVisit: AskMaryStone.comGarden Dilemmas? AskMaryStone@gmail.com Thank you for listening and for sharing the Garden of Life.
The search for survivors is underway after deadly flooding in Nepal and Tibet. But experts around the world are also unpacking what role climate change played in the disaster. We hear from two experts who know the region well, who say people have been warning that something like this was coming as glaciers warm at an alarming rate. And we find out why a better understanding of the impacts of warming on this region could protect lives.
Nature is healing. Unfortunately, nature has chosen violence. We're taking the Druid from level 5 all the way to 20, which means summoning packs of velociraptors, turning into dinosaurs, raising fungal zombies, weaponizing potted plants, becoming an angry celestial nature wizard, and eventually gaining the power to erase armies with natural disasters. But none of that matters because we discovered the true pinnacle of Druid magic: summoning cows sixty feet above our enemies and letting gravity finish the spell. Welcome to high-level Druid optimization, where Mother Nature loves you, but she has absolutely had enough of your crap. Show Notes We return to our 2014 D&D 5e Druid builds and take Tyler's Circle of Spores, Randall's Circle of the Moon, and Ash's Circle of Stars from level 5 all the way to 20. Third-level spells immediately send us down the Conjure Animals rabbit hole, where velociraptors look terrifying until someone suggests cows. From there, the entirely reasonable discussion of battlefield control becomes the Twister Gambit: summon livestock above your enemy and allow physics to contribute to the encounter. As the levels climb, the Druids only become more ridiculous. Randall gets increasingly dangerous Wild Shape options and eventually Elemental Wild Shape. Tyler builds an expanding fungal entourage while becoming increasingly difficult to kill. Meanwhile, Rain Shadow graduates from peaceful celestial hippie to terrifying flying star mage with an alarming willingness to unleash the wrath of nature. We dig through the Druid spell list, separating great options from traps, discussing Polymorph, Wall of Fire, summoning, battlefield control, Draconic Transformation, Foresight, Shapechange, and the point where spells like Earthquake and Tsunami stop feeling like combat abilities and start feeling like natural-disaster plot devices. By level 18, Beast Spells lets Druids cast while Wild Shaped, and level 20's Archdruid removes the practical limit on Wild Shape altogether. The result is a class that starts by talking to squirrels and ends as a nearly unkillable force of nature capable of turning into monsters, casting world-altering magic, and presumably still dropping cows on people whenever the situation demands it. Key Takeaways Conjure Animals remains enormously powerful, especially when quantity, Pack Tactics, battlefield control, and questionable applications of gravity get involved. The Twister Gambit proves that cows are not merely livestock. They are ammunition. Druids excel at battlefield control, with spells like Plant Growth capable of making movement extremely difficult under the right circumstances. Circle of the Moon keeps improving its Wild Shape options, eventually gaining Elemental Wild Shape and much stronger beast forms. Circle of Spores develops into a durable melee caster surrounded by fungal undead and eventually gains excellent defensive abilities. Circle of Stars becomes increasingly flexible as its Starry Forms improve, allowing Ash's Rain Shadow to become the terrifying celestial nature prophet she was always destined to be. Higher-level Druid magic increasingly shifts from winning encounters to reshaping entire situations with spells like Earthquake and Tsunami. Beast Spells dramatically changes Wild Shape by allowing Druids to cast while transformed. Foresight and Shapechange provide outstanding ninth-level options and make already-powerful Druids even harder to deal with. Archdruid's unlimited Wild Shape makes the level 20 Druid extraordinarily difficult to kill, especially for Circle of the Moon. The Druid's greatest strength is versatility. It can summon, heal, control the battlefield, transform, deal damage, support allies, infiltrate, and eventually become a walking ecological catastrophe. Welcome to the RPGBOT Podcast. If you love Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and tabletop RPGs, this is the podcast for you. Support the show for free: Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app. It helps new listeners find the best RPG podcast for D&D and Pathfinder players. Level up your experience: Join us on Patreon to unlock ad-free access to RPGBOT.net and the RPGBOT Podcast, chat with us and the community on the RPGBOT Discord, and jump into live-streamed RPG podcast recordings. Support while you shop: Use our Amazon affiliate link at https://amzn.to/3NwElxQ and help us keep building tools and guides for the RPG community. Meet the Hosts Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix. Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme. Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI's worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy. Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos. How to Find Us: In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net Tyler Kamstra BlueSky: @rpgbot.net TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET Ash Ely Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games BlueSky: @GravenAshes YouTube: @ashravenmedia https://ashelydm.com/ https://ashelydm.com/ Randall James BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG Amateurjack.com Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link) Producer Dan @Lzr_illuminati
Opie and Ron wander from the Centerport House of Horrors—pet cemetary, cars through the living room, cement stairs to nowhere, and Mom's backyard dump—straight into Mother Nature wiping out spiritual tourists in Nepal. Then it's celebrity deaths in threes, midnight showing of Rocky Horror shows, Tim Curry as Pennywise despite being terrified of clowns, and why little people walk with so much swagger. Classic unfiltered chaos.About Opie Unfiltered:Hosted by Gregg "Opie" Hughes—co-creator of the legendary Opie and Anthony show—Opie Unfiltered brings raw, unscripted commentary, classic radio lore, and unfiltered comedy featuring Ron the Waiter and regular guests.Support the Show:https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/JANCGHFW7GJHAFor fans of classic New York talk radio, unedited comedy, satellite broadcast history, and the original Opie and Anthony era.
Today's episode is one of the toughest nightmares - Mother Nature's! There's a very tough situation unfolding in Pennsylvania and we are on the front lines. Listen in to find out the drama!
Paul takes calls while the studio building faces the brute force of Mother Nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hey Pickles!Sorry for the replay, but we had to regroup after a colossal fail at Rochester VegFest thanks to Mother Nature!We hope this finds you well, and we will be back to tell you all about what happened in Rochester next week!We will also be talking about Big Bite Buffalo VegFest that's happening this coming Sunday in Buffalo NY! We hope to see some of you there!Wish us luck LOL.Anyway, thank you so much for always supporting what we do. We couldn't do it without you, and we wouldn't want to!Much love, Sam & ChristineSend us a voicemail or a text! We love to hear from you!Support the showJoin Our Patreon https://www.patreon.com/CompassionandcucumbersSign Up For Our Newsletterhttps://www.compassionandcucumbers.comOur YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@compassioncucumbersveganpod/videos72 Reasons To Be Vegan *paid link https://amzn.to/3W8ZwsUVisit Our Website https://www.compassionandcucumbers.comSam's Etsy https://www.etsy.com/shop/CucumberCraftworks
GHOST TRAIN – Countries around the world have built high-speed rail – why has it failed to catch on in the U.S.? An ambitious state-run project connecting L.A. and San Francisco is vastly behind schedule and has seen costs balloon. One private company is hoping it can succeed where the public sector hasn't – but that too faces challenges. Correspondent Jon Wertheim reports on the state of high-speed rail in the U.S. – which has become a stand-in for a broader question: can America still build big things? David M. Levine is the producer.ONE MOTHER'S STORY – Rachel Goldberg-Polin's son Hersh was taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. On his 328th day in captivity, Hersh was executed in a tunnel in Gaza. Now, Rachel Goldberg-Polin is trying to figure out how to live after losing her child. Anderson Cooper interviews Goldberg-Polin about Hersh and her grief, and speaks with Or Levy, a released hostage who was in captivity with Hersh, and credits him with helping to save his life. Katie Brennan is the producer.WILD CONCERTO – Acclaimed drummer of The Police Stewart Copeland and celebrated British naturalist Martyn Stewart have created Wild Concerto, a pioneering album that mixes authentic animal sounds with original music. It's based on Stewart's unparalleled audio archive of the world's wild inhabitants. Correspondent Bill Whitaker joins the pair at the iconic Abbey Road Studios as Copeland and Stewart give Mother Nature's orchestra the star treatment. Heather Abbott is the producer.
Can we save nature by putting a quantifiable value on it? Tim Christophersen is a forester, former UN environmentalist and a leading voice in the global ecosystem restoration movement, championing regenerative agriculture and nature-based solutions. With the UK sweltering through multiple heatwaves, we discuss whether investment can really deliver the restoration we need — and what happens when living ecosystems become part of the financial system. Benny's Insect of the Week: Toadflax Brocade Moth About Tim Christopherson Tim Christophersen joined Salesforce as VP, Climate Action in May 2022. Within the global Impact Team, he leads the work on climate and nature action and investments. Tim is based in Denmark. He is the author of 'Generation Restoration', a book about restoring nature at planetary scale. Before joining Salesforce, Tim was Head of the 'Nature for Climate' Branch at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and led a growing global movement backed by all UN Member States and over 300 partner organizations to 'prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide': the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030. He holds a degree in Forestry and Forest Conservation Engineering from Dresden University of Technology. He previously worked for the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), where he led the portfolio on the conservation and sustainable use of forest biodiversity. From 2017-2019, he was elected Chair of the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration. From 2002-2007 he was Regional Programme Coordinator for Europe, the Caucasus and the Commonwealth of Independent States at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). He also worked for the Danish Ministry of the Environment, and for the European Commission. Links Generation Restoration: How to Fix Our Relationship Crisis with Mother Nature by Tim Christopherson Tim Christophersen on how to rebuild humanity's ties to nature Other restoration projects of interest: Restor.eco decadeonrestoration.org Tim's LinkedIn profile Please support the podcast on Patreon As featured in the Feedspot Top 100 Horticulture Podcasts And follow Roots and All: On Instagram @rootsandallpod On Facebook @rootsandalluk On LinkedIn @rootsandall If you enjoyed this week's episode with Tim, you might also enjoy these episodes from the archives: Episode 318: Care Not Capital John Little challenges the idea that investing in green spaces is primarily about capital, arguing instead for investment in the people who care for them. It makes an interesting companion to Tim's discussion of the role money and investment can play in restoring nature. Episode 58: A New Garden Ethic with Benjamin Vogt Benjamin Vogt argues for a different relationship with nature, one in which we see ourselves as part of the wider ecological community rather than separate from it. It's a useful counterpoint to Tim's much bigger-picture discussion about how we value and restore the natural world.
Chris McWatters and David Smithey of Tejas Trails join the Happy Cast to talk about the races that have become Texas trail-running institutions—and the stories behind keeping them alive. From Rocky Raccoon and Bandera to the beautifully brutal Cactus Rose, Chris and Dave share what makes these events special, why self-sufficiency is part of the culture, and what it takes behind the scenes when Mother Nature decides to completely wreck the plan. There are cows eating course markers, emergency race relocations and, naturally, Andrew providing medical assistance while dressed as a chicken.Then we get into Tejas Trails' newest experiment: the Frio Trio Zero Edition. Taking over the Frio Valley for a weekend, the event brings together night trail running, gravel biking, traditional trail racing, river floating and a full weekend built around the outdoor community. Chris and Dave explain how the idea grew out of an invitation from the communities around Leakey, Concan and Garner State Park—and why they decided to make the inaugural edition intentionally affordable while encouraging racers to spend their money with local businesses.We also talk about what makes a race worth creating when the calendar is already packed, the nerves that come with producing something completely new, and why the best adventures usually involve accepting that something is probably going to go wrong. Plus, Stephanie enters another school year surrounded by teenage drivers, Chris discovers the limitations of simultaneously having busted toes and a bad shoulder, Dave can't stop thinking about a chicken-fried steak, and Andrew mysteriously disappears from his own podcast exactly as everyone predicted.Be sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, and we always appreciate you leaving a good rate and review. Join the Facebook Group and follow us on Instagram and check out our website for the more episodes, posts and merchandise coming soon.Have a topic you'd like to hear discussed in depth, or a guest you'd like to nominate? Email us at info@happyendingstc.org
Dirt Doctor This Week - Cicada Killers Beetles and Fertilizer The August 22, 2026, Dirt Doctor Podcast with Howard Garrett answering listener questions regarding insects, weeds, the condition of plants in the extreme heat of summer, and fertilizing. Podcast highlights: Cicada Killer waspSoap damage to tree foliageBlack beetles Flea beetleHarlequin beetleBlack spotted cucumber beetleTexas Bug BookHow often to water in heatChinese pistache looking badFruit tree gummosisGrub wormsAzaleas not blooming FertilizerAdvertisers:Crazy Water is the only mineral water bottled in Texas. Rich with Mother Nature-infused minerals, which are more readily absorbed by your body. https://drinkcrazywater.com/ Dr. Ohhira probiotics have been part of the Garrett family health regimen for years. https://drohhiraprobiotics.com/dr-ohhira-probiotics/Essential Formulas https://essentialformulas.com/https://www.dirtdoctor.com
Dirt Doctor This Week - cactus compost, button bush, fasciation, and molassesThe August 8, 2026, Dirt Doctor Podcast with Howard Garrett discusses why cactus pads are a great form of compost (and how to do it) and more about cactus pests (cochineal) and aberations (cristate forms). Also a discussion of what goes into Garrett Juice, what plants are good in wet or shaded areas, and how to deal with root sprouts. Many questions come in through the "Ask Howard" button on all Dirt Doctor website pages. Podcast highlights: Howard's healthy tips Prickly pear in compostcochinealfasciationmolassessprayersbutton bushginkgoJapanese maple OrangeolaTree cavities bugs in plantsroot sproutsPortable fan for mosquito repelling (Murphy's mosquito repellent) Advertisers:Crazy Water is the only mineral water bottled in Texas. Rich with Mother Nature-infused minerals, which are more readily absorbed by your body. https://drinkcrazywater.com/ Dr. Ohhira probiotics have been part of the Garrett family health regimen for years. https://drohhiraprobiotics.com/dr-ohhira-probiotics/Essential Formulas https://essentialformulas.com/https://www.dirtdoctor.com
The August 15, 2026, Dirt Doctor Podcast with Howard Garrett answering listener questions and discussing photos sent in to illustrate the problems they asked about. The site is being adjusted so photos can be added to the Ask Howard page. A big question - how to successfully transplant trees and shrubs in high summer plus a look at sucking insect pests such as aphids and scale. After a few teasers through the podcast it concludes with a short slideshow from the trip the Garrett family made to the Galapagos Islands some years ago. Podcast highlights: Tea recommendation Speaking Event in AugustSPCASuccessful transplanting in summerWhite scale and sooty moldSick Tree TreatmentPorganic preemergent - corn gluten mealPreemergent date for turf Neem shelf-life (AzaSol)Spinosadoak wiltpoison ivy/ 20% vinegarmealy bugs mound drenchMealybug destroyerGalapagos trip slideshowAdvertisers:Crazy Water is the only mineral water bottled in Texas. Rich with Mother Nature-infused minerals, which are more readily absorbed by your body. https://drinkcrazywater.com/ Dr. Ohhira probiotics have been part of the Garrett family health regimen for years. https://drohhiraprobiotics.com/dr-ohhira-probiotics/Essential Formulas https://essentialformulas.com/https://www.dirtdoctor.com
We were worried at the start of the season about a sprint around Zandvoort... And turns out we were right to be. Especially after we were literally rainbated by Mother Nature.We will not be going on tour next year! So if you want to come and see our brand new live show 'Super Podding' this autumn, get your tickets here: http:/tix.to/p1liveSign up to our Patreon for just $5 a month! You'll get access to every P1 episode ad-free, extended versions of every 2026 race review, early access to tickets & merch, and access to our Discord server where you can chat with us and other F1 fans! Click here to sign up now: http://patreon.com/mattp1tommyFollow us on socials! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and TikTokP1 with Matt and Tommy is the world's biggest F1 podcast. Subscribe for new podcasts around every single race throughout the 2026 Formula 1 season! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
John Mullen, also known as Ugly John, was born in Turley, Oklahoma. He is a boat dealer, marina operator, and former championship boat racer.He raced boats from 1974 to 1986 and began selling boats to help fund his racing career. John's first sale was recorded on a brown paper sack while he sat on a milk crate in his garage in Turley. The garage originally had a dirt floor, but as sales grew, he added a concrete floor and electricity before eventually moving into a 1,200-square-foot building.The business later expanded into Ugly John's Custom Boats, selling recreational boats, performance boats, and yachts while operating multiple marina locations. When asked how he overcame challenges from the economy and Mother Nature, he said, “I didn't know I couldn't do it.”Listen to John tell you why he is known as Ugly John, how he almost became a Yellow Pages salesman, and the ups and downs of the boating business on the podcast and website VoicesOfOklahoma.com.
IASP Members, The start of a new school year always brings challenges—and this year, Mother Nature has certainly added a few of her own. In this week's IASP Advocacy Podcast, IASP Executive Director Dr. Todd Bess joins me to welcome school leaders back and, more importantly, to recognize the leadership you continue to demonstrate as you navigate whatever comes your way. From there, we turn our attention beyond Indiana to talk about IASP's new national affiliation with the National Principals Association (NPA). What does having one national association representing PreK–12 school leaders mean for Indiana principals? Todd shares the story behind the formation of NPA, why IASP chose to become a founding state affiliate, and how this partnership can strengthen professional learning, connection, and—especially—advocacy for school leaders at the national level. Want to learn more about the benefits of bringing school leaders together under one national association? Watch this short video. And, of course, no conversation with Todd would be complete without a shameless plug! This week's plug is for IASP's Aspiring Leader Institute. As you begin the year, think about the rising stars in your building or corporation. Who has leadership potential? Who is ready for an opportunity to grow? Sometimes all it takes is a school leader tapping someone on the shoulder and saying, "I think you'd be good at this." We'd love for you to make that tap and encourage a future school leader to take the next step. Click here to learn more about the IASP Aspiring Leader Institute. Thank you for your leadership—and welcome back!
Welcome to Episode 66, where the parking lot smells like raw sewage and somehow THAT is the least disgusting thing we discuss.The morning begins with Lern trying to figure out whether Hubbard Media has a sewage problem or whether she personally needs to reevaluate some life choices. Thankfully, the mystery quickly leads us to Florida, where somebody learns one of nature's most important rules the hard way: do not jump on a manatee. Especially when you haven't taken the time to determine whether said manatee is, you know… alive.What follows is Mother Nature delivering one of the fastest and grossest examples of karma we've ever encountered. And because this is a funny podcast run by adults who allegedly know better, the conversation immediately becomes a competition over the nastiest things anyone has ever gotten on themselves.Rizz remembers the beautiful bonding experience of having baby vomit deposited directly into his mouth. Moon recalls an athletic encounter with an impressive amount of dog poop. And then Rafe casually unlocks a repressed memory from his days working in surgery that probably should've stayed repressed. There's gangrene. There's a sterile operating room. There's vomiting. There's mint extract that arrives WAY too late. At one point, breakfast officially files for divorce.We also discover that the infamous “blue waffle” is an Internet hoax, which is terrific news for anyone who survived the early Internet and somehow never bothered to verify that until adulthood.Eventually, Rizz attempts to drag this funny podcast out of the biological danger zone by choosing joy. Unfortunately, he's Rizz, so even his daughter thanking him for making dinner turns into an existential crisis involving garlic, dementia, stuffed animals, retirement in Florida, and an imaginary future son-in-law handling his estate. Normal father-daughter stuff.Then we actually get GOOD NEWS. St. Charles runner Emma Kessler thought she'd be tackling a half marathon without her boyfriend Jason, who repeatedly insisted running wasn't his thing. Turns out Jason had secretly trained for months so he could surprise her and run alongside her. It's sweet. It's supportive. Nobody gets covered in anything. Naturally, Rizz's immediate concern is that this man is making every other partner look terrible.The crew also looks back at teenage summer jobs — camp counseling, landscaping, mall jobs, mowing lawns, hauling hay, food service and all the other character-building employment our parents lovingly forced upon us. With fewer teenagers working summer jobs than when the crew was growing up, we ask whether kids are missing an important rite of passage. Rafe's solution? Basically draft every 16-year-old into retail or food service. Honestly, one summer behind a register might improve society overnight.Episode 66 is funny podcast chaos in its purest form: weird news, gross stories, St. Louis conversation, parenting failures, questionable childhood employment and the kind of morning-show tangents that begin with sewage and somehow end in labor statistics.We're sorry about breakfast.Follow The Rizzuto Show → linktr.ee/rizzshow for more from your favorite daily comedy show.Connect with The Rizzuto Show Comedy Podcast online → 1057thepoint.com/RizzShow.Hear The Rizz Show daily on the radio at 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio in St. Louis, MO.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
What happens when life and career plans are redirected? How can you walk confidently into new plans and greater purpose? Linda welcomes Bristan Heaven, an experienced business leader and President of the Central Florida Christian Chamber of Commerce, for a powerful conversation about faith, leadership, business, and the unique role Christian entrepreneurs and employers play in shaping culture. Bristan shares his remarkable journey from humble beginnings in Jamaica, to a successful career in banking, to answering God's call to lead one of the nation's most influential Christian business organizations. His story is unique, yet the principles are universal and applicable to each of us as we navigate constant changes in our personal and professional lives. ©Copyright 2026, Prosperity 101, LLC __________________________________________________________ For information about our online course and other resources visit: https://prosperity101.com To order a copy of Prosperity 101 – Job Security Through Business Prosperity® by Linda J. Hansen, click here: https://prosperity101.com/products/ Become a Prosperity Partner: https://prosperity101.com/partner-contribution/ If you would like to be an episode sponsor, please contact us directly at https://prosperity101.com. You can also support this podcast by engaging with our Strategic Partners using the promo codes listed below. Be free to work and free to hire by joining RedBalloon, America's #1 non-woke job board and talent connector. Use Promo Code P101 or go to RedBalloon.work/p101 to join Red Balloon and support Prosperity 101®. Connect with other Kingdom minded business owners by joining the US Christian Chamber of Commerce. Support both organizations by mentioning Prosperity 101, LLC or using code P101 to join. https://uschristianchamber.com Mother Nature's Trading Company®, providing natural products for your health, all Powered by Cranology®. Use this link to explore Buy One Get One Free product options and special discounts: https://mntc.shop/prosperity101/ Unite for impact by joining Christian Employers Alliance at www.ChristianEmployersAlliance.org and use Promo Code P101. Support Pro-Life Payments and help save babies with every swipe. Visit www.prolifepayments.com/life/p101 for more information. Maximize your podcast by contacting Podcast Town. Contact them today: https://podcasttown.zohothrive.com/affiliateportal/podcasttown/login Check out VAUSA, America's choice for virtual assistants- https://hirevausa.com/connect" Thank you to all our guests, listeners, Prosperity Partners, and Strategic Partners. You are appreciated! The opinions expressed by guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent those held or promoted by Linda J. Hansen or Prosperity 101, LLC.
Who's to blame for The Dust Bowl?This week, The Alarmist (Rebecca Delgado Smith) welcomes fellow podcaster Mike Rugnetta, host of Never Post, to discuss a major bump in the road during America's westward expansion. Well, more like a big bowl of dust which swept up the country's notion of manifest destiny. Was this wheat bubble also part of our destiny or was it created by poor planning and farming practices? Perhaps WWI had something to do with it? And let us never forget Mother Nature! Fact Checker Chris Smith and Producer Clayton Early join the conversation.Join our Patreon!Tell us who you think is to blame at http://thealarmistpodcast.comEmail us at thealarmistpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Instagram @thealarmistpodcastFollow us on TikTok @thealarmistpodcastSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/alarmist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Christine Page shares a mystical and deeply grounded exploration of the 8/8 Lionsgate portal, stargates, sacred sites, Gaia's living grid, lioness symbolism, and the eternal light of the soul. Drawing from decades of holistic healing, astrology, sacred site work, nature communication, and multidimensional wisdom, Christine invites us to remember that we are not trying to become beings of light — we already are. In this presentation, Christine explores the difference between portals and stargates, how synchronicities act as windows into deeper reality, why sacred sites hold energetic memory, and how the Lion's Gate can be understood as a reflective portal into the infinitely expanding universe. She also guides a beautiful meditation through the ancient Lion's Gate of Mycenae, helping you breathe into everything you are, return to the still point, and step through the portal into a new field of remembrance. ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Christine Page, MD, is a mystical physician, author, international speaker, spiritual teacher, and intuitive wisdom keeper with nearly five decades of experience in holistic healthcare and complementary medicine. Intuitive since birth, Christine works with universal wisdom, astrology, alchemy, acoustics, sacred sites, nature spirits, multidimensional light beings, dragon energy, whale consciousness, serpent wisdom, Gaia, and the deeper intelligence of the soul. She is the author of multiple books, including The Magic of Mother Nature, and her work supports people in expressing their soul's full creative potential on Earth. CONNECT WITH THE SPEAKER: Website: https://www.christinepage.com/
Sometimes we can't tend to everything at once. Mary Stone shares her mission to manage the undesirable Mile-a-Minute weed and Japanese Stilt Grass, while heavy rains unexpectedly cleared the pond of favorable Duckweed. Along the way, an old stone wall, resilient Blackberry Lilies, and newly visible frogs offer reminders that while we can't get to everything in our gardens—or our lives—we can tend what we can and let go of the rest.Link to the Companion Blog Post: Tending What We Can in the Garden of Life Related Episodes you will enjoy:· Episode 177 — Nighttime Chorus of Garden Insects · Episode 264 Another Lesson from the Leaf—Help Is on the Way· Episode 107 — Mile-a-Minute Weed and Butterfly Magnets· Episode 215 — The Tiny Wonder of Duckweed· Episode 211 — Truth and Tale of Two Country Gardens· Blackberry Lily & Soil Remediation Blog PostA favorite "tool of the trade":· Farmer's Defense — Garden Protection Sleeves Connect with Mary Stone Visit: AskMaryStone.com Garden Dilemmas? AskMaryStone@gmail.com Thank you for listening and for sharing the Garden of Life.
Joe Poirot is back from his very first National, and after a couple of weeks to process the experience, he joins Jeremy Lee to break down what surprised him, what overwhelmed him, how the show changed his collecting eye and, of course, what he brought home. We take a look at Joe's National pickups, including everything from modern game-used pieces to beautiful pre-war cardboard, culminating in a pair of major vintage additions that might officially put the old “Beater Joe” nickname to rest. That leads us into a bigger conversation about vintage, eye appeal, buying the card instead of the grade, and an interesting question: with so much money pouring into other areas of the hobby, have collectors actually lost sight of just how important Babe Ruth is? And then Mother Nature decides to become part of Sports Cards Live. A massive Calgary thunderstorm knocks Jeremy completely offline in the middle of the livestream, leaving Joe unexpectedly in charge of the show while Jeremy tries to get his internet, modem and computer back from the dead. Another night of cards, collecting and completely unscripted Sports Cards Live. Check out The Hobby Spectrum at thehobbyspectrum.com and take the assessment to discover where you fit in the hobby. Try AuctionWire at auctionwire.ai and use promo code SCL to receive two free months. Check out Card Ladder and use promo code SCL. Buy Pops and Comps: Truths, Insights, and Psychology Behind the Numbers That Drive the Sports Card Market, available now on Amazon. And, as always, subscribe to Sports Cards Live on YouTube, turn on notifications, and if you enjoy the podcast, follow, rate and review Sports Cards Live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to Hot Topics! In this episode, host Gabrielle Crichlow engages with guest Axay Shah to challenge conventional eating habits. They investigate the compelling argument that if a food item does not originate from Mother Nature, it has no place on our plates. By intertwining ancient wisdom with modern nutritional insights, they provide a roadmap for cultivating a lifestyle that prioritizes living foods and actively avoids harmful substances.Who is Axay Shah?Axay Shah is a dedicated raw foodist and researcher with nearly two decades of experience studying the intersection of nature and human biology. His work, recognized by the Library of Congress and supported by leading medical professionals, including Dr. Shrenik Shah, is driven by his mission to help one million people reclaim their vitality. By bridging the gap between ancient dietary wisdom and modern nutritional science, Axay draws on 16 years of personal practice and research into raw foodism to provide a “biological backbone” for the plant-based community, demonstrating that living foods are the ultimate fuel for the human body.You can find Axay Shah:On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RawFoodiestGuruOn Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rawfoodiest/On X: https://x.com/RawFoodiestOn YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RawFoodiestOn GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19980619.Axay_ShahAxay Shaw's book, "In Nature We Trust: A Raw Food Manifesto for Energy, Healing & Longevity," is an #1 Amazon Best Seller in the The Scientific Manifesto for Energy, Healing & Longevity category. Purchase his book here: https://a.co/d/0hriRnKxHere's his book on Kirkus Star Review: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/axay-shah/in-nature-we-trust/= PROMO =The giveaway is hosted on Goodreads. Listeners simply visit the link below and click "Enter Giveaway" to be entered to win one of 100 FREE Kindle copies of "IN NATURE WE TRUST."GIVEAWAY LINK: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/250233293-in-nature-we-trustDETAILS:
What happens when life tests the very lessons we hope to live?In this heartfelt episode, Mary Stone shares an emotionally difficult week that almost preempted the weekly chat. She invites listeners onto her screened porch, where a summer thunderstorm replaces the noisy cicadas, setting the stage for a conversation about acceptance, resilience, and hope. Inspired by a recent Call to Calm meditation with Panache Desai, Mary reflects on the image of a single leaf surrendering to the wind and explores how embracing our emotions—rather than resisting them—can help us find peace.Mary also shares an update on her book, The Lesson of the Leaf, and why one closed door has become the beginning of a new path. Along the way, she revisits a favorite summertime story about the Dog Days of Summer and the curious origins of the phrase "sweating like a pig," bringing a few laughs to a humid August afternoon.The episode closes with a heartfelt reflection on the love we share with our dogs, the pieces of our hearts they carry, and the reassurance that, even during life's hardest seasons, help is on the way.Link to companion blog post: Doing Nothing and Everything: Wisdom from Nature & Gardens
Paul and Jay recap the night practice in the stadium that overcame a storm to sneak in 30 minutes in front of the crowd.Sharefax Credit Union has 9 branches across Cincinnati with locations in Batavia, Blue Ash, Eastgate, Evendale, Lebanon, Liberty Township, Mason, Milford & Western Hills. Learn more at www.sharefax.org or call 513-753-2440.Send your questions, comments & sponsorship inquiries to thegrowlerpodcast@gmail.com00:00 Intro and theme song01:53 Mother Nature hates the Bengals02:58 Light, camera, offense06:08 Easy Dexy08:01 Evan bombs away09:22 Sharefax Credit Union Poll Questions results11:17 Dan Hoard feels the love12:12 Locker room DJ warSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Capt. Kevin was kinda like Dr. Frankenstein – no, he wasn’t creating a monster out of spare parts. But he sure was paying attention to the water and noticing just how lively the water was. He, as well as the Unusual Suspects, noticed how busy the fish were…and how busy Mother Nature was as well. Check out the reports and the forecast to find out just how ALIVE it’s going to be for you in the upcoming week. Facebook
EARTHQUAKES, VOLCANOES, AND THE FIGHT TO STAY GROUNDED Trent Loos sits down with JC Cole for a wild ride through earth science and everyday survival. They dig into a string of recent earthquakes, a rumbling Mount St. Helens, and stirring activity at Mount Pelée that some say lines up with old…
Immigration is always a hot -and often emotional - topic, yet few people truly understand the impact immigration policies have on their daily lives, finances, and freedoms. Immigration touches every segment of society and impacts every community. Every town is a border town when immigration policies allow for open borders, financial fraud, rampant crime, and cultural upheaval. How do we continue our promise of freedom to immigrants while protecting the rights of our American citizens? As policy details are swallowed in news cycles and impacts are often ignored until irreversible, Todd Bensman, Linda's guest in this episode, brings clarity and truth to the conversation, all based on his years as a journalist, policy analyst, and counterterrorism expert. Todd served as Senior National Security Fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies and as Senior Adviser to the US Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center. He now serves as a Senior Research Fellow for The Heritage Foundation's Border Security and Immigration Center. Todd has testified before Congress and written extensively to alert American citizens regarding the negative national security implications of open-border policies and to provide insight on providing safeguards for citizens and legal immigrants. This is an important episode you will not want to miss. Listen today and share with friends. ©copyright 2026, Prosperity 101, LLC __________________________________________________________ For information about our online course and other resources visit: https://prosperity101.com To order a copy of Prosperity 101 – Job Security Through Business Prosperity® by Linda J. Hansen, click here: https://prosperity101.com/products/ Become a Prosperity Partner: https://prosperity101.com/partner-contribution/ If you would like to be an episode sponsor, please contact us directly at https://prosperity101.com. You can also support this podcast by engaging with our Strategic Partners using the promo codes listed below. Be free to work and free to hire by joining RedBalloon, America's #1 non-woke job board and talent connector. Use Promo Code P101 or go to RedBalloon.work/p101 to join Red Balloon and support Prosperity 101®. Connect with other Kingdom minded business owners by joining the US Christian Chamber of Commerce. Support both organizations by mentioning Prosperity 101, LLC or using code P101 to join. https://uschristianchamber.com Mother Nature's Trading Company®, providing natural products for your health, all Powered by Cranology®. Use this link to explore Buy One Get One Free product options and special discounts: https://mntc.shop/prosperity101/ Unite for impact by joining Christian Employers Alliance at www.ChristianEmployersAlliance.org and use Promo Code P101. Support Pro-Life Payments and help save babies with every swipe. Visit www.prolifepayments.com/life/p101 for more information. Maximize your podcast by contacting Podcast Town. Contact them today: https://podcasttown.zohothrive.com/affiliateportal/podcasttown/login Check out VAUSA, America's choice for virtual assistants- https://hirevausa.com/connect" Thank you to all our guests, listeners, Prosperity Partners, and Strategic Partners. You are appreciated! The opinions expressed by guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent those held or promoted by Linda J. Hansen or Prosperity 101, LLC.
A total solar eclipse is coming on August 12th. They're awe inspiring. But imagine it’s a normal day in ancient times and suddenly the sun begins to get dimmer and dimmer. Is it the end of the world? Are we being punished by Mother Nature? These folks had no way to explain an eclipse so they turned it into stories, myths, warnings, and eventually, science. Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover . . On Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this special episode, Mónica and producer Jessica Jones explore questions from curious listeners about fear, family conflict, patriotism when we’re so at odds, and the unforeseeable ways we come to believe what we believe. Also on deck: Advice to a mom caught in a political rift between father and son, what happens when Moni loses her temper, and bridging tips from Mother Nature. Want to send us *your* question? Email abraverway@reclaimcuriosity.com! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
“A secret spot in Baja California, hundreds of miles from civilization. An old milk van converted into the perfect surfing mobile. A 67-year-old man, at the peak of his physical fitness and in line with Mother Nature every step of the way. “The Bull” is the award-winning story of San Diego surfing legend Glen Horn and his journey to an unconventional lifestyle."On today's Slow Baja, we're in conversation with Documentary Filmmaker Eric Ebner, as he discusses his path to becoming a filmmaker and making "The Bull" his film on surfer Glen Horn. The tale picks up as Ebner and a friend quit their jobs, divested themselves of their worldly possessions, packed up a 1992 Toyota 4Runner with their surfboards, camp gear, guitar, and headed south for what they knew would be an epic, life-changing surf trip.After a disastrous first day that saw their trusty 4Runner broken down on the side of the road two hours south of Ensenada, a transformative experience followed, opening Ebner's eyes to the beautiful culture of kindness among the rural people of Baja.Humbled and uplifted, Ebner continued his quest for waves, eventually settling into a surf camp in Baja Sur where he met 67-year-old Glen Horn. Horn was the camp “OG” and lived for months at a time, off-grid, in his bright red vintage camper-made from a converted bread van. A fascination with Horn's unconventional but harmonious life led Ebner to begin following and filming the surfer-steward-in-residence of this remote surf break.Ebner's film, The Bull, was the result of that endeavor. It went on to stack up awards in scores of film festivals, including: Winner- “Best Picture” Short Film Category- Carolina Surf Film Festival Winner- “Best Documentary” Short Film Category- Florida Surf Film FestivalWinner- “Audience Award”- Portuguese Surf Film FestivalWinner- “Filmmaker Award, Audience Appreciation” - Save the Waves Film Festival TourEbner has gone on to a career in filmmaking and has made several films. Learn more about him and his work here:https://ericebner.com/Subscribe to Eric Ebner's YouTube channel here.Need Baja Bound Insurance? Get a quote here.Support the Slow Baja Podcast here.Join a Slow Baja Adventure here.Watch my Slow Baja Conversation with Glen Horn here.
Love, Laughter & Absolute Mayhem In Mexico. What was supposed to be a romantic birthday and anniversary getaway to Cancun quickly turned into one unforgettable adventure! We take you behind the scenes of our week in paradise—from arriving during the infamous sargassum season (trust us... don't make our mistake!) to discovering that Mother Nature had other plans for our beach vacation. Thankfully, our incredible swim-up suite at BlueBay Esmeralda Resort saved the trip, and SnowWhite90210 immediately claimed it as her royal palace. Of course, no vacation with us would ever be normal. Between fearless iguanas, adorable baby raccoons, one very determined mama raccoon that seemed convinced SnowWhite90210 was dinner, and our endless debates over French fries versus French cuisine, you'll hear every hilarious moment exactly as it happened. We relive our spectacular candlelit dinner on the beach complete with tiki torches, crashing waves, rose petals, chocolate-covered strawberries, a surprise "Te Amo" bedroom setup... and why one of us completely ruined the romantic ending by falling asleep. We also share our favorite moments exploring Cancun, relaxing at an incredible jungle spa, discovering crystal-clear lagoons, watching traditional Mexican performances, dancing through an epic foam party, surviving a hilarious beer-drinking competition (that one of us actually won!), and why golf carts became our favorite form of VIP transportation. Then photographer Simone Sartori with Photo Factory Cancun Photography reunites with us for a stunning sunset magazine photo shoot that creates some of our favorite images we've ever taken together while celebrating another year of love. Just when we thought our adventure was over... everything changed. On our way home we discovered nearly 500,000 American Airlines miles had been stolen after hackers broke into our accounts, changed our email addresses, phone numbers and loyalty information while they continued redeeming points in real time as we desperately tried to stop them. We also talk about traveling internationally with SnowWhite90210, learning about Mexico's screw worm regulations, our favorite meals, the incredible people we met, and why this vacation reminded us that sometimes the biggest travel disasters create the funniest lifelong memories. Plus, we announce our upcoming Armenian Coffee Reading tour dates, share where you can meet us in person, introduce new podcast guests coming soon, and remind everyone why SnowBubu continues stealing hearts everywhere we go. Paradise was messy... But we wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Subscribe to our audio: linktr.ee/undressedpod Follow Pol Atteu: Instagram: @polatteu Tiktok: @polatteu Twitter: @polatteu www.polatteu.com Follow Patrik Simpson: Instagram: @patriksimpson Tiktok: @patriksimpson www.patriksimpson.com Follow SnowWhite90210: Instagram: @snowwhite90210 Twitter: @SnowWhite9010 www.snowwhite90210.com Watch Gown and Out In Beverly Hills on Prime Video. www.gownandoutinbeverlyhills.com #UndressedPodcast Armenian Coffee Reading SnowWhite90210 SnowBubu is a Perfect gift! https://polatteu.com/shop/ols/products/snowbubu90210 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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