Podcasts about Powder Mountain

How do you build a high-performance culture without turning your company into the Hunger Games? Reed Hastings, co-founder and former CEO of Netflix, shares lessons from a career spent rewriting the rules—from severance as a management tool to “big-hearted champions who pick up the trash.” In this episode, he reveals how Netflix scaled trust, made bold bets before the data was in, and kept its edge by treating employees like adults—not assets. You'll hear how Hastings evaluates talent beyond the interview, the reason he avoids performance improvement plans, and what most leaders misunderstand about judgment, feedback, and innovation.  You'll also hear why he placed a $100 million bet on House of Cards with no pilot, how Drive to Survive changed an entire sport, and why Squid Game caught even Netflix by surprise.  Now focused on a new chapter—owning a ski mountain, reshaping education through AI tutors, and supporting charter schools—Hastings is still doing what he does best: building systems that scale culture, not just product.  If you care about performance without politics—or culture without the clichés—this is a blueprint from one of the clearest thinkers in modern business.  Approximate timestamps: Subject to variation due to dynamically inserted ads: (3:09) Powder Mountain, Skiing Industry, & Buying a Mountain (6:36) Setting Culture in an Organization (9:21) Hiring Process and Evaluating Candidates (14:24) Netflix's 2009 Slide Deck Release (16:26) Talent Density and Performance Culture (17:59) Loyalty and Team Building (19:56) Severance Packages (22:17) Process Vs. Innovation (24:21) Preventing Bureaucracy from Creeping In (25:46) Identifying and Nurturing Good Judgment (26:40) Transition from CEO to Board Member (27:37) Competitive Landscape of Online Streaming (29:18) Role of Netflix in Driving Industry Interest (31:25) Handling Controversy: The Dave Chappelle Case (33:59) Inclusiveness and DEI in the Workplace (35:10) Customer Satisfaction and Operating Income (36:06) Decision Making in Content Acquisition: House of Cards (37:28) Creating vs Buying Content (38:46) Data Collection and User Preferences (40:32) AI in Netflix and Personal Use (42:33) AI in Education (45:12) Charter Schools and Importance of Education (48:07) Charter Schools and Government Control (52:34) Misconceptions and Personal Projects (53:25) Admiration for Bill Gates (55:04) Work-Life Integration (56:59) Reflections on Career and Obsession (59:12) The Netflix Keeper Test (1:00:38) Learning from Past Experiences at Pure Software (1:02:27) Challenges and Regrets at Pure Software (1:03:38) Role of the Board in Founder-led Companies (1:04:49) Venture Capital Experiences and Insights (1:05:31) Defining Moments and Openness to New Experiences (1:06:14) First Product Excitement: The Foot Mouse (1:07:19) Definition of Success Thanks to our sponsors for supporting this episode: NORDVPN: To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan go to ⁠⁠nordvpn.com/KNOWLEDGEPROJECT⁠. Our link will also give you 4 extra months on the 2-year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30 day money-back guarantee! MOMENTOUS: Head to https://www.livemomentous.com and use code KNOWLEDGEPROJECT for 35% off your first subscription. Newsletter - The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it's completely free. Learn more and sign up at ⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/newsletter⁠⁠⁠ Upgrade — If you want to hear my thoughts and reflections at the end of the episode, join our membership: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and get your own private feed. Watch on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠@tkppodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if selling your company didn't mean letting go—but leveling up, on your terms? In this episode of The Greatness Machine, Ryan Begelman returns for part two to share the behind-the-scenes story of how he scaled, sold, and systematized a company—without losing his sense of joy. From building a business with friends to generating millions in additional value by taking the exit process into his own hands, Ryan unpacks how thoughtful planning, operational excellence, and self-education made all the difference. He shares why most founders leave money on the table during a sale, how he trained his COO to take over, and the surprising reason he almost didn't want to sell. Part 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/339-ryan-begelman-part-1-the-mayor-effect-how-to/id1555334180?i=1000697821147  In this episode, Darius and Ryan will discuss: (00:00) Introduction and Recap of Previous Episode (03:00) The Journey of Bisnow Media (06:09) Acquisition Entrepreneurship and Bootstrapping (09:00) The Role of AI in Business (12:12) Navigating Multiple Ventures (15:09) The Summit and Powder Mountain Experience (18:07) Challenges of Managing Multiple Businesses (21:10) The Future of Powder Mountain and Lessons Learned (31:20) The Journey of Acquiring Powder Mountain (32:38) Lessons Learned from Past Experiences (35:46) Building Bisnow: Growth and Strategy (39:13) The Exit Strategy: Selling Bisnow (48:10) The Joy of Entrepreneurship and Life Design Ryan Begelman is an executive coach, entrepreneur, and investor. As CEO of Bisnow Media, he grew the company from $1 million to $20 million in revenue before its sale in 2016. He co-founded Summit, described by Forbes as “The Davos of Generation Y,” and has invested in startups like Uber, Warby Parker, and Coinbase. A mindfulness practitioner based in NYC, Ryan is passionate about cycling, cooking, and lifelong learning. Sponsored by: Huel: Try Huel with 15% OFF + Free Gift for New Customers today using my code greatness at ExpressVPN: Secure your online data today with ExpressVPN. Go to expressvpn.com/darius. Indeed: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/DARIUS. Shopify: Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/darius.  Connect with Ryan: Website: https://www.ryanbegelman.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanbegelman  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanbegelman/  Email: ryan.begelman@gmail.com Connect with Darius: Website: https://therealdarius.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariusmirshahzadeh/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imthedarius/ YouTube: https://therealdarius.com/youtube Book: The Core Value Equation https://www.amazon.com/Core-Value-Equation-Framework-Limitless/dp/1544506708 Write a review for The Greatness Machine using this link: https://ratethispodcast.com/spreadinggreatness.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.WhoTrent Poole, Vice President and General Manager of Hunter Mountain, New YorkRecorded onMarch 19, 2025About Hunter MountainClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Hunter, New YorkYear founded: 1959Pass affiliations:* Epic Pass, Epic Local Pass – unlimited access* Epic Northeast Value Pass – unlimited access with holiday blackouts* Epic Northeast Midweek Pass – unlimited access with holiday and midweek blackouts* Epic Day Pass – All Resorts, 32 Resorts tiersClosest neighboring ski areas: Windham (:16), Belleayre (:35), Plattekill (:49)Base elevation: 1,600 feetSummit elevation: 3,200 feetVertical drop: 1,600 feetSkiable acres: 320Average annual snowfall: 120 inchesTrail count: 67 (25% beginner, 30% intermediate, 45% advanced)Lift count: 13 (3 six-packs, 1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 2 doubles, 1 platter, 3 carpets)Why I interviewed himSki areas are like political issues. We all feel as though we need to have an opinion on them. This tends to be less a considered position than an adjective. Tariffs are _______. Killington is _______. It's a bullet to shoot when needed. Most of us aren't very good shots.Hunter tends to draw a particularly colorful basket of adjectives: crowded, crazy, frantic, dangerous, icy, frozen, confusing, wild. Hunter, to the weekend visitor, appears to be teetering at all times on the brink of collapse. So many skiers on the lifts, so many skiers in the liftlines, so many skiers on the trails, so many skiers in the parking lots, so many skiers in the lodge pounding shots and pints. Whether Hunter is a ski area with a bar attached or a bar with a ski area attached is debatable. The lodge stretches on and on and up and down in disorienting and disconnected wings, a Winchester Mansion of the mountains, stapled together over eons to foil the alien hordes (New Yorkers). The trails run in a splintered, counterintuitive maze, an impossible puzzle for the uninitiated. Lifts fly all over, 13 total, of all makes and sizes and vintage, but often it feels as though there is only one lift and that lift is the Kaatskill Flyer, an overwhelmed top-to-bottom six-pack that replaced an overwhelmed top-to-bottom high-speed quad on a line that feels as though it would be overwhelmed with a high-speed 85-pack. It is, in other words, exactly the kind of ski area you would expect to find two hours north of a 20-million-person megacity world famous for its blunt, abrasive, and bare-knuckled residents.That description of Hunter is accurate enough, but incomplete. Yes, skiing there can feel like riding a swinging wrecking ball through a tenement building. And I would probably suggest that as a family activity before I would recommend Hunter on, say, MLK Saturday. But Hunter is also a glorious hunk of ski history, a last-man-standing of the once-skiing-flush Catskills, a nature-bending prototype of a ski mountain built in a place that lacks both consistent natural snow and fall lines to ski on. It may be a corporate cog now, but the Hunter hammered into the mountains over nearly six decades was the dream and domain of the Slutsky family, many of whom still work for the ski area. And Hunter, on a midweek, when all those fast lifts are 10 times more capacity than you need, can be a dream. Fast up, fast down. And once you learn the trail network, the place unfolds like a picnic blanket: easy, comfortable, versatile, filled with delicious options (if occasionally covered with ants).There's no one good way to describe Hunter Mountain. It's different every day. All ski areas are different every day, but Hunter is, arguably, more more different along the spectrum of its extremes than just about any other ski area anywhere. You won't get it on your first visit. You will show up on the wrong day, at the wrong time, in the wrong parking lot, and the whole thing will feel like playing lasertag with hyenas. Alien hyenas. Who will for some reason all be wearing Jets jerseys. But if you push through for that second visit, you'll start to get it. Maybe. I promise. And you'll understand why one-adjective Hunter Mountain descriptions are about as useful as the average citizen's take on NATO.What we talked aboutSixty-five years of Hunter; a nice cold winter at last; big snowmaking upgrades; snowmaking on Annapurna and Westway; the Otis and Broadway lift upgrades; Broadway ripple effects on the F and Kaatskill Flyer lifts; supervising the installation of seven new lifts at three Vail Resorts over a two-year period; better liftline management; moving away from lettered lift names; what Otis means for H lift; whether the Hunter East mountaintop Poma could ever spin again; how much of Otis is re-used from the old Broadway lift; ski Ohio; landing at Vail Resorts pre-Epic Pass and watching the pass materialize and grow; taking over for a GM who had worked at Hunter for 44 years; understanding and appreciating Hunter madness; Hunter locals mixed with Vail Resorts; Hunter North and the potential for an additional base area; disappearing trailmap glades; expansion potential; a better ski connection to Hunter East; and Epic Local as Hunter's season pass.Questions I wish I'd askedI'd wanted to ask Poole about the legacy of the Slutzky family, given their founding role at Hunter. We just didn't have time. New York Ski Blog has a nice historical overview.I actually did ask Poole about D lift, the onetime triple-now-double parallel to Kaatskill Flyer, but we cut that segment in edit. A summary: the lift didn't run at all this past season, and Poole told me that, “we're keeping our options open,” when I asked him if D lift was a good candidate to be removed at some near-future point.Why now was a good time for this interviewThe better question is probably why I waited five-and-a-half years to feature the leader of the most prominent ski area in New York City's orbit on the podcast. Hunter was, after all, the first mountain I hit after moving to the city in 2002. But who does and does not appear on the podcast is grounded in timing more than anything. Vail announced its acquisition of Hunter parent company Peak Resorts just a couple of months before I launched The Storm, in 2019. No one, including me, really likes doing podcast interviews during transitions, which can be filled with optimism and energy, but also uncertainty and instability. The Covid asteroid then transformed what should have been a one-year transition period into more like a three-year transition period, which was followed by a leadership change at Hunter.But we're finally here. And, as it turns out, this was a pretty good time to arrive. Part of the perpetual Hunter mess tied back to the problem I alluded to above: the six-pack-Kaatskill-Flyer-as-alpha-lift muted the impact of the lesser contraptions around it. By dropping a second superlift right next door, Vail appears to have finally solved the problem of the Flyer's ever-exploding liftline.That's one part of the story, and the most obvious. But the snowmaking upgrades on key trails signal Hunter's intent to reclaim its trophy as Snow God of the New York Thruway. And the shuffling of lifts on Hunter East reconfigured the ski area's novice terrain into a more logical progression (true green-circle skiers, however, will be better off at nearby Belleayre, where the Lightning Quad serves an incredible pod of long and winding beginner runs).These 2024 improvements build on considerable upgrades from the Peak and Slutzky eras, including the 2018 Hunter North expansion and the massive learning center at Hunter East. If Hunter is to remain a cheap and accessible Epic Pass fishing net to funnel New Yorkers north to Stowe and west to Park City, even as neighboring Windham tilts ever more restrictive and expensive, then Vail is going to have to be creative and aggressive in how the mountain manages all those skiers. These upgrades are a promising start.Why you should ski Hunter MountainThink of a thing that is a version of a familiar thing but hits you like a completely different thing altogether. Like pine trees and palm trees are both trees, but when I first encountered the latter at age 19, they didn't feel like trees at all, but like someone's dream of a tree who'd had one described to them but had never actually seen one. Or horses and dolphins: both animals, right? But one you can ride like a little vehicle, and the other supposedly breathes air but lives beneath the sea plotting our extinction in a secret indecipherable language. Or New York-style pizza versus Domino's, which, as Midwest stock, I prefer, but which my locally born wife can only describe as “not pizza.”This is something like the experience you will have at Hunter Mountain if you show up knowing a good lot about ski areas, but not much about this ski area. Because if I had to make a list of ski areas similar to Hunter, it would include “that Gwar concert I attended at Harpos in Detroit when I was 18” and “a high-tide rescue scene in a lifeguard movie.” And then I would run out of ideas. Because there is no ski area anywhere remotely like Hunter Mountain.I mean that as spectacle, as a way to witness New York City's id manifest into corporeal form. Your Hunter Mountain Bingo card will include “Guy straightlining Racer's Edge with unzipped Starter jacket and backward baseball cap” and “Dude rocking short-sleeves in 15-degree weather.” The vibe is atomic and combustible, slightly intimidating but also riotously fun, like some snowy Woodstock:And then there's the skiing. I have never skied terrain like Hunter's. The trails swoop and dive and wheel around endless curves, as though carved into the Tower of Babel, an amazing amount of terrain slammed into an area that looks and feels constrained, like a bound haybale that, twine cut, explodes across your yard. Trails crisscross and split and dig around blind corners. None of it feels logical, but it all comes together somehow. Before the advent of Google Maps, I could not plot an accurate mental picture of how Hunter East, West, North, and whatever the hell they call the front part sat in relation to one another and formed a coherent single entity.I don't always like being at Hunter. And yet I've skied there more than I've skied just about anywhere. And not just because it's close. It's certainly not cheap, and the road in from the Thruway is a real pain in the ass. But they reliably spin the lifts from November to April, and fast lifts on respectable vert can add up quick. And the upside of crazy? Everyone is welcome.Podcast NotesOn Hunter's lift upgradesHunter orchestrated a massive offseason lift upgrade last year, moving the old Broadway (B) lift over to Hunter East, where the mountain demolished a 1968 Hall Double named “E,” and planted its third six-pack on a longer Broadway line. Check the old lines versus the new ones:On six-packs in New York StateNew York is home to more ski areas than any other state, but only eight of them run high-speed lifts, and only three host six-packs: Holiday Valley has one, Windham, next door to Hunter, has another, and Hunter owns the other three.On five new lifts at Jack Frost Big BoulderPart of Vail Resorts' massive 2022 lift upgrades was to replace eight old chairlifts at Jack Frost and Big Boulder with five modern fixed-grip quads.At Jack Frost, Paradise replaced the E and F doubles; Tobyhanna replaced the B and C triples; and Pocono replaced the E and F doubles:Over at Big Boulder, the Merry Widow I and II double-doubles made way for the Harmony quad. Vail also demolished the parallel Black Forest double, which had not run in a number of years. Blue Heron replaced an area once served by the Little Boulder double and Edelweiss Triple – check the side-by-side with Big Boulder's 2008 trailmap:Standing up so many lifts in such a short time is rare, but we do have other examples:* In 1998, Intrawest tore down up to a dozen legacy lifts and replaced them with five new ones: two high-speed quads, two fixed-grip quads, and the Cabriolet bucket lift (basically a standing gondola). A full discussion on that here.* American Skiing Company installed at least four chairlifts at Sugarbush in the summer of 1995, including the Slide Brook Express, a two-mile-long lift connection between its two mountains. More here.* Powder Mountain installed four chairlifts last summer.* Deer Valley built five chairlifts last summer, including a bubble six-pack, and is constructing eight more lifts this year.On Mad River Mountain, OhioMad River is about as prototypical a Midwest ski area as you can imagine: 300 vertical feet, 144 acres, 36 inches of average annual snowfall, and an amazing (for that size) nine ski lifts shooting all over the place:On Vail Resorts' acquisition timelineHunter is one of 17 U.S. ski areas that Vail purchased as part of its 2019 acquisition of Peak Resorts.On Hunter's 2018 expansionWhen Peak opened the Hunter West expansion for the 2018-19 ski season, a number of new glades appeared on the map:Most of those glades disappeared from the map. Why? We discuss.On Epic Pass accessHunter sits on the same unlimited Epic Local Pass tier as Okemo, Mount Snow, Breckenridge, Keystone, Crested Butte, and Stevens Pass. Here's an Epic Pass overview:You can also ski Hunter on the uber-cheap 32 Resorts version of the Epic Day Pass:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

We've been sold the lie that freedom comes after the exit. But what if we built businesses we never wanted to leave? That's exactly what Elliott Bisnow did. As co-founder of Summit and Powder Mountain, he's created a movement, not just a company—one built on authenticity, community, and the belief that life and work should be equally inspiring. In this episode, Elliott breaks down the power of big ideas, the myth of the exit strategy, and how living your brand is the real key to long-term happiness and success.Takeaways:Focusing on niches can lead to unique business opportunities.Building community is essential for entrepreneurial success.Authenticity is more valuable than perfection in leadership.Managing expectations is crucial for customer satisfaction.Creating leaders within organizations fosters a positive culture.Mentorship plays a significant role in personal growth.Co-founding a business brings diverse perspectives and skills.Living the brand enhances personal fulfillment and business success.Intentional living can lead to a more balanced and fulfilling life.____________________________________________________________Full Comp is brought to you by Yelp for Restaurants: In July 2020, a few hundred employees formed Yelp for Restaurants. Our goal is to build tools that help restaurateurs do more with limited time.We have a lot more content coming your way! Be sure to check out our other content:Yelp for Restaurants PodcastsRestaurant expert videos & webinars

Embark on a thrilling journey to the slopes of Utah in this episode of Night Sky Tourist. Join us as we explore the magical experience of night skiing with special guest Amber Palmer, the creative marketing mind behind Brian Head Resort and an avid skier and mountain climber. Discover how this unexpected mountain paradise, sitting at 10,000 feet elevation just minutes from Cedar Breaks National Monument, offers the unique opportunity to carve through fresh powder under a canopy of stars. Amber reveals what makes Brian Head a must-visit destination for both skiing enthusiasts and stargazers alike in Utah's remarkable winter landscape.Visit NightSkyTourist.com/117 for more information about this episode.CHECK OUT THESE LINKS FROM EPISODE 117:2025 Stargazing Guide (FREE download): https://nightskytourist.com/guide/ Brian Head Resort: https://www.brianhead.com/ 2025 Dark Sky Festivals & Star Parties: https://nightskytourist.com/2025festivals/ Brighton Ski Resort: https://www.brightonresort.com/ Cherry Peak Ski Resort: https://www.skicpr.com/ Powder Mountain: https://powdermountain.com/ Sundance Mountain Resort: https://www.sundanceresort.com/ Woodward Park City: https://www.woodwardparkcity.com/ Rate Night Sky Tourist with 5 stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. THANK YOU!FOLLOW NIGHT SKY TOURIST ON SOCIAL MEDIAFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/NightSkyTourist Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nightskytourist/ SPREAD THE WORDHelp us reach more people by subscribing to the podcast, leaving a review, and sharing it with others.GET TO KNOW US MOREVisit NightSkyTourist.com to read our great blog articles, check out our resource page, and sign up for our newsletters. Our monthly newsletter has content that is exclusive for subscribers.SHARE YOUR QUESTIONWe want to hear your questions. They could even become part of a future Q&A. Record your question in a voice memo on your smartphone and email it to us at Hello@NightSkyTourist.com.COMMENTS OR QUESTIONSEmail us at Hello@NightSkyTourist.com.

This is Derek Miller, Speaking on Business. Ski Utah plays a vital role in supporting Utah's ski and snowboard industry, fostering connections within the community while championing efforts that make winter sports more inclusive and impactful for current and future generations. President and CEO, Nathan Rafferty, joins us with more. Nathan Rafferty: At Ski Utah, we proudly serve as the voice of Utah's renowned ski industry, representing the state's 15 ski and snowboard resorts and promoting The Greatest Snow on Earth®. As a 501(c)6 nonprofit, our efforts center on marketing, membership, community engagement and government relations. This season, we're thrilled to highlight exciting developments, from expanded terrain at Deer Valley and Powder Mountain's significant investment into upgrades to night skiing at Brighton and free lift tickets for kids under 12 at Eagle Point. Sustainability and inclusion remain core to our mission. Programs like Discover Winter, supported by Morgan Stanley and the Larry H. Miller Family Foundation, introduce skiing to ethnically diverse adults, while initiatives like the Ski Utah Passport make winter sports more accessible for kids. As Utah prepares to host the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, we look forward to showcasing our exceptional resorts and foster a love for winter sports statewide. Derek Miller: Ski Utah's efforts extend far beyond the slopes, fostering community through inclusion programs, sustainability initiatives and support for youth skiing. Check out a resort or learn more about their impact and how to get involved at SkiUtah.com. I'm Derek Miller, with the Salt Lake Chamber, Speaking on Business. Originally aired: 2/18/25

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings talks about his latest venture, Powder Mountain, a pristine ski resort in Utah that's also an outdoor art museum. Plus: we head to an elite business school in Lyon that's celebrating 40 years of helping entrepreneurs launch their innovative ideas.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 23. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 30. To receive future episodes as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:What is this?Every autumn, ski associations and most of the large pass coalitions host media events in New York City. They do this because a) NYC is the media capital of the world; b) the city is a lot of fun; and, c) sometimes mountain folks like something different too, just like us city folks (meaning me), like to get to the mountains as much as possible. But I spend all winter traveling the country in search of ski areas of all sizes and varieties. This is the one time of year skiing comes to me. And it's pretty cool.One of the associations that consistently hosts an NYC event is Ski Utah. This year, they set up at the Arlo Soho, a chic Manhattan hotel. Longtime President Nathan Rafferty asked if I would be interested in setting up an interview station, talking to resort reps, and stringing them together into a podcast. It was a terrific idea, so here you go.Who* Nathan Rafferty, President of Ski Utah* Sara Huey, Senior Manager of Communications at Park City Mountain Resort* Sarah Sherman, Communications Manager at Snowbird* Nick Como, VP of Marketing at Sundance* Rosie O'Grady, President and Innkeeper of Alta Lodge* Jessica Turner, PR Manager for Go Heber Valley* Taylor Hartman, Director of Marketing and Communications at Visit Ogden* Brooks Rowe, Brand Manager at Snowbasin* Riley Elliott, Communications Specialist at Deer Valley* Andria Huskinson, Communications and PR Manager at Solitude* Anna Loughridge, PR Manager for Visit Utah* Courtney Ryan, Communications Manager for Visit Park City* Ryan Mack, VP of Communications for Visit Salt LakeRecorded onOctober 3, 2024About Ski UtahMost large ski states have a statewide trade group that represents its ski areas' interests. One of the best of these is Ski Utah, which is armed with a large staff, a generous budget, and some pretty good freaking skiing to promote (Buckskin, Utah Olympic Park, and Wasatch Peaks Ranch are not members of Ski Utah):What we talked aboutSKI UTAHTopicsWhy NYC; the Olympics return to Utah; why the state is such a great place to host the games (besides, you know, the awesome skiing); where we could potentially see future ski area development in Utah; Pow Mow's shift toward public-private hybrid; Deer Valley's expansion and ongoing snowboard ban; and the proposed LCC Gondola – “Little Cottonwood Canyon is not a great place for rubber-wheeled vehicles.”On Utah skier visits and population growth over timeOn chairlifts planned in Utah over the next three yearsUtah is on a chairlift-building binge, with the majority slated for Deer Valley's massive expansion (11) and Powder Mountain (4 this year; 1 in 2025). But Snowbird (Wilbere quad), Park City (Sunrise Gondola), and Snowbasin (Becker high-speed quad) are also scheduled to install new machines this year or next. The private Wasatch Peaks Ranch will also add two lifts (a gondola and a high-speed quad) this year. And Sundance is likely to install what resort officials refer to as the “Flathead lift” some time within the next two years. The best place to track scheduled lift installations is Lift Blog's new lifts databases for 2024, 2025, and 2026.On expansion potential at Brian Head and Nordic ValleyUtah's two largest expansion opportunities are at Brian Head and Nordic Valley, both operated by Mountain Capital Partners. Here's Brian Head today:The masterplan could blow out the borders - the existing ski area is in the lower-right-hand corner:And here's Nordic Valley:And the masterplan, which could supersize the ski area to 3,000-ish acres. The small green blob represents part of the existing ski area, though this plan predates the six-pack installation in 2020:PARK CITY MOUNTAIN RESORTStats: 3,226 vertical feet | 7,300 skiable acres | 355 inches average annual snowfallTopicsSnowmaking upgrades; the forthcoming Sunrise Gondola on the Canyons side; why this gondola didn't face the opposition that Park City's last lift upgrades did; Olympic buzz in Park City; and which events PCMR could host in the 2034 Olympics.On the Great Lift Shutdown of 2022Long story short: Vail tried to upgrade two lifts in Park City a couple of years ago. Locals got mad. The lifts went to Whistler. Here's the longer version:More Park City Mountain ResortSNOWBIRDStats: 3,240 vertical feet | 2,500 skiable acres | 500 inches average annual snowfallTopicsThe new Wilbere lift; why Snowbird shifted the chairlift line; the upside of abandoning the old liftline; riding on top of the new tram; and more LCC gondola talk.On the new Wilbere lift alignmentHere's where the new Wilbere lift sits (right) in comparison to the old lift (left):On inter-lodgeIf you happen to be at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon when avalanche danger spikes, you may be subject to something called “inter-lodge.” Which means you stay in whatever building you're in, with no option to leave. It's scary and thrilling all at once.Inter-lodge can last anywhere from under an hour to several days.On the LCC gondola and phase-in planAnother long story short: UDOT wants to build a gondola up Little Cottonwood Canyon. A lot of people would prefer to spend four hours driving seven miles to the ski areas. Here's a summary of UDOT's chosen configuration:As multiple lawsuits seeking to shut the project down work through the courts, UDOT has outlined a phased traffic-mitigation approach:More SnowbirdSUNDANCE Stats: 2,150 vertical feet | 450 skiable acres | 300 inches average annual snowfallTopicsThe importance of NYC to the wider skiing world; how the Wildwood terrain helped evolve Sundance; Epkon refugees headed south; parking improvements; options for the coming Flathead terrain expansion; and potential lift switcheroos. More SundanceSundance's new owners have been rapidly modernizing this once-dusty ski area, replacing most of the lifts, expanding terrain, and adding parking. I talked through the grand arc of these changes with the mountain's GM, Chad Linebaugh, a couple of years ago:ALTA LODGEAlta stats: 3,240 vertical feet | 2,500 skiable acres | 500 inches average annual snowfallTopics65 years of Levitt family ownership; Alta's five lodges; inter-lodge; how Alta has kept its old-school spirit even as it's modernized; and an upcoming women's ski event. On Alta's lift evolutionIt wasn't so long ago that Alta was known for its pokey lift fleet. As recently as the late ‘90s, the mountain was a chutes-and-ladders powder playground:Bit by bit, Alta consolidated and updated its antique lift fleet, beginning with the Sugarloaf high-speed quad in 2001. The two-stage Collins high-speed quad arrived three years later, replacing the legacy Collins double and Germania triple lines. The Supreme high-speed quad similarly displaced the old Supreme triple and Cecret double in 2017, and the Sunnyside sixer replaced the Albion double and Sunnyside high-speed triple in 2022. As of 2024, the only clunker left, aside from the short hotel lifts and the long transfer tow, is the Wildcat double.GO HEBER VALLEYTopicsWhy Heber Valley makes sense as a place to crash on a ski trip; walkable sections of Heber; ease of access to Deer Valley; and elevation.VISIT OGDENConsidering “untamed and untouched” Ogden as ski town; “it's like skiing in 2005”; Pow Mow, Snowbasin; accessing the mountains from Ogden; Pow Mow's partial privatization; art on the mountain; and Nordic Valley as locals' bump.  On Powder Mountain size claimsPow Mow has long claimed 8,000-ish acres of terrain, which would make it the largest ski area in the United States. I typically only count lift-served skiable acreage, however, bringing the mountain down to a more average-for-the-Wasatch 3,000-ish acres. A new lift in Wolf Canyon next year will add another 900 lift-served acres (shaded with stripes on the right-hand side below).On Nordic Valley's fire and the broken Apollo liftLast December, Nordic Valley's Apollo chairlift, a 1970 Hall double, fell over dead, isolating the mountain's glorious expansion from the base area. The next month, a fire chewed up the baselodge, a historic haybarn left over from the property's ranching days. Owner MCP renovated the chairlift over the summer, but Nordic will operate out of “temporary structures,” GM Pascal Begin told KSL.com in June, until they can build a new baselodge, which could be 2026 or '27.SNOWBASINStats: 3,015 vertical feet | 3,000 skiable acres | 300 inches average annual snowfallTopicsBreaking down the coming Becker lift upgrade; why Becker before Porcupine; last year's DeMoisy six-pack installation; where is everyone?; where to ski at Snowbasin; the 2034 Olympics plan; when will on-mountain lodging arrive?; and RFID.More SnowbasinDEER VALLEYStats: 3,040 vertical feet | 2,342 skiable acres | 300 inches average annual snowfallTopicsMassive expansion; avoiding Park City; and snowmaking in the Wasatch Back.On Expanded ExcellenceDeer Valley's expansion plans are insane. Here's a summary:More Deer ValleySOLITUDEStats: 2,030 vertical feet | 1,200 skiable acres | 500 inches average annual snowfallTopicsAlterra; Big versus Little Cottonwood Canyons; and Alta.More SolitudeVISIT UTAHTopicsWatching the state's population explode; the Olympics; comparing 2002 to 2034; RIP three percent beer; potential infrastructure upgrades to prepare for the Olympics; and SLC airport upgrades.VISIT PARK CITYTopicsPark City 101; Main Street; the National Ability Center; mining history everywhere; Deer Valley's trail names; Silver to Slopes at Park City; Deer Valley's East Village; public transit evolution; Park City Mountain Resort lift drama; paid parking; and why “you don't need a car” in Park City.On Silver to SlopesThe twice-daily guided ski tour of on-mountain mining relics that we discuss on the podcast is free. Details here.On Park City and Deer Valley's shared borderPark City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley share a border, but you are forbidden to cross it, on penalty of death.* Alta and Snowbird share a crossable border, as do Solitude and Brighton. All four have different operators. I'm not sure why PCMR and Deer Valley can't figure this one out.*This is not true.^^Though actually it might be true.VISIT SALT LAKETopicsThe easiest ski access in the world; why stay in SLC during a ski trip; walkable downtown; free transit; accessing the ski areas without a car; Olympic buzz; and Olympic events outside of the ski areas.What I got wrong* I said that former mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to bring the Olympics to NYC “around 2005 or 2006.” The city's bid was for the 2012 Summer Olympics (ultimately held in London). I also said that local opposition shut down the bid, but I confused that with the proposed stadium on what is now Manhattan's Hudson Yards development.* I said you had to drive through Park City to access Deer Valley, but the ski area has long maintained a small parking lot at the base of the Jordanelle Gondola off of US 40.The robots aren't readyEveryone keeps telling me that the robots will eat our souls, but every time I try to use them, they botch something that no human would ever miss. In this case, I tried using my editing program's AI to chop out the dead space and “ums,” and proceeded to lose bits of the conversation that in some cases confuse the narrative. So it sounds a little choppy in places. You can blame the robots. Or me for not re-doing the edit once I figured out what was happening.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 78/100 in 2024, and number 578 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Send us a textIn Episode 39 of the podcast we travel to the deep snow country of Minami-Uonuma to speak with Kuwakino Keiko. Keiko is the head chef of Sanaburi, the Michelin-starred restaurant within the renowned hotel, Satoyama Jujo. Awarded that Michelin-star in 2020, Keiko has since gone on to receive a Terroir Award and a score of 15.5 by Gault Millau in 2022 while also nominated as one of Japan's 100 Best Chefs. Keiko's acclaimed cuisine draws on the traditional plants and methods local to the Minami-Uonuma area, with ‘sansai' (mountain / wild vegetables) and ‘tsukemono' (pickled / preserved vegetables) being fundamental to the seaonsal menus she serves to guests.In the first half of our chat we explore Keiko's own story and her journey to becoming head chef at Satoyama Jujo before delving more fully into the principles and methods which underpin her cooking and the cuisine she serves in the second half of our chat. In telling Keiko's story and exploring the principles which underpin her cooking, I hope to promote the fact that some of Japan's best gastronomic experiences lies outside the cities. Minami-Uonuma has long been renowned rice and sake – indeed, we have already travelled here on the podcast in Episode 24, Hakkaisan Brewery: Snow-Aged Sake & Beer from Powder Mountain – along with its heavy snow and abundant natural landscape. For more information, follow Keiko via her Instagram or visit the official Satoyama Jujo website. I hope you enjoy.Outland Japan is a bi-weekly podcast hosted by Peter Carnell - a freelance tour guide based in northern Nagano – that transports you to rural, regional and the wilds of Japan in pursuit of stories that lie outside the neon hum of Tokyo and golden trimmings of Kyoto. Stories of travel, life and culture beyond the big cities. Follow the show on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Please note, prior to October 2024, Outland Japan was named Snow Country Stories Japan.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Oct. 31. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 7. To receive future episodes as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoGeordie Gillett, Managing Director and General Manager of Grand Targhee, WyomingRecorded onSeptember 30, 2024About Grand TargheeClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Gillett FamilyLocated in: Alta, WyomingYear founded: 1969Pass affiliations: Mountain Collective: 2 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Jackson Hole (1:11), Snow King (1:22), Kelly Canyon (1:34) – travel times vary considerably given time of day, time of year, and weather conditions.Base elevation: 7,650 feet (bottom of Sacajawea Lift)Summit elevation: 9,862 feet at top of Fred's Mountain; hike to 9,920 feet on Mary's NippleVertical drop: 2,212 feet (lift-served); 2,270 feet (hike-to)Skiable Acres: 2,602 acresAverage annual snowfall: 500 inchesTrail count: 95 (10% beginner, 70% intermediate, 15% advanced, 5% expert)Lift count: 6 (1 six-pack, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Grand Targhee's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himHere are some true facts about Grand Targhee:* Targhee is the 19th-largest ski area in the United States, with 2,602 lift-served acres.* That makes Targhee larger than Jackson Hole, Snowbird, Copper, or Sun Valley.* Targhee is the third-largest U.S. ski area (behind Whitefish and Powder Mountain) that is not a member of the Epic or Ikon passes.* Targhee is the fourth-largest independently owned and operated ski area in America, behind Whitefish, Powder Mountain, and Alta.* Targhee is the fifth-largest U.S. ski area outside of Colorado, California, and Utah (following Big Sky, Bachelor, Whitefish, and Schweitzer).And yet. Who do you know who has skied Grand Targhee who has not skied everywhere? Targhee is not exactly unknown, but it's a little lost in skiing's Bermuda Triangle of Jackson Hole, Sun Valley, and Big Sky, a sunken ship loaded with treasure for whoever's willing to dive a little deeper.Most ski resort rankings will plant Alta-Snowbird or Whistler or Aspen or Vail at the top. Understandably so – these are all great ski areas. But I appreciate this take on Targhee from skibum.net, a site that hasn't been updated in a couple of years, but is nonetheless an excellent encyclopedia of U.S. skiing (boldface added by me for emphasis):You can start easy, then get as wild and remote as you dare. Roughly 20% of the lift-served terrain (Fred's Mountain) is groomed. The snowcat area (Peaked Mountain) is completely ungroomed, completely powder, totally incredible [Peaked is lift-served as of 2022]. Comparisons to Jackson Hole are inevitable, as GT & JH share the same mountain range. Targhee is on the west side, and receives oodles more snow…and therefore more weather. Not all of it good; a local nickname is Grand Foggy. The locals ski Targhee 9 days out of 10, then shift to Jackson Hole when the forecast is less than promising. (Jackson Hole, on the east side, receives less snow and virtually none of the fog). On days when the weather is good, Targhee beats Jackson for snow quality and shorter liftlines. Some claim Targhee wins on scenery as well. It's just a much different, less crowded, less commercialized resort, with outstanding skiing. Some will argue the quality of Utah powder…and they're right, but there are fewer skiers at Targhee, so it stays longer. Some of the runs at Targhee are steep, but not as steep as the couloirs at Jackson Hole. Much more of an intermediate mountain; has a very “open” feel on virtually all of the trails. And when the powder is good, there is none better than Grand Targhee. #1 ski area in the USA when the weather is right. Hotshots, golfcondoskiers and young skiers looking for “action” (I'm over 40, so I don't remember exactly what that entails) are just about the only people who won't call Grand Targhee their all-time favorite. For the pure skier, this resort is number one.Which may lead you to ask: OK Tough Guy then why did it take you five years to talk about this mountain on your podcast? Well I get that question about once a month, and I don't really have a good answer other than that there are a lot of ski areas and I can only talk about one at a time. But here you go. And from the way this one went, I don't think it will be my last conversation with the good folks at Grand old Targhee.What we talked aboutContinued refinement of the Colter lift and Peaked Mountain expansion; upgrading cats; “we do put skiing first here”; there's a reason that finance people “aren't the only ones in the room making decisions for ski areas”; how the Peaked expansion changed Targhee; the Teton Pass highway collapse; building, and then dismantling, Booth Creek; how ignoring an answering machine message led to the purchase of Targhee; first impressions of Targhee: “How is this not the most popular ski resort in America?”; imagining Booth Creek in an Epkonic alt reality; Targhee's commitment to independence; could Targhee ever acquire another mountain?; the insane price that the Gilletts paid for Targhee; the first time you see the Rockies; massive expansion potential; corn; fixed-grip versus detach; Targhee's high percentage of intermediate terrain and whether that matters; being next-door neighbors with “the most aspirational brand in skiing”; the hardest part of expanding a ski area; potential infill lifts; the ski run Gillett would like to eliminate and why; why we're unlikely to see a lift to the true summit; and why Targhee joined Mountain Collective but hasn't joined the Ikon Pass (and whether the mountain ever would).Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewA few things make Targhee extra relevant to our current ski moment:* Targhee is the only U.S. ski area aside from Sugar Bowl to join the Mountain Collective pass while staying off of Ikon.* In 2022, Targhee (sort of) quietly opened one of the largest lift-served North American ski expansions in the past decade, the 600-acre Peaked Mountain pod, served by the six-pack Colter lift.* The majority of large U.S. ski areas positioned on Forest Service land are bashful about their masterplans, which are publicly available documents that most resort officials wish we didn't know about. That's because these plans outline potential future expansions and upgrades that resorts would rather not prematurely acknowledge, lest they piss off the Chipmunk Police. So often when I'm like “Hey tell us about this 500-acre bowl-skiing expansion off the backside,” I get an answer that's something like, “well we look forward to working with our partners at the Forest Service to maybe consider doing that around the year 3000 after we complete our long-term study of mayfly migration routes.” But Geordie is just like, “Hell yes we want to blow the resort out in every direction like yesterday” (not an exact quote). And I freaking love the energy there.* Most large Western ski areas fall into one of two categories: big, modern, and busy (Vail, Big Sky, Palisades, Snowbird), or big, somewhat antiquated, and unknown (Discovery, Lost Trail, Silver). But Targhee has split the difference, being big, modern, and lesser-known, that rare oasis that gives you modern infrastructure (like fast lifts), without modern crowds (most of the time). It's kind of strange and kind of glorious, and probably too awesome to stay true forever, so I wanted to get there before the Brobot Bus unloaded.* Even 500-inches-in-an-average-winter Targhee has a small snowmaking system. Isn't that interesting?What I got wrong* I said that $20 million “might buy you a couple houses on the slopes at Jackson Hole.” It kind of depends on how you define “on the slopes,” and whether or not you can live without enough acreage for your private hippo zoo. If not, $24.5 million will get you this (I'm not positive that this one is zoned for immediate hippo occupation).* I said that 70 percent of Targhee's terrain was intermediate; Geordie indicated that that statistic had likely changed with the addition of the Peaked Mountain expansion. I'm working with Targhee to get updated numbers.Why you should ski Grand TargheeThe disconnect between people who write about skiing and what most people actually ski leads to outsized coverage of niche corners of this already niche activity. What percentage of skiers think that skiing uphill is fun? Can accomplish a mid-air backflip? Have ever leapt off a cliff more than four feet high? Commute via helicopter to the summit of their favorite Alaskan powder lines? The answer on all counts is probably a statistically insignificant number. But 99 percent of contemporary ski media focuses on exactly such marginal activities.In some ways I understand this. Most basketball media devote their attention to the NBA, not the playground knuckleheads at some cracked-concrete, bent-rim Harlem streetball court. It makes sense to look at the best and say wow. No one wants to watch intermediate skiers skiing intermediate terrain. But the magnifying glass hovering over the gnar sometimes clouds consumer choice. An average skier, infected by cliffity-hucking YouTubes and social media Man Bro boasting, thinks they want Corbet's and KT-22 and The Cirque at Snowbird. Which OK if you zigzag across the fall line yeah you can get down just about anything. But what most skiers need is Grand Targhee, big and approachable, mostly skiable by mostly anyone, with lots of good and light snow and a low chance of descent-by-tomahawk.Targhee's stats page puts the mountain's share of intermediate terrain at 70 percent, likely the highest of any major North American ski area (Northstar, another big-time intermediate-oriented mountain, claims 60 percent blue runs). I suspect this contributes to the resort's relatively low profile among destination skiers. Broseph Jones and his Brobot buddies examine the statistical breakdown of major resorts and are like “Yo cuz we want some Jackson trammage because we roll hard see.” Even though Targhee is bigger and gets more snow (both true) and offers a more realistic experience for the Brosephs.That's not to say that you shouldn't ski Jackson Hole. Everyone should. But steeps all day are mentally and physically draining. It's nice most of the time to not be parkouring down an elevator shaft. So go to Targhee too. And you can whoo-hoo through the deep empty trees and say “dang Brah this is hella rad Brah.” And it is.Podcast NotesOn the Peaked Mountain expansionThe Peaked Mountain terrain has been marked on Targhee's trailmap for years, but up until 2022, it was accessible mostly via snowcat:In 2022, the resort dropped a six-pack back there, better defined the trail network, and brought Peaked into the lift-served terrain package:On Grand Targhee's masterplanHere's the overview of Targhee's Forest Service master development plan. You can see potential expansions below Blackfoot (left in the image below), looker's right of Peaked/Colter (upper right), and below Sacajawea (lower right):Here's a better look at the so-called South Bowl proposal, which would add a big terrain pod contiguous with the recent Peaked expansion:Here's the MDP's inventory of proposed lifts. These things often change, and the “Peaked DC-4” listed below actualized as the Colter high-speed sixer:Targhee's snowmaking system is limited, but long-term aspirations show potential snowmaking stretching toward the top of the Dreamcatcher lift:On opposition to all of this potential expansionThere are groups of people masquerading as environmental commandos who I suspect oppose everything just to oppose it. Like oh a bobcat pooped next to that tree so we need to fence the area off from human activity for the next thousand years. But Targhee sits within a vast and amazing wilderness, the majority of which is and should be protected forever. But humans need space too, and developing a few hundred acres directly adjacent to already-developed ski terrain is the most sustainable and responsible way to do this. It's not like Targhee is saying “hey we're going to build a zipline connecting the resort to the Grand Teton.” But nothing in U.S. America can be achieved without a minimum of 45 lawsuits (it's in the Constitution), so these histrionic bozos will continue to exist.On Net Promoter Score and RRCI'm going to hurt myself if I try to overexplain this, so I'll just point toward RRC's Net Promoter Score overview page and the company's blog archive highlighting various reports. RRC sits quietly behind the ski industry but wields tremendous influence, assembling the annual Kotke end-of-season statistical report, which offers the most comprehensive annual overview of the state of U.S. skiing.On the reason I couldn't go to Grand Targhee last yearSo I was all set up to hit Targhee for a day last year and then I woke up in the middle of the night thinking “Gee I feel like I'm gonna die soon” and so I did not go skiing that day. Here's the full story if you are curious how I ended up not dying.On the Peaked terrain expansion being the hypothetical largest ski area in New HampshireI'll admit that East-West ski area size comparisons are fundamentally flawed. Eastern mountains not named Killington, Smugglers' Notch, and Sugarloaf tend to measure skiable terrain by acreage of cut trails and maintained glades (Sugarbush, one of the largest ski areas in the East by pure footprint, doesn't even count the latter). Western mountains generally count everything within their boundary. Fair enough – trying to ski most natural-growth eastern woods is like trying to ski down the stands of a packed football stadium. You're going to hit something. Western trees tend to be higher altitude, older-growth, less cluttered with undergrowth, and, um, more snow-covered. Meaning it's not unfair to include even unmarked sectors of the ski area as part of the ski area.Which is a long way of saying that numbers are hard, and that relying on ski area stats pages for accurate ski area comparisons isn't going to get you into NASA's astronaut training academy. Here's a side-by-side of 464-acre Bretton Woods – New Hampshire's largest ski area – and Targhee's 600-acre Peaked Mountain expansion, both at the same scale in Google Maps. Clearly Bretton Woods covers more area, but the majority of those trees are too dense to ski:And here's an inventory of all New Hampshire ski areas, if you're curious:On the Teton Pass highway collapseYeah so this was wild:On Booth CreekGrand Targhee was once part of the Booth Creek ski conglomerate, which now exists only as the overlord for Sierra-at-Tahoe. Here's a little history:On the ski areas at Snoqualmie Pass being “insane”We talk a bit about the “insane” terrain at Summit at Snoqualmie, a quirky ski resort now owned by Boyne. The mountain was Frankensteined together out of four legacy ski areas, three of which share a ridge and are interconnected. And then there's Alpental, marooned across the interstate, much taller and infinitely rowdier than its ho-hum brothers. Alpy, as a brand and as a badass, is criminally unknown outside of its immediate market, despite being on the Ikon Pass since 2018. But, as Gillett notes, it is one of the roughest, toughest mountains going:On Targhee's sinkholePer Jackson Hole News and Guide in September of last year:About two weeks ago, a day or so after torrential rain, and a few days after a downhill mountain biking race concluded on the Blondie trail, Targhee ski patrollers noticed that something was amiss. Only feet away from the muddy meander that mountain bikers had zipped down, a mound of earth had disappeared.In its place, there was a hole of unknown, but concerning, size.Subsequent investigations — largely, throwing rocks into the hole while the resort waits for more technical tools — indicate that the sinkhole is at least 8 feet wide and about 40 feet deep, if not more. There are layers of ice caking the walls a few feet down, and the abyss is smack dab in the middle of the resort's prized ski run.Falling into a sinkhole would be a ridiculous way to go. Like getting crushed by a falling piano or flattened under a steamroller. Imagine your last thought on earth is “Bro are you freaking kidding me with this s**t?”On the overlap between Mountain Collective and IkonMountain Collective and Ikon share a remarkable 26 partner ski areas. Only Targhee, Sugar Bowl, Marmot Basin, Bromont, Le Massif du Charlevoix, and newly added Megève have joined Mountain Collective while holding out on Ikon.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 70/100 in 2024, and number 570 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

In this thought-provoking episode of Drops of Gold, host Jeff Scult sits down with Jeremy Schwartz—co-owner of Powder Mountain and co-founder of Summit—for a candid conversation about creativity, entrepreneurship, and building meaningful communities. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a creative spirit, or someone navigating life's transitions, this episode offers profound insights into overcoming challenges and unlocking your full potential. How to Harness Creativity as a Tool for Growth Overcoming Imposter Syndrome The Power of Community How to Stay Aligned with Your Passion Why This Episode Matters: This conversation is packed with actionable insights for anyone who feels stuck, uncertain, or disconnected from their creative purpose. Jeremy's journey demonstrates that the limits we place on ourselves can be transcended with the right mindset, a supportive community, and a deep commitment to our passions. Tune in to gain clarity, ignite your creativity, and learn how to build a community that supports your personal and professional growth. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major platforms! Drops of Gold Website | ⁠⁠Drops of Gold Instagram | Jeff Scult Instagram This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠One Golden Thread⁠⁠⁠, the eco-chic regenerative fashion brand founded by Jeff Scult. As a special offering for Drops of Gold listeners, receive 22% off your first purchase with - dropsofgold ⁠⁠⁠Drops of Gold⁠⁠⁠ is the NOW podcast hosted and threaded by Jeff Scult, devoted to reminding us how to release stuck stories, embrace life, and reveal our most expressive, authentic selves.  Gratitudes: To One Golden Thread for powering the pod, to co-producers Mark Shapiro, Josh Robertson, and Victory for bringing it to life, Kat Benzova for her stunning guest portraits, and special thanks to artist Taib for featuring his electrifying new track Departures as the Drops of Gold title song.  And infinite love to you, for your curiosity and commitment to living in your highest vibrational truth. Aho, here we grow. We are designed to be reminded, we are already golden inside. I'm Jeff Scult, Wishing you a radically yes f*ck yes day, Ase Bio Jeremy Schwartz is the Co-Founder & Creative Director of Summit, where for more than a decade, he has driven the creative vision behind the brand.   Jeremy is also the Founder & Creative Director of All The Colors, a creative consulting agency that supports companies through crafting their brand narrative and identity, and executing on web assets, technologies, and marketing strategies.   Prior to Summit, Jeremy spent eight years in the music industry, touring in a rock band, as well as co-founding and managing a record label and music publishing agency.

Park City sisters' Helene survival story highlights need for disaster relief, Summit County Sheriff's Office talks jiu-jitsu-based training and launch of new app, Heber City Manager Matt Brower previews Tuesday's city council meeting, Summit Community Gardens/EATS donates over 1,400 pounds of food, Park City Planning Director Rebecca Ward talks about how residents can get involved in the general plan update, Park City School District cellphone ban credited for kinder classrooms, Caring Bridge, a national nonprofit health platform that supports caregivers and patients, is hosting two fundraisers in Utah this week, and why Powder Mountain's new parking plan has some season pass-holders feeling duped.

Winter Sports School head receives Administrator of the Year Award, New lifts, private terrain coming to Powder Mountain, South Summit School District Superintendent Greg Maughan has an update from this month's board meeting, Wasatch County School District raises teacher salaries, Scott van Hartesvelt, Myles Rademan, Matt Dias talk Leadership, Exalted Ruler Andrew Caplan and Elks Board member Jim Osselaer discuss the Flag Day ceremony happening on Saturday at noon at the Park City Senior Center, How to sign up for text alerts, other Summit County notifications this wildfire season and Free tickets to summer Sundance screenings in Park City now available.

Trails report with Mountain Trails Foundation, Summit County Council Chair Malena Stevens recaps Wednesday's meeting, Powder Mountain's new Chief Development and Construction Officer Brooke Hontz who recently left Extell Corp, Executive Director of Park City Sailing Scott VerMerris has details on this year's sailing season and upcoming "Sailstice" event this weekend and Contributions of Chinese railroad workers in Utah's history examined at free lecture.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on June 2. It dropped for free subscribers on June 9. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoRicky Newberry, Vice President and General Manager of Kirkwood Ski Resort, CaliforniaRecorded onMay 20, 2024About KirkwoodClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Kirkwood, CaliforniaYear founded: 1972Pass affiliations:* Epic Pass: unlimited access* Epic Local Pass: unlimited access with holiday blackouts* Tahoe Local Epic Pass: unlimited access with holiday blackouts* Tahoe Value Pass: unlimited access with holiday and Saturday blackouts* Kirkwood Pass: unlimited accessClosest neighboring ski areas: Heavenly (:43), Sierra-at-Tahoe (:44) – travel times vary significantly given weather conditions, time of day, and time of year.Base elevation: 7,800 feetSummit elevation: 9,800 feetVertical drop: 2,000 feetSkiable Acres: 2,300Average annual snowfall: 354 inchesTrail count: 86 (20% expert, 38% advanced, 30% intermediate, 12% beginner)Lift count: 13 (2 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 6 triples, 1 double, 1 T-bar, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Kirkwood's lift fleet).Why I interviewed himImagine this: 1971. Caltrans, the military-grade state agency charged with clearing California's impossible snows from its high-alpine road network, agrees to maintain an additional wintertime route across the Sierra Crest: Highway 88, over Carson Pass, an east-west route cutting 125 miles from Stockton to US 395. This is California State Route 88 in the winter:A ridiculous road, an absurd idea: turn the industrial power of giant machines against a wilderness route whose wintertime deeps had eaten human souls for centuries. An audacious idea, but not an unusual one. Not in that California or in that America. Not in that era of will and muscle. Not in that country that had pushed thousands of miles of interstate across mountains and rivers and deserts in just 15 years. Caltrans would hammer 20-foot-high snow canyons up and over the pass, punching an arctic pathway into and through the howling angry fortress of the Sierra Nevada.And they did it all to serve a new ski resort.Imagine that. A California, an America that builds.Kirkwood, opened in 1972, was part of the last great wave of American ski resort construction. Copper, Northstar, Powder Mountain, 49 Degrees North, and Telluride all opened that year. Keystone (1970), Snowbird (1971), and Big Sky (1973) also cranked to life around this time. Large ski area building stalled by the early ‘80s, though Vail managed to develop Beaver Creek in 1980. Deer Valley opened in 1981. Outliers materialize: Bohemia, in spite of considerable local resistance, in 2000. Tamarack in 2004. But mostly, the ski resorts we have are all the ski resorts we'll ever have.But there is a version of America, of California, that dreams and does enormous things, and not so long ago. This institutional memory lives on, even in those who had no part in its happening. Kirkwood is an emblem of this era and its willful collective imagining. The mountain itself is a ludicrous place for a commercial ski resort, steep and wild, an avalanche hazard zone that commands constant vigilant maintenance. Like Alta-Snowbird or Jackson Hole, the ski area offers nominal groomed routes, a comfortable lower-mountain beginner area, just enough accommodation for the intermediate mass-market passholder to say “yes I did this.” This dressing up, too, encapsulates the fading American habit of taming the raw and imposing, of making an unthinkable thing look easy.But nothing about Kirkwood is easy. Not the in or the out. Not the up or the down. It's rough and feisty, messy and unpredictable. And that's the point of the place. As with the airplane or the smartphone, we long ago lost our awe of the ski resort, what a marvelous feat of human ingenuity it is. Kirkwood, lost in the highlands, lift-served on its crazy two-mile ridge, is one of the more improbable organized centers of American skiing. In its very existence the place memorializes and preserves lost impulses to actualize the unbelievable, to transport humans into, up, and down a ferocious mountain in a hostile mountain range. I find glory in Kirkwood, in that way and so many more. Hyperbole, perhaps. But what an incredible place this is, and not just because of the skiing.What we talked aboutComing down off a 725-inch 2022-23 winter; what's behind Kirkwood's big snows and frequent road closures; scenic highway 88; if you're running Kirkwood, prepare to sleep in your office; employee housing; opening when the road is closed; why Kirkwood doesn't stay open deep into May even when they have the snowpack; the legacy of retiring Heavenly COO Tom Fortune; the next ski area Vail should buy; watching Vail Resorts move into Tahoe; Vail's culture of internal promotion; what it means to lead the ski resort where you started your career; avalanche safety; the nuance and complexity of managing Kirkwood's avy-prone terrain; avy dogs; why is Kirkwood Vail's last Western mountain to get a new chairlift?; bringing Kirkwood onto the grid; potential lift upgrades (fantasy version); considering Kirkwood's masterplan; whether a lift could ever serve the upper bowls looker's right; why Kirkwood shrank the boundary of Reuter Bowl this past season; why the top of The Wall skied different this winter; why Kirkwood put in and then removed surface lifts around Lift 4 (Sunrise); Kirkwood's fierce terrain; what happens when Vail comes to Rowdy Town; The Cirque and when it opens for competitions; changes coming to Kirkwood parking; why Kirkwood still offers a single-mountain season pass; and the Tahoe Value and Tahoe Local passes.  Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewMaybe last year, when the stacked snows transformed Tahoe into a Seussian mushroom village, would have been a better moment for this interview. Kirkwood – Kirkwood – beat a 700-inch single-winter snowfall record that had stood for 40 years, with 725 inches of freaking snow. By the time I arrived onsite, in late March, the snowpack was so deep that I could barely see out the windows of my condo – on the second floor:This winter marked a return to almost exactly average, which at Kirkwood is still better than what some ski areas clock in a decade: 370 inches. Average, in draught-prone Tahoe and closure-prone Kirkwood, is perhaps the best possible outcome. As this season settled from a thing that is to a thing that happened, it felt appropriate to document the contrast: how does 370 feel when it chases 725? Is snow like money, where after a certain amount you really can't tell the difference? Or does snow, which, like money, occupies that strange space between the material and the ephemeral, ignite with its vanishing form some untamable avarice? More is never enough. Even 725 inches feels stingy in some contexts – Alta stacked 903 last winter; Baker's 1,140-inch 1998-99 season bests any known season snowfall total on Planet Earth.But Californians, I've found, have little use for comparisons. Perhaps that's an effect of the horizon-bending desert that chops the state off from the rest of the continent. Perhaps it's a silent pride in being a resident of America's most-populous state – more people live in California than in the 21 least-populous U.S. states combined, or in all of Canada. Perhaps its Surf Brah bonhomie drifting up to the mountains. Whatever it is, there seems to be something in Cali's collective soul that takes whatever it's given and is content with it.Or at least it feels that way whenever I go there, and it sure felt that way in this interview. At a moment when it seems as though too many big-mountain skiers at headliner mountains want to staple their home turf's alpha-dog patch to their forehead and walk around with two thumbs jerking upward repeating “You do realize I'm a season passholder at Alta, right?”, Kirkwood still feels tucked away, quiet in its excellence, a humble pride masking its fierce façade. Even 12 years into Vail Resorts' ownership, the ski area feels as corporate as a guy selling bootleg purses out of a rolled-out sheet on Broadway. Swaggering but approachable, funky and improvised, something that's probably going to make a good story when you get back home.Why you should ski KirkwoodOddly, I usually tell people not to go here. And not in that stupid social media way that ever-so-clever (usually) Utah and Colorad-Bros trip over one another to post: “Oh Snowbird/Wolf Creek/Pow Mow sucks, no one should go there.” It's so funny I forgot to laugh. But Kirkwood can be genuinely tough to explain. Most Epic Pass-toting tourists are frankly going to have a better time at Heavenly or Northstar, with their fast lifts, Tahoe views, vast intermediate trail networks, and easy access roads. Kirkwood is grand. Kirkwood is exceptional. Kirkwood is the maximalist version of what humankind can achieve in taming an angry pocket of wilderness for mass recreation. But Kirkwood is not for everyone.There. I've set expectations. So maybe don't make this your first Tahoe stop if you're coming west straight from Paoli Peaks. It's a bruiser, one of the rowdiest in Vail's sprawling portfolio, wild and steep and exposed. If you're looking for a fight, Kirkwood will give you one.That's not to say an intermediate couldn't enjoy themselves here. Just don't expect Keystone. What's blue and green at Kirkwood is fine terrain, but it's limited, and lacks the drama of, say, coming over Ridge Run or Liz's at Heavenly, with the lake shimmering below and miles of intermediate pitch in front of you. **This message is not endorsed (or likely appreciated) by the Kirkwood Chamber of Commerce, Vail Resorts, or Kirkwood ski area.Podcast NotesOn former Kirkwood GMs on the podcast Sometimes it seems as though everyone in skiing has taken their turn running Kirkwood. An unusual number of past Storm Skiing Podcast guests have done so, and I discussed the resort with all of them: Chip Seamans (now at Windham), Tim Cohee (now at China Peak), and Tom Fortune (recently retired from Heavenly). Apologies if I forgot anyone.On Apple MountainApple Mountain wasn't much: 200-ish vertical feet (pushed up from an original 30-footer) with a quad chair and a bunch of ropetows. Here was the 2000 trailmap:But this little Michigan ski area – where both Newberry and I learned (partially, in my case), to ski – moved nearly 800,000 students through its beginner programs from 1961 to '94, according to the Michigan Lost Ski Areas Project.It's been closed since 2017. Something about the snowmaking system that's either too hard or too expensive to fix. That leaves Michigan's Tri-Cities – Midland, Bay City, and Saginaw, with a total metro population approaching 400,000 – with no functioning ski area. Snow Snake is only about 40 minutes north of Midland, and Mt. Holly is less than an hour south of Saginaw. But Apple Mountain, tucked into the backwoods behind Freeland, sat dead in the middle of the triangle. It was accessible to almost any schoolkid, and, humble as it was, stoked that fire for thousands of what became lifelong skiers.What skiing has lost without Apple Mountain is impossible to calculate. I would argue that it was one of the more important ski areas anywhere. Winters in mid-Michigan are long, cold, snowy, and dull. People need something to do. But skiing is not an obvious solution: this is the flattest place you can imagine. To have skiing – any skiing – in the region was a joy and a novelty. There was no redundancy, no competing ski center. And so the place was impossibly busy at all times, minting skiers who would go off to start ski newsletters and run huge resorts on the other side of the country.The most frustrating fact about Apple Mountain is that it continues to operate as a conference center, golf course, and apple orchard. The ski lifts are intact, the slopes mowed in summertime. I stopped in two summers ago (I accidentally said “last summer,” implying 2023, on the podcast), and the place was immaculate:I haven't given up on Apple Mountain just yet. The hill is there, the market is there, and there is no shortage of people in Michigan – home to the second-most ski areas after New York – who know how to run a ski area. I told Ricky to tell Vail to buy it, which I am certain they will not do. But a solution must exist.On Mount Shasta and “the big mountain above it”Newberry references his time at “Mt. Shasta and the big mountain above it.” Here's what he meant by that: Mt. Shasta Ski Park is a mid-sized ski area seated on the lower portion of 14,179-foot Mt. Shasta. The lifts top out at 7,536 feet, even after an uphill expansion last ski season. The trailmap doesn't really capture the scale of it all (the ski area's vert is around 2,000 feet):Shasta is a temperamental (and potentially active) volcano. A previous ski area called Mt. Shasta Ski Bowl ran chairlifts up to 9,400 feet, but an avalanche wiped out the summit lift in 1978. Ski Bowl never ran again. Here's a nice history of the lost ski area:On Vail Resorts' timelineWe talk a lot about Vail's growth timeline. Here's the full roster, in order of acquisition:On HeavenlyWe discuss Heavenly - where Newberry spent a large part of his career - extensively. Here's the mountain's trailmap for reference:On Ted LassoIf you haven't watched Ted Lasso yet, you should probably go ahead and do that immediately:On Ellen at Stevens PassNewberry mentioned “Ellen at Stevens Pass.” He was referring to Ellen Galbraith, the ski area's delightful general manager, who joined me on the podcast last year.On Vail's lift installations in the WestGiven its outsized presence in the ski zeitgeist, Vail actually operates very few ski areas in Western North America: five in Colorado, three in California, and one each in Utah, Washington, and British Columbia. The company has stood up 44 (mostly) new lifts at these 11 ski areas since 2012, with one puzzling exception: Kirkwood. Check this:Why is Big K getting stiffed? Newberry and I discuss.On Kirkwood's masterplanAs far as I know, Vail hasn't updated Kirkwood's Forest Service masterplan since acquiring the resort in 2012. But this 2007 map shows an older version of the plan and where potential lifts could go:I can't find a version with the proposed Timber Creek lift, which Newberry describes in the pod as loading near Bunny and TC Express and running up-mountain to the top of the bowls.On the shrinking border of Reuter BowlKirkwood's 2023-24 trailmap snuck in a little shrinkage: the border of Reuter Bowl, a hike-in zone on the resort's far edge, snuck south. Newberry explains why on the pod:On Kirkwood's short-lived surface liftsWe discuss a pair of surface lifts that appeared as Lift 15 on the trailmap from around 2008 to 2017. You can see them on this circa 2017 (earlier maps show this as one lift), trailmap:On The CirqueThe Cirque, a wicked labyrinth of chutes, cliffs, and rocks looming above the ski area, was, somewhat unbelievably, once inbounds terrain. This circa 1976 trailmap even shows a marked trail through this forbidden zone, which is now open only occasionally for freeride comps:On Kirkwood's parking changesKirkwood will implement the same parking-reservations policy next winter that Northstar and Heavenly began using last year. Here's a summary from the ski area's website:Skiers get pretty lit up about parking. But Vail is fairly generous with the workarounds, and a system that spreads traffic out (because everyone knows they'll get a spot), across the morning is a smart adjustment so long as we are going to continue insisting on the automobile as our primary mode of transport.On Saginaw, MichiganNewberry and I share a moment in which we discover we were both born in the same mid-sized Michigan city: Saginaw. Believe it or not, there's a song that starts with these very lyrics: “I was born, in Saginaw, Michigan…” The fact that this song exists has long puzzled me. It is kind of stupid but also kind of great. The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 40/100 in 2024, and number 540 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

In this episode of Inside the Rope, David interviews Greg Mauro, founder of Learn Capital. The episode focuses on Mauro's venture capital fund, highlighting its emphasis on educational investments and some of the well-known companies Greg has invested in. Greg shares his transition from a tech entrepreneur to a significant figure in venture capital, underlining his extensive experience in technology and entrepreneurial investments. The conversation also covers his ownership stake in Powder Mountain, the U.S.'s largest ski field, alongside notable tech entrepreneur Reid Hastings, offering insights into Greg's diverse commercial interests. Additionally, Greg discusses his impactful role in the educational sector through his investments, aiming to transform educational outcomes with technology. Greg Mauro is the Founder & Managing Partner at Learn Capital and oversees the investing practice of the firm. Greg previously managed an affiliate of Founders Fund and co-founded several venture-backed startups used by millions across the education, wireless, and media sectors. Greg has helped lead Learn investments in companies such as Coursera, Udemy, General Assembly, OnDeck, Ascent, Wave Neuro, and MindPortal. Greg is the co-founder of Edmodo, the world's largest social network for learning with over 100M users. Greg also helped incubate and co-found Higher Ground Education, the world's largest Montessori operator, where he serves on the board and is the largest investor. Greg has served on the board of NewGlobe — where Learn is also the largest investor — as the company has grown from serving one school to over 8,000, transforming the lives of over 3M students across Africa and India.

Reed Hastings became executive chairman of Netflix in 2023, after 25 years as CEO. He co-founded Netflix in 1997. Reed is also a majority owner of Powder Mountain. He is currently on the board of several educational organizations including KIPP and Pahara.Timestamps for this episode are available below.Sponsors:AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement: https://drinkag1.com/tim (1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase.)Wealthfront high-yield savings account: https://wealthfront.com/tim (Start earning 5% interest on your savings. And when you open an account today, you'll get an extra fifty-dollar bonus with a deposit of five hundred dollars or more.)Shopify global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business: https://shopify.com/tim (one-dollar-per-month trial period)Timestamps:[06:34] Alfred Lee Loomis and Tuxedo Park.[07:53] Risk tolerance: nature or nurture?[10:56] Cultivating culture that “eats strategy for lunch.”[15:41] The logic behind generous severance.[17:02] Adapting to Pure chaos.[18:44] Reference checking potential hires.[20:29] Context vs. control.[22:35] Radical candor.[24:15] Guardrails for maintaining work/life balance.[27:04] Farming for dissent.[28:39] Believing in the green crystals.[30:54] High-performance team, not family.[31:59] The keeper test.[32:49] Fire and replace, or replace and fire?[33:59] Beyond Entrepreneurship and other recommended reading/viewing.[37:46] A favorite failure.[40:32] Outstanding leaders.[41:10] Reed's two “religions.”[42:19] Powder Mountain.[44:44] How Powder Mountain differs from Reed's other projects.[46:24] Powder Mountain's biggest challenges ahead.[47:02] Could Reed ever really retire?[47:19] Best investments of time, energy, or money.[48:49] How can we improve education in the US?[52:48] What class would Reed teach?[53:59] Juggling projects without losing focus.[55:04] Philanthropy: Why Africa?[55:32] Being “big-hearted champions who pick up the trash.”[56:28] Reed's billboard.[58:01] Parting thoughts.*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim's email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim's books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Margaret Atwood, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Dr. Gabor Maté, Anne Lamott, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

California now has the highest minimum wage law in the country at $20/hour for fast food workers — We call it “The McPayDay”, and it's a test of the economic concept: “Bottom-Up Economics.”Netflix Co-Founder Reed Hastings acquired Powder Mountain, a ski resort in Utah — It will be part private club, part open to the public. Because Post-Pandemic America loves clubs.And the sports betting industry just had its worst week yet after 3 pro scandals — So we think sports betting needs to learn from the stock market… sports betting needs to learn from insider trading.Plus, 63% of restaurants are officially “too loud”. Do you think music at restaurants should be louder or quieter?: Vote Here.$NFLX $MCD $DKNGWatch us on YouTubeWant merch, a shoutout, or got TheBestFactYet? Go to: www.tboypod.comFollow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In Episode 24 of the podcast I speak with Shoko Baba, a member of the international sales team, of one of the snow country's most celebrated sake breweries, Hakkaisan. Located in the heavy snow area of Minami-Uonuma, Hakkaisan Brewery produces high quality sake that reflects the pristine surrounding environment and traditions of this beautiful area of Niigata. Shoko and I discuss the heritage and pedigree of Hakkaisan including their celebrated snow-aged ‘Yukimuro' sake, while also delving into the importance of sake in the culture of Niigata and more broadly, in Japan. We discuss Hakkaisan's fantastic Rydeen Beer and their wonderful facility Uonuma-no-Sato, along with exciting enterprises including Niseko Distillery in Hokkaido and Brooklyn Kura in New York. The brewery takes its name from nearby Mount Hakkai or in Japanese, Hakkaisan. Standing 1778 metres / 5834 feet in height, Hakkaisan is home to the little-known but fantastic Muikamachi Hakkaisan Ski Resort. The location of the mountain and ski resort subject it to heavy snowfall each winter making it an ideal destination for skiers and snowboarders wanting to dive into some deep stuff without the crowds. I provide information about Muikamachi Hakkaisan – one of my favourite ski resorts – following my chat with Shoko. Make sure to check out the episode page on the Snow Country Stories Japan website for more information, images, videos and a map showing you where in the snow country we are today.This episode is the last of Season 2 of the Snow Country Stories Japan podcast. A big thank you to everyone who is listening. I'll be taking a short break and returning with Season 3 in late March / early April. I will announce the return date as soon as possible and in the meantime, I will upload some bonus episodes. I hope you enjoy!Snow Country Stories Japan is a bi-weekly podcast about life and travel in Japan's legendary 'yukiguni'. For more information about the show and your host, visit our website - www.snowcountrystories.com - and make sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

This week on The Hamilton Review Podcast, we are pleased to welcome author, Margot Bisnow to the show! Margot has written a fabulous book entitled: "Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams." In this conversation, Margot chats with Dr. Bob about the book and how to we can guide and support our children to achieve their dreams. This is a wonderful conversation, friends and we are honored to have Margot on the show. Enjoy! Margot Machol Bisnow is a writer, wife, and mom from Washington, DC who speaks on raising fearless, creative, entrepreneurial kids who are filled with joy and purpose. She is the author of Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams — 99 Stories From Families Who Did. Margot has a BA in English and an MBA, both from Northwestern, and spent 20 years in government, including as an FTC Commissioner and staff director of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. In the 1990s she established a non-profit that set up economic think tanks in Eastern Europe's emerging democracies. Both her kids are now grown: Austin started a popular band, Magic Giant; Elliott founded Summit, a noted international conference series for Millennial entrepreneurs and creatives, and led the purchase and development of Utah's Powder Mountain ski resort, subsequently sold to Netflix founder Reed Hastings. Her husband Mark was a late-blooming entrepreneur, and wishes his parents had read her book when he was growing up, so he might have started his company before he was 50. Margot is on the Board of Spark the Journey that mentors low-income DC-area high school kids.  How to contact Margot Bisnow: Margot Bisnow on Instagram Raising An Entrepreneur website Order Margot's book here! How to contact Dr. Bob: Dr. Bob on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChztMVtPCLJkiXvv7H5tpDQ Dr. Bob on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drroberthamilton/ Dr. Bob on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bob.hamilton.1656 Dr. Bob's Seven Secrets Of The Newborn website: https://7secretsofthenewborn.com/ Dr. Bob's website: https://roberthamiltonmd.com/ Pacific Ocean Pediatrics: http://www.pacificoceanpediatrics.com/

Get ready for something unexpected! James recaps his recent visit to Ogden, Utah and how the town has transformed over the past few years. Ogden is located just north of Salt Lake City and was once a gritty railroad town. However, recent investment and development has turned it into an up-and-coming, artsy, mountain destination. Does Ogden's growth, outdoor recreation, and real estate make it a potential hometown? Depends on your hobbies and occupation, but YES. Denise is all up in arms over e-bike hunting, James is sick of virtue signaling, and Huffington Post is intoxicated on their own crazy news headlines. This one is packed with info on life in Utah and lots of jokes… a few of which are even funny! We're gaining subscribers every day on YouTube... Care to join the party? And our social media is pretty damn cool for a coupla Gen-Xers. You should follow us!

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 6. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 13. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoTom Chasse, President and CEO of Schweitzer Mountain, IdahoRecorded onOctober 23, 2023About SchweitzerClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Alterra Mountain CompanyLocated in: Sandpoint, IdahoYear founded: 1963Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: unlimited* Ikon Base Pass, Ikon Base Plus Pass: 5 days with holiday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: 49 Degrees North (1:30), Silver Mountain (1:42), Mt. Spokane (2:00), Lookout Pass (2:06), Turner Mountain (2:17) – travel times vary considerably depending upon weather, time of day, and time of yearBase elevation: 3,960 feet (at Outback Inn)Summit elevation: 6,389 feetVertical drop: 2,429 feetSkiable Acres: 2,900Average annual snowfall: 300 inchesTrail count: 92 (10% Beginner, 40% Intermediate, 35% Advanced, 15% Expert)Lift count: 10 (1 six-pack, 4 high-speed quads, 2 triples, 1 double, 1 T-bar, 1 carpet)View historic Schweitzer trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himChasse first appeared on the podcast in January 2021, for what would turn out to be the penultimate episode in the Covid-19 & Skiing miniseries. Our focus was singular: to explore the stress and irritation shoved onto resort employees charged with mask-police duty. As I wrote at the time:One of the biggest risks to the reconstituted-for-Covid ski season was always going to be that large numbers of knuckleheads would treat mask requirements as the first shots fired in Civil War II. Schweitzer, an enormous ski Narnia poking off the tip of the Idaho panhandle, became the most visible instance of this phenomenon when General Manager Tom Chasse chopped three days of twilight skiing after cantankerous Freedom Bros continually threw down with exhausted staff over requests to mask up. While violations of mask mandates haven't ignited widespread resort shutdowns and the vast majority of skiers seem resigned to them, Schweitzer's stand nonetheless distills the precarious nature of lift-served skiing amidst a still-raging pandemic. Skiers, if they grow careless and defiant, can shut down mountains. And so can the ski areas themselves, if they feel they can't safely manage the crowds descending upon them in this winter of there's-nothing-else-to-do. While it's unfortunate that a toxic jumble of misinformation, conspiracy theories, political chest-thumping, and ignorance has so thoroughly infected our population that even something as innocuous as riding a chairlift has become a culture war flashpoint, it has. And it's worth investigating the full story at Schweitzer to gauge how big the problem is and how to manage it in a way that allows us to all keep skiing.We did talk about the mountain for a few minutes at the end, but I'd always meant to get back to Idaho's largest ski area. In 2022, I hosted the leaders of Tamarack, Bogus Basin, Brundage, and Sun Valley on the podcast. Now, I'm finally back at the top of the panhandle, to go deep on the future of Alterra Mountain Company's newest lift-served toy.What we talked aboutThe new Creekside Express lift; a huge new parking lot incoming for the 2024-25 ski season; the evolution of the 2018 masterplan; why and how Schweitzer sold to Alterra; the advantages of joining a conglomerate versus remaining independent; whether Schweitzer could ever evolve into a destination resort; reflecting on the McCaw family legacy as Alterra takes control; thoughts on the demise-and-revival of Black Mountain, New Hampshire; the biggest difference between running a ski resort in New England versus the West; the slow, complete transformation of Schweitzer over the past two decades; the rationale behind the Outback Bowl lift upgrades; why Schweitzer's upper-mountain lifts are mostly fixed-grip machines; whether Alterra will continue with Schweitzer's 2018 masterplan or rethink it; potential for an additional future Outback Bowl lift, as outlined in the masterplan; contemplating future frontside lifts and terrain expansion; thoughts on a future Sunnyside lift replacement; how easy it would be to expand Schweitzer; the state of the ski area's snowmaking system; Schweitzer's creeping snowline; sustained and creative investment in employee housing; Ikon Pass access; locals' reaction to the mountain going unlimited on the full Ikon; whether Schweitzer could convert to the unlimited-with-blackouts tier on Ikon Base; dynamic pricing; whether the Musical Carpet will continue to be free; discount night-skiing; and whether Schweitzer's reciprocal season pass partners will remain after the 2023-24 ski season.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewUntil June, Schweitzer was the third-largest independent ski area in America, and just barely, trailing the 3,000 lift-served acres at Whitefish and Powder Mountain by just 100 acres. It's larger than Alta (2,614 acres), Grand Targhee (2,602), or Jackson Hole (2,500). That made this ever-improving resort lodged at the top of America the largest independent U.S. ski area on the Ikon Pass.Well, that's all finished. Once Alterra dropped Idaho's second-largest ski area into its shopping cart in June, Schweitzer became another name on the Denver-based company's attendance sheet, their fifth-largest resort after Palisades Tahoe (6,000 acres), Mammoth (3,500), Steamboat (3,500), and Winter Park (3,081).But what matters more than how the mountain stacks up on the stat sheet is how Alterra will facilitate Schweitzer's rapidly unfolding 2018 masterplan, which calls for a clutch of new lifts and a terrain expansion rising out of a Delaware-sized parking lot below the current base area. Schweitzer has so far moved quickly on the plan, dropping two brand-new lifts into Outback Bowl to replace an old centerpole double and activating a new high-speed quad called Creekside to replace the Musical Chairs double this past summer. Additional improvements include an upgrade to the Sunnyside lift and yet another lift in Outback. Is Alterra committed to all this?The company's rapid and comprehensive renovations or planned upgrades of Palisades Tahoe, Steamboat, and Deer Valley suggest that they will be. Alterra is not in the business of creating great day-ski areas. They are building destination ski resorts. Schweitzer, always improving but never quite gelling as a national bucket-lister, may have the captain it needs to finally get there.What I got wrongI asked Chasse if there was an “opportunity for a Snowcat operation.” There already is one: Selkirk Powder runs day-long tours in Schweitzer's “west-northwest-facing bowls adjacent to the resort.”Why you should ski SchweitzerAllow me to play the Ida-homer for a moment. All we ever hear about is traffic in Colorado. Traffic in the canyons. Traffic in Tahoe. Traffic at Mount Hood and all around Washington. Sometimes, idling amid stopped traffic in your eight-wheel-drive Chuckwagon Supreme Ultimate Asskicker Pickup Truck can seem as much a part of western skiing as pow and open bowls.But when was the last time you heard someone gripe about ski traffic in Idaho? Probably never. Which is weird, because look at this:Ten ski areas with a thousand-plus acres of terrain; 12 with vertical drops topping 1,000 feet; seven that average 300 inches or more of snow per season. That's pretty, um, Epic (except that Vail has no mountains and no partners in this ripper of a ski state).So what's going on? Over the weekend, I hosted a panel of ski area general managers at the Snowvana festival in Portland, Oregon. Among the participants were Tamarack President Scott Turlington and Silver Mountain GM Jeff Colburn. Both told me some version of, “we never have lift lines.” Look again at those stats. What the hell?Go to Idaho, is my point here, if you need a break from the madness. The state, along with neighboring Montana, may be the last refuge of big vert and big snow without big crowds in our current version of U.S. America.Schweitzer, as it happens, is the largest ski area in the state. It also happens to be one of the most modern, along with Tamarack, which is not yet 20 years old, and Sun Valley, with its fleet of high-speed lifts. Schweitzer sports what was long the state's only six-pack (until Sun Valley upgraded Challenger this year), along with four high-speed quads. Of the remaining lifts, all are less than 20 years old with the exception of Sunnyside, a 1960s relic that is among the last artifacts of Old Schweitzer.Chasse tells us on the podcast that the ski area could add hundreds of acres of terrain simply by moving a boundary rope. So why not do it? Because the mountain, as it stands, absorbs everyone who shows up to ski it pretty well.A lot of the appeal of Idaho lies in the rough-and-tumble, in the dented-can feel of big, remote mountains towering forgotten in the hinterlands, centerpole doubles swinging empty up the incline. But that's changing, slowly, ski area by ski area. Schweitzer is way ahead of most on the upgrade progression, infrastructure built more like a Wasatch resort than that of its neighbors in Idaho and Washington. But the crowds – or relative lack of them – is still pure Idaho.Podcast NotesOn Schweitzer's masterplan Even though Schweitzer sits entirely on private land, the ski area published a masterplan similar to those of its Forest Service peers in 2018, outlining new lifts and terrain all over the mountain:Though that plan has changed somewhat (Creekside, for instance, was not included), Schweitzer has continued to make progress against it. Alterra, it seems, will keep pushing it down the assembly line.On the Alterra acquisitionIn July, I hosted Alterra CEO Jared Smith on the podcast. We discuss the Schweitzer acquisition at the 53:48 mark:On Alterra's megaresort ambitionsWithout explicitly saying so, Alterra has undertaken an aggressive cross-portfolio supercharging of several marquee properties. Last year, the company sewed together the Palisades and Alpine Meadows sides of its giant California resort with a 2.1-mile-long gondola:This year, Steamboat will open the second leg of its 3.1-mile-long, 10-passenger Wild Blue gondola and a several-hundred-acre terrain expansion (and attendant high-speed quad), on Mahogany Ridge:Earlier this year, Alterra announced a massive expansion that will make Deer Valley the fourth-largest ski area in America:Winter Park's 2022 masterplan update included several proposed terrain pods and a gondola linking mountain to town:If my email inbox is any indication, New England Alterra skiers – meaning loyalists at Stratton and Sugarbush – are getting inpatient. When will the Colorado-based company turn its cash cannon east? I don't know, but it will happen.On Mt. WittierChasse learned how to ski at Mt. Wittier, New Hampshire. I included a whole bit on this place in a recent newsletter:As far as ski area relics go, it's hard to find a more captivating artifact than the Mt. Whittier gondola. While the New Hampshire ski area has sat abandoned since the mid-1980s, towers for the four-passenger gondola still rise 1,300-vertical feet up the mountainside. Tower one stands, improbably, across New Hampshire State Highway 16, rising from a McDonald's parking lot. The still-intact haul rope stretches across this paved expanse and terminates at a garage-style door behind the property. Check it out:Jeremy Davis, founder of the New England Lost Ski Areas Project, told me an amazing story when he appeared on The Storm Skiing Podcast in 2019. A childhood glimpse of the abandoned Mt. Whittier ignited his mad pursuit to document the region's lost ski areas. Years later, he returned for a closer look. He visited the shop that now occupies the former gondola base building, and the owner offered to let him peek in the garage. There, dusty but intact, sat many, or perhaps all, of the lift's 35 four-passenger gondola cars. It's still one of my favorite episodes:A bizarre snowtubing outfit called “Mt. Madness” briefly operated around the turn of the century, according to New England Ski History. But other than the gondola, traces of the ski area have mostly disappeared. The forest cover is so thick that the original trail network is just scarcely visible on Google Maps.The entire 797-acre property is now for sale, listed at $3.2 million. The gondola barn, it appears, is excluded, as is the money-making cell tower at the summit. But there might be enough here to hack the ski area back out of the wilderness:Which would, of course, cost you a lot more than $3.2 million. Whittier has a decent location, west of King Pine and south of Conway. But it's on the wrong side of New Hampshire for easy interstate access, and we're on the wrong side of history for realistically building a ski area in New England. On the seasonal disruption of hunting in rural areasChasse points to hunting season as an unexpected operational disruption when he moved from New England to Idaho. If you've never lived in a rural area, it can be hard to appreciate how ingrained hunting is into local cultures. Where I grew up, in a small Michigan town, Nov. 15 – or “Deer Day,” as the first day of the state's two-week rifle-hunting season was colloquially known – was an official school holiday. Morning announcements would warn high-schoolers to watch out for sugar beets – popular deer bait – on M-30. It's a whole thing.On 2006 SchweitzerIt's hard to overstate just how much Schweitzer has evolved since the turn of the century. Until the Stella sixer arrived in 2000, the mountain was mostly a kingdom of pokey old double chairs, save for the Great Escape high-speed quad, which had arrived in 1990:The only lift from that trailmap that remains is Sunnyside, then known as Chair 4. The Stella sixer replaced Chair 5 in 2000; Chair 1 gave way to the Basin Express and Lakeview triple in 2007; Chair 6 (Snow Ghost), came down for the Cedar Park Express quad and Colburn triple in 2019; and Creekside replaced Chair 2 (Musical Chairs), this past summer. In 2005, Schweitzer opened up an additional peak to lift service with the Idyle Our T-bar.While lifts are (usually) a useful proxy for measuring a resort's modernization progress, they barely begin to really quantify the extreme changes at Schweitzer over the past few decades. Note, too, the parking lots that once lined the mountain at the Chair 2 summit – land that's since been repurposed for a village.On Schweitzer's proximity to Powder Highway/BC mountainsMany reference materials stop listing ski areas at the top of America, as though that is the northern border of our ski world. But stop ignoring that big chunk of real estate known as “Canada,” and Schweitzer suddenly sits in a far more interesting neighborhood. The ski area could be considered the southern-most stop on the Powder Highway, just down the road from Red and Whitewater, not far from Kimberley and Fernie, skiable on the same circuit as Revelstoke, Sun Peaks, Silver Star, Big White, Panorama, and Castle. It's a compelling roadtrip:Yes, there area lot more ski areas in there, but these are most of the huge ones. And no, I don't know if all of these roads are open in the winter – the point here is to show the overall density, not program your GPS.On Alterra's varying approach to its owned mountains on the Ikon PassAlterra, unlike Vail, does not treat all of its mountains equally on the top-tier Ikon Pass. Here's how the company's owned mountains sit on the various Ikon tiers:On cheap I-90 lift ticketsI've written about this a bunch of times, but the stretch of I-90 from Spokane to the Idaho-Montana border offers some of the most affordable big-mountain lift tickets in the country. Here's a look at 2022-23 walk-up lift ticket prices for the five mountains stretched across the region:Next season's rates aren't live yet, but I expect them to be similar.On Alterra lift ticket pricesI don't expect Schweitzer's lift tickets to stay proportionate to the rest of the region for long. Here are Alterra's top anticipated 2023-24 walk-up lift ticket rates at its owned resorts:On Bogus Basin's reciprocal lift ticket programI mentioned Bogus Basin's extensive reciprocal lift ticket program. It's pretty badass, as the ski area is a member of both the Freedom Pass and Powder Alliance, and has set up a bunch of independent reciprocals besides:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 97/100 in 2023, and number 483 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Episode 2354: Our random article of the day is Powder Mountain Icefield.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Feb. 3. It dropped for free subscribers on Feb. 6. To receive future pods as soon as they're live and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoBrett Cook, Vice President and General Manager of Seven Springs, Hidden Valley, and Laurel Mountain, PennsylvaniaRecorded onJanuary 30, 2023About Seven SpringsOwned by: Vail ResortsPass affiliations: Epic Pass, Epic Local Pass, Northeast Value Epic Pass, Northeast Midweek Epic PassLocated in: Seven Springs, PennsylvaniaYear opened: 1932Closest neighboring ski areas: Hidden Valley (17 minutes), Laurel Mountain (45 minutes), Nemacolin (46 minutes), Boyce Park (1 hour), Wisp (1 hour), Blue Knob (1 hour, 30 minutes)Base elevation: 2,240 feetSummit elevation: 2,994 feetVertical drop: 754 feetSkiable Acres: 285Average annual snowfall: 135 inchesTrail count: 48 (5 expert, 6 advanced, 15 intermediate, 16 beginner, 6 terrain parks)Lift count: 14­­ (2 six-packs, 4 fixed-grip quads, 4 triples, 3 carpets, 1 ropetow)About Hidden ValleyOwned by: Vail ResortsPass affiliations: Epic Pass, Epic Local Pass, Northeast Value Epic Pass, Northeast Midweek Epic PassLocated in: Hidden Valley, PennsylvaniaYear opened: 1955Closest neighboring ski areas: Seven Springs (17 minutes), Laurel Mountain (34 minutes), Mystic Mountain (50 minutes), Boyce Park (54 minutes),Wisp (1 hour), Blue Knob (1 hour 19 minutes)Base elevation: 2,405 feetSummit elevation: 2,875 feetVertical drop: 470 feetSkiable Acres: 110Average annual snowfall: 140 inchesTrail count: 32 (9 advanced, 13 intermediate, 8 beginner, 2 terrain parks)Lift count: 8 (2 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples, 2 carpets, 2 handle tows)About Laurel MountainOwned by: Vail ResortsPass affiliations: Epic Pass, Epic Local Pass, Northeast Value Epic Pass, Northeast Midweek Epic PassLocated in: Boswell, PennsylvaniaYear opened: 1939Closest neighboring ski areas: Hidden Valley (34 minutes), Seven Springs (45 minutes), Boyce Park (1 hour), Blue Knob (1 hour), Mystic Mountain (1 hour, 15 minutes), Wisp (1 hour, 15 minutes)Base elevation: 2,005 feetSummit elevation: 2,766 feetVertical drop: 761 feetSkiable Acres: 70Average annual snowfall: 41 inchesTrail count: 20 (2 expert, 2 advanced, 6 intermediate, 10 beginner)Lift count: 2­­ (1 fixed-grip quad, 1 handle tow)Below the paid subscriber jump: a summary of our podcast conversation, a look at abandoned Hidden Valley expansions, historic Laurel Mountain lift configurations, and much more.Beginning with podcast 116, the full podcast articles are no longer available on the free content tier. Why? They take between 10 and 20 hours to research and write, and readers have demonstrated that they are willing to pay for content. My current focus with The Storm is to create value for anyone who invests their money into the product. Here are examples of a few past podcast articles, if you would like to see the format: Vail Mountain, Mt. Spokane, Snowbasin, Mount Bohemia, Brundage. To anyone who is supporting The Storm: thank you very much. You have guaranteed that this is a sustainable enterprise for the indefinite future.Why I interviewed himI've said this before, but it's worth repeating. Most Vail ski areas fall into one of two categories: the kind skiers will fly around the world for, and the kind skiers won't drive more than 15 minutes for. Whistler, Park City, Heavenly fall into the first category. Mt. Brighton, Alpine Valley, Paoli Peaks into the latter. I exaggerate a bit on the margins, but when I drive from New York City to Liberty Mountain, I know this is not a well-trod path.Seven Springs, like Hunter or Attitash, occupies a slightly different category in the Vail empire. It is both a regional destination and a high-volume big-mountain feeder. Skiers will make a weekend of these places, from Pittsburgh or New York City or Boston, then they will use the pass to vacation in Colorado. It's a better sort of skiing than your suburban knolls, more sprawling and interesting, more repeatable for someone who doesn't know what a Corky Flipdoodle 560 is.“Brah that sounds sick!”Thanks Park Brah. I appreciate you. But you know I just made that up, right?“Brah have you seen my shoulder-mounted Boombox 5000 backpack speaker? I left it right here beside my weed vitamins.”Sorry Brah. I have not.Anyway, I happen to believe that these sorts of in-the-middle resorts are the next great frontier of ski area consolidation. All the big mountains have either folded under the Big Four umbrella or have gained so much megapass negotiating power that the incentive to sell has rapidly evaporated. The city-adjacent bumps such as Boston Mills were a novel and highly effective strategy for roping cityfolk into Epic Passes, but as pure ski areas, those places just are not and never will be terribly compelling experiences. But the middle is huge and mostly untapped, and these are some of the best ski areas in America, mountains that are large enough to give you a different experience each time but contained enough that you don't feel as though you've just wandered into an alternate dimension. There's enough good terrain to inspire loyalty and repeat visits, but it's not so good that passholders don't dream of the hills beyond.Examples: Timberline, West Virginia; Big Powderhorn, Michigan; Berkshire East and Jiminy Peak in Massachusetts; Plattekill, New York; Elk Mountain, Pennsylvania; Mt. Spokane, Washington; Bear Valley, California; Cascade or Whitecap, Wisconsin; Magic Mountain, Vermont; or Black Mountain, New Hampshire. There are dozens more. Vail's Midwestern portfolio is expansive but bland, day-ski bumps but no weekend-type spots on the level of Crystal Mountain, Michigan or Lutsen, Minnesota.If you want to understand the efficacy of this strategy, the Indy Pass was built on it. Ninety percent of its roster is the sorts of mountains I'm referring to above. Jay Peak and Powder Mountain sell passes, but dang it Bluewood and Shanty Creek are kind of nice now that the pass nudged me toward them. Once Vail and Alterra realize how crucial these middle mountains are to filling in the pass blanks, expect them to start competing for the space. Seven Springs, I believe, is a test case in how impactful a regional destination can be both in pulling skiers in and pushing them out across the world. Once this thing gels, look the hell out.What we talked aboutThe not-so-great Western Pennsylvania winter so far; discovering skiing as an adult; from liftie to running the largest ski resort in Pennsylvania; the life and death of Snow Time Resorts; joining the Peak Pass; two ownership transitions in less than a year, followed by Covid; PA ski culture; why the state matters to Vail; helping a Colorado ski company understand the existential urgency of snowmaking in the East; why Vail doubled down on PA with the Seven Springs purchase when they already owned five ski areas in the state; breaking down the difference between the Roundtop-Liberty-Whitetail trio and the Seven-Springs-Hidden-Valley-Laurel trio; the cruise ship in the mountains; rugged and beautiful Western PA; dissecting the amazing outsized snowfall totals in Western Pennsylvania; Vail Resorts' habit of promoting from within; how Vail's $20-an-hour minimum wage hit in Pennsylvania; the legacy of the Nutting family, the immediate past owners of the three ski areas; the legendary Herman Dupree, founder of Seven Springs and HKD snowguns; Seven Springs amazing sprawling snowmaking system, complete with 49(!) ponds; why the system isn't automated and whether it ever will be; how planting more trees could change the way Seven Springs skis; connecting the ski area's far-flung beginner terrain; where we could see additional glades at Seven Springs; rethinking the lift fleet; the importance of redundant lifts; do we still need Tyrol?; why Seven Springs, Hidden Valley, and Laurel share a single general manager; thinking of lifts long-term at Hidden Valley; Hidden Valley's abandoned expansion plans and whether they could ever be revived; the long and troubled history of state-owned Laurel Mountain; keeping the character at this funky little upside-down boomer; “We love what Laurel Mountain is and we're going to continue to own that”; building out Laurel's snowmaking system; expansion potential at Laurel; “Laurel is a hidden gem and we don't want it to be hidden anymore”; Laurel's hidden handletow; evolving Laurel's lift fleet; managing a state-owned ski area; Seven Springs' new trailmap; the Epic Pass arrives; and this season's lift-ticket limits.        Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewWhen Vail bought Peak Resorts in 2019, they suddenly owned nearly a quarter of Pennsylvania's ski areas: Big Boulder, Jack Frost, Whitetail, Roundtop, and Liberty. That's a lot of Eagles jerseys. And enough, I thought, that we wouldn't see VR snooping around for more PA treasures to add to their toybox.Then, to my surprise, the company bought Seven Springs – which they clearly wanted – along with Hidden Valley and Laurel, which they probably didn't, in late 2021. Really what they bought was Pittsburgh, metropolitan population 2.3 million, and their large professional class of potentially globe-trotting skiers. All these folks needed was an excuse to buy an Epic Pass. Vail gave them one.So now what? Vail knows what to do with a large, regionally dominant ski area like Seven Springs. It's basically Pennsylvania's version of Stowe or Park City or Heavenly. It was pretty good when you bought it, now you just have to not ruin it and remind everyone that they can now ski Whistler on their season pass. Hidden Valley, with its hundreds of on-mountain homeowners, suburban-demographic profile, and family orientation more or less fit Vail's portfolio too.But what to do with Laurel? Multiple locals assured me that Vail would close it. Vail doesn't do that – close ski areas – but they also don't buy 761-vertical-foot bumps at the ass-end of nowhere with almost zero built-in customer base and the snowmaking firepower of a North Pole souvenir snowglobe. They got it because it came with Seven Springs, like your really great spouse who came with a dad who thinks lawnmowers are an FBI conspiracy. I know what I think Vail should do with Laurel – dump money into the joint to aggressively route crowds away from the larger ski areas – but I didn't know whether they would, or had even considered it.Vail's had 14 months now to think this over. What are these mountains? How do they fit? What are we going to do with them? I got some answers.Questions I wish I'd askedYou know, it's weird that Vail has two Hidden Valleys. Boyne, just last year, changed the name of its “Boyne Highlands” resort to “The Highlands,” partly because, one company executive told me, skiers would occasionally show up to the wrong resort with a condo reservation. I imagine that's why Earl Holding ultimately backed off on renaming Snowbasin to “Sun Valley, Utah,” as he reportedly considered doing in the leadup to the 2002 Olympics – if you give people an easy way to confuse themselves, they will generally take you up on it.I realize this is not really the same thing. Boyne Mountain and The Highlands are 40 minutes apart. Vail's two Hidden Valleys are 10-and-a-half hours from each other by car. Still. I wanted to ask Cook if this weird fact had any hilarious unintended consequences (I desperately wish Holding would have renamed Snowbasin). Perhaps confusion in the Epic Mix app? Or someone purchasing lift tickets for the incorrect resort? An adult lift ticket at Hidden Valley, Pennsylvania for tomorrow is $75 online and $80 in person, but just $59 online/$65 in person for Hidden Valley, Missouri. Surely someone has confused the two?So, which one should we rename? And what should we call it? Vail has been trying to win points lately with lift names that honor local landmarks – they named their five new lifts at Jack Frost-Big Boulder “Paradise,” “Tobyhanna,” “Pocono,” “Harmony,” and “Blue Heron” (formerly E1 Lift, E2 Lift, B Lift, C Lift, E Lift, F Lift, Merry Widow I, Merry Widow II, and Edelweiss). So how about renaming Hidden Valley PA to something like “Allegheny Forest?” Or call Hidden Valley, Missouri “Mississippi Mountain?” Yes, both of those names are terrible, but so is having two Hidden Valleys in the same company.What I got wrong* I guessed in the podcast that Pennsylvania was the “fifth- or sixth-largest U.S. state by population.” It is number five, with an approximate population of 13 million, behind New York (19.6M), Florida (22.2M), Texas (30M), and California (39M).* I guessed that the base of Keystone is “nine or 10,000 feet.” The River Run base area sits at 9,280 feet.* I mispronounced the last name of Seven Springs founder Herman Dupre as “Doo-Pree.” It is pronounced “Doo-Prey.”* I said there were “lots” of thousand-vertical-foot ski areas in Pennsylvania. There are, in fact, just four: Blue Mountain (1,140 feet), Blue Knob (1,073 feet), Elk (1,000 feet), and Montage (1,000 feet).Why you should ski Seven Springs, Hidden Valley, and LaurelIt's rugged country out there. Not what you're thinking. More Appalachian crag than Poconos scratch. Abrupt and soaring. Beautiful. And snowy. In a state where 23 of 28 ski areas average fewer than 50 inches of snow per season, Seven Springs and Laurel bring in 135-plus apiece.Elevation explains it. A 2,000-plus-foot base is big-time in the East. Killington sits at 1,165 feet. Sugarloaf at 1,417. Stowe at 1,559. All three ski areas sit along the crest of 70-mile-long Laurel Ridge, a storm door on the western edge of the Allegheny Front that rakes southeast-bound moisture from the sky as it trains out of Lake Erie.When the snow doesn't come, they make it. Now that Big Boulder has given up, Seven Springs is typically the first ski area in the state to open. It fights with Camelback for last-to-close. Twelve hundred snowguns and 49 snowmaking ponds help.Seven Springs doesn't have the state's best pure ski terrain – look to Elk Mountain or, on the rare occasions it's fully open, Blue Knob for that – but it's Pennsylvania's largest, most complete, and, perhaps, most consistent operation. It is, in fact, the biggest ski area in the Mid-Atlantic, a ripping and unpretentious ski region where you know you'll get turns no matter how atrocious the weather gets.Hidden Valley is something different. Cozy. Easy. Built for families on parade. Laurel is something different too. Steep and fierce, a one-lift wonder dug out of the graveyard by an owner with more passion, it seems, than foresight. Laurel needs snowmaking. Top to bottom and on every trail. The hill makes no sense in 2023 without it. Vail won't abandon the place outright, but if they don't knock $10 million in snowmaking into the dirt, they'll be abandoning it in principle.Podcast NotesThe trailmap rabbit hole – Hidden ValleyWe discussed the proposed-but-never-implemented expansion at Hidden Valley, which would have sat skier's right of the Avalanche pod. Here it is on the 2010 trailmap:The 2002 version actually showed three potential lifts serving this pod:Unfortunately, this expansion is unlikely. Cook explains why in the pod.The trailmap rabbit hole – LaurelLaurel, which currently has just one quad and a handletow, has carried a number of lift configurations over the decades. This circa 1981 trailmap shows a double chair where the quad now sits, and a series of surface lifts climbing the Broadway side of the hill, and another set of them bunched at the summit:The 2002 version shows a second chairlift – which I believe was a quad – looker's right, and surface lifts up top to serve beginners, tubers, and the terrain park:Related: here's a pretty good history of all three ski areas, from 2014.The Pennsylvania ski inventory rabbitholePennsylvania skiing is hard to get. No one seems to know how many ski areas the state has. The NSAA says there are 26. Cook referenced 24 on the podcast. The 17 that Wikipedia inventories include Alpine Mountain, which has been shuttered for years. Ski Central (22), Visit PA (21), and Ski Resort Info (25) all list different numbers. My count is 28. Most lists neglect to include the six private ski areas that are owned by homeowners' associations or reserved for resort guests. Cook and I also discussed which ski area owned the state's highest elevation (it's Blue Knob), so I included base and summit elevations as well:The why-is-Vail-allowed-to-own-80-percent-of-Ohio's-public-ski-areas? rabbitholeCook said he wasn't sure how many ski areas there are in Ohio. There are six. One is a private club. Snow Trails is family-owned. Vail owns the other four. I think this shouldn't be allowed, especially after how poorly Vail managed them last season, and especially how badly Snow Trails stomped them from an operations point of view. But here we are:The steepest-trail rabbitholeWe discuss Laurel's Wildcat trail, which the ski area bills as the steepest in the state. I generally avoid echoing these sorts of claims, which are hard to prove and not super relevant to the actual ski experience. You'll rarely see skiers lapping runs like Rumor at Gore or White Lightning at Montage, mostly because they frankly just aren't that much fun, exercises in ice-rink survival skiing for the Brobot armies. But if you want the best primer I've seen on this subject, along with an inventory of some very steep U.S. ski trails, read this one on Skibum.net. The article doesn't mention Laurel's Wildcat trail, but the ski area was closed sporadically and this site's heyday was about a decade ago, so it may have been left out as a matter of circumstance.The “back in my day” rabbitholeI referenced an old “punchcard program” at Roundtop during our conversation. I was referring to the Night Club Program offered by former-former owner Snow Time Resorts at Roundtop, Liberty, and Whitetail. When Snow Time sold the ski area in 2018 to Peak Resorts, the buyer promptly dropped the evening programs. When Vail purchased the resort in 2019, it briefly re-instated some version of them (I think), but I don't believe they survived the Covid winter (2020-21). This 5,000-word March 2019 article (written four months before Vail purchased the resorts) from DC Ski distills the rage around this abrupt pass policy change. Four years later, I still get emails about this, and not infrequently. I'm kind of surprised Vail hasn't offered some kind of Pennsylvania-specific pass, since they have more ski areas in that state (eight) than they have in any other, including Colorado (five). After all, the company sells an Ohio-specific pass that started at just $299 last season. Why not a PA-specific version for, say, $399, for people who want to ski always and only at Roundtop or Liberty or Big Boulder? Or a nights-only pass?I suppose Vail could do this, and I suspect they won't. The Northeast Value Pass – good for mostly unlimited access at all of the company's ski areas from Michigan on east – sold for $514 last spring. A midweek version ran $385. A seven-day Epic Day Pass good at all the Pennsylvania ski areas was just $260 for adults and $132 for kids aged 5 to 12. I understand that there is a particular demographic of skiers who will never ski north of Harrisburg and will never stop blowing up message boards with their disappointment and rage over this. The line between a sympathetic character and a tedious one is thin, however, and eventually we're all better off focusing our energies on the things we can control.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 9/100 in 2023, and number 395 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Feb. 1. It dropped for free subscribers on Feb. 4. To receive future pods as soon as they're live and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoDavy Ratchford, Vice President and General Manager of Snowbasin Resort, UtahRecorded onJanuary 31, 2023About SnowbasinClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The R. Earl Holding FamilyPass affiliations: Ikon Pass, Mountain CollectiveLocated in: Huntsville, UtahYear founded: 1940Closest neighboring ski areas: Nordic Valley (30 minutes), Powder Mountain (35 minutes), Woodward Park City (1:05), Utah Olympic Park (1:08), Park City (1:15), Deer Valley (1:15), Snowbird (1:15), Alta (1:20), Solitude (1:20), Brighton (1:25), Sundance (1:40), Cherry Peak (1:45), Beaver Mountain (2:00) – travel times vary considerably based upon weather and trafficBase elevation: 6,450 feetSummit elevation: 9,350 feetVertical drop: 2,900 feetSkiable Acres: 3,000Average annual snowfall: 300 inchesTrail count: 111Lift count: 12­­ (One 15-passenger tram, 2 eight-passenger gondolas, 2 six-packs, 2 high-speed quads, 2 triples, 1 ropetow, 2 carpets) – Snowbasin will add a third six-pack on an all-new line this summer (more on this below).Why I interviewed himFor 60 years it sat there, empty, enormous, unnoticed. Utah skiing was Park City and Alta; Snowbird in the ‘70s; Deer Valley in the ‘80s; sometimes Solitude and Brighton. No need to ski outside that powder pocket east of SLC: in 1995, an Alta lift ticket cost $25, and the area resorts frequently landed on ski magazine “least-crowded” lists.The November 2000 issue of Ski distilled Snowbasin's malaise:Though skiers were climbing the high ridgeline that overlooks the small city of Ogden as far back as the Thirties, Alta founder Alf Engen officially discovered Snowbasin in 1940. At that time the high, sunny basin was used for cattle range, but it was so overgrazed that eroded topsoil and bloated carcasses of dead cows were tainting Ogden's water supply. Working with the U.S. Forest Service, Ogden's town fathers decided that a ski resort would provide income and recreation while also safeguarding the water supply. A deal was struck with the ranch owner, and Snowbasin opened for business.In the 60 years since, the resort has struggled under five owners, including Vail-founder Pete Seibert, who owned it in the mid-Eighties. The problem was a lack of lodging. Snowbasin was too far from Salt Lake City to attract out-of-state skiers and too far from Ogden to use the city's aging railroad center as a resort base. Successive owners realized that to succeed, Snowbasin needed a base village, but building one from scratch is a costly proposition. So for half a century, the resort has remained the private powder stash of Ogden locals and the few lucky skiers who have followed rumors of deep snow and empty lifts up Ogden Canyon.In 1984, Earl Holding, an oil tycoon who had owned Sun Valley since 1978, purchased the resort from Seibert (process the fact that Snowbasin was once part of the Vail portfolio for a moment). For a long time, nothing much changed. Then came the 2002 Olympics. In a single offseason in 1998, the resort added two gondolas, a tram, and a high-speed quad (John Paul), along with the thousand-ish-acre Strawberry terrain pod. A new access road cut 13 miles off the drive from Salt Lake City. Glimmering base lodges rose from the earth.Still, Snowbasin languished. “But despite the recent addition of modern lifts, it has still failed to attract more than 100,000 skier visits the past two seasons,” Ski wrote in 2000, attributing this volume partly to “the fact that the Olympics, not today's lift ticket revenue, is the management's priority.” Holding, the magazine reported, was considering a bizarre name change for the resort to “Sun Valley.” As in, Sun Valley, Utah. Reminder: there was no social media in 2000.That's all context, to make this point: the Snowbasin that I'm writing about today – a glimmering end-of-the-road Ikon Pass jewel with a Jetsonian lift fleet – is not the Snowbasin we were destined to have. From backwater to baller in a generation. This is the template, like it or not, for the under-developed big-mountain West. Vail Mountain, Park City, Snowbird, Palisades Tahoe, Breckenridge, Steamboat: these places cannot accommodate a single additional skier. They're full. The best they can do now is redistribute skiers across the mountain and suck more people out of the base areas with higher-capacity lifts. But with record skier visits and the accelerating popularity of multi-mountain passes that concentrate more of them in fewer places, we're going to need relief valves. And soon.There are plenty more potential Snowbasins out there. Mountains with big acreage and big snowfall but underdeveloped lift and lodging infrastructure and various tiers of accessibility issues: White Pass, Mission Ridge, Silver Mountain, Montana Snowbowl, Great Divide, Discovery, Ski Apache, Angel Fire, Ski Santa Fe, Powder Mountain, Sierra-at-Tahoe, Loveland. There are dozens more.Snowbasin's story is singular and remarkable, a testament to invested owners and the power of media magnification to alter the fate of a place. But the mountain's tale is instructive as well, of how skiing can reorient itself around something other than our current version of snowy bunchball, the tendency for novice soccer players to disregard positions and swarm to wherever the ball moves. Snowbasin didn't matter and now it does. Who's next?What we talked aboutUtah's amazing endless 2022-23 snow season; an Irish fairytale; skiing Beaver Mountain in jeans; helping to establish Utah's Major League Soccer team and then leaving for the ski industry; “if you have a chance to raise your family in the mountains, you should do that”; the unique characteristic of a ski career that helps work-life balance; much love for the Vail Fam; the Holding family legacy; “Snowbasin is a gift to the world”; the family's commitment to keeping Snowbasin independent long-term; “they're going to put in the best possible things, all the time”; amazing lodges, bathrooms and all; Snowbasin's Olympic legacy and potential future involvement in the Games; breaking down the DeMoisy Express six-pack that will go up Strawberry this summer; what the new lift will mean for the Strawberry gondola; soccer fans versus ski fans; managing a resort in the era of knucklehead social media megaphones; “I've lost a lot of employees to guests”; taming the rumor machine; reflecting on the Middle Bowl lift upgrade; long-term upgrades for the Becker and Porcupine triples; Snowbasin's ambitious base-area redevelopment plan, including an all-inclusive Club Med, new lifts and terrain, and upgraded access road; “the amount of desire to own something here is huge”; what happens with parking once the mountain builds a village over it; the curse of easy access; breaking down the new beginner terrain and lifts that will accompany the village; whether future large-scale terrain expansion is possible; and leaving the Epic Pass for Ikon and Mountain Collective.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewLast month, Snowbasin announced that it will build the DeMoisy Express, a long-awaited six-pack that will run parallel to the Strawberry Gondola on a slightly shorter line, for the 2023-24 ski season. Here's where it will sit on the current trailmap (highlighted below):This will be Snowbasin's second six-pack in just two years, and it follows the resort's 2021 announcement of an ambitious base-area development plan, which will include new beginner terrain, several new lifts, a mixed-use pedestrian village, access-road improvements, and an all-inclusive Club Med resort. Here's a rendering of the reconfigured base at full build-out:Snowbasin, along with sister resort Sun Valley, also stalked off the Epic Pass last year, fleeing for the Mountain Collective and Ikon passes. “Because we're smart,” Ratchford half-joked when I asked him why the resorts left Epic after just three years. He framed the switch as an opportunity to expose the resorts to new skiers. Snowbasin surely will not be the last resort to change allegiances. Don't think big indies like Jackson Hole, Taos, and Revelstoke aren't listening when Vail calls, offering them a blank check to change jerseys.What I got wrongI had an on-the-fly moment where I mixed up the Wildcat Express six-pack and the Littlecat Express high-speed quad. I asked Ratchford how they were going to upgrade Little Cat (as suggested in the base-area redevelopment image above), when it was already a six-pack. Dumb stuff happens in the moment during these podcasts, and while I guess I could ask the robots to fix it, I'd rather just own the mistake and keep moving.Why you should ski SnowbasinI love skiing Alta and Snowbird, but I don't love skiing anywhere enough to endure the mass evacuation drill that is a Cottonwoods powder-day commute. Not when there's a place like Snowbasin where you can just, you know, pull into the parking lot and go skiing.What you'll find when you arrive is as good as anything you'll hunt down in U.S. skiing. Maybe not from a total snowfall perspective – though 300 inches is impressive anywhere outside of Utah – but from a lift-and-lodge infrastructure point of view. Four – soon to be five – high-speed chairlifts, a tram and two gondolas, and a couple old triple chairs that Ratchford tells me will be replaced fairly soon, and probably with high-speed quads. The lodges are legendary, palaces of excess and overbuild, welcome in an industry that makes Lunch-Table Death-Match a core piece of the experience. If you need to take your pet elephant to the bathroom, plug Snowbasin into your GPS – I assure you the stalls can accommodate them.But, really, you ski Snowbasin because Snowbasin is easy to get to and easy to access, with the Ikon Pass that most people reading this probably already have, and with terrain that's as good as just about anything else you're going to find in U.S. America.Podcast NotesOn Park City: Ratchford referred obliquely to the ownership change at Park City in 2014, saying, “if you know the history there…” Well, if you don't know the history there, longtime resort owner Powdr Corp made the biggest oopsie in the history of lift-served skiing when it, you know, forgot to renew its lease on the mountain. Vail, in what was the most coldblooded move in the history of lift-served skiing, installed itself as the new lessee in what I can imagine was a fit of cackling glee. It was amazing. You can read more about it here and here. If only The Storm had existed back then.On the Olympics: While I don't cover the Olympics at all (I completely ignored them last year, the first Winter Games in which The Storm existed), I do find their legacy at U.S. ski resorts interesting. Only five U.S. ski areas have hosted events: Whiteface (1980), Palisades Tahoe (1960), and, in 2002, Deer Valley, Park City, and Snowbasin. Ratchford and I talk a bit about this legacy, and the potential role of his resort in the upcoming 2030 or 2034 Games – Salt Lake City is bidding to host one or the other. Read more here.On megapasses: Snowbasin has been all over the place with megapasses. Here's its history, as best I can determine:* 2013: Snowbasin joins the Powder Alliance reciprocal coalition (it is unclear when Snowbasin left this coalition)* 2017: Snowbasin joins Mountain Collective for 2017-18 ski season* 2019: Snowbasin joins Epic Pass, leaves Mountain Collective for 2019-20 ski season* 2022: Snowbasin leaves Epic Pass, re-joins Mountain Collective and joins Ikon Pass for 2022-23 ski seasonThe Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 8/100 in 2023, and number 394 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Ogden Friends of Acoustic Music & Powder Mountain on this Music and Mountains Episode of OAA   December 12, 2022 Arts & Adventure Show with Reba Nissen & Michelle Tanner of Ogden Friends of Acoustic Music, and JP, Nichole Dye, and Michelle… of Powder Mountain   Where Arts & Adventure summits the airwaves, this is the Ogden Arts & Adventure Show!! I'm R. Brandon Long, along with Todd Oberndorfer and we are your hosts for the greatest podcast in all the land.   HOSTS: Todd & Brandon   GUESTS:   Arts: Reba Nissen, Michelle Tanner // Ogden Friends of Acoustic Music (OFOAM) Adventure: JP, Nichole Dye, and Michelle  // Powder Mountain   Thank you to BANYAN1 for powering today's Episode of the Ogden Arts & Adventure Show! Listen and Subscribe to Ogden Arts & Adventure on YouTube! Look for us on Facebook, Instagram, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, thebanyancollective.com, and on the Podbean App for Android & iPhones.   DM us on Instagram @ogdenadventure   OUTDOOR JUKEBOX “Come Together” // Standards & Substandards on Van Sessions at The Monarch

Ogden Friends of Acoustic Music & Powder Mountain on this Music and Mountains Episode of OAA   December 12, 2022 Arts & Adventure Show with Reba Nissen & Michelle Tanner of Ogden Friends of Acoustic Music, and JP, Nichole Dye, and Michelle… of Powder Mountain   Where Arts & Adventure summits the airwaves, this is the Ogden Arts & Adventure Show!! I'm R. Brandon Long, along with Todd Oberndorfer and we are your hosts for the greatest podcast in all the land.   HOSTS: Todd & Brandon   GUESTS:   Arts: Reba Nissen, Michelle Tanner // Ogden Friends of Acoustic Music (OFOAM) Adventure: JP, Nichole Dye, and Michelle  // Powder Mountain   Thank you to BANYAN1 for powering today's Episode of the Ogden Arts & Adventure Show! Listen and Subscribe to Ogden Arts & Adventure on YouTube! Look for us on Facebook, Instagram, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, thebanyancollective.com, and on the Podbean App for Android & iPhones.   DM us on Instagram @ogdenadventure   OUTDOOR JUKEBOX “Come Together” // Standards & Substandards on Van Sessions at The Monarch

Today's guest is the co-founder of the Summit Group and has built a global community of entrepreneurs, academics, scientists, spiritual leaders, and beyond. Elliott's journey to success has been anything but conventional and on this podcast, he will share his view on the unconventional journey to success.   Elliott Bisnow is a co-founder of Summit Group, whose family of organizations includes Powder Mountain, Summit Series, Summit Junto, and Summit Impact. Bisnow is a startup investor, having made almost 50 early-stage investments, including Uber, Coinbase, Warby Parker & Allbirds. At 20 years old, Bisnow started Bisnow Media with his dad Mark, out of his college dorm room. Over the next decade, they grew the business into the largest commercial real estate media company in the world and it was acquired in 2016 by Wicks Group. Listen out for: - The story of how the first summit series started. ( Which Elliott paid for with his own credit card!) - How Elliott bought the largest ski resort in the US. - Why every business needs a community. - The importance of making big plans.   Bonus:                                                                          - Find out more about the Summit Series here

Across an industry that is rapidly changing, Utah-based Snowsports Industries America is leading the way. Nick Sargent, a former ski racer, World Cup ski tuner and marketing chief for Burton, is pioneering efforts to change SIA from a trade show company to a global leader in data-based marketing, sustainability and diversity to grow the equipment industry across America. He joins Last Chair to dive into the story and how a 2016 move of SIA to Utah was pivotal to its evolution.Sargent grew up on skis near Stowe, Vt., cross country skiing to school, ripping alpine turns on Mount Mansfield and talking his dad into buying him a Burton Backhill as a kid before snowboards were a thing. In college, he built a passion for the western mountains ski racing for Western State in Colorado.His career path took him right into the ski industry, serving as one of the original ski technicians at Park City's Rennstall, which led him to a few years of ski tuning for Dynastar/Lange on the World Cup before landing a job with Salomon and later Burton, where his savvy approach to marketing brought brands to life.When he took on leadership of SIA in 2015, he oversaw its transformation from a trade show company to an organization developing a roadmap for the sport's future. Topics turned to climate – how can the industry mitigate the number of winter days it was losing each season. Sustainability – what steps can be taken to recycle products. And diversity – how can skiing and snowboarding become more inclusive.The catalyst for much of that change was a board-directed move of SIA to Utah from its previous home outside Washington, D.C. Instantly, the organization became more connected to its sport.In this episode of Last Chair, shares fun and insightful stories from his days tuning skis in Park City to his yearlong persistence that led to his tenure with Dynastar and how he developed one of the most successful hospitality houses for Salomon at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Utah.What fostered your love for outdoor sport?My mom encouraged us to stay outside as much as possible. And we were just having the time of our lives playing in the snow and the woods and the farm fields. It was a real Tom Sawyer type of upbringing. That's what it was all about … just having fun. Winter is long and the more fun you could have – a winter was more enjoyable and you almost were disappointed when spring came around because you wanted to keep keep riding and skiing and sledding and having fun with your buddies in the snow.How did you initially make your way to Utah after college?I had a friend and a ski coach of mine for a little while, Will Goldsmith, and he was living in Crested Butte. He invited me to come work at a new ski shop that he and another colleague, Brian Burnett, were starting, called Rennstall in the early 90s. I came to Park City and couldn't believe the lights and the people and the buildings. I thought it was the right place for me at that time. And that was really the golden ticket –  learn how to tune skis at a world class level, get exposure to a lot of different athletes from around the world and also get a lot of exposure to the ski companies.What motivated SIA to move to Utah in 2016?(The board said} ‘we want you to move the organization to Utah. And we think Park City would be the best location. All roads come through Utah in the winter sport business. And there's a number of member companies that belong to SIA. It would be great for us to be closer to our business, closer to the sport, and put us in a place where we're going to be front and center.'What has made Utah a good home for the winter sports industry?Since around 2002, Utah had a mandate to attract winter sport brands to the state. It's why Rossignol is here … Amer, Salomon, Atomic, Descente and Black Diamond, they've been here for a long time, Scott Bikes and so on. It's just one of the best environments for a company, specifically if you are an outdoor or a winter sport brand, it has all that you need from the snow perspective, from an outdoor perspective, from a biking, hiking, hunting perspective, you know, whatever your sport is, Utah has it. But I would say, you know, one of the appealing factors for myself and moving SIA here was the proximity to the airport, the proximity to Salt Lake City, the proximity to the Cottonwoods. Snowbasin, Powder Mountain.How does SIA approach climate?Climate change is the largest threat to the winter sport business. (The winter sport industry) drives an engine for this state and the community. We need climate. So, you know, We started an initiative called Climate United. It's a way that we can gather our members, the suppliers, manufacturers, retailers and the resorts to start to pay attention to climate. And we've lost 35 days of winter in the last 30 years. They're working with different groups around the country and addressing climate and raising awareness of the effects of climate. We're working hard with the Biden administration and the Inflation Reduction Act, which was just passed. I'm really proud of the work that the team has done here to help push that across the line.And how do you approach sustainability?A lot of people will say climate and sustainability are the same thing. But sustainability is how we work with clean manufacturing and really doing the right things for your company and your business that set yourselves apart. Whether you're reducing your carbon emissions, your greenhouse gas output, whether you are putting in solar panels, having gardens, mandating that your product is manufactured in a clean and reducing your waste – those are elements that really come into play and we have a long way to go. We have a lot of leaders out there. Burton Snowboards is doing a great job. Rossignol is doing a great job. Patagonia -- the news about giving their company to climate. I mean, that's the ultimate!How important is diversity to sport growth?It's beyond a moral imperative. It is a business imperative. The funnel of winter sport participants is getting narrow. We had a huge boom in the sixties and seventies and eighties and the baby boomers had carried this forward. But unfortunately, it's been a wealthy white man's game. It's our job to change that. It's our destiny to open open up the outdoors to a more diverse audience and get more people comfortable in snow no matter what color you are or your gender or your sexual preference or things that don't matter. All that matters is that you're getting outside and having fun.On the equipment side, how have skiing and snowboarding innovated together?The shaped ski made it easier for beginners and intermediate to pick up the sport and learn how to turn their skis so much that snowboards have adapted shape as well to make it easier for people to ride and get comfortable when they're on snow. The other one was twin tips. That inspiration came from snowboarding and giving people the ability to go backwards or forwards, not only on snowboard, but also skis. They were feeding off each other and the designs were very simple and easy to execute.You've been living in Utah now at times over a span of 30 years. Favorite run?I'm a little reluctant to share it with everyone. But it's no secret. When you're at Alta on the Supreme Lift and you go far, far out there to Last Chance, those woods out there, you can still get powder a few days after a big storm. 

Across an industry that is rapidly changing, Utah-based Snowsports Industries America is leading the way. Nick Sargent, a former ski racer, World Cup ski tuner and marketing chief for Burton, is pioneering efforts to change SIA from a trade show company to a global leader in data-based marketing, sustainability and diversity to grow the equipment industry across America. He joins Last Chair to dive into the story and how a 2016 move of SIA to Utah was pivotal to its evolution.Sargent grew up on skis near Stowe, Vt., cross country skiing to school, ripping alpine turns on Mount Mansfield and talking his dad into buying him a Burton Backhill as a kid before snowboards were a thing. In college, he built a passion for the western mountains ski racing for Western State in Colorado.His career path took him right into the ski industry, serving as one of the original ski technicians at Park City's Rennstall, which led him to a few years of ski tuning for Dynastar/Lange on the World Cup before landing a job with Salomon and later Burton, where his savvy approach to marketing brought brands to life.When he took on leadership of SIA in 2015, he oversaw its transformation from a trade show company to an organization developing a roadmap for the sport's future. Topics turned to climate – how can the industry mitigate the number of winter days it was losing each season. Sustainability – what steps can be taken to recycle products. And diversity – how can skiing and snowboarding become more inclusive.The catalyst for much of that change was a board-directed move of SIA to Utah from its previous home outside Washington, D.C. Instantly, the organization became more connected to its sport.In this episode of Last Chair, shares fun and insightful stories from his days tuning skis in Park City to his yearlong persistence that led to his tenure with Dynastar and how he developed one of the most successful hospitality houses for Salomon at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Utah.What fostered your love for outdoor sport?My mom encouraged us to stay outside as much as possible. And we were just having the time of our lives playing in the snow and the woods and the farm fields. It was a real Tom Sawyer type of upbringing. That's what it was all about … just having fun. Winter is long and the more fun you could have – a winter was more enjoyable and you almost were disappointed when spring came around because you wanted to keep keep riding and skiing and sledding and having fun with your buddies in the snow.How did you initially make your way to Utah after college?I had a friend and a ski coach of mine for a little while, Will Goldsmith, and he was living in Crested Butte. He invited me to come work at a new ski shop that he and another colleague, Brian Burnett, were starting, called Rennstall in the early 90s. I came to Park City and couldn't believe the lights and the people and the buildings. I thought it was the right place for me at that time. And that was really the golden ticket –  learn how to tune skis at a world class level, get exposure to a lot of different athletes from around the world and also get a lot of exposure to the ski companies.What motivated SIA to move to Utah in 2016?(The board said} ‘we want you to move the organization to Utah. And we think Park City would be the best location. All roads come through Utah in the winter sport business. And there's a number of member companies that belong to SIA. It would be great for us to be closer to our business, closer to the sport, and put us in a place where we're going to be front and center.'What has made Utah a good home for the winter sports industry?Since around 2002, Utah had a mandate to attract winter sport brands to the state. It's why Rossignol is here … Amer, Salomon, Atomic, Descente and Black Diamond, they've been here for a long time, Scott Bikes and so on. It's just one of the best environments for a company, specifically if you are an outdoor or a winter sport brand, it has all that you need from the snow perspective, from an outdoor perspective, from a biking, hiking, hunting perspective, you know, whatever your sport is, Utah has it. But I would say, you know, one of the appealing factors for myself and moving SIA here was the proximity to the airport, the proximity to Salt Lake City, the proximity to the Cottonwoods. Snowbasin, Powder Mountain.How does SIA approach climate?Climate change is the largest threat to the winter sport business. (The winter sport industry) drives an engine for this state and the community. We need climate. So, you know, We started an initiative called Climate United. It's a way that we can gather our members, the suppliers, manufacturers, retailers and the resorts to start to pay attention to climate. And we've lost 35 days of winter in the last 30 years. They're working with different groups around the country and addressing climate and raising awareness of the effects of climate. We're working hard with the Biden administration and the Inflation Reduction Act, which was just passed. I'm really proud of the work that the team has done here to help push that across the line.And how do you approach sustainability?A lot of people will say climate and sustainability are the same thing. But sustainability is how we work with clean manufacturing and really doing the right things for your company and your business that set yourselves apart. Whether you're reducing your carbon emissions, your greenhouse gas output, whether you are putting in solar panels, having gardens, mandating that your product is manufactured in a clean and reducing your waste – those are elements that really come into play and we have a long way to go. We have a lot of leaders out there. Burton Snowboards is doing a great job. Rossignol is doing a great job. Patagonia -- the news about giving their company to climate. I mean, that's the ultimate!How important is diversity to sport growth?It's beyond a moral imperative. It is a business imperative. The funnel of winter sport participants is getting narrow. We had a huge boom in the sixties and seventies and eighties and the baby boomers had carried this forward. But unfortunately, it's been a wealthy white man's game. It's our job to change that. It's our destiny to open open up the outdoors to a more diverse audience and get more people comfortable in snow no matter what color you are or your gender or your sexual preference or things that don't matter. All that matters is that you're getting outside and having fun.On the equipment side, how have skiing and snowboarding innovated together?The shaped ski made it easier for beginners and intermediate to pick up the sport and learn how to turn their skis so much that snowboards have adapted shape as well to make it easier for people to ride and get comfortable when they're on snow. The other one was twin tips. That inspiration came from snowboarding and giving people the ability to go backwards or forwards, not only on snowboard, but also skis. They were feeding off each other and the designs were very simple and easy to execute.You've been living in Utah now at times over a span of 30 years. Favorite run?I'm a little reluctant to share it with everyone. But it's no secret. When you're at Alta on the Supreme Lift and you go far, far out there to Last Chance, those woods out there, you can still get powder a few days after a big storm. 

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Oct. 10. Free subscribers got it on Oct. 13. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoKen Rider, general manager of Brundage Mountain, IdahoRecorded onOct. 3, 2022About BrundageClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Brundage Mountain Holdings LLC, which Rider describes as a collection of “Idaho families.”Pass affiliations: Indy PassReciprocal pass partners – view full list here:* 5 days at Red Lodge* 4 days at Diamond Peak* 3 days each at Loveland, Monarch, Ski Cooper, Sunlight, Mt. Bohemia, Snow King, Mt. Hood Meadows, Beaver Mountain* 2 days at Homewood* Limited tickets available at Powder Mountain* Half off lift tickets at AltaLocated in: McCall, IdahoClosest neighboring ski areas: Little Ski Hill (10 minutes), Tamarack (47 minutes)Base elevation: 5,882 feetSummit elevation: 7,803 feet at SargentsVertical drop: 1,920 feetSkiable Acres: 1,920 acresAverage annual snowfall: 320 inchesTrail count: 70 (46% black, 33% intermediate, 21% beginner)Lift count: 6 (1 high-speed quad, 4 triples, 1 surface lift - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Brundage's lift fleet)Uphill capacity: 7,900 skiers per hourWhy I interviewed himIn April, I put together a list of 11 ski areas offering bomber reciprocal season pass benefits. Since the passes I chose are inexpensive and offer free days at up to 50 partners, they've become a bit of a cheat code for the adventure set ready to break from (or supplement) Epic or Ikon - even for skiers who live nowhere near the mountain. With that wink-wink in mind, I contacted each ski area to ask whether they mailed season passes. Brundage's answer led to an email exchange that led to this podcast.Some version of that story is how around half of Storm Skiing Podcasts are booked, but the timing was fortuitous. I'd been meaning to reach out anyway. What was this big mountain with big snow that was an Indy Pass favorite? How does a place that's larger than Aspen Mountain and Aspen Highlands combined, that's roughly the size of Beaver Creek or Deer Valley, that gets as much snow as Winter Park, stand so unassuming on the national scene? Yes, the place only has one high-speed lift and no on-slope lodging. It's far off any interstate and not particularly close to any large cities. But it's up the road from a great resort town (McCall), and close enough to supernova-ing Boise to catch some of the ambient heat.Who are you, Brundage? And why are you so shy about it? It was time to talk.What we talked aboutDetermining this year's opening date; snowmaking at Eldora; going from grad school to $10-an-hour peddling Copper Mountain lift tickets; working at heyday Intrawest; Tamarack in its Wild West 2004 grand opening; Tamarack's decline and current renaissance; Grand Targhee; McCall 101; the Little Ski Hill; how mountain-town pricing pressures are hitting Idaho; wage bumps and creative employee housing at Brundage; modernizing Brundage; the ski area's ownership history and the group that purchased it two years ago; Brundage's aggressive, expansive master plan; the Temptation Knob beginner/intermediate pod and what sort of lifts we could see there; Brundage's 320 average annual inches of snow falls at its base; potential lifts up Hidden Valley and Sargents; whether the Centennial triple could make its way to another part of the mountain; potential expansion off the East Side/backside of Brundage; how large Brundage could become if the master plan is fully built out; whether Brundage could be or wants to be a national destination; whether Bluebird Express could ever be upgraded to a six-pack; the evolution of BEARTOPIA!!!; Brundage's snowmaking capabilities, potential, and water source; the incoming new lodge; fixing the flow from parking lot to lodge to rentals to ski school; finally slopeside housing; the tension between the keep-it-wild crowd and people who want to sleep on the mountain; season passes; why Brundage was an inaugural Indy Pass member; the percentage of Brundage skier visits that are Indy and whether the pass is causing peak-period crowding; why the ski area introduced Indy Pass blackouts last year; and why Brundage continues to offer reciprocal lift ticket partnerships (for now).                Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewBrundage is one of many indie resorts across the West that are leveling up. Under an Idaho-strong group that took ownership a few years ago, the ski area is reworking its master plan. The scale of this thing is pretty incredible. Observe:Compare that to the trailmap above. The new plan would add:* A new beginner/intermediate pod on Temptation Knob, adjacent to the existing Beartopia pod. Rider told me that he foresees a high-speed quad rising up the knob's 650-ish vertical feet and a surface lift off the backside.* A fixed-grip quad serving Hidden Valley from the base area.* A pair of lifts serving Sargents, which is currently on the trailmap as unpatrolled terrain. Rider said that he imagines both Sargents and Wayback as fixed-grip doubles or quads.* Two large intermediate/beginner pods off the backside, both likely served by fixed-grip quads – labelled “Lift G” and “Eastside” on the map.If completed, these expansions would vault Brundage into Bogus Basin/Sun Valley territory size-wise, but there's a lot more happening here: a new lodge that isn't 700 steps above the parking lot, on-site residences, extensive (and creative) employee housing, serious snowmaking investments, and much more.Brundage is also a bit of a barnstormer, among the top two Indy Pass resorts in the West every year since launch. New England, of course, is Indy ground zero, but this year Brundage finished 10th in redemptions out of 82 Indy Pass partners. The only Western resort to top out higher was Utah A-bomb Powder Mountain.That really surprised me. My guess would have been Indy's big Washington ski areas – Mission Ridge, White Pass, 49 Degrees North – and Silver Mountain plopped dead off Interstate 90 an hour east of Spokane. Yes, the Tamarack/Brundage combo – the mountains sit less than an hour apart – is one of Indy's best, but the McCall Miracle was a top draw even before Tamarack joined in 2020.Brundage is telling a good story, and it's getting better. Now was a great time for a check-in.Questions I wish I'd askedI meant to ask about the Rainbow Fire, which hit Brundage last month but ended up leaving minimal damage. An article on the resort's website summarizes the whole ordeal pretty well anyway:Just five days after lightning sparked a fire at the top of Brundage Mountain, the Forest Service has declared the Rainbow Fire to be officially under control.The Rainbow Fire was sparked by lightning during a thunderstorm event on the evening of Wednesday, September 7 and was immediately visible from both McCall and New Meadows. Initial attack efforts kept the fire from spreading beyond the upper Hidden Valley area, which is located to the north of Brundage Mountain's main front side runs.Smokejumpers and engine crews engaged with the fire the first night, and an aerial assault from helicopters and scoopers doused the flames with water and applied fire retardant at the top of Brundage Mountain the following day.Ground crews circled the fire zone with hoses and worked through the weekend to monitor the perimeter and put out hot spots. The fire was contained to an area of less than five acres.“The Brundage Mountain team would, once again, like to thank the smokejumpers, firefighters and fire managers who sprung into action to quickly control this fire,” says Brundage Mountain General Manager, Ken Rider. “Wednesday night's lightning event resulted in a number of new fire starts on the Payette National Forest. The efforts to contain and control those new fires, while continuing to make progress on larger, existing fires in the area, speaks to the skill, dedication and hard work of our friends at the Payette National Forest and partner organizations like SITPA, the BLM and Lone Peak Fire Department from Utah.”Brundage Mountain crews will be assessing the Rainbow Fire scar but the impacts on skiers and riders are expected to be minimal.“The torching and visible flames the first night of this fire were alarming,” added Rider. “We are beyond grateful that it will have such a minor impact on our overall operations and on the skiing and riding public.”What I got wrongI say in the intro that Rider began his ski career at Intrawest. As we discuss in the conversation, his first ski job was actually at Eldora. I also asked Rider about going to the “new ski state” of Idaho when he went to work at Tamarack – I meant to say “new-to-you ski state,” since Rider was moving there from Colorado. I also have it stuck in my head that Beaver Creek, opened in 1980, was the last major ski resort developed in the U.S. prior to Tamarack in 2004, but Rider correctly reminded me that it was Deer Valley, in 1981. One could also argue for Yellowstone Club (1997), Mount Bohemia (2000), Silverton (2001), or even Whitetail (1991). But those all have some sort of asterisk: too oligarchy, too minimalist, too borderline-backcountryish, too Pennsylvania. The NSAA keeps a list here, though it's missing quite a few ski areas (Wolf Creek), and has a bunch that haven't operated in a while (Gateway, New Hampshire; Elk Ridge, Arizona).Why you should ski BrundageIf you're reading this far down the page then you don't need much of a nudge to pencil “ski 2,000-acre, 2,000-foot-vertical-drop ski area with 300-plus inches of snow” into your winter calendar. The skiing, like most Idaho skiing, is pretty great. But I always feel a sense of urgency when describing ski areas that are poised to unfold like a pop-up book into something far larger. It's only going to take a few more seasons of Epic and Ikon mountains disgorging the Epkonotron onto their slopes to turbocharge the Skipass Hack-O-Matic 5000. Savvy vacationers are going to figure out the McCall + a growing Brundage + a growing Tamarack = a-good-ski-vacation-without-feeling-as-though-you're-re-enacting-the-invasion-of-Normandy equation at some point.Brundage will never be Park City or Palisades Tahoe. But it will get bigger and better and busier than it is today. So go now, while their longest lift is still a fixed-grip triple crawling 1,653 vertical feet up the incline, over hillocks and pine forests and with the lakes placid in the distance. Enjoy the motion in the midst of stillness, the big mountain with the little-mountain vibe and prices and energy. And look around and imagine what it will one day be.Podcast notesRider and I discussed the Beartopia map briefly. It's a pretty brilliant rework of Brundage's beginner corner. If you don't have kids, perhaps you don't agree. But I recently sat beside my 5-year-old for a flight across the Atlantic, during which time he became obsessed with the route map displayed on the seatback monitor. The touchscreen offered two options: the regular map or the “kids' map.” The kids' map was nothing more than the regular map with some skunks and deer and bears superimposed over the atlas. And yet so extreme was his delight that you would have thought I had just invented cookie burgers. Yes Son it's just like a hamburger but instead of meat there's a giant cookie in there and yes of course you can have seven of them.Anyway, here's the map:Rider at one point compares the Brundage baselodge to “a steamship on the Mississippi Delta.” It was not meant to be a compliment. The lodge, like those antique riverboats, is staggered, boxy, imposing. An anachronism in our architecture-at-peace-with-the-earth moment. Still, as an avid reader of Twain, I found the comparison interesting, a literary-historic reference in a podcast about an Idaho ski area. Those sorts of thinkers, fecund and surprising, are the sorts of folks I want running my local.I also mentioned in the intro that Brundage is my third Idaho podcast this year. In January, I went deep on the Tamarack story with the resort's president, Scott Turlington:Then, this summer, I chatted with Bogus Basin General Manager Brad Wilson:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 109/100 in 2022, and number 355 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane). You can also email skiing@substack.com.The Storm is exploring the world of lift-served skiing all year long. Join us.Like The Storm? Invite the rest of your organization in via a per-subscriber discount that can be managed through a single administrator: Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

We take a bit of a detour from pure self-help in this episode. I started off with the story of a guy who wanted to be an entrepreneur, yet had no idea how to be, and was as he said, “socially uncalibrated,” which in his case meant he was the guy always trying to sell you something that everyone avoided. His first two attempts at being an entrepreneur, completely failed. Completely. Meaning he created a business and didn't make one sale. It's a great story for anyone who feels out of their depth or who is meeting literally zero success in some endeavors. My guest, is Elliot Bisnow. Elliott's somewhat ridiculous story takes him from literally zero, to now being co-founder of Summit Group, which began and still includes the Summit Series events that are as much festival as self-help conference. They've held 250 of the events, loaded with celebrities, thought-leaders, billionaires and politicians. And lots of people like you and me. The event has hosted luminaries like Jeff Bezos (bay-zos), Richard Branson, Jessica Alba, Shonda Rhimes, Brené Brown, and Al Gore in some of the most beautiful places on earth like Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Squaw Valley, California, and Washington, D.C. In this talk though, we really got into discussing the nuances of what makes the events so successful, as opposed to all the events you are used to attending. How they focus on who is attending and where the event takes place, even more than who is speaking. So if you have any interest in holding events, whether paid for as a business, or even just socially, you'll want to hear this. We even talk about what to look for in events as an attendee. Just really intriguing. A little more on Elliott, he's a startup investor, having made almost 50 early stage investments, including Uber, Coinbase, Warby Parker & Allbirds. At the start of the show in a moment, you'll hear he's talking to me from Powder Mountain ski resort in Utah, America's largest ski resort which he is co-owner of. Elliott and his three biz partners recently published the book, MAKE NO SMALL PLANS, which entails the again, fairly ridiculous story of how four, very average guys, created such a successful company after doing so many things wrong. I think you'll find great comfort and come away feeling you can be as clueless, and successful, as they have been. The story really inspired me to think bigger than I have as of late. You can get the book, Make No Small Plans, anywhere, and find Elliott and his pals at Summit.co. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Elliott Bisnow is the Co-Founder of Summit, whose family of organizations includes Powder Mountain, Summit Series, and Summit Junto. He's also a startup investor in 50 companies like Uber, Coinbase, Warby Parker, and Albert. Elliott describes his passion for building companies and cultures, connecting deeply with people on his teams, and building events and communities. He believes that what is good for business should be what is good for the community and the world.     https://bit.ly/TLP-318   Key Takeaways [2:20] Elliott Bisnow is focused on building companies with a great culture, and teams he loves, connecting deeply with the people who work at the Summit businesses, designing and building events and experiences, and meeting the people that come. He loves building communities and getting to understand them. He loves creating teams he wants to be part of. Elliott is a people person. [4:31] The least important part of any business is caring about profits and making money. Those things come from a well-run business with a great product. Good entrepreneurs, good CEOs, and good leaders are obsessed and focused on the thing that their company is making or selling. Consider why you are an entrepreneur. What are you bringing to the world? Elliott loves designing products. [6:239] Elliott recalls growing up watching MTV's Cribs and seeing the Forbes 400 list, which he remembers with negative associations. He remembers the first group of entrepreneurs he met who cared about the product, the customers, and the communities they were serving. He contrasts the old business model of profit-seeking with a new business model focused on the good of the community. [11:09] Are new entrepreneurs better people or do they just talk more about what they do in the community than the CEOs of the '90s talked about? Growing up, Elliott never heard of CEOs doing good in the community. He realized he could build businesses that combine profits and purpose. He says, “Profit Enough. What's good for our business should be good for the community and the world.” [12:46] It's a lot more enjoyable to do business when your team is happy, when your community is happy, and when you feel good about what you're creating. [13:44] Elliott liked college as a place to start a business because you have your dorm, food, and classes even if the business fails. His first two businesses in college didn't work. His third idea did work so he quit college and moved back in with his parents. He made every possible mistake as he learned how to run a startup. The key is to take small risks and make small mistakes and learn from them. [16:56] Elliott builds community by creating things that allow people to self-select into them, being very defined about its mission. However, once people have self-selected into an event, you can find yourself with a lot of similar voices and little diversity. [19:21] Elliott has kept a notepad on his phone for over 10 years. Anytime he hears something or reads something interesting, he writes a note down. He might write one note in a week or three in a day. He has thousands of notes he re-reads. He receives wisdom from other people in two ways: the first way is by reading one book a week; the second is by meeting people in the flow of life and listening to them. [21:45] Elliott has an 80% rule about conversations. In 80% of his conversations, he tries to ask questions. He will ask a question rather than answer one. He finds wisdom from ordinary people. Between his conversations and reading books, he's getting a lot of good ideas. [24:59] When Elliott realized he wanted to be an entrepreneur, he read a lot of very simple books about people's journeys to becoming entrepreneurs. Then he was done reading about entrepreneurs and wanted to go be an entrepreneur. [25:36] Elliott sees that MBA courses would serve people better after the people had experienced some years in business. Elliott spends a lot of time thinking about the books he is going to read. He identifies the types of books he wants to read. He also reads some books for fun. When he meets people that don't read, he suggests books that are just for fun, to get them to fall in love with reading. [27:31] You have to be in a good mindset to sit and read a business book. Elliott will skip a few pages ahead if he gets bored. He doesn't get stuck on pages. Reading is a big part of Elliott's life. [28:30] Elliott discusses the virtues of knowing when to quit and cites Warren Buffet who only makes small mistakes because he knows when to get out of a deal. He's never been in a massive mistake. [29:27] Elliott's view on ideas is that it's quite difficult to come up with good ideas, so you need to create a culture where the most ideas possible can come forward, no matter what they are. That's a hard environment to maintain when people naturally shoot down ideas or want to take credit for them. Elliott says there's no limit to what you can achieve if you give other people credit. [32:03] Elliott describes what it means to be a “favor-economy millionaire.” Build up a network of people with whom you trade for services. Having relationships where you and your network can help each other grow is extremely important. [35:05] Being an entrepreneur or a leader is hard. Making money is hard. Saving money is hard. Bartering makes it easier to do business. Relationships are like muscles and the more that you work with them, the more you nurture the relationships. Give to people and it will come back many times over. [36:32] Elliott's takeaway from his book, Make No Small Plans: Between the life people are living and the life they want to live, there's a lot of white space. Make No Small Plans, is in the context of the life that you want to live. Step out of anything that's held you back. Make plans to get to where you want to be. [40:06] Closing quote: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald.   Quotable Quotes “When you're an entrepreneur, you get to create your own culture and your own team.” “The least important part of any business is caring about profits and making money. Those things come from a well-run business with a great product. … Good entrepreneurs, good CEOs, and good leaders are obsessed and focused on the thing that their company is making or selling.” “At the crux of entrepreneurship is, ‘What is the thing that you're bringing to the world? Why are you an entrepreneur?'” “Just from a personal, selfish standpoint, it's a lot more enjoyable way to do business when your team is happy, when your community is happy, and when you actually feel really good about what you're creating.” “My main takeaway is that, as long as your mistakes are small, there's not very far to fall. … In the early days, the key is taking lots of small risks.” “There's a lot of emphasis placed on gaining tips and wisdom from super-famous people but I find that there's just as much wisdom to be had from every person in the world.” “The most important thing about reading is falling in love with reading. And so most people who don't read, I give them a few books that are just fun.” “You have to be in a good mindset to be able to sit and read a business book. And then I've developed a couple of tricks when it comes to reading, like skipping forward and if things are boring, don't let it hold you back; don't get stuck on pages.” “There are certain things where quitting is a virtue and it's a good skill to have.” “Between the life people want to live, and the life that they're living, there's a lot of white space. When I think about Make No Small Plans, it's in the context of the life that you want to live.”   Resources Mentioned Theleadershippodcast.com Sponsored by: Darley.com Elliott Bisnow on LinkedIn Make No Small Plans: Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community, by Elliott Bisnow,  Brett Leve,  Jeff Rosenthal, and Jeremy Schwartz Summit Powder Mountain Summit Junto Uber Coinbase Warby Parker Albert MTV Cribs Forbes 400 Allen-Bradley Shantaram: A Novel, by Gregory David Roberts  Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barak Obama Decision Points, by George W. Bush James A. Garfield Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression, by Christopher Knowlton The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way, by Richard Branson When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man, by Jerry Weintraub with Rich Cohen Ready Player One: A Novel, by Earnest Cline The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, by Ben Macintyre Daniel Pink Warren Buffet Google Facebook Gmail Corporate Competitor Podcast, with Don Yaeger  

In this episode, reporter Jordan Miller talks me through Summit County's emergency management plans should a wildfire spark in any of its communities during this historic drought. Also, reporter Julie Jag discusses how Powder Mountain, famous for its northern Utah ski lodge, is trying to draw people to its slopes during the summer months.

Selling With Love is more than a podcast! Join the community of like-minded entrepreneurs ready to overcome their sales blockages and transform the planet at: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14070148/ ===== Dreaming of organizing A-class events for entrepreneurs? Elliott Bisnow, the co-founder of the Summit Group, thinks big, chasing dreams and building communities. In this conversation, Elliot shares powerful lessons on how to build go from 0 to 1 with your idea, look for problems and develop solutions, and have sales-based conversations to build partnerships. A key message is to focus on what you're already good at while developing your network to get referrals and introductions organically. Listen carefully and take good notes about Elliot's journey, strategies and mindset. =====

GEAR:30 employee and also Powder Mountain employee joins us to chat about the new lift-served mountain bike trails at PowMow. - Like GEAR:30 on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GEAR30/ Follow GEAR:30 on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/gear_30/?hl=en Shop Premier Mountain Equipment at https://www.gearthirty.com Check out gear reviews and watch other great videos from GEAR:30 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8bAS978OE4 . Don't forget to subscribe.

Elliott Bisnow is a co-founder of Summit Group, whose family of organizations includes Powder Mountain, Summit Series, Summit Junto, and Summit Impact. Elliott and his co-founders just published their first book — Make No Small Plans: Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community._____Get your copy of Personal Socrates: Better Questions, Better Life  Connect with Marc >>>  Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter Drop a review and let me know what's resonating with you about the show!Thanks as always for listening and have the best day yet!*Behind the Human is proudly recorded in a Canadian made Loop Phone Booth*Special props

Everyone should try to build their own community. How attentive are you being to yours? It's so easy to slide into thinking that we're on our own, when we embark upon a new entrepreneurial journey. But if we make no small plans, we need to surround ourselves with those who support our vision! Welcome once again Dreamers, to the Do it with Dan Podcast! The place to truly dream with your eyes open. It's time to expand our experience with some more great discussion on the power of the mind in all things. Whether you want to manifest more wealth, emotional abundance or love in your life; this is the podcast for you. This week's guest, Elliott Bisnow, is a co-founder of Summit Group, whose family of organizations include Powder Mountain, Summit Series, Summit Junto, and Summit Impact. Bisnow is a startup investor, having made almost 50 early stage investments, including Uber, Coinbase, Warby Parker & Allbirds. At 20 years old, Bisnow started Bisnow Media with his dad Mark, out of his college dorm room. Over the next decade, they grew the business into the largest commercial real estate media company in the world and it was acquired in 2016 by Wicks Group. As the co-owner of America's largest ski resort, Powder Mountain, Bisnow lives in Eden, Utah. Bisnow sits on the board of Lindblad Expeditions (NASDAQ: LIND). Please share your stories with me over at dreamwithdan.com. Connect with Elliott here: See if you can find him… @summit To subscribe to my YouTube channel, please go here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMdAvGk6xa5fptmdULliJrg Want to manifest money now? Play the 'Money Game' to harness the power of micro-shifting to attract abundance immediately. Get your Ebook for $1. Buy NOW. Do you want inevitable & sustainable financial abundance, based on your own unique 'Money DNA'? Watch our brand new webinar Interested in working with Dan 1-2-1? In collaboration with other highly successful experts, he will help you reach financial freedom in 6 months or less: Apply Here *PLEASE RATE US AND SHARE* Join me on: Facebook Instagram Twitter Music Credit: "The Dreamer", Common Timestamps of interest: 01:27 - Welcome Elliott 08:00 - Cold call strategy 11:45 - The beginning of your journey 14:56 - Pearls of wisdom from cold calling 27:02 - The best decision I ever made 38:00 - A parting thought from Elliott #wellness #health #fitness #healthylifestyle #selfcare #love #motivation #mentalhealth #healthy #lifestyle #yoga #beauty #healing #mindfulness #selflove #nutrition #healthyliving #meditation #wellbeing #workout #skincare #gym #relax #life #weightloss #fitnessmotivation #inspiration #fit #instagood #bhfyp

Elena Brower, Glo instructor, bestselling author, teacher, artist and activist, hosts this episode of the podcast. Her guest is Jeff Rosenthal, co-author of Make No Small Plans: Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community. Jeff is the Co-Founder of Summit, best known for hosting global ideas festivals and events, and is the co-owner, principal designer, and developer of Summit Powder Mountain and Powder Mountain ski resort in Eden, Utah. Make No Small Plans was published in April, 2022. Along with his partners in the Summit event series and community, Jeff has written the story of how community becomes a powerful human technology.Elena Brower is a mom, teacher, artist, bestselling author and host of the Practice You Podcast._She _has taught yoga and meditation since 1999. Her first book, Art of Attention, has been translated into seven languages, and her second, Practice You, is a bestseller. Her third book, Being You, was released in early 2021. Elena's Essential Mentorship is beloved for bringing analog creativity to online study, and her spoken word work can be heard on Above & Beyond's Flow State albums.Links:Jeff's bookMake No Small Plans: Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building CommunityElena's BooksArt of Attention: Yoga for Teachers and PractitionersPractice You: A JournalBeing You: A JournalElena's PodcastPractice YouGLO classes:Elena Brower's Glo classes

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Starting in June, paid subscribers will receive podcasts three days before free subscribers.WhoDoug Fish, President and Founder of the Indy PassRecorded onMay 9, 2022About the Indy PassHere’s an overview of the 2022-23 Indy Pass suite:And here’s what that gets you access to:Why I interviewed himIt’s unfortunate that Steamboat, a personal favorite and one of Colorado’s most amiable mountains, has become the avatar for sticker-shock skiing, but there it is: $269 peak-day walk-up lift tickets last season. Any collateral pain is self-inflicted, and they seem committed to the process, so I don’t feel too bad hammering on them about it. Still, for readers of this newsletter, most of whom have next year’s Ikon Passes tucked into their jacket pockets by Easter, my ceaseless yammering about walk-up ticket prices can probably seem tedious and abstract, like detailing the logistical challenges of sustainable asteroid mining or the tolerable viral load of a brontosaurus: who cares?Which is a fair question. But as the three dozen or so mega-resorts that have mainlined this triple-digit ticket tactic race toward $300 for a day of skiing, a cartoonishly absurd double universe has materialized. One that makes comparisons like this possible: for $10 more than an Ikon-oblivious skier would pay for one day at Steamboat, they could have skied 162 days at 81 ski areas with a $279 Indy Pass. Which is probably more days than most skiers rack up in a decade, and more ski areas than they visit in a lifetime.It’s a hell of a bargain, is what I’m trying to say here, and an amazing product that the greater skiing public has, so far, failed to appreciate in large numbers. Indy predicted 400,000 redemptions this past season. The number came in at 125,000. That’s a 68.75 percent miss, which Fish attributes, in this interview, to overzealous predictions coming off the bomber Covid-induced boom season of 2020-21. What that means, for us skiers, is that this thing probably has plenty of room left to grow.“Growth” means a couple things here. First, more resorts are incoming. Fish promised as much in this interview, even in already crowded New England. The smaller-than-expected number of redemptions means the 85 percent cut of Indy revenue that goes to the resorts was not as diluted as Fish feared it could have been (he explains how the pass operates in the interview). Plus, the new Allied Resorts discount program is broad enough that this thing could easily reach a total of 200 downhill partners (it’s not unthinkable that the addition of cross-country ski areas could push that number toward 300).Second, more skiers are likely coming too. That’s a good thing. Numbers bring stability. Wouldn’t more skiers mean more redemptions? Yes, but it means more revenue, too, and since it’s likely that the most hardcore skiers – i.e. those most likely to redeem 30 days – are already in. Fish was comfortable enough with the average number of redemptions that he held prices steady for next season – and sales are strong as a result.For all the attention The Storm lavishes on the Indy Pass, the product is an industry minnow, not even three years old. Yet somehow this little pass with as many annual visits as an Eagle County weekend has stapled itself to the marquee alongside the Epic and Ikon passes, a toddler in size 14 boots. It’s been astonishing to watch it grow, but it will be more amazing still to see what happens when it grows into those knee-high kicks. Fish is the first three-time guest on The Storm Skiing Podcast. Yes, because he’s generous with his time and humble in his approach, but also because he keeps coming up with new things to say, keeps making the story more compelling, keeps making us believe that this is something worth talking about.What we talked aboutContinued discussion on whether any of the Mt. Hood ski areas would ever land on Indy; redemption and sales totals versus expectations for this past ski season; how the Indy Pass works from a business point of view; how Indy is able to sign headliners like Powder Mountain and Jay Peak, which could easily align with the Epic or Ikon passes; how Cannon kept visits high even as the mountain added an enormous number of blackout dates; White Pass finds the Epkon refugees; the power of Brundage and Tamarack as a combined destination; other popular Indy combos; the New England state that will definitely get a new full Indy Pass partner before next season; expansion potential in New York; the chances of Jay staying with Indy post-sale (whenever that happens); why Indy Pass prices will stay steady for 2022-23; why the Indy Pass processing fee exists and why it’s here to stay; the Indy Switch Pass; untangling the spaghetti bowl of last year’s blackout dates; fixing the Saturday problem; thoughts on the recent additions of Kelly Canyon, Bluewood, and Ski Sawmill; the surprising appeal of Swain; finally breaking into Colorado, with Sunlight; the number of Indy Pass visits that originate out of state; thoughts on Japan; dispensing with the resort target number; losing Marmot Basin; the genesis and purpose of the Allied Resorts program; begging Doug to shift Burke to full partner status; and why Indy began including cross-country ski areas and how the response has been so far.          Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewSince it debuted in 2008, the Epic Pass has both held steady and constantly evolved. Its premise, from the beginning, was fairly basic: unlimited access to all Vail Resorts, all the time. It launched with six mountains, and now includes access to 9,000. But almost annually, Vail has added some innovation or another: the Epic Local Pass, various versions of the Epic Day Pass, local and midweek passes, a massive lodging and on-mountain discount program, the Epic Mix tracking app, a payment plan, etc. Some of these innovations were more useful than others, but every year, we can expect something new. And that’s in addition to all the extra ski areas.Vail, skiing’s imperial fleet, rippling with aircraft carriers and battleships and submarines, is well equipped to dream up such annual salvos of newness. It’s impressive that Indy, with a staff that would be insufficient to captain a 30-foot fishing boat, has orchestrated a commando version of this evolution. The 2019 Indy Pass cost $199 and delivered two days each at 34 ski areas. There were no blackouts and no product variation (a few partners offered an add-on pass). The next year: 52 ski areas, plus a $99 kids pass and a $129 add-on pass, available uniformly across all partner ski areas. The Indy+ Pass and a payment plan also debuted. 2021 brought a (probably too large, Fish now admits) price increase, but access to 66 ski areas at launch and an additional 17 by December, including four in Japan.  By the time Indy confirmed its 2022-23 lineup last month, the roster stood at 83 downhill partners. An ambitious cross-country initiative seeks to add more than 30 Nordic partners by winter, and the standalone XC pass is just $69 (all Indy Pass holders get the XC days). And the Allied Resorts program, announced earlier this week, ensures that nearly any ski area that’s interested can fold itself into this nationally marketed network. Fish also held prices steady, upped the renewal discount, and introduced the Indy Switch Pass to encourage Epkon snobs to reconsider.There was plenty to talk about, is my point. And Fish, as always, accommodated, on one condition: for the love of God can we keep it to an hour?Questions I wish I’d askedI had meant to ask Doug about the possibility of pre-loading Indy tickets onto resort’s RFID cards, but I didn’t get to it. While he said that such integrations were “not practical,” he did provide the following statement, teasing a pretty cool tech upgrade coming for the season after next:In partnership with our tech partner Entabeni Systems, we will be rolling out an app for the 2023-24 season [I incorrectly indicated on Twitter earlier this week that this feature would be available for next ski season] that will allow our passholders to carry their pass on their phones. Among other features, it will contain a scannable QR code that can be read at the ticket window, eliminating the need for looking them up in our system.This app can be deployed without passing any additional costs on to our customers which we’d have to do if we issued a physical pass.What we got wrongI intimated that Powder Mountain was outside of the Wasatch Mountains, but the ski area in fact lies within this mountain range. I also suggested that Winter Park was a blacked-out mountain on the Ikon Pass, which it is not (on any version of the product other than the Ikon Session Pass). Doug also referred to “Wintergreen,” West Virginia. He meant Winterplace. Wintergreen is in Virginia, and is not an Indy Pass partner. Doug also referred to the marketing director of Sunlight, Colorado as “Tony Hawks” – his name is Troy Hawks, and you can (and should) follow him on Twitter here, since he’s the man who brough Indy Pass to Colorado.Why you should buy the Indy PassIn my head, gas is always a dollar a gallon. Even decades after that fleeting era when I pushed shopping carts for $4.35 an hour and drove a rusty pick-up, any sum over $15 to fill my gas tank baffles me. Candy bars are forever lodged at 35 cents, Hostess cupcakes at 55 cents – such were the prices when I would peddle my Huffy to the neighborhood Total in the 1980s.I’m sure there’s a name for this pricing nostalgia. Whatever it’s called, the first best thing about the Indy Pass has become a liability, as It-Used-to-Cost-$199 Bro forever peppers social media with his waxings of this bygone era. “When the Indy Pass came out, it was under $200 and there were no blackouts,” he will complain. “And it came with a pair of Volkls and a free Subaru. Now it costs $279, there’s all kinds of blackouts, and the courtesy ‘vehicle’ is just a Shetland pony without a saddle. It’s all going to hell!”Bros across America need to let it go. Yes, last year’s price jump was a little extreme. Fish admits as much in the interview. But it is still a very good deal – had it debuted at $279 with its current roster, it would seem like the greatest thing ever. That’s because it is. The glory in the Indy Pass is not in what it was – a coalition of 34 broadly distributed resorts – but in what it has become and is transforming into. We’re closing in on 100 partners, and we’ll likely blow right past that by the Fourth of July. God bless America. This is one damn fine product.There is one more dumbass Bro out there that befuddles Indy’s ascension: It’s-Not-Worth-It Bro. It’s-Not-Worth-It Bro’s narrative goes something like this: yes, it’s cool that Indy put all these mountains on one pass, but they’re not the sort of ski resorts that are “worth” traveling to Montana/Idaho/Utah for or anything.I beg your pardon? Scroll back to the chart at the top of this article. Red Lodge: 2,400 vertical feet, 1,635 acres, 250 inches of annual snowfall. Powder Mountain: 2,205 vert/8,464 acres (3,000 lift-served)/400 inches. Brundage: 1,921/1,920/320. Castle: 2,833/3,592/354. Exactly which district of Narnia do you call home if these numbers leave you yawning?There are a lot of good reasons to buy an Indy Pass: you live within a few hours of a half dozen or more partners and are looking for a reasonably priced family winter. You have an Epkon pass but are leary of voyaging through the gates of Mount Snow/Keystone/Mammoth/Crystal on a midwinter Saturday. You’ve already visited every high-speed demo center on the continent and are looking for something different. You’re Van Life Bro and want to ski an entire winter for less than five dollars. You want to support skiing’s equivalent of craft beer (only, in this case, the indie label is a lot less expensive). Or you just love skiing and everything about it, and you want to understand this dynamic world to the fullest extent possible.There are good reasons not to buy the Indy Pass, too: you don’t travel much, the mountains are too far, you are happy with your local, you dad’s private plane is too big to land at any mountain town airport other than Eagle. But if your goal is lots of skiing, and if you don’t exactly need a home mountain and have a little flexibility to travel, if you value novelty and don’t mind the occasional mile-long Hall double chair ride to the summit, then lock this thing in before prices increase on May 18.More Indy Pass on The Storm Skiing Podcast:Snow Ridge, New York GM Nick MirBeaver Mountain, Utah owner Travis SeeholzerLittle Switzerland, Nordic Mountain, The Rock Co-Owner Rick SchmitzTamarack, Idaho President Scott TurlingtonShawnee Mountain, Pennsylvania CEO Nick FredericksChina Peak, California CEO Tim CoheeLutsen and Granite Peak Owner Charles SkinnerCaberfae Peaks, Michigan Co-Owner and GM Tim MeyerWhaleback Executive Director Jon Hunt (recorded pre-Indy)Titus Mountain Co-Owner Bruce Monette Jr. (recorded pre-Indy)Indy Pass Founder Doug Fish (April 27, 2021 – 2nd appearance)West Mountain, New York owners Sara and Spencer Montgomery (recorded pre-Indy)Montage Mountain Managing Owner Charles Jefferson (recorded pre-Indy)Granite Peak, Wisconsin GM Greg FisherWaterville Valley, New Hampshire GM Tim SmithBolton Valley, Vermont President Lindsay DesLauriersBousquet GM and ownership (recorded pre-Indy)Saddleback, Maine GM Andy Shepard (recorded pre-Indy)Jay Peak, Vermont GM Steve WrightCannon Mountain, New Hampshire GM John DeVivoIndy Pass Founder Doug Fish (May 31, 2020 – 1st appearance)Berkshire East and Catamount, Massachusetts Owner Jon SchaeferBurk Mountain GM Kevin Mack (recorded pre-Indy)Magic Mountain, Vermont President Geoff HathewayThe Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 51/100 in 2022. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This episode is brought to you by Pendulum, InsideTracker, and Cozy Earth.Our greatest tool for learning and growing is each other. It might be easy to think that means we should surround ourselves with people who only share our specific interests or professions. But, we may actually gain the most from those we least expect to connect with. I've been so blessed to cross paths with many inspiring people in my life who have influenced how I pursue my passions in both work and my personal life. Today, I'm so excited to talk to Jeff Rosenthal, who has been a catalyst for me to collaborate with many others. Jeff is the Co-Founder of Summit, a cutting-edge organization best known for hosting global ideas festivals and events, and is the co-owner, principal designer, and developer of Summit Powder Mountain and Powder Mountain ski resort in Eden, Utah. He's the co-author of Make No Small Plans: Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community. This episode is brought to you by Pendulum, InsideTracker, and Cozy Earth. Pendulum is the first company to figure out how to harness the amazing benefits of Akkermansia in a probiotic capsule. To receive 20% off your first purchase of Pendulum's Akkermansia probiotic supplement, go to Pendulumlife.com and use code MARK20. InsideTracker is a personalized health and wellness platform like no other. Right now they're offering my community 20% off at insidetracker.com/drhyman.Cozy Earth makes the most comfortable, temperature-regulating, nontoxic sheets on the market. Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code MARK40. Here are more details from our interview (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): The two types of people who are “afflicted by ambition” (8:59 / 5:30)How Jeff and his colleagues at Summit approach their events (12:03 / 9:21)The science of altruism and winning at the game of giving (15:57 / 13:16)Applying the mindset of possibility to creating Summit events (22:42 / 19:20)Jeff and his colleagues' unique approach to purchasing a mountain (28:18 / 25:14) The secrets to bringing fun to Summit events (33:18 / 28:30)The number-one metric Summit considers as a measure of success (36:16 / 30:20)My life-changing experience at a Summit event (36:48 / 31:56)The power of community and how to build it for ourselves (41:17 / 34:36) Reimagining our world and dreaming big (53:07 / 45:00) Get a copy of Jeff's book, Make No Small Plans: Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community, at summit.co/make-no-small-plans. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

So does Greg now hold the official, unofficial ski descent record at Powder Mountain? He gave it a hell of a go! His recap, how many laps it took, and his advice for all those who wish to challenge the record next season. Great job, Greg on the effort and "record." Sounds boring, tho. Haha! - Like GEAR:30 on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GEAR30/ Follow GEAR:30 on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/gear_30/?hl=en Shop https://www.gearthirty.com for premier mountain equipment. Check out gear reviews and watch other great videos from GEAR:30 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8bAS978OE4 . Don't forget to subscribe.  

TODAY´S EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE FLOW RESEARCH COLLECTIVE Are you an entrepreneur, a leader, or a knowledge worker, who wants to harness the power of flow so you can get more done in less time with greater ease and accomplish your boldest professional goals faster? If you´ve answered this question with “hell yes” then our peak-performance training Zero to Dangerous may be a good fit for you. If this sounds of interest to you all you need to do is go to getmoreflow.com right now, pop in your application and one of our team members will be in touch with you very soon.  ABOUT THE GUEST: Elliott Bisnow and Jeff Rosenthal are co-founders of Summit Group, whose family of organizations include Powder Mountain, Summit Series, Summit Junto, and Summit Impact.   The Summit Series is an American organization that hosts conferences and events for young entrepreneurs, artists and activists. Events organized by the group include an annual invitation-only conference during which participants discuss topics including business practices, technological innovation, and philanthropy.   ABOUT THE EPISODE:  In this episode, you will learn about: What contributed to Summit's Success (02:14) Different Worlds Merging at Summit (06:04) Group Flow in Summit (10:58) Online VS In-Person Connection (15:08) Risks of Creating Summit (18:50) Bill Clinton Speaking at Summit (25:42) The Most & Least “Flowy” Summit Events (28:39) What Makes Summit Unique (36:52) What's Next for Jeff & Elliott (39:54) Building a Community From Scratch (43:07) Group Flow between the founders of Summit (52:49)   RESOURCES Jeff Rosenthal's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/-jeff-rosenthal/ Elliott Bisnow's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliott-bisnow-17b96a3/ Summit's Website: https://summit.co/   STEVEN KOTLER is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist, and Founder and Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world's leading experts on human performance. His books include The Art of Impossible, Stealing Fire, and The Rise of Superman. His work has been translated into over 40 languages and appeared in over 100 publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, The Harvard Business Review and Forbes.

Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams and Building Community with Jeff Rosenthal, Co-Founder of Summit   Longtime viewers and listeners know that Jeffrey Hayzlett lives by the title of one his books, “Think Big and Act Bigger.” On this episode of All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett, our guest and his business partners were thinking big and went even bigger. Jeff Rosenthal, Co-Founder of Summit turned his wild idea of a ski trip for young entrepreneurs and turned it into Summit, a series of invitation-only events with some of the top thought-leaders and entrepreneurs in the world. He also co-owns one of the largest ski resorts in North America. Jeff sits down to discuss creating what is being called “The Davos of Generation Y,” what it means to be prolific, the importance of culture, saying why not, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Entrepreneurship can feel a bit like being on your own island, but Elliott Bisnow is connecting like-minded people to make big things from small groups. Elliot is the Co-Founder of Summit Group, whose family of organizations includes Powder Mountain, Summit Series, Summit Junto, and Summit Impact. Elliot is a startup investor, having made almost 50 early-stage investments. At 20 years old, Bisnow started Bisnow Media out of his college dorm room. Over the next decade, he grew the business into the world's largest commercial real estate media company.Jump right into the episode, and let's explore what it really means to make no small plans.Things you will learn in this episode:[00:01 - 06:49] Opening Segment Elliot shares a bit of his background Always on the go but with no structure Getting inspired to break the norm and build a businessHow he was pressured to stay in college for a degreeAccelerating his learning without a college[06:50 - 16:50] Break Away from the NormElliot talks about the start of his real estate businessPartnering with his dad to monetize his commercial real estate contentThe transition from a successful real estate business to buying a mountain Realizing that the most important thing in life is to be different The importance of awareness How Elliot started by making the right connectionsA quick word from our sponsor[16:51 - 33:32] Make No Small PlansElliot explains how Make No Small Plans maps out his journey of successHow he went from clueless to networking with high ticket people Why Elliot's strategy workedEveryone wants community Breaking away from “safe” to doing big things Elliot's realization of how Entrepreneurs operateOnly the adventurous go on adventuresPeople who don't know you see you as you are in the moment Having partners and co-founders is the best for businessElliot talks about the Powder Mountain dealThe story and structure of the plan The benefits of using a Founding Members Program[33:33 - 38:40] Closing Segment The number one takeaways you should get from the book The importance of having a community around you Want to connect with Elliot? You can follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter. Find your unique community over on https://summit.co/, and start making big things happen!Start hiring right now with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at indeed.com/network. Offer valid through March 31st, 2022.There's a reason why so many creators use Riverside. Check them out and all the other features they have at Riverside.fm and create an account. Get started today. Click the link here and use Coupon Code BYN for $10 off any subscription. Want to start living a happier life today? As a listener, you'll get 10% off your first month by visiting our sponsor BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/buildyournetworkDid you love the value that we are putting out in the show? LEAVE A REVIEW and tell us what you think about the episode so we can continue putting out great content just for you! Share this episode and help someone who wants to connect with world-class people. Jump on over to travischappell.com/makemypodcast and let my team make you your very own show!If you want to learn how to build YOUR network, check out my website travischappell.com. You can connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Be sure to join The Lounge to become part of the community setting up REAL relationships that add value and create investments.Tweetable Quotes: “I realized that maybe the most important thing was being different.” - Elliot Bisnow“Bite off more than you can chew and then learn how to chew later.” - Elliot Bisnow“Entrepreneurial people do entrepreneurial things… Adventures only happen to the adventurous.” - Elliot BisnowAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

GEAR:30 Buyer, Greg Bean plans on establishing a new Powder Mountain ski decent record. Apparently he's been scheming this for a while. Here's his plan. - Like GEAR:30 on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GEAR30/ Follow GEAR:30 on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/gear_30/?hl=en For the best deals on amazing outdoor gear, check out our deals of the week at https://www.gearthirty.com Check out gear reviews and watch other great videos from GEAR:30 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8bAS978OE4 . Don't forget to subscribe.

Greg Bean charges hard, but what makes it impressive is that it's nearly always with his kids. This episode we chat about a couple outdoor adventure events Greg took his kids to including a Jr. Freeride competition at Snowbasin and a ladies only snowboard event at Powder Mountain.  - Like GEAR:30 on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GEAR30/ Follow GEAR:30 on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/gear_30/?hl=en For the best deals on amazing outdoor gear, check out our deals of the week at https://www.gearthirty.com Check out gear reviews and watch other great videos from GEAR:30 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8bAS978OE4 . Don't forget to subscribe.

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Spot and Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Organizations can email skiing@substack.com to add multiple users on one account at a per-subscriber enterprise rate.WhoNadia Guerriero, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Beaver Creek, ColoradoRecorded onMarch 25, 2022About Beaver CreekClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsBase elevation: 7,400 feet at Arrowhead Village; 8,100 feet at Beaver Creek VillageSummit elevation: 11,440 feetVertical drop: 3,340 feet (continuous)Skiable acres: 2,082Average annual snowfall: 325 inchesTrail count: 150 (39% advanced, 42% intermediate, 19% beginner)Lift count: 24 (12 high-speed quads, 1 chondola, 2 gondolas, 1 triple, 1 double, 7 conveyors - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Beaver Creek’s lift fleet)Uphill capacity: 48,264 skiers per hourWhy I interviewed herAmerica may or may not have suspected, when Beaver Creek flipped the power on in 1980 with three double chairs and three triples, that we were nearing the end of big-time ski resort construction in the United States. In the previous decade, Keystone (1970), Snowbird (1971), Copper Mountain (1972), Kirkwood (1972), Northstar (1972), Powder Mountain (1972), Telluride (1972), and Big Sky (1973) had all come online. Breckenridge (1961), Crested Butte (1962), Vail (1962), Park City (1963), Schweitzer (1963), Steamboat (1963), Crystal Mountain Washington (1964), Mt. Rose (1964), Purgatory (1965), Diamond Peak (1966), Jackson Hole (1966), Mission Ridge (1966), Snowmass (1967), Sierra-at-Tahoe (1968), and Grand Targhee (1969) had materialized out of the wilderness the decade before. This was a country that thought big and acted big, that crafted the tangible out of the improbable: a high-end ski resort, buffed smooth as an interstate and hemmed in by the faux villages of aspirational America, rising 3,000 feet out of the Colorado wilderness. The resort would be Vail’s answer to Aspen, high-end and straight down, without the drive to the end of the world.But after Deer Valley cranked to life the following year, big-mountain ski area development mostly broke down in the United States. The mammoth Yellowstone Club – all private, exclusively for individuals who consider automobiles to be single-use disposables – didn’t open until 1997. Tamarack, Idaho, was the next entrant, in 2004. The private Wasatch Peaks should open soon, and Mayflower may follow. But for the most part, this is a nation that, for better or worse, has decided to make do with the ski resorts it has.So what? Well, I lay this history out to make a simple point: Beaver Creek is about the best illustration we have of how and where we would build a ski resort if we still built ski resorts, with all our modern technology and understanding. The fall lines are incredible. The lift network sprawls and hums. The little walkable villages excise vehicles at exactly the right points. The place is just magnificent.The aversion to large-scale mountain construction did not, fortunately, temper Beaver Creek’s ambition. That simple half-dozen lifts multiplied to the west until the network overran and absorbed the formerly independent Arrowhead ski area. In 1991, Beaver Creek ran a high-speed quad up Grouse Mountain, one of the best pure black-diamond pods in Colorado. This year, the ski area added McCoy Park, a terrific high-altitude beginner pod, which complements the green-circle paradise off the Red Buffalo Express, already some of the most expansive top-of-the-world beginner terrain in America.Not that Beaver Creek got everything it wanted. A long-imagined 3.8-mile gondola connection to Vail, with a waystation at the long-abandoned Meadow Mountain ski area in Minturn, has been stalled for years. A lift up from Eagle-Vail would also be nice (and would eliminate a lot of traffic). But this isn’t the Alps, and the notion of lifts-as-transit is a tough sell to U.S. Americans, even in a valley already served by 55 of them (Vail Mountain has 31 lifts on top of Beaver Creek’s 24). They’d rather just drive around in the snow.Whatever. It’s a pretty fine complex just the way it is. And it’s one with a big, bold, ever-changing present. Beaver Creek is, along with Whistler and Vail Mountain, one of Vail Resorts’ three flagships, a standard-setter and an aspirational end-point for all those Epic Pass buyers around Milwaukee and Minneapolis and Detroit and Cleveland. This one has been on my list since the day I launched The Storm, and I was happy to finally lock it down.What we talked aboutWhy Beaver Creek is closing a bit later than usual this season; Guerriero’s early career as an agent for snowsports athletes, including Picabo Street and Johnny Moseley; night skiing at Eldora; working at pre-Vail Northstar; reactions to Vail buying Northstar; taking the lead at Beaver Creek; the differences between running a ski resort in Colorado versus Tahoe; what it means to get 600-plus inches of snow in a season; what elevates Beaver Creek to alpha status along with Vail Mountain and Whistler among Vail’s 40 resorts; going deep on the evolution and opening of McCoy Park, Beaver Creek’s top-of-the-mountain gladed beginner oasis; why the mountain converted McCoy to downhill terrain when it already had the excellent Red Buffalo pod on the summit of Beaver Creek Mountain; once again, I go on and on about green-circle glades; thoughts on the mountain’s lift fleet and where we could see upgrades next; why Beaver Creek doesn’t tend to see monster liftlines and the weird un-business of the ski area in general; the status of the long-discussed Vail Mountain-to-Beaver Creek gondola; thoughts on the rolling disaster that is Colorado’s Interstate 70; how Arrowhead, once an independent ski area, became part of Beaver Creek; the surprising sprawl and variety of Beaver Creek; potential future terrain expansions; the mountain’s high-end and rapidly evolving on-mountain food scene; cookies!; watching the evolution of the Epic Pass from the inside; whether Vail would ever build another ski area from scratch; Vail’s deliberate efforts to create leadership opportunities for women within its network; the mountain-town housing crisis; thoughts on Vail’s massive employee and housing investment; and Guerriero’s efforts to address the mountain-town mental health crisis.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewTwo words: McCoy Park. I recall skiing past this oddly wide-open and empty bowl, perched atop the mountain like some snowy pit-mine, years ago and wondering what was going on in there. The trailmap explained. For a long time, it was a Nordic and snowshoeing center. But this year, Beaver Creek finally finished a long-planned project to drop a new beginner center into the bowl. Two lifts and a clutch of blues and greens, some ungroomed, a contained adventure center for the graduated-from-the-carpet set that’s craving top-of-the-mountain adventure without the whooshing crowds or oops-I-just-skied-into-a-mogul-field regrets. Reviews have been solid. There’s one more thing: Vail has quietly built a very deep roster of women mountain leaders. Four of the company’s five Colorado resorts, and eight of its 40*, are led by women. Women hold approximately 45 percent of Vail’s corporate leadership roles, and half of its 10 board of directors members are women. Also, according to a Vail spokeswoman, CEO Kirsten Lynch is the only female CEO among travel and leisure companies listed on the 2021 Fortune 100 list.These gender-diversity efforts are, Vail Resorts’ Director of Corporate Communications Jamie Alvarez told me, “intentional and explicit. The ski industry has traditionally been male-dominated, particularly in senior leadership roles. As a company, Vail Resorts has prioritized creating an environment that encourages and enables growth opportunities for women at all levels of the company. This isn’t just in corporate, but also throughout our operations. We are proud of our industry-leading accomplishments and are committed to continuing to accelerate women at our company and in our industry.”They should be.*The eight current women heads of Vail Resorts are: Jody Churich at Breckenridge, Nadia Guerriero at Beaver Creek, Beth Howard at Vail, Tara Schoedinger at Crested Butte, Dierdra Walsh at Northstar, Belinda Trembath at Perisher, Sue Donnelly at Crotched, and Robin Kisiel at Whitetail. Vail recently promoted Mount Snow GM Tracy Bartels to VP of mountain planning, projects, and maintenance, overseeing maintenance and mountain-planning efforts across the portfolio.Questions I wish I’d askedI’ve always found it interesting that Alterra chose to leave Deer Valley off the unlimited tier of the Ikon Pass, while Vail granted unlimited Beaver Creek access on its comparatively cheap Epic Pass (Deer Valley’s season pass is $2,675). Both ski areas have similar philosophies around grooming, on-mountain food, and delivering a high-end experience. My guess is that this model works at Beaver Creek because it’s just a little bit harder to get to, while you can fall off your patio in Salt Lake City and end up at the top of Deer Valley’s Empire Express. Since Alterra just limited Deer Valley access even more, yanking it off the Ikon Base Pass, I’m guessing they’re fairly committed to that model, but it’s still an interesting contrast that I’d like to explore more at some point.What I got wrongNadia and I discussed one of the more tedious meta-critiques of Vail, which is that the company makes all its resorts the same. I don’t agree with this narrative, but the example I gave on the podcast was, to be honest, pretty lame, as I couched my counterpoint in a discussion of how Beaver Creek and Northstar differ operations-wise. Which, of course. No one is comparing Kirkwood to Mad River, Ohio from a snowfall and terrain point of view. What I should have done instead is to ask Guerriero what makes each resort culturally distinct. That’s on me.I also made the assertion that skiers could drop into McCoy Park from the top of the Bachelor Gulch lift, which is untrue. The three lifts with McCoy access (aside from the two lifts within the bowl intself) are Strawberry Express, Larkspur Express, and Upper Beaver Creek Express. I made a bad assumption based on the trailmap.Why you should ski Beaver CreekLiving in New York, I find myself in a lot of casual conversation with skiers pointed west for a week at Vail. I don’t know why (actually I do know why), but New Yorkers are drawn to the place like cows to grass. Like hipsters to $9 coffee drinks. Like U.S. Americans to 18-wheel-drive pickups. Like… well, they really like Vail, OK? And every time someone tells me about their long-planned trip to Vail, I ask them how many days they plan on spending at Beaver Creek, and (just about) every time, their answer is the same:Zero.This, to me, is flabbergasting. A Storm reader, Chris Stebbins, articulated this phenomenon in an email to me recently:“Beaver Creek is the single biggest mystery in skidom in my humble opinion. On Epic. On I-70.  Just 12 minutes past Vail. 15 high-speed lifts strung across six pods, suiting every ability. A huge bed base, with a mountain ‘village.’ And I’m making 15-minute laps on Centennial. On a perfect blue-bird day. After 16 inches of snow. On a Saturday. During Presidents’ Week.”I don’t get it either, Chris. But there it is. I’ve been having similar experiences at Beaver Creek for almost 20 years. Enormous powder days, lapping Birds of Prey and Grouse Mountain, no liftlines all day. Maybe here and there on Centennial. Once or twice on Larkspur or Rose Bowl. The entirety of the Arrowhead and Bachelor Gulch side deserted, always, like some leftover idyll intact and functional after an apocalyptic incineration of mankind. Once, on Redtail, or maybe it was Harrier, I crested the drop-off at mid-day to catch the growling hulks of half a dozen Snowcats drifting out of my siteline. Ahead of me a corduroy carpet, woven and royal, the union of all that is best in nature and best in technology. And no one to fight for it. I stood there perched over the Rockies just staring. Like I’m in a museum and contemplating something improbably manmade and ancient. Glorious. And 18 years later I still think about those turns, the large arcing sort born of absolute confidence in the moment, those Rossi hourglass twin-tips bought at an Ann Arbor ski shop and buried, for an ecstatic instant, in the test-lab best-case-scenario of their design.Look, I love Vail Mountain as much as anyone. It’s titanic and frenetic and pitch-perfect for hero turns on one of the most unintimidating big mountains in North America. I could spend the rest of my life skiing there and only there and be like, “OK well if it has to be one place I’m just relieved it’s not Ski Ward.” But the dismissive attitude toward 2,082-acre Beaver Creek, with its 3,340-foot vertical drop and zippidy-doo lift fleet and endless sprawling trail network, is amazing. The terrain, especially on Grouse, is steep and fall-line beautiful. My last trip to Beaver Creek – a midwinter pow-day Sunday where I never so much as shared a chair with another skier – was a dozen runs off Grouse, eight of those in the tangled wilds of Royal Elk Glades.All of which is a long way of suggesting that you work at least one Beaver Creek day into your next Vail run. It may be right down the road from Vail and an Epic Pass headliner, but Beaver Creek feels like it’s on another planet, or at least lodged within another decade.Oh yeah, and the cookies. Just trust me on this one. Go there.A pictorial history of Beaver Creek’s developmentBeaver Creek opened with six chairlifts, all on the main mountain, in 1980. By the next season, a triple ran up Strawberry Park. McCoy Park is a named section of the ski area more than four decades before it would enter the downhill system:The Larkspur triple came online in 1983. Two years later, McCoy Park is defined on the trailmap as a Nordic center:In 1991, Grouse Mountain opened:In 1997, Beaver Creek as we know it today came together, with lift connections from Rose Bowl all the way to Arrowhead, which was once an independent ski area. Beaver Creek purchased the small mountain in 1993 and eventually connected it to the rest of the resort via the Bachelor Gulch terrain expansion. Here’s what the mountain looked like in 1998:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 31/100 in 2022. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer. You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Organizations can email skiing@substack.com to add multiple users on one account at a per-subscriber enterprise rate.WhoTravis Seeholzer, Third-Generation Owner and Mountain Operations Manager of Beaver Mountain, UtahRecorded onMarch 21, 2022About Beaver MountainClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Seeholzer Family (since 1939!)Base elevation: 7,200 feetSummit elevation: 8,860 feetVertical drop: 1,660 feetSkiable acres: 828Average annual snowfall: 400-plus inchesTrail count: 48 (25% advanced, 40% intermediate, 35% beginner)Lift count: 6 (3 triples, 1 double, 2 conveyors - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Beaver Mountain’s lift fleetWhy I interviewed himWhen our son turned 1 year old, my wife and I hosted a small baby-naming ceremony for our families. To prepare for this event, I tapped into my aunt’s extensive ancestry.com research. What I found both surprised me and explained everything: tracing my paternal lineage back for centuries, no one had died in the place where they were born since George Winchester, born in Hemel Hempstead, Herfordshire, England in 1555. George begot Daniell, and his son Daniell edged closer to London until Willoughby jumped the Atlantic and landed in South Carolina sometime in the early 1700s. The pattern continued through William, Francis, Jonathan, Wiley, Edward, Herman, Ken, and then me. Four hundred years of getting the hell out of wherever you were from. I’m sure my kids will leave New York City the second they can program their robocars to fly them to Moonbase Six – my 13-year-old daughter already hates the subway and just wants to live somewhere “where I can look outside and see grass.”Perhaps because of this generational wanderlust, I’ve always been interested in the multi-generational clans who unite around place and purpose. I was in awe of kids in my grade school whose grandparents lived across the street from them, amazed by my neighbor who had attended my high school in the ancient 1960s, astonished to realize that local landmarks or roads were named after families whose children I knew well.Many – probably most – ski areas started as family concerns. Gramps and the boys went up-mountain with some chainsaws and a tractor, and the next thing you knew you had a ski area. Over the generations, most of these went bust, and most of the rest grew and grew until the grandkids said to Big Ski Company X, “Wait, you’ll give me how much money to just go sit on my ass for the rest of my life?”That never happened at Beaver Mountain. Harry Seeholzer hacked the joint out of the wilderness in 1939, and the Seeholzers are still running it 83 years later. That alone makes this a good story. A family could be running a petting zoo for eight decades and I’d want to host them on the podcast to talk about it. But add in 400 inches of Utah pow, a tie-in with the comet-across-the-night-sky Indy Pass, and a bursting-at-the-seams ski area acting as Exhibit A for why Vail and the Epic Pass may be the best thing to ever happen to independent skiing, and this is a conversation I couldn’t book fast enough.What we talked aboutUtah’s not-so-snowy (for Utah) season so far; Remembrances of Travis’ grandpa, Harry Seeholzer, who was born in 1902 and founded Beaver Mountain in 1939; a bygone America where hardscrabble ancestors lived off the land; the big change in Logan Canyon management that allowed Beaver to open for skiing; the ski area’s different locations over time; what inspired Seeholzer’s grandfather to found a ski area long before the sport had entered the American mainstream; what saved Beaver Mountain in the 1960s; how a group of good-old boys hand-built a parking lot, baselodge, and chairlift in the course of a single summer; the transformational installation of the Harry’s Dream chairlift; the vagaries of running a ski area with no snowmaking; growing up and raising your family at a ski area; the old days of driving through Utah snowstorms that would close canyons today; how rapidly and profoundly Utah skiing has changed in recent years; how the megapass scene has transformed Beaver; who really runs Beaver Mountain; the story behind the woman who will hand you your Beaver Mountain lift ticket; the pride and pressure of maintaining an 83-year-old family business; whether the Seeholzer family is destined to continue managing the ski area; “there’s definitely no motivation to sell the ski area”; deciding what’s next as the megapass refugees roll in off the horizon; Beaver’s massive forthcoming base area expansion; tech’s place in the future of small ski areas; why Beaver Mountain still has RFID season passes but metal sticky-wickets for day passes; the downside of technology; the kids just don’t get the wicket tickets; reaction to nearby Cherry Peak, one of the newest ski areas in the country, opening in 2015; where we could see expansion and what it would take to make it happen; how Beaver Mountain shifted from federal to state land; where Beaver may drop a new chairlift and which chairs are priority for upgrades; the story behind the 20-year-old Marge’s terrain expansion and how that transformed Beaver Mountain; musings on being the new home of Keystone’s Ruby lift and Alta’s Germania; why Germania was such a great lift and what made it unique; why Beaver Mountain doesn’t have snowmaking and whether it ever could; why Beaver Mountain was one of the first to adopt the discount volume season-pass strategy and why they have persisted with it; how Beaver Mountain joined the Indy Pass; why the ski area blacked out weekends and holidays this season and why that’s likely to continue; and why Beaver still maintains reciprocal partnerships with a number of mid-sized regional ski areas.    Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe West is dotted with ski areas like Beaver Mountain, three- or four-lift outposts serving a hyper-local population of families and school groups and the unexpectedly hardcore, the retiree or the stay-at-homer racking up 100 days a year while the rest of us are yelling at each other on Facebook.For decades, many of us have treated these bumps like the bounce house at Six Flags. “Yeah, that’s cute, but I’m moving right along past it to crush the Triple Upside Down Tyrannosaurus Rexicoaster. On the fourth loop they have a Siberian tiger fighting a white rhino in a 10-foot cage!” So tourists drive right past places like Homewood or Sunlight or Diamond Peak or Monarch or Sundance or Bridger Bowl. They didn’t fly across the country to ski at some rinky-dink place that’s five times the size of their local and gets 10 times the snow – they’re here to wait an hour on the Snowbird tram line and post about it on Instagram. Many locals have a more nuanced view - enough of them that Beaver Mountain lasted eight decades with little help from the outside world. But for a lot of people, ski area choice was a pretty simple equation of size + snowfall + reputation = where I’m going.But this attitude is evolving, for a lot of reasons. One, the Epic Pass worked too well. Not only did it hyper-activate capacity at most Vail-owned mountains, but it spawned the Ikon Pass, which also worked too well. Trying to ski a weekend powder day in the Wasatch is like trying to catch the last lifeboat off the Titanic. You have a lot of competition. People, especially locals, need a break, and they’re seeing what else is out there. Beaver Mountain is not Alta (nothing is), but on a mid-winter Saturday, it’s not a bad stand-in if you can skip the canyon traffic and not spend much of the day plotting a Wile E. Coyote network of fake “to Little Cottonwood Canyon” signs that send unsuspecting tourists sailing off a cliff.The second reason is the Indy Pass, which arrived at the perfect historical moment, when both the Epic and the Ikon passes had corralled the continent’s biggest butt-kickers onto a pair of thousand-dollar-ish products and everyone else was sitting around going, “huh, would you look at that?” And Indy Pass was sitting there like, “Oh, you want a lesser-known ski area with comparable terrain and maybe one or two fewer four-horse chariot lifts? Well here’s like 80 of them.” But while Indy raised the general awareness of these back-of-the-canyon outposts, it never overran them – passholders only get two days at each mountain. And the blackout dates can be insane – there are more full moons in an average month than days you can use your Indy Pass at Beaver Mountain. Nonetheless, the ski area’s presence on the Indy Pass has worked as an attention-grabber - Seeholzer told me on the podcast that Beaver Mountain was the most-searched resort on the Indy coalition during its first year.The final reason is a mix of things, rising from our current cultural fixations on the local, the family-owned, the “authentic,” and the relatively unknown. In this arena, social media helps. “Oh, you took a vacation to Park City? Nice job tracking down the busiest ski resort in Utah, Inspector Gadget. Hey how about this gorgeous powder dump I found in the back of a canyon a couple hours away?”Eighty-three years ago, Travis Seeholzer’s grandfather staked out a ski center on the fringes of the Utah wilderness. Word just now got out to the rest of us. It’s time to give these places the love they deserve.Why you should ski Beaver MountainUtah has fewer ski areas than you probably think: just 15, less than half the number of Colorado or, gulp, Wisconsin. The state is tied with Montana for 12th in total number of ski areas, according to the National Ski Areas Association. And yet, Utah finished third in skier visits last year, with 5.3 million. That’s behind only California’s 6.8 million and Colorado’s astonishing 12 million.The reason is that Utah has some seriously kick-ass mountains, most of them are on some megapass or another, and all of them are exceedingly easy to access. Park City is an Epic Pass headliner. More than a third of the state’s ski areas – Alta, Snowbird, Brighton, Solitude, Deer Valley, and Snowbasin – have lined up on the Ikon Pass. Beaver joins Powder Mountain and Eagle Point on the Indy Pass, and MCP’s Power Pass claims Brian Head and Nordic Valley. That really just leaves Sundance and Cherry Peak as true independents (the remainder are specialized facilities like Woodward or the Olympic training center, or surface-lift bumps out in the hinterlands).All of that is a long way of saying that it can be hard to find your own little bit of lift-served Utah. Even out-of-the-way Beaver Mountain is facing some volume concerns, as Seeholzer points out in the podcast. But crowding means different things at different places, and while you may be looking at some weekend liftlines at Beaver, the low-capacity, fixed-grip fleet keeps the trails relatively empty.And while you’re waiting in line, you can think about this: you’re part of a pretty cool story, of a single family whose story echoes across generations and up Logan Canyon to the end of the road.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 30/100 in 2022. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer. You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Utah's 15 resorts paint a majestic portrait amidst the winter landscape. So what if someone painted them all, with watercolors based in snow melt from each resort. That's what passionate Utah skier Lexi Dowdall has set out to do with her Paint by Powder Project!Dowdall is a snow-loving outdoor enthusiast who actively seeks out the Greatest Snow on Earth in every corner of the state. But her skiing career got off to a rocky start. At her first lesson as a little girl, she became frightened of a yeti-like skier with a snow-encrusted beard. So she watched Sleeping Beauty in the lodge at Solitude instead. Not so today as she crushes the powder every chance she can - all with a big smile on her face.The artist in her came from her grandmother, a sculptor and painter in Sedona. She says today, “Art is in my nature. But I spent a long time ignoring that fact.” Her grandmother focused her art on her surroundings, the towering vermillion monoliths in Sedona. So Lexi looked around herself at the Utah ski resorts she loved and decided to make that her palette.In 2019, she took a rudimentary watercolor kit along on a rafting trip through the Gates of Lodore. A year later, she used the platform of COVID to start focusing on painting Utah's ski areas. Looking out to the street one day, she saw her boyfriend's pickup truck bed filled with fresh Alta snowfall he had trucked down to the valley after a huge snowstorm. And the idea struck her - why not blend her watercolor paints using snowmelt from each resort.And the Paint by Powder Project was launched!This episode of Last Chair is a really fun podcast with an exuberant powder-loving artist, Lexi Dowdall. She'll win your heart with her stories of her continual discovery of the outdoor world around her, and how she's sharing it with others.She also personifies the ‘support a cause' energy that is ingrained in all of us as skiers and snowboarders. And, she's doing something about it. She is a passionate volunteer with Wasatch Adaptive Sports at Snowbird, and she's donating proceeds of the Paint by Powder Project to Protect Our Winters.In her day job, she's the director of freeride for the International Freeskiers and Snowboarders Association (IFSA), helping young freeride skiers overseeing event series'.Here's a little teaser of the Last Chair episode with Lexi Dowdall.Lexi, how did skiing get in your blood?I'm a fourth or fifth generation Utahn. I grew up here. My parents were big skiers. My dad was a ski bum who came here after college and never really left. So my mom always says we never had a choice and being skiers, it was that worked out so well.What has inspired you growing up in Utah?I come from a very creative family and we're always doing stuff yet scrapbooking or making terrariums, or we were just crafting all the time. And I may be biased, but I think Utah is the most beautiful state. We have just such an amazing diversity of landscapes and vistas and state parks and national parks. It's hard not to be inspired by the vistas that we're surrounded by out here.Why watercolors?It's an enigma. It's very simple, but it's difficult to master. And I would say I'm very much a type A kind of control freak kind of person. So watercolor has helped me to be a lot more open to outcome. You literally have to go with the flow. So that's a neat thing about watercolor is you can have an idea of what you want to accomplish. But in the end, the water and the paint are going to force your destiny and you don't have as much control over it as the acrylic or oil.And why mountains?I just knew I wanted to paint mountains - that's where I'm happiest, that's where my soul is alive. So it's funny. I still feel like I don't really know how to paint mountains or snow, but you know, I'm practicing as much as I can, and it's just going to be a work in progress.And why snow?Snow is water. I thought I could incorporate snow from each mountain into my watercolor painting, and you know, I'm really working on my technique with painting mountains. I thought, ‘oh, maybe this snow will make the painting a little bit better, and I can channel the energy of the mountain as I paint with its snow.' So that was kind of how it got started.When you collect snow in milk jugs at resorts, do people look at you strangely?I had this very awkward interaction with a Powder Mountain patroller. I tried to explain what I was doing, and he was just very confused. But I will say the fastest response time was Deer Valley. They were on the scene in probably 34 seconds. ‘Ma'am, are you OK? Do you need assistance?' I was fine. But again, I needed to explain what the heck I'm doing, and it was just all pretty comical.Like many of us, you've also been moved by Protect Our Winters.Yeah, if we don't start to make some pretty massive changes, we're not going to have a ski industry. The gauntlet of this fact is what kind of spurred me to action because I was just the thought of not being able to ski here in the winter was truly sobering. So I'm just hoping to galvanize folks around here. We need to vote. We need to change the legislation. There are lots of things we can do on an individual level that will help our air quality and contribute, in small ways, to the overconsumption that our society subscribes to. But the most important thing we need to do is change the legislation and vote climate. Protect Our Winters provides a ton of resources about that and ways to get involved and panels and discussions with legislators.We had a lot of fun with Lexi on Last Chair. Regular listeners will know that we often talk about our sponsor, High West. Lexi took that one step further. And, she also explains the concept of ‘interlodge' to us and how it can work to a skier's advantage when you're stuck up Little Cottonwood for a few days. Tune in to learn more …Kapowder InkLexi Dowdall's watercolor paintings offer a unique look at Utah's 15 ski resorts from the viewpoint of a passionate skier. Her colors bring out the vibrancy of the sport, with snowmelt from each individual resort making its way back onto the canvas of the resorts we all love. You can learn more about Lexi's Paint by Powder Project, and acquire a print yourself, at her Kapowder Ink website. You'll have a wonderful and unique look at Utah ski resorts, and you'll be helping to support Protect Our Winters, a cause important to skiers and snowboarders.