Podcasts about Revelstoke

The biggest event in snowboarding Natural Selection Tour 2025 ! We sat down with riders, media, and industry legends, including Travis Rice and friends, to dive into this year's event and swap stories from over the years of NST. From game changing moments to behind-the-scenes insights, this one's a must and on a mic so the quality is kinda busted but still epic. Tune in! Featuring - Mikey Ciccarelli, Travis Rice, Elena Hight, Sage Kotenburg, Harrison Gordon, Jesse Fox ( KingSnow Magazine ), Jared Elston, Pat Bridges, Liam Griffin, Dustin Craven, Estelle Pensiero Presented by Monster Energy and Vans Snow Supported by Source Board Shop, K2 snowboarding, Autumn Headwear, Skullcandy, Baldface Lodge, Gibbons Whistler, Scandinave Spa Whistler

We sit down in Revelstoke BC with the judging panel from the legendary Yeti - Natural Selection Tour — Leanne Pelosi, DCP, Chad Otterstrom, and Jussi Oksanen along with our usual host, Jody Wachniak. Since Jody is on judging duty this time, the homie Rob Lemay takes over the mic to chat with the panel about what makes NST the most progressive and exciting snowboard events to date. A deep dive into the tour, the CREDO aka the judge criteria, plenty of laughs, and, of course, some good snowboarding talk. Tune in and enjoy!

On this star-studded super-episode of the World's Greatest Action Sports Podcast, Chris and Todd talk to Pedro Barros about doing one of the biggest airs ever done, we talk to Austin Sweetin live from Revelstoke après-practice session for Natural Selection, and our correspondent Jon Veder captured a quick chat with last year's Natural selection winner, Mikey Ciccarelli on the gondola just days before he attempts to defend his title! The boys also talk about The MEO Rip Curl Pro Portugal, ask the question is Volcom done for good, Oahu's new Center Of Radical Education, Simple Session Estonia was insane, Yuto now on Red Bull, Bobby Puleo's Epicly Later'd is a Must Watch, EDGLRD skateboards with Harmony Korine and Sean Pablo is trippy, Adult Film star Angela White goes VX, an opulent Snow League breakdown, lots of questions answered, and so much more.  Presented by: New Greens @newgreens Portal @portal.exp   Mammoth Mountain @mammothmountain   Sun Bum @sunbum   Spy Optic @spyoptic  (big online sale) Hansen Surfboards @hansensurf Bachan's Japanese BBQ Sauce @trybachans MachuPicchu Energy @machupicchu.energy Pannikin Coffee And Tea @pannikincoffeeandtea Bubs Naturals @bubsnatruals Pedal Electric @pedal.electric Mint Tours @minttours Die Cut Stickers @diecutstickersdotcom

In 1965, a meteorite fell near Revelstoke, B.C., and was discovered by beaver trappers. Scientists studied its fragments, which provided clues about the early solar system. Decades later, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission brought back samples from the asteroid Bennu, a space rock similar to the Revelstoke meteorite, to learn more about the origins of life on Earth. Guest: Sara Russell - Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Natural History Museum 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.As of episode 198, you can now watch The Storm Skiing Podcast on YouTube. Please click over to follow the channel. The podcast will continue to stream on all audio platforms. WhoEric Clark, President and Chief Operating Officer of Mammoth and June Mountains, CaliforniaRecorded onJanuary 29, 2025Why I interviewed himMammoth is ridiculous, improbable, outrageous. An impossible combination of unmixable things. SoCal vibes 8,000 feet in the sky and 250 miles north of the megalopolis. Rustic old-California alpine clapboard-and-Yan patina smeared with D-Line speed and Ikon energy. But nothing more implausible than this: 300 days of sunshine and 350 inches of snow in an average year. Some winters more: 715 inches two seasons ago, 618 in the 2016-17 campaign, 669 in 2010-11. Those are base-area totals. Nearly 900 inches stacked onto Mammoth's summit during the 2022-23 ski season. The ski area opened on Nov. 5 and closed on Aug. 6, a 275-day campaign.Below the paid subscriber jump: why Mammoth stands out even among giants, June's J1 lift predates the evolution of plant life, Alterra's investment machine, and more.That's nature, audacious and brash. Clouds tossed off the Pacific smashing into the continental crest. But it took a soul, hardy and ungovernable, to make Mammoth Mountain into a ski area for the masses. Dave McCoy, perhaps the greatest of the great generation of American ski resort founders, strung up and stapled together and tamed this wintertime kingdom over seven decades. Ropetows then T-bars then chairlifts all over. One of the finest lift systems anywhere. Chairs 1 through 25 stitching together a trail network sculpted and bulldozed and blasted from the monolithic mountain. A handcrafted playground animated as something wild, fierce, prehuman in its savage ever-down. McCoy, who lived to 104, is celebrated as a businessman, a visionary, and a human, but he was also, quietly, an artist.Mammoth is not the largest ski area in America (ranking number nine), California (third behind Palisades and Heavenly), Alterra's portfolio (third behind Palisades and Steamboat), or the U.S. Ikon Pass roster (fifth after Palisades, Big Sky, Bachelor, and Steamboat). But it may be America's most beloved big ski resort, frantic and fascinating, an essential big-mountain gateway for 39 million Californians, an Ikon Pass icon and the spiritual home of Alterra Mountain Company. It's impossible to imagine American skiing without Mammoth, just as it's impossible to imagine baseball without the Yankees or Africa without elephants. To our national ski identity, Mammoth is an essential thing, like a heart to a human body, a part without which the whole function falls apart.About MammothClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Alterra Mountain Company, which also owns:Located in: Mammoth Lakes, CaliforniaYear founded: 1953Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: unlimited, no blackouts* Ikon Base Pass: unlimited, holiday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: June Mountain – around half an hour if the roads are clear; to underscore the severity of the Sierra Nevada, China Peak sits just 28 miles southwest of Mammoth, but is a seven-hour, 450-mile drive away – in good weather.Base elevation: 7,953 feetSummit elevation: 11,053 feetVertical drop: 3,100 feetSkiable acres: 3,500Average annual snowfall: 350 inchesTrail count: 178 (13% easiest, 28% slightly difficult, 19% difficult, 25% very difficult, 15% extremely difficult)Lift count: 25 (1 15-passenger gondola, 1 two-stage, eight-passenger gondola, 4 high-speed six-packs, 8 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 6 triples, 3 doubles, 1 Poma – view Lift Blog's inventory of Mammoth's lift fleet) – the ski area also runs some number of non-public carpetsAbout JuneClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Alterra Mountain Company (see complete roster above)Located in: June Lake, CaliforniaYear founded: 1963Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: unlimited, no blackouts* Ikon Base Pass: unlimited, holiday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Mammoth Mountain – around half an hour if the roads are clearBase elevation: 7,545 feetSummit elevation: 10,090 feetVertical drop: 2,590 feetSkiable acres: 1,500 acresAverage annual snowfall: 250 inchesTrail count: 41Lift count: 6 (2 high-speed quads, 4 doubles – view Lift Blog's inventory of June Mountain's lift fleet)What we talked aboutMammoth's new lift 1; D-Line six-packs; deciding which lift to replace on a mountain with dozens of them; how the new lifts 1 and 16 redistributed skier traffic around Mammoth; adios Yan detachables; the history behind Mammoth's lift numbers; why upgrades to lifts 3 and 6 made more sense than replacements; the best lift system in America, and how to keep this massive fleet from falling apart; how Dave McCoy found and built Mammoth; retaining rowdy West Coast founder's energy when a mountain goes Colorado corporate; old-time Colorado skiing; Mammoth Lakes in the short-term rental era; potential future Mammoth lift upgrades; a potentially transformative future for the Eagle lift and Village gondola; why Mammoth has no public carpets; Mammoth expansion potential; Mammoth's baller parks culture, and what it takes to build and maintain their massive features; the potential of June Mountain; connecting to June's base with snowmaking; why a J1 replacement has taken so long; kids under 12 ski free at June; Ikon Pass access; changes incoming to Ikon Pass blackouts; the new markets that Ikon is driving toward Mammoth; improved flight service for Mammoth skiers; and Mammoth ski patrol.What I got wrong* I guessed that Mammoth likely paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 million for “Canyon and Broadway.” I meant that the new six-pack D-line lifts likely cost $15 million each.* I mentioned that Jackson Hole installed a new high-speed quad last year – I was referring to the Sublette chair.* I said that Steamboat's Wild Blue Gondola was “close to three miles long” – the full ride is 3.16 miles. Technically, the first and second stages of the gondola are separate machines, but riders experience them as one.Why now was a good time for this interviewTalk to enough employees of Alterra Mountain Company and a pattern emerges: an outsized number of high-level execs – the people building the mountain portfolio and the Ikon Pass and punching Vail in the face while doing it – came to the mothership, in some way or another, through Mammoth Mountain.Why is that? Such things can be a coincidence, but this didn't feel like it. Rusty Gregory, Alterra's CEO from 2018 to '23, entered that pilot's seat as a Mammoth lifer, and it was possible that he'd simply tagged in his benchmates. But Alterra and the Ikon Pass were functioning too smoothly to be the products of nepotism. This California ski factory seemed to be stamping out effective big-ideas people like an Italian plant cranking out Ferraris.Something about Mammoth just works. And that's remarkable, considering no one but McCoy thought that the place would work at all as a functional enterprise. A series of contemporary dumbasses told him that Mammoth was “too windy, too snowy, too high, too avalanche-prone, and too isolated” to work as a commercial ski area, according to The Snow Mag. That McCoy made Mammoth one of the most successful ski areas anywhere is less proof that the peanut gallery was wrong than that it took extraordinary will and inventiveness to accomplish the feat.And when a guy runs a ski area for 52 years, that ski area becomes a manifestation of his character. The people who succeed in working there absorb these same traits, whether of dysfunction or excellence. And Mammoth has long been defined by excellence.So, how to retain this? How does a ski area stitched so tightly to its founder's swashbuckling character fully transition to corporate-owned megapass headliner without devolving into an over-groomed volume machine for Los Angeles weekenders? How does a mountain that's still spinning 10 Yan fixed-grip chairs – the oldest dating to 1969 – modernize while D-Line sixers are running eight figures per install? And how does a set-footprint mountain lodged in remote wilderness continue to attract enough skiers to stay relevant, while making sure they all have a place to stay and ski once they get there?And then there's June. Like Pico curled up beside Killington, June, lost in Mammoth's podium flex, is a tiger dressed up like a housecat. At 1,500 acres, June is larger than Arapahoe Basin, Aspen Highlands, or Taos. It's 2,590-foot-vertical drop is roughly equal to that of Alta, Alyeska, or Copper (though June's bottom 1,000-ish vertical feet are often closed due to lack of lower-elevation snow). And while the terrain is not fierce, it's respectable, with hundreds of acres of those wide-open California glades to roll through.And yet skiers seem to have forgotten about the place. So, it can appear, has Alterra, which still shuffles skiers out of the base on a 1960 Riblet double chair that is the oldest operating aerial lift in the State of California. The mountain deserves better, and so do Ikon Pass holders, who can fairly expect that the machinery transporting them and their gold-plated pass uphill not predate the founding of the republic. That Alterra has transformed Deer Valley, Steamboat, and Palisades Tahoe with hundreds of millions of dollars of megalifts and terrain expansions over the past five years only makes the lingering presence of June's claptrap workhorse all the more puzzling.So in Mammoth and June we package both sides of the great contradiction of corporate ski area ownership: that whoever ends up with the mountain is simultaneously responsible for both its future and its past. Mammoth, fast and busy and modern, must retain the spirit of its restless founder. June, ornamented in quaint museum-piece machinery while charging $189 for a peak-day lift ticket, must justify its Ikon Pass membership by doing something other than saying “Yeah I'm here with Mammoth.” Has one changed too much, and the other not enough? Or can Alterra hit the Alta Goldilocks of fast lifts and big passes with throwback bonhomie undented?Why you should ski Mammoth and JuneIf you live in Southern California, go ahead and skip this section, because of course you've already skied Mammoth a thousand times, and so has everyone you know, and it will shock you to learn that there is anyone, anywhere, who has never skied this human wildlife park.But for anyone who's not in Southern California, Mammoth is remote and inconvenient. It is among the least-accessible big mountains in the country. It lacks the interstate adjacency of Tahoe, the Wasatch, and Colorado; the modernized airports funneling skiers into Big Sky and Jackson and Sun Valley (though this is changing); the cultural cachet that overcomes backwater addresses for Aspen and Telluride. Going to Mammoth, for anyone who can't point north on 395, just doesn't seem worth the hassle.It is worth the hassle. The raw statistical profile validates this. Big vert, big acreage, big snows, and big lift networks always justify the journey, even if Mammoth's remoteness fails to translate to emptiness in the way it does at, say, Taos or Revelstoke. But there is something to being Not Tahoe, a Sierra Nevada monster throwing off its own gravity rather than orbiting a mother lake with a dozen equals. Lacking the proximity to leave some things to more capable competitors, the way Tahoe resorts cede parks to Boreal or Northstar, or radness to Palisades and Kirkwood, Mammoth is compelled to offer an EveryBro mix of parks and cliffs and groomers and trees and bumps. It's a motley, magnificent scene, singular and electric, the sort of place that makes all realms beyond feel like a mirage.Mammoth does have one satellite, of course, and June Mountain fills the mothership's families-with-kids gap. Unlike Mammoth, June lets you use the carpet without an instructor. Kids 12 and under ski free. June is less crowded, less vodka-Red Bull, less California. And while the dated lifts can puzzle the Ikon tote-bagger who's last seven trips were through the detachable kingdoms of Utah and Colorado, there is a certain thrill to riding a chairlift that tugged its first passengers uphill during the Eisenhower administration.Podcast NotesOn Mammoth's masterplanOn Alterra pumping “a ton of money into its mountains”Tripling the size of Deer Valley. A massive terrain expansion and transformative infill gondola at Steamboat. The fusing of Palisades Tahoe's two sides to create America's second-largest interconnected ski area. New six-packs at Big Bear, Mammoth, Winter Park, and Solitude. Alterra is not messing around, as the Vail-Slayer continues to add mountains, add partners, and transform its portfolio of once-tired giants into dazzling modern megaresorts with billions in investment.On D-Line lifts “floating over the horizon”I mean just look at these things (Loon's Kancamagus eight on opening day, December 10, 2021 – video by Stuart Winchester):On severe accidents on Yan detachablesIn 2023, I wrote about Yan's detachable lift hellstorm:Cohee referenced a conversation he'd had with “Yan Kunczynski,” saying that, “obviously he had his issues.” If it's not obvious to the listener, here's what he was talking about: Kuncyznski founded Yan chairlifts in 1965. They were sound lifts, and the company built hundreds, many of which are still in operation today. However. Yan's high-speed lifts turned out to be death traps. Two people died in a 1985 accident at Keystone. A 9-year-old died in a 1993 accident at Sierra-at-Tahoe (then known as Sierra Ski Ranch). Two more died at Whistler in 1995. This is why all three detachable quads at Sierra-at-Tahoe date to 1996 – the mountain ripped out all three Yan machines following the accident, even though the oldest dated only to 1989.Several Yan high-speed detachables still run, but they have been heavily modified and retrofit. Superstar Express at Killington, for example, was “retrofitted with new Poma grips and sheaves as well as terminal modifications in 1994,” according to Lift Blog. In total, 15 ski areas, including Sun Valley, Schweitzer, Mount Snow, Mammoth, and Palisades Tahoe spent millions upgrading or replacing Yan detachable quads. The company ceased operations in 2001.Since that writing, many of those Yan detachables have met the scrapyard:* Killington will replace Superstar Express with a Doppelmayr six-pack this summer.* Sun Valley removed two of their Yan detachables – Greyhawk and Challenger – in 2023, and replaced them with a single Doppelmayr high-speed six-pack.* Sun Valley then replaced the Seattle Ridge Yan high-speed quad with a Doppelmayr six-pack in 2024.* Mammoth has replaced both of its Yan high-speed quads – Canyon and Broadway – with Doppelmayr D-line six-packs.* Though I didn't mention Sunday River above, it's worth noting that the mountain ripped out its Barker Yan detachable quad in 2023 for a D-Line Doppelmayr bubble sixer.I'm not sure how many of these Yan-detach jalopies remain. Sun Valley still runs four; June, two; and Schweitzer, Mount Snow, and Killington one apiece. There are probably others.On Mammoth's aging lift fleetMammoth's lift system is widely considered one of the best designed anywhere, and I have no doubt that it's well cared for. Still, it is a garage filled with as many classic cars as sparkling-off-the-assembly-line Aston Martins. Seventeen of the mountain's 24 aerial lifts were constructed before the turn of the century; 10 of those are Yan fixed- grips, the oldest dating to 1969. Per Lift Blog:On Rusty's tribute to Dave McCoyFormer Alterra CEO Rusty Gregory delivered an incredible encomium to Mammoth founder Dave McCoy on this podcast four years ago [18:08]:The audio here is jacked up in 45 different ways. I suppose I can admit now that this was because whatever broke-ass microphone I was using at the time sounded as though it had filtered my audio through a dying air-conditioner. So I had to re-record my questions (I could make out the audio well enough to just repeat what I had said during our actual chat), making the conversation sound like something I had created by going on Open AI and typing “create a podcast where it sounds like I interviewed Rusty Gregory.” Now I probably would have just asked to re-record it, but at the time I just felt lucky to get the interview and so I stapled together this bootleg track that sounds like something Eminem would have sold from the trunk of his Chevy Celebrity in 1994.More good McCoy stuff here and in the videos below:On Mammoth buying Bear and Snow SummitRusty also broke down Mammoth's acquisition of Bear Mountain and Snow Summit in that pod, at the 29:18 mark.On Mammoth super parksWhen I was a kid watching the Road Runner dominate Wile E. Coyote in zip-fall-splat canyon hijinks, I assumed it was the fanciful product of some lunatic's imagination. But now I understand that the whole serial was just an animation of Mammoth Superparks:I mean can you tell the difference?I'm admittedly impressed with the coyote's standing turnaround technique with the roller skis.On Pico beside KillingtonThe Pico-Killington dilemma echoes that of June-Mammoth, in which an otherwise good mountain looks like a less-good mountain because it sits next door to a really great mountain. As I wrote in 2023:Pico is funny. If it were anywhere else other than exactly next door to the largest ski area in New England, Pico might be a major ski area. Its 468 acres would make it the largest ski area in New Hampshire. A 2,000-foot vertical drop is impressive anywhere. The mountain has two high-speed lifts. And, by the way, knockout terrain. There is only one place in the Killington complex where you can run 2,000 vertical feet of steep terrain: Pico.On the old funitel at JuneCompounding the weirdness of J1's continued existence is the fact that, from 1986 to '96, a 20-passenger funitels ran on a parallel line:Clark explains why June removed this lift in the podcast.On kids under 12 skiing free at JuneThis is pretty amazing – per June's website:The free June Mountain Kids Season Pass gives your children under 12 unlimited access to June Mountain all season long. This replaces day tickets for kids, which are no longer offered. Everyone in your family must have a season pass or lift ticket. Your child's free season pass must be reserved in advance, and picked up in-person at the June Mountain Ticket Office. If your child has a birthday in our system that states they are older than 12 years of age, we will require proof of age to sell you a 12 and under season pass.I clarified with June officials that adults are not required to buy a season pass or lift ticket in order for their children to qualify for the free season pass.While it is unlikely that I will make it to June this winter, I signed my 8-year-old son up for a free season pass just to see how easy it was. It took about 12 seconds (he was already in Alterra's system, saving some time).On Alterra's whiplash Ikon Pass accessAlterra has consistently adjusted Ikon Pass access to meter volume and appease its partner mountains:On Mammoth's mammoth snowfallsMammoth's annual snowfalls tend to mirror the boom-bust cycles of Tahoe, with big winters burying the Statue of Liberty (715 inches at the base over the 2022-23 winter), and others underperforming the Catskills (94 inches in the winter of 1976-77). Here are the mountain's official year-by-year and month-by-month tallies. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Meghan Tabor is an experienced leader in marketing and destination management, with over a decade dedicated to advancing tourism and community development. As the Executive Director at Tourism Revelstoke, Meghan leads strategic initiatives and builds impactful partnerships to strengthen tourism's role in community enhancement.In addition, she shares her industry expertise as a part-time business professor at Okanagan College, teaching courses in tourism and destination management. In her free time, she enjoys exploring through skiing, snowmobiling, and mountain biking.Tourism Revelstoke is a non-profit organization contracted by the City of Revelstoke to execute the 5-year Strategic Business Plan for the use of Municipal and Regional District Tax (MRDT).Links:Tourism Revelstoke: https://www.destinationrevelstoke.com/who-we-areRevelstoke Mountain Resort: https://www.revelstokemountainresort.com/mountain/mountain-stats/Protect Our Winters Outdoor Recreation Economic Report: https://www.protectourwinters.ca/economicreport---- Please subscribe to the Sports for Social Impact Podcast wherever you get your podcast! Leave us a review and a 5 star rating to help bring others in the world of sports into the conversation! The Sports for Social Impact podcast was nominated for a Sports Podcast Award and Canadian Podcast Award.Send us an email at⁠sportsforsocialimpact@gmail.com⁠ Linktree:⁠https://linktr.ee/sportsforsocialimpact⁠Linkedin:⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/sports-for-social-impact⁠Follow us on Instagram (@SportsSocImpact) Visit our website athttps://www.sportsforsocialimpact.com/

This special episode of The Ski Podcast is an exclusive interview with BBC presenter Ed Leigh.  Ed tells us how the ‘Ski Sunday' season has gone so far, including why his co-presenter, Chemmy Alcott, was a natural when it came to snowboarding.  We cover his journey from Turin 2006 to Paris 2024, where he commentated on the BMX and skateboarding, before discussing the ridiculous talent of Mia Brookes, Britain's 18-year-old world champion snowboarder. Finally, I asked Ed about the Natural Selection Tour. We talk about the format, how it's evolved and where you can watch it this winter. Intersport Ski Hire Discount Code If you want to help The Ski Podcast and save yourself some money this winter…just use the code ‘SKIPODCAST' when you book your ski hire at intersportrent.com. That applies to any ski hire booked in their massive network across France, Austria and Switzerland. You'll get a guaranteed additional discount, or simply take this link for your discount to be automatically applied.  SHOW NOTES   Ed was last on the show in Episode 169 (2:30) He was last on snow at Zugspitze above Garmisch (3:15) Working with the Ski Sunday team (5:00) Was Chemmy really a natural snowboarder? (10:00) Listen to Warren Smith talking about coaching Louis Smith on ‘The Jump' (10:30) Ed on his ski racing lessons (12:00) Presenting Ski Sunday with a serious injury (13:30) Ed's first BBC work was at the 2006 Turin Olympics (15:30) Starting on Ski Sunday (17:15) Filming ‘High Altitude' (17:45) Commentating on the BMX and Skateboarding in Paris 2024 (22:00) “Every time I heard you or Tim Warwood's voice I knew there'd be something fun to watch!” (25:00) Is skateboarding selling out? (27:00) Why don't we see more freestyle snowboarding and skiing on Ski Sunday? (30:00) Mia Brookes' amazing season (32:30) Is she stronger at slopestyle or big air? (33:00) Charlotte Bankes as another potential medallist at Cortina 2026? (34:45) Maisie Hill's prospects (36:45) Who is Txema Mazet Brown? (38:15) What is the Natural Selection Tour? (40:30) ‘Designed for athletes, not spectators' (40:45) The Natural Selection Tour includes mountain biking, surfing, skiing and snowboarding (43:00) It was founded by Travis Rice in Jackson Hole (43:45) What's the format? (47:45) The snowboarding takes place in Revelstoke from 10-17 March (50:45) You can watch the Natural Selection Tour on RedBull TV (51:00) Can you compare the X-Games and Natural Selection Tour (51:00) Does the X-Games use AI judging? (53:15) Feedback   I enjoy all feedback about the show, so please do contact me on social @theskipodcast or by email theskipodcast@gmail.com  Dave Mills and James Rice very kindly bought me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com/theskipodcast Dave: “Iain, love your podcast. It's essential listening all year round, but never more so than during the ski season. Bravo!” James: “I'm a huge fan of The Storm Skiing Podcast, so it was great to have him on your show. As an American, one of the things I really enjoy about your podcast is that it offers me a glimpse into a completely different ski and travel culture. I often listen to The Ski Podcast and inevitably add a resort or experience to my dream list of ski holidays.”  There are now 248 episodes of The Ski Podcast to catch up with and 152 of those were listened to in the last week.  If you enjoyed this episode, then go to theskipodcast.com where you'll find plenty of other interviews, destinations, experiences and adventures to entertain you on your commute, run, gym workout or wherever you listen to your podcasts.     If you like the podcast, there are three things you can do to help:    1) Follow us. Just take a look for that button and press it now  2) Give us a review or just leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or Spotify  3) Book your ski hire with Intersport Rent using the code ‘SKIPODCAST' or take this link You can follow Iain @skipedia and the podcast @theskipodcast. You can also follow us on WhatsApp.

Two weeks into his Powder Highway road trip, PowBot calls in from Revelstoke, British Columbia to chat about life on the road in the new van, the differences between the U.S. and Canada when it comes to snow and ski culture, hiring a ski guide in Whistler to go big in the Blackcomb backcountry and interviewing “Trailhead Tim” Gibson, who PowBot met at the trailhead and suddenly became his backcountry partner in bagging the Aussie Couloir in Joffre Lakes Provincial Park. Also, the boys Dope or Derp snow stake cams, backcountry skiing solo, the magnetic Snow Strip product and reggae music. 3:00 – Catching up with PowBot on his road trip to the Powder Highway of Canada, calling from the Revelstoke Rec Center parking lot.8:30 – Trail Whisperer in Downieville.10:00 – Avalanche Canada is saying “it's time to consider getting into bigger terrain” – it's GO TIME in the alpine! Favorable clear high pressure weather all week.13:00 – Pow Bot's road trip so far – Mount Bachelor, Stevens Pass, Whistler, Duffey Lakes.18:45 – Vail Resorts is having a PR nightmare. Youtube Peak Rankings financial breakdown of Vail Resorts. Park City Mountain Resort Ski Patrol is on strike and Vail wouldn't give them a $2/hr pay raise.21:40 – PowBot arrives in Whistler/Blackcomb and stays at Riverside RV park. PowBot hires a ski guide from Altus Mountain Guides, Tim Ross, to take him touring off the Blackcomb glaciers.25:00 – How does Canada differ from United States when it comes to skiing culture?28:35 – What is Pow Bot's boondock overnight parking plan?29:30 – Parking and skiing at Joffre Lakes area, a Canadian Provincial Park. PowBot helped unstuck the local plow truck driver, Danny, a backcountry skier who plows the lots for skiers.33:00 – PowBot meets Trailhead Tim and skis the Aussie Couloir with him.37:55 – How do you know when you meet a stranger that they will be a good ski partner?39:35 – Dope or Derp? Skiing solo. PowBot skied the Seven Steps to Paradise on Rogers Pass by himself and it was the dopest tour of his life.49:24 – In order to ski parts of Rogers Pass you have to take a backcountry travel test.52:45 – New iPhones have a text to satellite feature, eliminating the need to have something like a Spot or Garmin InReach.54:45 – Dope or Derp? The Snowstrip - A magnetic rack that goes on the side of your vehicle so your skis/board doesn't fall and hit the ground.57:55 – Dope or Derp? Reggae Music – Tom's been listening to a bunch of reggae. Stick Figure, Arise Roots, John Brown's Body and 10 Foot Ganja Plant. David Lee Scales and Chaz Smith of The Grit podcast think reggae is derp. Bob Marley is The Legend for a reason.1:04:55 – ON A MUSICAL NOTE – Ross – listener recommending Tycho and Khruangbin.1:09:20 – Dope or Derp? – a listener Derek wants to know what's up with snow stake cams.1:16:25 – Last Saturday, tail end of the holiday, one of the busiest days of skiing in Tahoe ever due to the snow stake cam.1:20:25 – The sleeper pow days are the best days – the snow stake cam isn't always accurate.1:21:40 – PowBot recorded a conversation with Trailhead Tim after their adventure on Aussie Couloir and the concept of “risk shaming”.1:30:50 – A conversation with Tim Gibson at Joffre Lakes Provincial Park – living van life and skiing in Canada.1:36:20 – Quitting the corporate life, retiring and living the ski bum van life full time.1:40:45 – Partnering up with Tim to ski Joffre Peak and Aussie Couloir.1:48:24 – Moved to Chile in 2004 and got into backcountry skiing, fully self-taught through trial and error. Close calls with cornices, glaciers and crevasses.1:54:00 – The American ski culture of not reporting avalanche accidents, opposite from Canada. The concept of “risk shaming” and how risky behavior is frowned upon in skiing in the US.1:59:00 – Living in Seattle and skiing in Washington state – Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Snoqualmie Pass.2:07:00 – What does Mind the Track mean to you?

Freeride athlete Nat Segal has had a long and impressive journey as a professional skier, and part of this journey has been getting in a properly fitting ski boot. Our Blister Recommended Shop, Pulse Boot Labs and Ski Co., has been an important part of this process. So, Kara Williard sat down with Nat and Bryn Vickers from Pulse to hear about bootfitting from an athlete's perspective; Nat's current setup; bootfitting stories from her career; and we hear about some recent filmmaking projects, including her latest short film, Mountain Joy, which covers her journey of managing a chronic disease. RELATED LINKS:A Very Deep Dive on Bootfitting, Pt. 6: Ski Boot Flex w/ Pulse Boot Labs Our Blister Rec Shop: Pulse Boot Labs and Ski Co.Watch Mountain Joy BLISTER+: Get Yourself CoveredBlister Summit 2025TOPICS & TIMES:The Season in Revelstoke (4:07)Nat's Background (5:43)Bootfitting Considerations for Athletes (9:36)Nat's Journey with Boots (14:35)Athlete Bootfitting Stories (22:18)“No Pain No Gain” Mentality (26:07)Nat's Current Setup (31:22)Nat's Transition to Filmmaking & Producing (35:44)Mountain Joy (43:17)The Season Ahead / Upcoming Projects (46:25)CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Blister CinematicBlister PodcastCRAFTEDBikes & Big Ideas Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the final episode of 2024, the boys catch up on a variety of topics just before PowBot hits the road for a month-long ski adventure on the Powder Highway of Canada, including Trail Whisperer's story of driving the Powder Highway right as COVID hit in early 2020. The new snow reporter, Al Powcino, makes his debut with a wet and soggy forecast, Trail Whisperer presents the most compelling evidence yet that the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption is linked to the last two years of record-breaking global warming, the boys discuss the 2024 word of the year, “Brain Rot”, and Trail Whisperer recounts his recent visit to San Diego chasing the massive surf swell. Pepper in a few Dope or Derps and 2024 is complete. Thanks to all our listeners for an awesome second season of Mind the Track! 3:00 – Artificial Intelligence and snow forecasting.5:50 – Christmas Day – Pow Day at Sugar Bowl, death cookies at Mount Rose and holiday traffic.8:20 – PowBot gets Trail Whisperer a Christmas gift – a bicycling book from Japan.11:00 – Dope or Derp? eSkimo – the ebike of backcountry skiing.15:50 – Dope or Derp? Christmas gifts and Christmas trees.21:10 – Sam and Trail Whisperer went to San Diego before Christmas to surf the big swell.27:30 – PowBot is about to embark on a road trip to the Powder Highway of Canada and going to the Meadow Hut with Golden Alpine Holidays.29:25 – Driving the Powder Highway, Trans-Canada Highway, Revelstoke, Kelowna, Golden.32:45 – Revelstoke and Kicking Horse – awesome mountains but no chairlift infrastructure.35:10 – Crystal Mountain in Washington.36:00 – Chairlift evacuation malfunctions at Heavenly, Telluride, Winter Park and France. What's the longest you've ever spent on a broken chairlift?41:00 – Golden Alpine Holidays and Meadow Hut in the Esplanade Range north of Golden.42:00 – Banff National Park – Amazing winter campground with 110V power and heated showers.44:10 – Dope or Derp? Driving and passing someone on a double yellow.48:20 – Oxford University Press Word of the Year – “Brain Rot”.50:15 – The Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption and it's effect on recent climate change. Scientists are beginning to acknowledge its effects on the suddenly warming climate.52:10 – Dr. Javier Vinos – author of Climate of the Past, Present and Future, a Scientific Debate, summarizes Hunga Tonga's effect on the rapid warming of the climate.58:10 – Mind the Track introduces the new Powderiffic Snow Report correspondent – Al Powcino!1:02:30 – Low tide snow conditions in Tahoe and Shasta Avalanche Center employees rescue a lost and frozen duck at 10,000 feet elevation and released it at a creek in town.1:05:00 – News – EXPLORE Act passed by Congress – legislation focused on improving outdoor recreation access, including BOLT Act - Bicycling on Long Distance Trails.1:08:50 – Outdoor recreation is a $1.2 trillion industry supporting 5 million jobs in the U.S.1:10:30 – Toyota takes every spot in vehicles most likely to last 250,000 miles or more, including the Tacoma, Tundra, Sequoia, 4Runner and Highlander Hybrid.1:13:35 – New study shows staggering number of spinal cord injuries with mountain bikers.1:15:20 – Hoot Trail in Nevada City – continued drama about its future.1:23:25 – Trail Whisperer's story about driving the Powder Highway at the beginning of COVID.1:29:40 – On a musical note - @facemelts – King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, The Osees, Queens of the Stone Age, Screaming Trees, Mark Lanegan.1:35:45 – Do you listen to music when you ski or ride your bike?1:39:30 – Thanks to all our listeners for an awesome 2024. Growing fast!

What are two of the best things in the world? Deep powder skiing and a great food truck. And today, we're talking about both with professional skier, Yu Sasaki. We also talk about Yu's beautiful short film, Home From Home; moving from Hokkaido, Japan, to Revelstoke; the ins-and-outs of running a food truck; and more.RELATED LINKS:Watch Yu's Film: Home From HomeBecome a BLISTER+ MemberCheck out the Blister Craft CollectiveTOPICS & TIMES:New Film (2:52)Japan Origins (5:49)Food and Canada (7:59)Food Truck (10:21)Planning His Menu (15:08)2 Food Trucks and Ramen (16:27)Logistics (19:41)He Skis in the Winter, Staff Runs the Trucks (22:19)How to Identify Good Food Trucks (25:24)Ten Minute Timeline (29:23)Favorite Food Trucks (31:00)Craft Obsessions and Freeride Coaching (33:05)Upcoming Ski Season (36:03)Closing (38:21)SEE OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Blister CinematicBikes & Big IdeasGEAR:30Blister Podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Revelstoke boarder Mateo Massitti is part of the next generation of backcountry riders. At 19, he left the contest scene to chase something different and landed in Revelstoke. Now 23, he's been honing his skills under the legend Dustin Craven, leveling up each season. He even helped build the Natural Selection course this summer! No doubt there's a bright future for this kid. Tune in! 

This episode is a Snow Show special, including interviews with Dave Ryding, Chemmy Alcott and others at the 2024 London Snow Show, Northern Snow Show and the industry event LISTEX.  We discuss the upcoming World Cup season, the Alpine Ski World Championships in Saalbach, the growth of the Magic Pass and there's big news about the future of the London Snow Show itself. Plus we have a new competition where you can win some great prizes. Host Iain Martin was joined in the studio by Jamie Grant – the founder of Carv.  Intersport Ski Hire Discount Code If you are heading to the snow, listener, then don't forget that you can save money when you book your ski hire at intersportrent.com and use the code ‘SKIPODCAST'  You'll get a guaranteed discount for ski hire in France, Austria and Switzerland and to make it even simpler you don't even need to use the code, just take this link and your basket will automatically be reduced. SHOW NOTES Jamie was first on the podcast in Episode 193 (1:00) The Carv team were testing the Carv 2 in Valle Nevado, Chile in September (1:30) Glencoe is planning a new £26 million gondola (3:00) Listen to Iain's report from Glencoe earlier this year in Episode 203 GB Snowsport athlete Mia Brookes came 5th in the Snowboard Big Air at Chur (3:30) The new GB Alpine Foundation has already raised over £160,000 (4:00) Listen to Iain's interview with GB Snowsport CEO Vicky Gosling in Episode 222 Dave Ryding chat (5:15) Dave has moved to Head Skis (6:00) Chemmy Alcott chat (7:00) Marcel Hirscher is back representing the Netherlands (8:15) Could Lindsey Vonn make a comeback (8:45) Ski Sunday schedule for 2025 (9:00) Neil McQuoid, Racer Ready Magazine (11:00) Julia Eder, Salzburgerland (13:45) The World Champs will take place from 04-16 February in Saalbach (14:15) The Ski Podcast sponsors the Carrick-Smith brothers – Zak, Freddy and Luca (16:15) Zak Carrick-Smith (16:30) Luca Carrick-Smith with Phil Smith (18:30) Freddy Carrick-Smith (21:20) Iain presented at the London Show about ‘How to Ski Flight Free' (22:15) Iain has taken a Flight Free Pledge for 2024 (22:30) Dom Winter, Protect Our Winters (23:00) Find out about POW's Carbon Literacy Courses (25:00) Inghams are celebrating their 90th anniversary this year Helen Taylor, Inghams (25:30) Listen to Iain's special interview with Lesley McKenna Lesley McKenna, Wandering Workshops, Aviemore (27:45) Mike Richards reported from the new Northern Snow Show (31:00) LISTEX is a B2B event that took just before show, organised by MTN (32:30) Iain moderated a panel on how the industry can help skiers make better choices (33:00) The Mountain Travel Network is taking over the London Snow Show (33:15) James Gambrill from MTN (33:45) Jamie Grant, founder of Carv (37:00) Carv 2 launched on 14 October (37:15) Buddy Passes mean that the Carv can now be shared with friends (41:45) Carv uses data from over 500 million turns (43:00) The algorithm for 24/25 is 6% more accurate than last year (45:45) Ski IQ is now different values for different terrains (46:30) Carv 2 is available at £159 until 28 October (51:00) Sebastien Travelletti, Vice President at Magic Pass (52:00)        COMPETITION – WIN A CARV 2 and more (57:45) Simply complete our short survey to be included in the draw to win prizes including a Carv 2, Vallon Aviator Sunglasses, Wild Caper underlayer, Atomic Atom Hydrogen water bottle, Verbier beanie, Val d'Isère Opinel and more. The survey is open until the end of November, so just take this to get your name in the draw. Feedback I enjoy all feedback about the show so please contact us on social @theskipodcast or by email theskipodcast@gmail.com  Ed Parkinson: "Thanks for the pod. I find it brilliant and very informative. I'm an avid skier and I love gear." Rachel: "Great podcast, thanks guys! Just moved to Revelstoke from the UK for my first season and now feel way more prepped to go buy my first pair of skis'" If you like the podcast, there are three things you can do to help:    1) Follow us. Just take a look for that button and press it now  2) Give us a review or just leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or Spotify  3) Book your ski hire with Intersport Rent using the code ‘SKIPODCAST' or take this link You can follow Iain @skipedia and the podcast @theskipodcast

In this comprehensive episode, Alex McFadyen, Mortgage Broker and Owner of Flow Mortgage Co., sits down with Heather Blaeser, a realtor specializing in development pre-sales, to dive deep into the complexities and nuances of the real estate market. The conversation covers a vast array of topics, from the historical boom and bust cycles in regions like Revelstoke, Canmore, and Kelowna, to the unique challenges of resort development and market demands. Key episodes include discussions on the rise of tourism and short-term rentals in Kelowna post-COVID-19, the impact of new short-term rental regulations coming into effect in May 2024, and the current struggle of closing deals amidst an affordability crisis and investment-driven purchases. Heather offers valuable insights on developer strategies adapting to new market conditions, financial and regulatory pressures, and shares actionable advice for potential investors on securing financing and making timely strategic decisions. Tune in to explore how industry veterans navigate and thrive in the ever-changing real estate landscape. You can find Heather on Instagram: @heatherblaeser.realestate You can also reach out to Heather through her website: blaeserhomes.ca ********** Ready to take the plunge into homeownership? Don't miss our comprehensive First-Time Home Buyers Course available at the link below. This essential resource is designed to guide you through the maze of purchasing your first home with confidence and ease. Free for a limited time to listeners of the show! https://alex-s-school-7883.thinkific.com/courses/first-time-home-buyer-course For daily insights, make sure to find us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube: @flowmortgageco Don't just dream about your future home, make it a reality! Subscribe to "The Flow: Real Estate & Money Show" for more invaluable insights, and visit our website at getflowmortgage.ca to discover how we can help make your property aspirations come true.

In this episode, we guide you through Mount Revelstoke National Park in British Columbia, Canada, just west of Glacier National Park. While it might not be as famous as some of its neighboring parks, Mount Revelstoke offers breathtaking landscapes, rainforests, and wildflower-covered alpine meadows. Plus, hear our family-friendly tips and stories from the trip.    Show notes: https://thefaiolas.com/135

Creators of the Fear Daily podcast, Brandon Schexnayder (Southern Gothic) and Brennan Storr (The Ghost Story Guys) join me to discuss TN folklore, haunted locations, and personal paranormal experiences.Find Fear Daily on Apple Podcasts- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fear-daily/id1755456394Their website- https://feardaily.com/YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@FearDailyPodAnd check out Franklin Walking Tours- https://franklinwalkingtours.com/Get Brennan's book here- 'A Strange Little Place: The Paranormal Secrets of Revelstoke, British Columbia'If you love iNTO THE FRAY and want more content....join us over on Patreon! Exclusive interviews, physical rewards like stickers, signed books, T-shirts and more, interactive live-on-video guest interviews and group chats with fellow patrons, private RSS feed, Patron-only Discord room and FB group, and more.Click HERE to check out the various pledge levels.OR...if you prefer Apple Podcasts...subscribe to iTF Premium in your Apple Podcasts app! You'll get all bonus episodes and early releases of the main show. Completely AD-FREE. If you have an encounter or encounters you'd like to share, contact me HERE or via email, shannon@intothefrayradio.comGet your iTF STICKERS....HEREFollow iTF:Facebook: Join the interactive group and visit the official iTF page Twitter: Official iTF and Shannon's personal accountShannon's Instagram Website artwork and logo for iNTO THE FRAY, by Mister-Sam ShearonIntro music with permission from TanekOutro music provided with permission from Electus Official

Send us a textA fantastic season launch episode, loads of ski news and new lifts opening for this seasonVerbier's new Savoleyres combined chair and gondolaA new replacement lift in Engelberg taking people up to TitlisLes 2 Alpes the new Jandri Express, a 32 person tricable carIn Les Gets, a new enclosed beginner's lift on the Mappy's areaBig Sky Resort in Montana continues to invest and is opening the fastest 6 person lift in North America, the Swift Current.We also cover some ski racing news, a new ski school and dry slope has opened near Perth, Scotland, as well as the InTheSnow readers trip to Les getsAlso Val Cenis and it's bid to reduce wastage by using old lift material to build new lifts   We also look at new gear for the season   ADN that is a technology that is specifically designed to improve the eco credentials of skisPanda Optics has launched its new dual vision goggle - pandaoptics.co.uk at £160Chemmy Alcott has just become an ambassador for SalomonSalomon Brigade Index with Custom Dial 360 fit Stance socksWe also looked at where is best to ski right nowAnd finally our destination showcase focussed around some incredible resorts that we both visited last season including:Whistler, Sun Peaks, Revelstoke, Pila, Crans Montana, La Clusaz, Les Gets and the PDS and many more besides.In the meantime Enjoy the mountains :) And Please do leave a review as it's the only way other like minded travellers get to find us! And don't forget to check us out on the following channels inthesnow.cominstagram.com/inthesnowTikTok@inthesnowmag youtube.com/inthesnowmagfacebook.com/inthesnowand contact us with your suggestions for further episodes at dom@InTheSnow.com / robert@ski-press.com

In this Destination episode, we take you to the heart of British Columbia, to a mountain town nestled in the Selkirk Mountains — Revelstoke. Whether you're into climbing, hiking, paddling, mountain biking, snowboarding, or skiing, this town offers endless opportunities to explore the great outdoors. From cozy coffee shops and tap rooms to great restaurants and outdoor gear shops, everything in this town caters to adventurers. Revelstoke has something for everyone.Join us as we spill the tea on our adventures as we spend a long weekend exploring Revelstoke, British Columbia. Send us a textPlease follow/subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. We ask that you kindly give the show a rating and a review as well. Learn more about RV Out West over on our website at www.rvoutwest.com Join in on the conversation via social media:InstagramFacebookQuestion of the Month

Finally the chance to chop it up with Canadian basketball royalty, the former Women's National Team Coach, SFU women's dynasty, high school and all in between as we have none other than Allison McNeill with us for Episode 143! If for some reason you don't know Allison's story then let us remind you…..as a player- back-to-back Championships in both high school AND University, transferred to Division 1 Oregon, and played pro ball overseas. Life certainly changed for Allison when she made the move to Salmon Arm, where her and Bev Smith created a women's high school dynasty, from there her hoops life took off! Once playing wrapped up at the University of Oregon and a short stint overseas, Allison came back home and found herself in Revelstoke with a teaching and coaching job, knowing for a long time that she wanted to become a coach. From there she continued to develop her craft, watching the National team practice on VHS and in person, building her notes and helping grow the game anyway she possibly could. After she moved to the lower mainland and coached at a couple of high schools the job came open at Simon Fraser University, she applied, got the job and never looked back. The mid 80's and 90's “up on the hill” found fantastic hoopers and people come through the program, all while being Nationally ranked at the NAIA level along the way! Allison (alongside her lifelong partner and amazing hoops brain Mike) was then appointed the Senior Women's National Team job after a couple of experiences with the student and junior teams. She takes great pride in the time put in with the program, watching the women climb in the world rankings with the pinnacle being a trip to the 2012 Olympics! We could literally go on forever, just do yourself the favor and tap in to this episode with one of the greatest in Canadian history! Allison McNeill- Guest https://bcsportshall.com/honoured_member/allison-mcneill/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allison_McNeill https://x.com/allisonmcneill Aaron Mitchell - Host Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/a_a_mitch/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ahoopsjourney/ Website: https://www.ahoopsjourney.com/

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Sept. 11. It dropped for free subscribers on Sept. 19. 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:WhoMatt Davies, General Manager of Cypress Mountain, British ColumbiaRecorded onAugust 5, 2024About Cypress MountainClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Boyne ResortsLocated in: West Vancouver, British ColumbiaYear founded: 1970Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts* Ikon Base Pass: 5 days, holiday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Grouse Mountain (:28), Mt. Seymour (:55) – travel times vary considerably given weather, time of day, and time of yearBase elevation: 2,704 feet/824 meters (base of Raven Ridge quad)Summit elevation: 4,720 feet/1,440 meters (summit of Mt. Strachan)Vertical drop: 2,016 feet/614 meters total | 1,236 feet/377 meters on Black Mountain | 1,720 feet/524 meters on Mt. StrachanSkiable Acres: 600 acresAverage annual snowfall: 245 inches/622 cmTrail count: 53 (13% beginner, 43% intermediate, 44% difficult)Lift count: 7 (2 high-speed quads, 3 fixed-grip quads, 1 double, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Cypress' lift fleet)View historic Cypress Mountain trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himI'm stubbornly obsessed with ski areas that are in places that seem impractical or improbable: above Los Angeles, in Indiana, in a New Jersey mall. Cypress doesn't really fit into this category, but it also sort of does. It makes perfect sense that a ski area would sit north of the 49th Parallel, scraping the same snow train that annually buries the mountains from Mt. Bachelor all the way to Whistler. It seems less likely that a 2,000-vertical-foot ski area would rise just minutes outside of Canada's third-largest city, one known for its moderate climate. But Cypress is exactly that, and offers – along with its neighbors Grouse Mountain and Mt. Seymour – a bite of winter anytime cityfolk want to open the refrigerator door.There's all kinds of weird stuff going on here, actually. Why is this little locals' bump – a good ski area, and a beautiful one, but no one's destination – decorated like a four-star general of skiing? 2010 Winter Olympics host mountain. Gilded member of Alterra's Ikon Pass. A piece of Boyne's continent-wide jigsaw puzzle. It's like you show up at your buddy's one-room hunting cabin and he's like yeah actually I built like a Batcave/wave pool/personal zoo with rideable zebras underneath. And you're like dang Baller who knew?What we talked aboutOffseason projects; snowmaking evolution since Boyne's 2001 acquisition; challenges of getting to 100 percent snowmaking; useful parking lot snow; how a challenging winter became “a pretty incredible experience for the whole team”; last winter: el nino or climate change?; why working for Whistler was so much fun; what happened when Vail Resorts bought Whistler – “I don't think there was a full understanding of the cultural differences between Canadians and Americans”; the differences between Cypress and Whistler; working for Vail versus working for Boyne – “the mantra at Boyne Resorts is that ‘we're a company of ski resorts, not a ski resort company'”; the enormous and potentially enormously transformative Cypress Village development; connecting village to ski area via aerial lift; future  lift upgrades, including potential six-packs; potential night-skiing expansion; paid parking incoming; the Ikon Pass; the 76-day pass guarantee; and Cypress' Olympic legacy.Why now was a good time for this interviewMountain town housing is most often framed as an intractable problem, ingrown and malignant and impossible to reset or rethink or repair. Too hard to do. But it is not hard to do. It is the easiest thing in the world. To provide more housing, municipalities must allow developers to build more housing, and make them do it in a way that is dense and walkable, that is mixed with commerce, that gives people as many ways to move around without a car as possible.This is not some new or brilliant idea. This is simply how humans built villages for about 10,000 years, until the advent of the automobile. Then we started building our spaces for machines instead of for people. This was a mistake, and is the root problem of every mountain town housing crisis in North America. That and the fact that U.S. Americans make no distinction between the hyper-thoughtful new urbanist impulses described here and the sprawling shitpile of random buildings that are largely the backdrop of our national life. The very thing that would inject humanity into the mountains is recast as a corrupting force that would destroy a community's already-compromised-by-bad-design character.Not that it will matter to our impossible American brains, but Canada is about to show us how to do this. Over the next 25 years, a pocket of raw forest hard against Cypress' access road will sprout a city of 3,711 homes that will house thousands of people. It will be a human-scaled, pedestrian-first community, a city neighborhood dropped onto a mountainside. A gondola could connect the complex to Cypress' lifts thousands of feet up the mountain – more cars off the road. It would look like this (the potential aerial lift is not depicted here):Here's how the whole thing would set up against the mountain:And here's what it would be like at ground level:Like wow that actually resembles something that is not toxic to the human soul. But to a certain sort of Mother Earth evangelist, the mere suggestion of any sort of mountainside development is blasphemous. I understand this impulse, but I believe that it is misdirected, a too-late reflex against the subdivision-off-an-exit-ramp Build- A-Bungalow mentality that transformed this country into a car-first sprawlscape. I believe a reset is in order: to preserve large tracts of wilderness, we should intensely develop small pieces of land, and leave the rest alone. This is about to happen near Cypress. We should pay attention.More on Cypress Village:* West Vancouver Approves ‘Transformational' Plan for Cypress Village Development - North Shore News* West Vancouver Approves Cypress Village Development with Homes for Nearly 7,000 People - UrbanizedWhat I got wrong* I said that Cypress had installed the Easy Rider quad in 2021, rather than 2001 (the correct year).* I also said that certain no-ski zones on Vail Mountain's trailmap were labelled as “lynx habitat.” They are actually labelled as “wildlife habitat.” My confusion stemmed from the resort's historical friction with the pro-Lynxers.Why you should ski Cypress MountainYou'll see it anyway on your way north to Whistler: the turnoff to Cypress Bowl Road. Four switchbacks and you're there, to a cut in the mountains surrounded by chairlifts, neon-green Olympic rings standing against the pines.This is not Whistler and no one will try to tell you that it is, including the guy running the place, who put in two decades priming the machine just up the road. But Cypress is not just a waystation either, or a curiosity, or a Wednesday evening punchcard for Vancouver Cubicle Bro. Two thousand vertical feet is a lot of vertical feet. It often snows here by the Dumpster load. Off the summits, spectacular views, panoramic, sweeping, a jigsaw interlocking of the manmade and natural worlds. The terrain is varied, playful, plentiful. And when the snow settles and the trees fill in, a bit of an Incredible Hulk effect kicks on, as this mild-mannered Bruce Banner of a ski area flexes into something bigger and beefier, an unlikely superhero of the Vancouver heights.But Cypress is also not a typical Ikon Pass resort: 600 acres, six chairlifts, not a single condo tucked against the hill. It's a ski area that's just a ski area. It rains a lot. A busy-day hike up from the most distant parking lot can eat an irrevocable part of your soul (new shuttles this year should help that). Snowmaking, by Boyne standards, is limited, (though punchy for B.C.). The lift fleet, also by Boyne standards, feels merely adequate, rather than the am-I-in-Austria-or-Montana explosive awe that hits you at the base of Big Sky.  To describe a ski area as both spectacular and ordinary feels like a contradiction (or, worse, lazy on my part). But Cypress is in fact both of these things. Lodged in a national park, yet part of Vancouver's urban fabric. Brown-dirt trails in February and dang-where'd-I-leave-my-giraffe deep 10 days later. Just another urban ski area, but latched onto a pass with Aspen and Alta, a piece of a company that includes Big Sky and Big Cottonwood and a pair of New England ski areas that dwarf their Brother Cypress. A stop on the way north to Whistler, but much more than that as well.Podcast NotesOn the 2010 Winter OlympicsA summary of Cypress' Olympic timeline, from the mountain's history page:On Whistler BlackcombWe talk quite a bit about Whistler, where Davies worked for two decades. Here's a trailmap so you don't have to go look it up:On animosity between the merger of Whistler and BlackcombI covered this when I hosted Whistler COO Belinda Trembath on the podcast a few months back.On neighborsCypress is one of three ski areas seated just north of Vancouver. The other two are Grouse Mountain and Mt. Seymour, which we allude to briefly in the podcast. Here are some visuals:On Boyne's building bingeI won't itemize everything here, but over the past half decade or so, Boyne has leapt ahead of everyone else in North American in adoption of hyper-modern lift technology. The company operates all five eight-place chairlift in the United States, has built four advanced six-packs, just built a rocketship-speedy tram at Big Sky, has rebuilt and repurposed four high-speed quads within its portfolio, and has upgraded a bucketload of aging fixed-grip chairs. And many more lifts, including two super-advanced gondolas coming to Big Sky, are on their way.On Sunday River's progression carpetsThis is how carpets ought to be stacked – as a staircase from easiest to hardest, letting beginners work up their confidence with short bursts of motion:On side-by-side carpetsBoyne has two of these bad boys, as far as I know – one at Big Sky, and one at Summit at Snoqualmie, both installed last year. Here's the Big Sky lift:On Ikon resorts in B.C. and proximity to CypressWhile British Columbia is well-stocked with Ikon Pass partners – Revelstoke, Red Mountain, Panorama, Sun Peaks – none of them is anywhere near Cypress. The closest, Sun Peaks, is four to five hours under the best conditions. The next closest Ikon Pass partner is The Summit at Snoqualmie, four hours and an international border south – so more than twice the distance as that little place north of Cypress called Whistler. 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 56/100 in 2024, and number 556 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 September 1998, Brianne Wolgram was your average 19-year-old girl living in Revelstoke, British Columbia.  After her shift at a gas station she went home to take a nap and had planned to pick up her friend at 11pm.  She left her home and was seen outside of a 7-11 sometime between 11-11:30pm on the night of September 5th, 1998.  She never made it to pick up her friend Cindy.  What happened to Brianne and where did she go? Listen to her story now told by Holly! Brianne Wolgram Website: https://findbrianne.wordpress.com/ GofundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/find-brianne-wolgram Enjoying the show?  Here's a way to find out where else you can follow CrimeaHolly! https://linktr.ee/CrimeaHolly Crime with Holly Case Suggestion Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScGdPu4AWAoG_-cmznwcNxnNQlEyX9nxxOwZNZfqpprL3TaUQ/viewform Episode Sources: https://ucfiles.com/CA/104200186.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelstoke,_British_Columbia https://truecrimediva.com/brianne-wolgram-missing-since-1998-from-revelstoke-bc/ https://globalnews.ca/news/151188/13-years-later-mystery-still-surrounds-disappearance-of-revelstoke-teen/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-186gBIZayE&t=32s https://www.abbynews.com/news/20-years-later-foul-play-never-ruled-out-in-disappearance-of-revelstoke-woman/ https://avcrimestoppers.ca/missing/brianne-wolgram/

The Ghost Furnace - Episode 93 "A Strange Little Place, w/ Brennan Storr"   In this episode we have a conversation with Brennan Storr, the author of "A Strange Little Place: The Paranormal Secrets of Revelstoke, British Columbia". This book covered everything from anomalous lights, cryptids, high strangeness and more ghost stories than you'd normally expect from a remote town. Brennan has put in the legwork uncovered and compiled these fascinating stories which helps paint a picture of a particularly weird place.    You can find this book from Beyond the Fray publishing on Amazon: https://a.co/d/gE6eZR2 Brennan co hosts the Ghost Story Guys podcast at: https://ghoststoryguys.com/   If you have a story you'd like to share, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube or TheGhostFurnacePodcast@gmail.com  

The CBC has obtained a WorkSafeBC report into the death of 19-year-old Devyn Gale, who died when she was struck by a burning cedar tree that fell on her while she was fighting a wildfire outside Revelstoke last year. The investigation found danger-tree assessments were not conducted, and it also outlines a culture of normalizing risk in the B.C. Wildfire Service. We hear a response from the wildfire service and learn more details from CBC's Daybreak South host, Chris Walker.As October's provincial election approaches, new polling shows more gains for the B.C. Conservatives. We discuss the reasons for the party's surge in support with CBC The Early Edition's director Laurence Watt, and Hamish Telford, political science professor with the University of the Fraser Valley.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on July 7. It dropped for free subscribers on July 14. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoChip Chase, Founder and Owner of White Grass Ski Touring Center, West VirginiaRecorded onMay 16, 2024About White Grass Touring CenterClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Chip ChaseLocated in: Davis, West VirginiaYear founded: 1979 (at a different location)Pass affiliations: Indy Pass and Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Canaan Valley (8 minutes), Timberline (11 minutes)Base elevation: 3,220 feet (below the lodge)Summit elevation: 4,463 feet (atop Weiss Knob)Vertical drop: 1,243 feetSkiable Acres: 2,500Average annual snowfall: 140 inchesTrail count: 42 (50 km of maintained trails)Lift count: NoneWhy I interviewed himOne habit I've borrowed from the mostly now-defunct U.S. ski magazines is their unapologetic focus always and only on Alpine skiing. This is not a snowsports newsletter or a wintertime recreation newsletter or a mountain lifestyle newsletter. I'm not interested in ice climbing or snowshoeing or even snowboarding, which I've never attempted and probably never will. I'm not chasing the hot fads like Norwegian goat fjording, which is where you paddle around glaciers in an ice canoe, with an assist tow from a swimming goat. And I've narrowed the focus much more than my traditionalist antecedents, avoiding even passing references to food, drink, lodging, gear, helicopters, snowcats, whacky characters, or competitions of any kind (one of the principal reasons I ski is that it is an unmeasured, individualistic sport).Which, way to squeeze all the fun out of it, Stu. But shearing off 90 percent of all possible subject matter allows me to cover the small spectrum of things that I do actually care about – the experience of traveling to and around a lift-served snowsportskiing facility, with a strange side obsession with urban planning and land-use policy – over the broadest possible geographic area (currently the entire United States and Canada, though mostly that's Western Canada right now because I haven't yet consumed quantities of ayahuasca sufficient to unlock the intellectual and spiritual depths where the names and statistical profiles of all 412* Quebecois ski areas could dwell).So that's why I don't write about cross-country skiing or cross-country ski centers. Sure, they're Alpine skiing-adjacent, but so is lift-served MTB and those crazy jungle gym swingy-bridge things and ziplining and, like, freaking ice skating. If I covered everything that existed around a lift-served ski area, I would quickly grow bored with this whole exercise. Because frankly the only thing I care about is skiing.Downhill skiing. The uphill part, much as it's fetishized by the ski media and the self-proclaimed hardcore, is a little bit confusing. Because you're going the wrong way, man. No one shows up at Six Flags and says oh actually I would prefer to walk to the top of Dr. Diabolical's Cliffhanger. Like do you not see the chairlift sitting right f*****g there?But here we are anyway: I'm featuring a cross-country skiing center on my podcast that's stubbornly devoted always and only to Alpine skiing. And not just a cross-country ski center, but one that, by the nature of its layout, requires some uphill travel to complete most loops. Why would I do this to myself, and to my readers/listeners?Well, several factors collided to interest me in White Grass, including:* The ski area sits on the site of an abandoned circa-1950s downhill ski area, Weiss Knob. White Grass has incorporated much of the left-over refuse – the lodge, the ropetow engines – into the functioning or aesthetic of the current business. The first thing you see upon arrival at White Grass is a mainline clearcut rising above a huddle of low-slung buildings – Weiss Knob's old maintrail.* White Grass sits between two active downhill ski areas: Timberline, a former podcast subject that is among the best-run operations in America, and state-owned Canaan Valley, a longtime Indy Pass partner. It's possible to ski across White Grass from either direction to connect all three ski areas into one giant odyssey.* White Grass is itself an Indy Pass partner, one of 43 Nordic ski areas on the pass last year (Indy has yet to finalize its 2024-25 roster).* White Grass averages 95 days of annual operation despite having no snowmaking. On the East Coast. In the Mid-Atlantic. They're able to do this because, yes, they sit at a 3,220-foot base elevation (higher than anything in New England; Saddleback, in Maine, is the highest in that region, at 2,460 feet), but also because they have perfected the art of snow-farming. Chase tells me they've never missed a season altogether, despite sitting at the same approximate latitude as Washington, D.C.* While I don't care about going uphill at a ski area that's equipped with mechanical lifts, I do find the notion of an uphill-only ski area rather compelling. Because it's a low-impact, high-vibe concept that may be the blueprint for future new-ski-area development in a U.S. America that's otherwise allergic to building things because oh that mud puddle over there is actually a fossilized brontosaurus footprint or something. That's why I covered the failed Bluebird Backcountry. Like what if we had a ski area without the avalanche danger of wandering into the mountains and without the tension with lift-ticket holders who resent the a.m. chewing-up of their cord and pow? While it does not market itself this way, White Grass is in fact such a center, an East Coast Bluebird Backcountry that allows and is seeing growing numbers of people who like to make skiing into work AT Bros.All of which, I'll admit, still makes White Grass lift-served-skiing adjacent, somewhere on the spectrum between snowboarding (basically the same experience as far as lifts and terrain are concerned) and ice canoeing (yes I'm just making crap up). But Chase reached out to me and I stopped in and skied around in January completely stupid to the fact that I was about to have a massive heart attack and die, and I just kind of fell in love with the place: its ambling, bucolic setting; its improvised, handcrafted feel; its improbable existence next door to and amid the Industrial Ski Machine.So here we are: something a little different. Don't worry, this will not become a cross-country ski podcast, but if I mix one in every 177 episodes or so, I hope you'll understand.*The actual number of operating ski areas in Quebec is 412,904.What we talked aboutWhite Grass' snow-blowing microclimate; why White Grass' customers tend to be “easy to please”; “we don't need a million skiers – we just need a couple hundred”; snow farming – what it is and how it works; White Grass' double life in the summer; a brief history of the abandoned/eventually repurposed Weiss Knob ski area; considering snowmaking; 280 inches of snow in West Virginia; why West Virginia; the state's ski culture; where and when Chase founded White Grass, and why he moved it to its current location; how an Alpine skier fell for the XC world; how a ski area electric bill is “about $5 per day”; preserving what remains of Weiss Knob; White Grass' growing AT community; the mountain's “incredible” glade skiing; whether Chase ever considered a chairlift at White Grass; is atmosphere made or does it happen?; “the last thing I want to do is retire”; Chip's favorite ski areas; an argument for slow downhill skiing; the neighboring Timberline and Canaan Valley; why Timberline is “bound for glory”; the Indy Pass; XC grooming; and White Grass' shelter system.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewI kind of hate the word “authentic,” at least in the context of skiing. It's a little bit reductive and way too limiting. It implies that nothing planned or designed or industrially scaled can ever achieve a greater cultural resonance than a TGI Friday's. By this definition, Vail Mountain – with its built-from-the-wilderness walkable base village, high-speed lift fleet, and corporate marquee – fails the banjo-strumming rubric set by the Authenticity Police, despite being one of our greatest ski centers. Real-ass skiers, don't you know, only ride chairlifts powered from windmills hand-built by 17th Century Dutch immigrants. Everything else is corporate b******t. (Unless those high-speed lifts are at Alta or Wolf Creek or Revelstoke – then they're real as f**k Brah; do you see how stupid this all is?)Still, I understand the impulses stoking that sentiment. Roughly one out of every four U.S. skier visits is at a Vail Resort. About one in four is in Colorado. That puts a lot of pressure on a relatively small number of ski centers to define the activity for an enormous percentage of the skiing population. “Authentic,” I think, has become a euphemism for “not standing in a Saturday powder-day liftline that extends down Interstate 70 to Topeka with a bunch of people from Manhattan who don't know how to ski powder.” Or, in other words, a place where you can ski without a lot of crowding and expense and the associated hassles.White Grass succeeds in offering that. Here are the prices:Here is the outside of the lodge:And the inside:Here is the rental counter:And here's the lost-and-found, in case you lose something (somehow they actually fit skis in there; it's like one of those magic tents from Harry Potter that looks like a commando bivouac from the outside but expands into King Tut's palace once you walk in):The whole operation is simple, approachable, affordable, and relaxed. This is an everyone-in-the-base-lodge-seems-to-know-one-another kind of spot, an improbable backwoods redoubt along those ever-winding West Virginia roads, a snow hole in the map where no snow makes sense, as though driving up the access road rips you through a wormhole to some different, less-complicated world.What I got wrongI said the base areas for Stowe, Sugarbush, and Killington sat “closer to 2,000 feet, or even below that.” The actual numbers are: Stowe (1,559 feet), Sugarbush (1,483 feet), Killington (1,165 feet).I accidentally referred to the old Weiss Knob ski area as “White Knob” one time.Why you should ski White GrassThere are not a lot of skiing options in the Southeast, which I consider the ski areas seated along the Appalachians running from Cloudmont in Alabama up through Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland. There are only 18 ski areas in the entire region, and most would count even fewer, since Snowshoe Bro gets Very Mad at me when I count Silver Creek as a separate ski area (which it once was until Snowshoe purchased it in 1992, and still is physically until/unless Alterra ever develops this proposed interconnect from 1978):No one really agrees on what Southeast skiing is. The set of ski states I outline above is the same one that Ski Southeast covers. DC Ski includes Pennsylvania (home to another 20-plus ski areas), which from a cultural, travel, and demographic standpoint makes sense. Things start to feel very different in New York, though Open Snow's Mid-Atlantic updates include all of the state's ski areas south of the Adirondacks.Anyway, the region's terrain, from a fall line, pure-skiing point of view, is actually quite good, especially in good snow years. The lift infrastructure tends to be far more modern than what you'll find in, say, the Midwest. And the vertical drops and overall terrain footprints are respectable. Megapass penetration is deep, and you can visit a majority of the region with an Epic, Indy, or Ikon Pass:However. Pretty much everything from the Poconos on south tends to be mobbed at all times by novice skiers. The whole experience can be tainted by an unruly dynamic of people who don't understand how liftlines work and ski areas that make no effort to manage liftlines. It kind of sucks, frankly, during busy times. And if this is your drive-to region, you may be in search of an alternative. White Grass, with its absence of lifts and therefore liftlines, can at least deliver a different story for your weekend ski experience.It's also just kind of an amazing place to behold. I often describe West Virginia as the forgotten state. It's surrounded by Pennsylvania (sixth in population among the 50 U.S. states, with 13 million residents), Ohio (8th, 11.8 M), Kentucky (27th, 4.5 M), Virginia (13th, 8.7 M), and Maryland (20th, 6.2 M). And yet West Virginia ranks 40th among U.S. states in population, with just 1.8 million people. That fact – despite the state's size (it's twice as large as Maryland) and location at the crossroads of busy transcontinental corridors – is explained by the abrupt, fortress-like mountains that have made travel into and through the state slow and inconvenient for centuries. You can crisscross parts of West Virginia on interstate highways and the still-incomplete Corridor H, but much of the state's natural awe lies down narrow, never-straight roads that punch through a raw and forgotten wilderness, dotted, every so often, with industrial wreckage and towns wherever the flats open up for an acre or 10. Other than the tailgating pickup trucks, it doesn't feel anything like America. It doesn't really feel like anything else at all. It's just West Virginia, a place that's impossible to imagine until you see it.Podcast NotesOn Weiss Knob Ski Area (1959)I can't find any trailmaps for Weiss Knob, the legacy lift-served ski area that White Grass is built on top of. But Chip and his team have kept the main trail clear:It rises dramatically over the base area:Ski up and around, and you'll find remnants of the ropetows:West Virginia Snow Sports Museum hall-of-famers Bob and Anita Barton founded Weiss Knob in 1955. From the museum's website:While the Ski Club of Washington, DC was on a mission to find an elusive ski drift in West Virginia, Bob was on a parallel mission.  By 1955, Bob had installed a 1,200-foot rope tow next door to the Ski Club's Driftland.  The original Weiss Knob Ski Area was on what is now the "Meadows" at Canaan Valley Resort.  By 1958, Weiss Knob featured two rope tows and a T-bar lift.In 1959, Bob moved Weiss Knob to the back of Bald Knob (out of the wind) on what is now White Grass Touring Center.According to Chase, the Bartons went on to have some involvement in a “ski area up at Alpine Lake.” This was, according to DC Ski, a 450-footer with a handful of surface lifts. Here's a circa 1980 trailmap:The place is still in business, though they dismantled the downhill ski operation decades ago.On the three side-by-side ski areasWhite Grass sits directly between two lift-served ski areas: state-owned Canaan Valley and newly renovated Timberline. Here's an overview of each:TimberlineBase elevation: 3,268 feetSummit elevation: 4,268 feetVertical drop: 1,000 feetSkiable Acres: 100Average annual snowfall: 150 inchesTrail count: 20 (2 double-black, 2 black, 6 intermediate, 10 beginner), plus two named glades and two terrain parksLift count: 4 (1 high-speed six-pack, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog's inventory of Timberline's lift fleet)Canaan ValleyBase elevation: 3,430 feetSummit elevation: 4,280 feetVertical drop: 850 feetSkiable Acres: 95Average annual snowfall: 117 inchesTrail count: 47 (44% advanced/expert, 36% intermediate, 20% beginner)Lift count: 4 (1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 1 carpet - view Lift Blog's inventory of Canaan Valley's lift fleet)And here's what they all look like side-by-side IRL:On other podcast interviewsChip referenced a couple of previous Storm Skiing Podcasts: SMI Snow Makers President Joe VanderKelen and Snowbasin GM Davy Ratchford. You can view the full archive (as well as scheduled podcasts) here.On West Virginia statisticsChase cited a few statistical rankings for West Virginia that I couldn't quite verify:* On West Virginia being the only U.S. state that is “100 percent mountains” – I couldn't find affirmation of this exactly, though I certainly believe it's more mountainous than the big Western ski states, most of which are more plains than mountains. Vermont can feel like nothing but mountains, with just a handful of north-south routes cut through the state. Maybe Hawaii? I don't know. Some of these stats are harder to verify than I would have guessed.* On West Virginia as the “second-most forested U.S. state behind Maine” – sources were a bit more consistent on this: every one confirmed Maine as the most-forested state (with nearly 90 percent of its land covered), then listed New Hampshire as second (~84 percent), and West Virginia as third (79 percent).* On West Virginia being “the only state in the nation where the population is dropping” – U.S. Census Bureau data suggests that eight U.S. states lost residents last year: New York (-0.52), Louisiana (-0.31%), Hawaii (-0.3%), Illinois (-0.26%), West Virginia (-0.22%), California (-0.19%), Oregon (-0.14%), and Pennsylvania (-0.08%).On the White Grass documentaryThere are a bunch of videos on White Grass' website. This is the most recent:On other atmospheric ski areasChase mentions a number of ski areas that deliver the same sort of atmospheric charge as White Grass. I've featured a number of them on past podcasts, including Mad River Glen, Mount Bohemia, Palisades Tahoe, Snowbird, and Bolton Valley.On the Soul of Alta movieAlta also made Chase's list, and he calls out the recent Soul of Alta movie as being particularly resonant of the mountain's special vibe:On resentment and New York State-owned ski areasI refer briefly to the ongoing resentment between New York's privately owned, tax-paying ski areas and the trio of heavily subsidized state-owned operations: Gore, Whiteface, and Belleayre. I've detailed that conflict numerous times. This interview with the owners of Plattekill, which sits right down the road from Belle, crystalizes the main conflict points.On White Grass' little shelters all over the trailsThese are just so cool: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 46/100 in 2024, and number 546 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Seriah is re-joined by Brennan Storr, researcher, podcaster, and author of “A Strange Little Place: The Hauntings & Unexplained Events of One Small Town”, a collection of very weird stories involving Revelstoke Canada. Topics include an encounter in a haunted house, Seriah's fortunate experience with a cliff in the dark, Brennan's experience near the Best Friends' Animal Shelter by the Grand Canyon, skinwalker sightings and a bizarrely malfunctioning vehicle, ghostly pets, the Revelstoke graveyard and homes next door, an encounter in Waikiki Hawaii at night, the instinct to leave a location suddenly, a strange encounter alone in a house, an interaction with an unknown force, shadow people, individuals influenced emotionally by unknown entities, weird experiences with green lights, an x-ray technician and a light and a mysterious woman, a bizarrely self-starting record player, Harry Potter fiction, a weird collective dream, Mafia-related murder, the Hell's Angels MC, a youthful police experience, underground streams, running water and the paranormal, anomalous audio while podcasting late at night, misunderstood EVPs, the film “Under the Silver Lake”, life changes after getting a book published, timing of paranormal phenomena, an encounter with a belligerent gas station patron, Mike Festa's experience wearing a cape in public, incidents of dealing with enraged strangers, a misadventure in business investment, shadow people, gremlins, small darting shadow beings, the Uzbekian cultural concept of the Divine Dark, dark vs evil, introspection, and much more! This is a truly enjoyable, wide-ranging conversation!

Seriah is re-joined by Brennan Storr, researcher, podcaster, and author of “A Strange Little Place: The Hauntings & Unexplained Events of One Small Town”, a collection of very weird stories involving Revelstoke Canada. Topics include an encounter in a haunted house, Seriah's fortunate experience with a cliff in the dark, Brennan's experience near the Best Friends' Animal Shelter by the Grand Canyon, skinwalker sightings and a bizarrely malfunctioning vehicle, ghostly pets, the Revelstoke graveyard and homes next door, an encounter in Waikiki Hawaii at night, the instinct to leave a location suddenly, a strange encounter alone in a house, an interaction with an unknown force, shadow people, individuals influenced emotionally by unknown entities, weird experiences with green lights, an x-ray technician and a light and a mysterious woman, a bizarrely self-starting record player, Harry Potter fiction, a weird collective dream, Mafia-related murder, the Hell's Angels MC, a youthful police experience, underground streams, running water and the paranormal, anomalous audio while podcasting late at night, misunderstood EVPs, the film “Under the Silver Lake”, life changes after getting a book published, timing of paranormal phenomena, an encounter with a belligerent gas station patron, Mike Festa's experience wearing a cape in public, incidents of dealing with enraged strangers, a misadventure in business investment, shadow people, gremlins, small darting shadow beings, the Uzbekian cultural concept of the Divine Dark, dark vs evil, introspection, and much more! This is a truly enjoyable, wide-ranging conversation! - Recap by Vincent Treewell of The Weird Part Podcast Outro Music is Leviathan by Haishen Download

Cars & Coffee. My God does it get much better than that? Alex Stoyle, owner of Revelstoke coffee in downtown Concord, drops in to talk about the event he created. Cars & Coffee on Capitol hosted by Revelstoke Coffee is a gathering of people and their vehicles in beautiful downtown Concord, New Hampshire. All makes and models are welcome and encouraged. From rat-rods to exotics, muscle cars to imports, tuners to classics and everything in-between, if you're proud of it, they want to see it. Held alongside the state capitol building on Capitol Street and Park Street in Concord, NH directly across from Revelstoke Coffee and is on the second Sunday of each month 8am-11am. The streets are closed to normal traffic, open for show car parking only.

Cars & Coffee. My God does it get much better than that? Alex Stoyle, owner of Revelstoke coffee in downtown Concord, drops in to talk about the event he created. Cars & Coffee on Capitol hosted by Revelstoke Coffee is a gathering of people and their vehicles in beautiful downtown Concord, New Hampshire. All makes and models are welcome and encouraged. From rat-rods to exotics, muscle cars to imports, tuners to classics and everything in-between, if you're proud of it, they want to see it. Held alongside the state capitol building on Capitol Street and Park Street in Concord, NH directly across from Revelstoke Coffee and is on the second Sunday of each month 8am-11am. The streets are closed to normal traffic, open for show car parking only.

I love coffee. Wayyyyyy too much to be honest. Anyway I thought that I fell into a fever dream when I found out that there's a coffee event called The Northeast Coffee Festival coming to Concord, NH on May 10-11. It's being hosted by two of my favorite coffee houses Revelstoke Coffee and Wayfarer Roasters. Alex Stoyle and Karen Bassett, respectively, come by and give me the deets on this event for all of us java addicts. There are going to workshops on espresso, tea, and homebrewing. There'll be panel discussions, coffee tastings AND “drumroll please” a 2024 Latte Art Throwdown at the Bank of NH Stage! Much of the weekend is free, but, certain events require purchasing a pass.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 16. It dropped for free subscribers on April 23. 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:WhoSteve Paccagnan, President and CEO of Panorama Mountain, British ColumbiaRecorded onMarch 27, 2024About PanoramaClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Panorama Mountain Village, Inc., a group of local investorsLocated in: Panorama, British Columbia, CanadaYear founded: 1962Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts* Ikon Base Pass: 5 days, holiday blackouts* Mountain Collective: 2 days, no blackouts* Lake Louise Pass: view details hereClosest neighboring ski areas: Fairmont Hot Springs (:45), Kimberley (1:43), Kicking Horse (1:54) – travel times will vary considerably depending upon road conditions and time of yearBase elevation: 3,773 feet/1,150 metersSummit elevation: 8,038 feet/2,450 metersVertical drop: 4,265 feet/1,300 metersSkiable Acres: 2,975Average annual snowfall: 204 inches/520 centimetersTrail count: 135 (30% expert, 20% advanced, 35% intermediate, 15% beginner)Lift count: 10 (1 eight-passenger pulse gondola, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 1 platter, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Panorama's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himU.S. America is making a mistake. In skiing, as in so many other arenas, we prioritize status quo protectionism over measured, holistic development that would reorient our built environments around humans, rather than cars, shrinking our overall impact while easing our access to the mountains and permitting more people to enjoy them. Our cluttered and interminable western approach roads, our mountain-town housing shortages, our liftlines backed up to Kansas are all the result of deliberate generational decisions to prioritize cars over transit, open space over dense walkable communities, and blanket wilderness protection over metered development of new public ski areas in regions where the established businesses - and their surrounding infrastructure - are overwhelmed.I write about these things a lot. This pisses some of you off. I'm OK with that. I'm not here to recycle the broken ideas that have made U.S. skiing into the mess that (in some fundamental ways, in certain regions) it is. I'm here to figure out how it can be better. The skiing itself, mind you, tends to be fabulous. It is everything that surrounds the mountains that can spoil the experience: the cost, the hassle, the sprawl. There are better ways to do this, to get people to the mountains and to house them there, both to live and to vacation. We know this because other countries already do a lot of the things that we ought to be doing. And the most culturally similar and geographically cozy one is so close we can touch it.U.S. America and U.S. Americans are ceding North American skiing's future to British Columbia. This is where virtually all of the continent's major resort development has occurred over the past three decades. Why do you suppose so many skiers from Washington State spend so much time at Whistler? Yes, it's the largest resort in North America, with knockout terrain and lots of snow. But Crystal and Stevens Pass and Baker all get plenty of snow and are large enough to give most skiers just about anything they need. What Whistler has that none of them do is an expansive pedestrian base village with an almost infinite number of ski-in, ski-out beds and places to eat, drink, and shop. A dense community in the mountains. That's worth driving four or more hours north for, even if you have to deal with the pain-in-the-ass border slowdowns to get there.This is not an accident, and Whistler is not an outlier. Over the past 30-plus years, the province of British Columbia has deliberately shaped its regulatory environment and developmental policies to encourage and lubricate ski resort evolution and growth. While all-new ski resort developments often stall, one small ski area after another has grown from community bump to major resort over the past several decades. Tiny Mount Mackenzie became titanic Revelstoke, which towers over even mighty Whistler. Backwater Whitetooth blew upward and outward into sprawling, ferocious Kicking Horse. Little Tod Mountain evolved into Sun Peaks, now the second-largest ski area in Canada. While the resort has retained its name over the decades, the transformation of Panorama has been just as thorough and dramatic.Meanwhile, in America, we stagnate. Every proposed terrain expansion or transit alternative or housing development crashes headfirst into a shredder of bureaucratic holdups, lawsuits, and citizen campaigns. There are too many ways to stop things, and too many people whose narrow visions of what the world ought to be blockade the sort of wholesale rethinking of community architecture that would make the mountains more livable and accessible.This has worked for a while. It's still sort of working now. But each year, as the same two companies sell more and more passes to access a relatively stable number of U.S. ski areas, the traffic, liftlines, and cost of visiting these large resorts grows. Locals will find a way, pick their spots. But destination skiers with a menu of big-mountain options will eventually realize that I-70 is not a mandatory obstacle to maneuver on a good ski vacation. They can head north, instead, with the same ski pass they already have, and spend a week at Red or Fernie or Kimberley or Revelstoke or Sun Peaks or Kicking Horse.Or Panorama. Three thousand acres, 4,265 vertical feet, no lines, and no hassle getting there other than summoning the patience to endure long drives down Canadian two-laners. As the U.S. blunders along, Canada kept moving. The story of Panorama shows us how.What we talked aboutA snowmaking blitz; what happened when Panorama joined the Ikon Pass; how Covid savaged the international skier game; Panorama in the ‘80s; Intrawest arrives; a summit lift at last; village-building; reviving Mt. Baldy, B.C.; Mont Ste. Marie and learning French; why Intrawest sold the ski area; modernizing the lift system; busy busy Copper; leaving for Kicking Horse; Resorts of the Canadian Rockies arrives; who owns Panorama; whether the resort will stay independent; potential lift replacements and terrain expansions; could we ever see a lift in Taynton Bowl?; explaining those big sections of the trailmap that are blocked off with purple borders; and whitebark pine conservation.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIt wouldn't be fair to call Panorama a Powder Highway sleeper. The place seems to be doing fine as a business, with plenty of skier traffic to support continuous expansive infrastructure upgrades. But with lower average annual snowfall totals than Revy and Whitewater and Fernie and Red, Panorama does tend to get fewer shout-outs through the media and social media megaphones. It's Northstar to Palisades Tahoe, Keystone to A-Basin, Park City to the Cottonwoods: the less-snowy, less-intense neighbor that collects families in wholesome Build-A-Bear fashion.But Panorama is wrapping up its second full season on the Ikon Pass, and its second winter since Canada finally unlocked its Covid-era borders. What impact, if any, would those two developments have on Panorama's famously uncrowded slopes? Even if Colorad-Bro would never deign to turn his Subaru north, would Kansas Karl or North Dakota Norman load the kids into the minivan for something farther but less annoying?Not yet, it turns out. Or at least, not in great enough numbers to wreck the place. But there is another angle to the Panorama story that intrigues me. Like Copper Mountain, Mountain Creek, and Whistler, Panorama once belonged to Intrawest. Unlike Winter Park, Steamboat, Stratton, and Snowshoe, they did not remain part of the enterprise long enough to live second lives as part of Alterra Mountain Company. But what if they had? Our big-mountain coalitions have somewhat ossified over these past half-dozen years, so that we think of ski areas as Ikon mountains or Epic mountains or Indy mountains or independent mountains. But these rosters, like the composition of sports teams or, increasingly, leagues, can fluctuate wildly over time. I do wonder how Whistler would look under Alterra and Ikon, or what impact Mountain Creek-as-unlimited-Ikon mountain would have had on the megapass market in New York City? We don't really know. But Panorama, as a onetime Intrawest mountain that rejoined the family through the backdoor with Ikon membership, does give us a sort-of in-between case, a kind of What If? episode of skiing.Which would be a fun thought experiment under any circumstances. But how cool to hear about the whole evolution from a guy who saw it all happen first-hand over the course of four decades? Who saw it from all levels and from all angles, who knew the players and who helped push the boulder uphill himself? That's increasingly rare with big mountains, in this era of executive rotations and promotions, to get access to a top leader in possession of institutional knowledge that he himself helped to draft. It was, I'm happy to say, as good as I'd hoped.What I got wrongI said that Panorama was “one of the closest B.C. ski areas to the United States.” This is not quite right. While the ski area is just 100 or so miles from the international border, more than a dozen ski areas sit closer to the U.S., including majors such as Kimberley, Fernie, Whitewater, and Red Mountain.Why you should ski PanoramaLet's acknowledge, first of all, that Panorama has a few things working against it: it's more than twice as far from Calgary airport – most skiers' likely port of entry – than Banff and its trio of excellent ski areas; it's the least powdery major ski resort on the Powder Highway; and while the skiable acreage and vertical drop are impressive, skiers must ride three lifts and a Snowcat to lap much of the best terrain.But even that extra drive still gets you to the bump in under four hours on good roads – hardly an endurance test. Sure, they get more snow in Utah, but have you ever been in Utah on a powder day? Enjoy that first untracked run, because unless you're a local who knows exactly where to go, it will probably be your only one. And lapping multiple lifts is more of a psychological exercise than a practical one when there are few to no liftlines.And dang the views when you get there:There are plenty of large, under-trafficked ski resorts remaining in the United States. But they tend to be hundreds of miles past the middle of nowhere, with 60-year-old chairlifts and little or no snowmaking, and nowhere to sleep other than the back of your van. In BC, you can find the best of America's Big Empties crossed with the modern lift fleets of the sprawling conglomerate-owned pinball machines. And oh by the way you get a hell of a discount off of already low-seeming (compared to the big-mountain U.S.) prices: an American dollar, as of April 16, was worth $1.38 Canadian.Podcast NotesOn IntrawestPanorama, as a former Intrawest-owned resort, could easily have been part of Alterra Mountain Company right now. Instead, it was one of several ski areas sold off in the years before the legacy company stuffed its remainders into the Anti-Vail:On Mont Ste. MarieMont Ste. Marie is one of approximately 45,000 ski areas in Quebec, and the only one, coincidentally, that I've actually skied. Paccagnan happened to be GM when I skied there, in 2002:On Kicking HorseIt's incredible how many U.S. Americans remain unaware of Kicking Horse, which offers what is probably the most ferocious inbounds ski terrain in North America, 4,314 vertical feet of straight down:Well, almost straight down. The bottom bit is fairly tame. That's because Kicking Horse, like many B.C. ski areas, began as a community bump and exploded skyward with an assist from the province. Here's what the ski area, then known as “Whitetooth,” looked like circa 1994:This sort of transformation happens all the time in British Columbia, and is the result of a deliberate, forward-looking development philosophy that has mostly evaporated in the U.S. American West.On the Powder HighwayPanorama lacks the notoriety of its Powder Highway size-peers, mostly because the terrain is overall a bit milder and the volume of natural snow a bit lower than many of the other ski areas. Here's a basic Powder Highway map:And a statistical breakdown:On the Lake Louise PassI already covered this one in my podcast with Red Mountain CEO Howard Katkov a couple months back:Katkov mentions the “Lake Louise Pass,” which Red participates in, along with Castle Mountain and Panorama. He's referring to the Lake Louise Plus Card, which costs $134 Canadian up front. Skiers then get their first, fourth, and seventh days free, and 20 percent off lift tickets for each additional visit. While these sorts of discount cards have been diminished by Epkon domination, versions of them still provide good value across the continent. The Colorado Gems Card, Smugglers' Notch's Bash Badge, and ORDA's frequent skier cards are all solid options for skiers looking to dodge the megapass circus.On Panorama's masterplan:On Mt. Baldy, B.C.Paccagnan helped revitalize a struggling Mt. Baldy, British Columbia, in the 1990s. Here was the ski area's 1991 footprint:And here's what it looks like today – the ski area joined Indy Pass for the 2023-24 ski season:On Panorama's evolutionPanorama, like many B.C. ski areas, has evolved significantly over the past several decades. Here's what the place looked like in 1990, not long after Paccagnan started and before Intrawest bought the place. A true summit lift was still theoretical, Taynton Bowl remained out of bounds, and the upper-mountain lifts were a mix of double chairs and T-bars:By 1995, just two years after Intrawest had purchased the ski area, the company had installed a summit T-bar and opened huge tracts of advanced terrain off the top of the mountain:The summit T ended up being a temporary solution. By 2005, Intrawest had thoroughly modernized the lift system, with a sequence of high-speed quads out of the base transporting skiers to the fixed-grip Summit Quad. Taynton Bowl became part of the marked and managed terrain:On Whitebark Pine certificationA bit of background on Panorama's certification as a “whitebark pine-friendly ski resort” – from East Kootenay News Online Weekly:The Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada has certified Panorama Mountain Resort as a Whitebark Pine Friendly Ski Area, the first resort in Canada to receive this designation.The certification recognizes the resort's long and continued efforts to support the recovery of whitebark pine within its ski area boundary, a threatened tree species that plays a critical role in the biodiversity of mountain ecosystems. ,,,Found across the subalpine of interior B.C., Alberta and parts of the U.S, this slow growing, five needle pine is an integral part of an ecosystem that many other species depend on for survival. The tree's cones hold some of the most nutritious seeds in the mountains and sustain Grizzly bears and birds, including the Clark's nutcracker which has a unique symbiotic relationship with the tree. The deep and widespread roots of the whitebark pine contribute to the health of watersheds by stabilizing alpine slopes and regulating snowpack run-off.Over the past decade, whitebark pine numbers have fallen dramatically due in large part to a non-native fungal disease known as white pine blister rust that has been infecting and killing the trees at an alarming rate. Since 2012, the whitebark pine has been listed as endangered under the Government of Canada's Species at Risk Act (SARA), and was recently added to the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service's threatened species list.Panorama Mountain Resort has collaborated with the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada to facilitate restoration projects including cone collection and tree plantings within the resort's ski area.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 31/100 in 2024, and number 531 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 today's show from Revelstoke, Canada, Chas reports live from Natural Selection and David defines criteria to “identify” as a surfer, Carissa does a deal with Dior, Lisa deals in boards, and Jimbo goes toe-to-toe with Mother Nature for the heavyweight bout to end all humanity. Plus Barrel or Nah?! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Feb. 28. It dropped for free subscribers on March 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 (on sale at 15% off through March 12, 2024). You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoHoward Katkov, Chairman and CEO of Red Mountain Resort, British ColumbiaRecorded onFeb. 8, 2024About Red MountainClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Red Mountain VenturesLocated in: Rossland, British Columbia, CanadaYear founded: 1947 (beginning of chairlift service)Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts* Ikon Base Pass and Ikon Base Pass Plus: 5 days, holiday blackouts* Lake Louise Pass (described below)Closest neighboring ski areas: Salmo (:58), Whitewater (1:22), Phoenix Mountain (1:33), 49 Degrees North (1:53)Base elevation: 3,887 feet/1,185 metersSummit elevation: 6,807 feet/2,075 metersVertical drop: 2,919 feet/890 metersSkiable Acres: 3,850Average annual snowfall: 300 inches/760 cmTrail count: 119 (17% beginner, 34% intermediate, 23% advanced, 26% expert)Lift count: 8 (2 fixed-grip quads, 3 triples, 1 double, 1 T-bar, 1 carpet)View historic Red Mountain trailmaps on skimap.org. Here are some cool video overviews:Granite Mountain:Red Mountain:Grey Mountain:Rossland:Why I interviewed himIt's never made sense to me, this psychological dividing line between Canada and America. I grew up in central Michigan, in a small town closer to Canada (the bridge between Sarnia and Port Huron stood 142 miles away), than the closest neighboring state (Toledo, Ohio, sat 175 miles south). Yet, I never crossed into Canada until I was 19, by which time I had visited roughly 40 U.S. states. Even then, the place felt more foreign than it should, with its aggressive border guards, pizza at McDonald's, and colored currency. Canada on a map looks easy, but Canada in reality is a bit harder, eh?Red sits just five miles, as the crow flies, north of the U.S. border. If by some fluke of history the mountain were part of Washington, it would be the state's greatest ski area, larger than Crystal and Stevens Pass combined. In fact, it would be the seventh-largest ski area in the country, larger than Mammoth or Snowmass, smaller only than Park City, Palisades, Big Sky, Vail, Heavenly, and Bachelor.But, somehow, the international border acts as a sort of invisibility shield, and skiing Red is a much different experience than visiting any of those giants, with their dense networks of high-speed lifts and destination crowds (well, less so at Bachelor). Sure, Red is an Ikon Pass mountain, and has been for years, but it is not synonymous with the pass, like Jackson or Aspen or Alta-Snowbird. But U.S. skiers – at least those outside of the Pacific Northwest – see Red listed on the Ikon menu and glaze past it like the soda machine at an open bar. It just doesn't seem relevant.Which is weird and probably won't last. And right now Shoosh Emoji Bro is losing his goddamn mind and cursing me for using my platform focused on lift-served snowskiing to hype one of the best and most interesting and most underrated lift-served snowskiing operations in North America. But that's why this whole deal exists, Brah. Because most people ski at the same 20 places and I really think skiing as an idea and as an experience and as a sustainable enterprise will be much better off if we start spreading people out a bit more.What we talked aboutRed pow days; why Red amped up shuttle service between the ski area and Rossland and made it free; old-school Tahoe; “it is the most interesting mountain I've ever skied”; buying a ski area when you've never worked at a ski area; why the real-estate crash didn't bury Red like some other ski areas; why Katkov backed away from a golf course that he spent a year and a half planning at Red; why the 900 lockers at the dead center of the base area aren't going anywhere; housing and cost of living in Rossland; “we look at our neighborhood as an extension of our community of Rossland”; base area development plans; balancing parking with people; why and how Red Mountain still sells affordable ski-in, ski-out real estate; “our ethos is to be accessible for everybody”; whether we could ever see a lift from Rossland to Red; why Red conducted a crowd-funding ownership campaign and what they did with the money; Red's newest ownership partners; the importance of independence; “the reality is that the pass, whether it's the Epic or the Ikon Pass, has radically changed the way that consumers experience skiing”; why Red joined the Ikon Pass and why it's been good for the mountain; the Mountain Collective; why Red has no high-speed lifts and whether we could ever see one; no stress on a powder day; Red's next logical lift upgrades; potential lift-served expansions onto Kirkup, White Wolf, and Mt. Roberts; and the Powder Highway.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewMy full-scale assault of Canada, planned for 2023, has turned into more of an old-person's bus tour. I'm stopping at all the big sites, but I sure am taking my time, and I'm not certain that I'm really getting the full experience.Part of this echoes the realization centuries' of armies have had when invading Russia: damn this place is big. I'd hoped to quickly fold the whole country into the newsletter, as I'd been able to do with the Midwest and West when I expanded The Storm's coverage out of the Northeast in 2021. But I'd grown up in the Midwest and been skiing the West annually for decades. I'd underestimated how much that had mattered. I'd skied a bit in Canada, but not consistently enough to kick the door down in the manner I'd hoped. I started counting ski areas in Quebec and stopped when I got to 4,000*, 95 percent of which were named “Mont [some French word with numerous squiggly marks above the letters].” The measurements are different. The money is different. The language, in Quebec, is different. I needed to slow down.So I'm starting with western Canada. Well, I started there last year, when I hosted the leaders of SkiBig3 and Sun Peaks on the podcast. This is the easiest Canadian region for a U.S. American to grasp: Epic, Ikon, Mountain Collective, and Indy Pass penetration is deep, especially in British Columbia. Powdr, Boyne, Vail, and Pacific Group Resorts all own ski areas in the province. There is no language barrier.So, Red today, Panorama next month, Whistler in June. That's the way the podcast calendar sets up now, anyway. I'll move east as I'm able.But Red, in particular, has always fascinated me. If you're wondering what the largest ski area in North America is that has yet to install a high-speed lift, this is your answer. For many of you, that may be a deal-breaker. But I see a time-machine, an opportunity to experience a different sort of skiing, but with modern gear. Like if aliens were to land on today's Earth with their teleportation devices and language-translation brain chips and standard-issue post-industro-materialist silver onesies. Like wow look how much easier the past is when you bring the future with you.Someday, Red will probably build a high-speed lift or two or four, and enough skiers who are burned out on I-70 and LCC but refuse to give up their Ikon Passes will look north and say, “oh my, what's this all about?” And Red will become some version of Jackson Hole or Big Sky or Whistler, beefy but also busy, remote but also accessible. But I wanted to capture Red, as it is today, before it goes away.*Just kidding, there are actually 12,000.^^OK, OK, there are like 90. Or 90,000.Why you should ski Red MountainLet's say you've had an Ikon Pass for the past five or six ski seasons. You've run through the Colorado circuit, navigated the Utah canyons, circled Lake Tahoe. The mountains are big, but so are the crowds. The Ikon Pass, for a moment, was a cool little hack, like having an iPhone in 2008. But then everyone got them, and now the world seems terrible because of it.But let's examine ye ‘ole Ikon partner chart more closely, to see what else may be on offer:What's this whole “Canada” section about? Perhaps, during the pandemic, you resigned yourself to U.S. American travel. Perhaps you don't have a passport. Perhaps converting centimeters to inches ignites a cocktail of panic and confusion in your brain. But all of these are solvable dilemmas. Take a deeper look at Canada.In particular, take a deeper look at Red. Those stats are in American. Meaning this is a ski area bigger than Mammoth, taller than Palisades, snowy as Aspen. And it's just one stop on a stacked Ikon BC roster that also includes Sun Peaks (Canada's second-largest ski area), Revelstoke (the nation's tallest by vertical drop), and Panorama.We are not so many years removed from the age of slow-lift, empty American icons. Alta's first high-speed lift didn't arrive until 1999 (they now have four). Big Sky's tin-can tram showed up in 1995. A 1994 Skiing magazine article described the then-Squaw Valley side of what is now Palisades Tahoe as a pokey and remote fantasyland:…bottomless steeps, vast acreage, 33 lifts and no waiting. America's answer to the wide-open ski circuses of Europe. After all these years the mountain is still uncrowded, except on weekends when people pile in from the San Francisco Bay area in droves. Squaw is unflashy, underbuilt, and seems entirely indifferent to success. The opposite of what you would expect one of America's premier resorts to be.Well that's cute. And it's all gone now. America still holds its secrets, vast, affordable fixed-grip ski areas such as Lost Trail and Discovery and Silver Mountain. But none of them have joined the Ikon Pass, and none gives you the scale of Red, this glorious backwater with fixed-grip lifts that rise 2,400 vertical feet to untracked terrain. Maybe it will stay like this forever, but it probably won't. So go there now.Podcast NotesOn Red's masterplanRed's masterplan outlines potential lift-served expansions onto Kirkup, White Wolf, and Mount Roberts. We discuss the feasibility of each. Here's what the mountain could look like at full build-out:On Jane CosmeticsAn important part of Katkov's backstory is his role as founder of Jane cosmetics, a ‘90s bargain brand popular with teenagers. He built the company into a smash success and sold it to Estée Lauder, who promptly tanked it. Per Can't Hardly Dress:Lauder purchased the company in 1997. Jane was a big deal for Lauder because it was the company's first mass market drugstore brand. Up until that point, Lauder only owned prestige brands like MAC, Clinique, Jo Malone and more. Jane was a revolutionary move for the company and a quick way to enter the drugstore mass market.Lauder had no clue what do with Jane and sales plummeted from $50 million to $25 million by 2004. Several successive sales and relaunches also failed, and, according to the article above, “As it stands today, the brand is dunzo. Leaving behind a default Shopify site, an Instagram unupdated for 213 weeks and a Facebook last touched three years ago.”On Win Smith and SugarbushKatkov's story shares parallels with that of Win Smith, the Wall-Streeter-turned-resort-operator who nurtured Sugarbush between its days as part of the American Skiing Company shipwreck and its 2019 purchase by Alterra. Smith joined me on the podcast four years ago, post-Alterra sale, to share the whole story.On housing in Banff and Sun PeaksCanadian mountain towns are not, in general, backed up against the same cliff as their American counterparts. This is mostly the result of more deliberate regional planning policies that either regulate who's allowed to live where, or allow for smart growth over time (meaning they can build things without 500 lawsuits). I discussed the former model with SkiBig3 (Banff) President Pete Woods here, and the latter with Sun Peaks GM Darcy Alexander here. U.S. Americans could learn a lot from looking north.On not being able to buy slopeside real estate in Oregon, Washington, or California The Pacific Northwest is an extremely weird ski region. The resorts are big and snowy, but unless you live there, you've probably never visited any of them. As I wrote a few weeks back:Last week, Peak Rankings analyzed the matrix of factors that prevent Oregon and Washington ski areas, despite their impressive acreage and snowfall stats, from becoming destination resorts. While the article suggests the mountains' proximity to cities, lousy weather, and difficult access roads as blockers, just about every prominent ski area in America fights some combination of these circumstances. The article's most compelling argument is that, with few exceptions, there's really nowhere to stay on most of the mountains. I've written about this a number of times myself, with this important addendum: There's nowhere to stay on most of the mountains, and no possibility of building anything anytime soon.The reasons for this are many and varied, but can be summarized in this way: U.S. Americans, in thrall to an environmental vision that prizes pure wilderness over development of any kind, have rejected the notion that building dense, human-scaled, walkable mountainside communities would benefit the environment far more than making everyone drive to skiing every single day. Nowhere has this posture taken hold more thoroughly than in the Pacific Northwest.Snowy and expansive British Columbia, perhaps sensing a business opportunity, has done the opposite, streamlining ski resort development through a set of policies known as the B.C. Commercial Alpine Ski Policy. As a result, ski areas in the province have rapidly expanded over the past 30 years…California is a very different market, with plenty of legacy slopeside development. It tends to be expensive, however, as building anything new requires a United Nations treaty, an act of Jesus, and a total eclipse of the sun in late summer of a Leap Year. Perhaps 2024 will be it.On “Fight The Man, Own the Mountain”Red ran a crowd-funding campaign a few years back called “Fight the Man, Own the Mountain.” We discuss this on the pod, but here is a bit more context from a letter Katkov wrote on the subject:Investing in RED means investing in history, independence, and in this growing family that shares the same importance on lifestyle and culture. RED is the oldest ski resort in Western Canada and it has always been fiercely independent. There are not many, if any ski resorts left in North America like Red and the success of our campaign demonstrates a desire by so many of you to, help, in a small way, to protect the lifestyle, soul and ski culture that emanates from Red.RED is a place I've been beyond proud to co-own and captain since 2004 and the door is still open to share that feeling and be a part of our family. But please note that despite the friendly atmosphere, this is one of the Top 20 resorts in North America in terms of terrain. The snow's unreal and the people around here are some of the coolest, most down-to-earth folks you're ever likely to meet. (Trying to keep up with them on the hill is another thing entirely…)With $2 million so far already committed and invested, we wasted no time acting on promised improvements. These upgrades included a full remodel of fan favorite Paradise Lodge (incl. flush toilets!) as well as the expansion of RED's retail and High Performance centres. This summer we'll see the construction of overnight on-mountain cabins and the investor clubhouse (friends welcome!) as well as continued parking expansion. We've heard from a number of early investors that they were beyond stoked to enjoy the new Paradise Lodge so soon after clicking the BUY button. Hey, ownership has its privileges…On the Lake Louise PassKatkov mentions the “Lake Louise Pass,” which Red participates in, along with Castle Mountain and Panorama. He's referring to the Lake Louise Plus Card, which costs $134 Canadian up front. Skiers then get their first, fourth, and seventh days free, and 20 percent off lift tickets for each additional visit. While these sorts of discount cards have been diminished by Epkon domination, versions of them still provide good value across the continent. The Colorado Gems Card, Smugglers' Notch's Bash Badge, and ORDA's frequent skier cards are all solid options for skiers looking to dodge the megapass circus.On the Powder HighwayRed is the closest stop on the Powder Highway to U.S. America. This is what the Powder Highway is:And here's the circuit:Fairmont is just a little guy, but Kicking Horse, Kimberley, and Fernie are Epic Pass partners owned by Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, and Revy, Red, and Panorama are all on Ikon. Whitewater used to be on M.A.X. Pass, but is now pass-less. Just to the west of this resort cluster sits Big White (Indy), Silver Star (Ikon), and Sun Peaks (Ikon). To their east is Sunshine, Lake Louise, Norquay (all Ikon), and Castle (Indy). There are also Cat and heli-ski operations all over the place. You could lose a winter here pretty easily.On Katkov's business backgroundIn this episode of the Fident Capital Podcast, Katkov goes in-depth on his business philosophy and management style. Here's another:On bringing the city to the mountainsWhile this notion, rashly interpreted, could summon ghastly visions of Aspen-esque infestations of Fendi stores in downtown Rossland, it really just means building things other than slopeside mansions with 19 kitchens and a butler's wing. From a 2023 resort press release:Red Development Company, the real estate division of RED Mountain Resort (RED), in conjunction with ACE Project Marketing Group (ACE), recently reported the sell-out of the resort's latest real estate offering during the season opening of the slopes. On offer was The Crescent at RED, a collection of 102 homes, ranging from studio to one bedrooms and lofts featuring a prime ski in – ski out location. Howard Katkov, CEO of RED, and Don Thompson, RED President, first conceived of bringing the smaller urban living model to the alpine slopes in January 2021. ACE coined the concept as "everything you need and nothing you don't" …An important component was ensuring that the price point for The Crescent was accessible to locals and those who know and love the destination. With prices starting mid $300s – an excellent price when converted to USD – and with an achievable 5% deposit down, The Crescent at RED was easily one of the best value propositions in real estate for one of the best ranked ski resorts in North America. Not surprisingly, over 50% of the Crescent buyers were from the United States, spurred on by the extraordinary lifestyle and value offered by The Crescent, but also the new sparsity of Canadian property available to foreign buyers.As a good U.S. American, I ask Katkov why he didn't simply price these units for the one-percenters, and how he managed the House-Flipping Henries who would surely interpret these prices as opportunity. His answers might surprise you, and may give you hope that a different sort of ski town is possible.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 15/100 in 2024, and number 515 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

How should you think about ski boot flex patterns, and which one is “right” for you? For the latest installment of our “Very Deep Dive on Bootfitting” series, Kara Williard talks with bootfitter and Pulse Boot Lab's Revelstoke store manager, Bryn Vickers, to cover the complex and often misunderstood aspects of ski boot flex. We discuss how the ankle joint and an individual's biomechanics are the most important pieces of the puzzle; what exactly boot “flex” even means when it comes to on-snow performance; the many variables that determine what flex pattern might work best for you; and we also talk about Pulse's latest tech, including their new foam-injected aftermarket liner.RELATED LINKS:Blister Recommended Shop: Pulse Boot LabsBLISTER+ Membership: Sign Up A Very Deep Dive on Bootfitting Series3D Printing & Bootfitting w/ Pulse Boot Lab (Ep.234)Stance Balancing with Pulse Boot Labs (Ep.217)TOPICS & TIMESAnkle Joint = #1 Priority (3:33)How the Body Moves (6.17)Custom Insoles (12:49)What is Boot Flex? (17:50)Walk Mode Vs. Fixed Cuff (22:49)Flex Ratings (26:27)Forward Lean & Calf Size (33:39)Height, Weight, & Strength (39:17)Options for Stiffening (42:26)Options for Softening (45:59)Final Thoughts on Boot Flex (48:49)Pulse's Foam Injected Liner & Other Tech (52:51)CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Blister CinematicCRAFTEDBikes & Big IdeasBlister PodcastOff The Couch Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chuck Copenace is a Winnipeg-based Ojibway musician and we talk about Chuck's excellent album Oshki Manitou, which expands his work as a trumpet player, arranger, and composer. He's woven together ceremonial sweat-lodge melodies with jazz, funk, dance and electronica and this episode features tracks from that album. He's such a powerfully lyrical trumpet player, and you'll be deeply touched to hear his inspiring story of moving through trauma and addiction to helping others through counseling and music. Chuck talked to me about his experience of growing up Indigenous, how intergenerational trauma from the residential schools affected his life, and how he was able to get sober and find healing in Indigineous ceremonial traditions.  You'll hear about his university experience at Brandon university studying with Alan Ehnes, how he became a counselor through the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba, and found his way back to a life in music. He spoke of his hope for the future of Indigenous youth, working with Julia Keefe's Indigenous Big Band, and his upcoming projects. Please check out Chuck's website: https://www.chuckcopenace.com/ Can you help support this series? I really do need the help of my listeners to keep this going: ⁠https://ko-fi.com/leahroseman⁠ Thanks! Like all my episodes, this is also available as a video on my YouTube, and the transcript is linked as well to my podcast website: https://www.leahroseman.com/episodes/chuck-copenace You can sign up here for my newsletter and get access to Sneak Peeks for upcoming guests: https://mailchi.mp/ebed4a237788/podcast-newsletter My Linktree for social media: https://linktr.ee/leahroseman Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (02:16) Creator, getting back to music, sweat lodge ceremony (06:26) Creator from Oshki Manitou (10:26) learning ceremonial songs, recording the album (14:12) Indian Act, suppression of Indigenous spiritual and cultural practices like the sweat lodge (15:45) intro to Nothing Simple (17:03) Nothing Simple live video from Revelstoke (21:36) Indigenous peoples in Winnipeg (22:56) the origin of Oshki Manitou (26:12) Oshki Manitou (30:13) Chuck's son (30:53) check out past episodes and support the show (31:31) school music programs (35:00) how music helped Chuck deal with inter-generational trauma, getting sober (46:53) growing up Indigenous, the way history is taught  (50:27) residential schools and hope for the future (58:22) excerpt from Little Sunflower from Oshki Manitou (59:20) Indigineous mentorship, Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band  (01:07:29) Chuck's music education, Alan Ehnes Brandon (01:16:47) Addictions Foundation of Manitoba, recovery and burnout  (01:24:36) finding a path in music again (01:35:18) next projects, sharing his story, youth workshops --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/leah-roseman/message

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Jan. 16. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 23. 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:WhoTroy Nedved, General Manager of Big Sky, MontanaRecorded onJanuary 11, 2024About Big SkyClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Boyne ResortsLocated in: Big Sky, MontanaYear founded: 1973Pass affiliations:* 7 days, no blackouts on Ikon Pass (reservations required)* 5 days, holiday blackouts on Ikon Base and Ikon Base Plus Pass (reservations required)* 2 days, no blackouts on Mountain Collective (reservations required)Reciprocal partners: Top-tier Big Sky season passes include three days each at Boyne's other nine ski areas: Brighton, Summit at Snoqualmie, Cypress, Boyne Mountain, The Highlands, Loon Mountain, Sunday River, Pleasant Mountain, and Sugarloaf.Closest neighboring ski areas: Yellowstone Club (ski-to connection); Bear Canyon (private ski area for Mount Ellis Academy – 1:20); Bridger Bowl (1:30)Base elevation: 6,800 feet at Madison BaseSummit elevation: 11,166 feetVertical drop: 4,350 feetSkiable Acres: 5,850Average annual snowfall: 400-plus inchesTrail count: 300 (18% expert, 35% advanced, 25% intermediate, 22% beginner)Terrain parks: 6Lift count: 38 (1 75-passenger tram, 1 high-speed eight-pack, 3 high-speed six-packs, 4 high-speed quads, 3 fixed-grip quads, 9 triples, 5 doubles, 3 platters, 1 ropetow, 8 carpet lifts – Big Sky also recently announced a second eight-pack, to replace the Six Shooter six-pack, next year; and a new, two-stage gondola, which will replace the Explorer double chair for the 2025-26 ski season – View Lift Blog's inventory of Big Sky's lift fleet.)View vintage Big Sky trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himBig Sky is the closest thing American skiing has to the ever-stacking ski circuses of British Columbia. While most of our western giants labor through Forest Service approvals for every new snowgun and trail sign, BC transforms Revelstoke and Kicking Horse and Sun Peaks into three of the largest ski resorts on the continent in under two decades. These are policy decisions, differences in government and public philosophies of how to use our shared land. And that's fine. U.S. America does everything in the most difficult way possible, and there's no reason to believe that ski resort development would be any different.Except in a few places in the West, it is different. Deer Valley and Park City and Schweitzer sit entirely (or mostly), on private land. New project approvals lie with local entities. Sometimes, locals frustrate ski areas' ambitions, as is the case in Park City, which cannot, at the moment, even execute simple lift replacements. But the absence of a federal overlord is working just fine at Big Sky, where the mountain has evolved from Really Good to Damn Is This Real in less time than it took Aspen to secure approvals for its 153-acre Hero's expansion.Boyne has pulled similar stunts at its similarly situated resorts across the country: Boyne Mountain and The Highlands in Michigan and Sunday River in Maine, each of them transforming in Hollywood montage-scene fashion. Progress has lagged more at Brighton and Alpental, both of which sit at least partly on Forest Service land (though change has been rapid at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire, whose land is a public-private hybrid). But the evolution at Big Sky has been particularly comprehensive. And, because of the ski area's inherent drama and prominence, compelling. It's America's look-what-we-can-do-if-we-can-just-do mountain. The on-mountain product is better for skiers and better for skiing, a modern mountain that eases chokepoints and upgrades facilities and spreads everyone around.Winter Park, seated on Forest Service land, owned by the City of Denver, and operated by Alterra Mountain Company, outlined an ambitious master development plan in 2005 (when Intrawest ran the ski area). Proposed projects included a three-stage gondola connecting the town of Winter Park with the ski area's base village, a massive intermediate-focused expansion onto Vasquez Ridge, and a new mid-mountain beginner area. Nearly 20 years later, none of it exists. Winter Park did execute some upgrades in the meantime, building a bunch of six-packs and adding lift redundancy and access to the high alpine. But the mountain's seven lift upgrades in 19 years are underwhelming compared to the 17 such projects that have remade Big Sky over that same time period. Winter Park has no lack of resources, skier attention, or administrative will, but its plans stall anyway, and it's no mystery why.I write more about Big Sky than I do about other large North American ski resorts because there is more happening at Big Sky than at any other large North American ski resort. That is partly luck and partly institutional momentum and partly a unique historical collision of macroeconomic, cultural, and technological factors that favor construction and evolution of what a ski resort is and can be. And, certainly, U.S. ski resorts build big projects on Forest Service land every single year. But Boyne and Big Sky, operating outside of the rulebooks hemming in their competitors, are getting to the future a hell of a lot faster than anyone else.What we talked aboutYes a second eight-pack is coming to Big Sky; why the resort is replacing the 20-year-old Six Shooter lift; potential future Headwaters lift upgrades; why the resort will replace Six Shooter before adding a second lift out of the Madison base; what will happen to Six Shooter and why it likely won't land elsewhere in Boyne's portfolio; the logic of selling, rather than scrapping, lifts to competitors; adjusting eight-packs for U.S. Americans; automated chairlift safety bars; what happened when the old Ramcharger quad moved to Shedhorn; what's up with the patrol sled marooned in a tree off Shedhorn?; the philosophy of naming lifts; why we won't see the Taco Bell tram anytime soon (or ever); the One & Only gondola; Big Sky's huge fleet of real estate lifts; how the new tram changed Big Sky; metering traffic up the Lone Peak tram; the tram's shift from pay-per-day to pay-per-ride; a double carpet; that new double-blue-square rating on the trailmap; Black Hills skiing at Terry Peak and Deer Mountain; working in Yellowstone; river kayaking culture; revisiting the coming out-of-base gondola; should Swifty have been an eight-pack?; on-mountain employee housing; Big Sky 2025; what does the resort that's already upgraded everything upgrade next?; potential future lift upgrades; and the Ikon Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewI didn't plan to record two Big Sky podcasts in two months. I prefer to spread my attention across mountains and across regions and across companies, as most of you know. This podcast was scheduled for early December, after an anticipated Thanksgiving-week tram opening. But then the tram was delayed, and as it happened I was able to attend the grand opening on Dec. 19. I recorded a podcast there, with Nedved and past Storm Skiing Podcast guests Taylor Middleton (Big Sky president) and Stephen Kircher (Boyne Resorts CEO).But Nedved and I kept this conversation on the calendar, pushing it into January. It's a good thing. Because no sooner had Big Sky opened its spectacular new tram than it announced yet another spectacular new lift: a second eight-pack chair, to replace a six-pack that is exactly 21 years old.There's a sort of willful showiness to such projects. Who, in America, can even afford a six-person chairlift, let alone have the resources to tag such a machine for the rubbish bin? And then replace it with a lift so spectacular that its ornamentation exceeds that of your six-year-old Ramcharger eight-seater, still dazzling on the other side of the mountain?When Vail built 18 new lifts in 2022, the projects ended up as all function, no form. They were effective, and well-placed, but the lifts are just lifts. Boyne Resorts, which, while a quarter the size of Vail, has built dozens of new lifts over the past decade, is building more than just people-movers. Its lifts are experiences, housed in ski shrines, buildings festooned in speakers and screens, the carriers descending like coaster trains at Six Flags, bubbles and heaters and sportscar seats and conveyors, a spectacle you might ride even if skiing were not attached at the end.American skiing will always have room for throwbacks and minimalism, just as American cuisine will always have room for Taco Bell and small-town diners. Most Montana ski areas are fixed-grip and funky – Snowbowl and Bridger and Great Divide and Discovery and Lost Trail and Maverick and Turner. Big Sky's opportunity was, at one time, to be a bigger, funkier version of these big, funky ski areas. But its opportunity today is to be the not-Colorado, not-Utah alt destination for skiers seeking comfort sans megacrowds. The mountain is fulfilling that mission, at a speed that is almost impossible to believe. Which is why we keep going back there, over and over again.What I got wrongI said several times that the Six Shooter lift was “only 20 years old.” In fact, Moonlight installed the lift in 2003, making the machine legal drinking age.Why you should ski Big SkyThe approach is part of the experience, always. Some ski areas smash the viewshed with bandoliers of steepshots slicing across the ridge. From miles down the highway you say whoa. Killington or Hunter or Red Lodge. Others hide. Even from the parking lot you see only suggestions of skiing. Caberfae in Michigan is like this, enormous trees mask its runs and its peaks. Mad River Glen erupts skyward but its ragged clandestine trail network resembles nothing else in the East and you wonder where it is. Unfolding, then, as you explore. Even vast Heavenly, from the gondola base, is invisible.Big Sky, alone among American ski areas, inspires awe on the approach. Turn west up 64 from 191 and Lone Peak commands the horizon. This place is not like other places you realize. On the long road up you pass the spiderwebbing trails off the Lone Moose and Thunder Wolf lifts and still that summit towers in the distance. There is a way to get up there and a way to ski down but from below it's all invisible. All you can see is snow and rocks and avy chutes flushed out over millennia.That's the marquee and that's the post: I'm here. But Lone Peak, with its triple black diamonds and sign-in sheets and muscled exposure, is not for mortal hot laps. Go up, yes. Ski down, yes. But then explore. Because staple Keystone to Breck and you have roughly one Big Sky.Humans cluster. Even in vast spaces. Or perhaps especially so. The cut trails below Ramcharger and Swifty swarm like train stations. But break away from the salmon run, into the trees or the bowl or the gnarled runs below the liftlines, and emerge into a different world. Everywhere, empty lifts, empty glades, endless crags and crannies. Greens and blues that roll for miles. Beyond every chairlift, another chairlift. Stacked like bonus levels are what feel like mini ski areas existing for you alone. An empty endless. A skiing fantasyland.Podcast NotesOn Uncle Dan's CookiesFear not: this little shack seated beside the Six Shooter lift is not going anywhere:On Moonlight Basin and Spanish PeaksLike the largest (Park City) and second-largest (Palisades Tahoe) ski areas in America, Big Sky is the stapled-together remains of several former operations. Unlike those two giants, which connected two distinct ski areas with gondolas (Park City and Canyons; Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows), seamless ski connections existed between the former Spanish Peaks terrain, on the ski area's far southern end, and the former Moonlight Basin, on the northern end. The circa 2010 trailmaps called out access points between each of the bookend resorts and Big Sky, which you could ski with upgraded lift tickets:Big Sky purchased the properties in 2013, a few years after this happened (per the Bozeman Daily Chronicle):Moonlight Basin, meanwhile, got into trouble after borrowing $100 million from Lehman Brothers in September 2007, with the 7,800-acre resort, its ski lifts, condos, spa and a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course put up as collateral, according to foreclosure records filed in Madison County.That loan came due in September 2008, according to the papers filed by Lehman, and Moonlight defaulted. Lehman itself went bankrupt in September 2008 and blamed its troubles on a collapse in the real estate market that left it upside down.An outfit called Crossharbor Capital Partners, which purchased and still owns the neighboring Yellowstone Club, eventually joined forces with Big Sky to buy Moonlight and Spanish Peaks (Crossharbor is no longer a partner). Now, just imagine tacking the 2,900-acre Yellowstone Club onto Big Sky's current footprint (which you can in fact do if you're a Yellowstone Club member):On the sled chilling in the tree off ShedhornYes, there's a patrol sled lodged in a tree off the Shedhorn high-speed quad. Here's a pic I snagged from the lift last spring:Explore Big Sky last year recounted the avalanche that deposited the sled there:“In Big Sky and around Montana, ['96 and '97] has never been topped in terms of snowfall,” [veteran Big Sky ski patroller Mike] Buotte said. Unfortunately, a “killer ice layer on the bottom of the snowpack” caused problems in the tram's second season. On Christmas Day, 1996, a patroller died in an explosive accident near the summit of Lone Mountain. Buotte says it was traumatic for the entire team.The next morning, patrol triggered a “wall-to-wall” avalanche across Lenin and the Dictator Chutes. The slide infamously took out the Shedhorn chairlift, leaving scars still visible today. Buotte and another patroller were caught in that avalanche. Miraculously, they both stopped. Had they “taken the ride,” Buotte is confident they would not have survived.“That second year, the reality of what's going on really hit us,” Buotte said. “And it was not fun and games. It was pretty dark, frankly. That's when it got very real for the organization and for me. The industry changed; avalanche training changed. We had to up our game. It was a new paradigm.”Buotte said patrol changed the Lenin route's design—adding more separation in time and space—and applied the same learning to other routes. Mitigation work is inherently dangerous, but Buotte believes the close call helped emphasize the importance of route structure to reduce risk.Here's Boutte recalling the incident:On the Ski the Sky loopBig Sky gamified a version of their trailmap to help skiers understand that there's more to the mountain than Ramcharger and Swifty:On the bigness of Big SkyNedved points out that several major U.S. destination ski areas total less than half Big Sky's 5,850 acres. That would be 2,950 acres, which is, indeed, more than Breckenridge (2,908 acres), Schweitzer (2,900), Alta (2,614), Crystal (2,600), Snowbird (2,500), Jackson Hole (2,500), Copper Mountain (2,465), Beaver Creek (2,082), Sun Valley (2,054), Deer Valley (2,026), or Telluride (2,000).On the One & Only resort and brandWe discuss the One & Only resort company, which is building a super-luxe facility that they will connect to the Madison base with a D-line gondola. Which is an insane investment for a transportation lift. As far as I can tell, this will be the company's first facility in the United States. Here's a list of their existing properties.On the Big Sky TramI won't break down the new Lone Peak tram here, because I just did that a month ago.On the Black HillsSouth Dakota's Black Hills, where Nedved grew up, are likely not what most Americans envision when they think of South Dakota. It's a gorgeous, mountainous region that is home to Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse monument, and 7,244-foot Black Elk Peak (formerly Harney Peak), the highest point in the United States east of the Rockies. This is a tourist bureau video, but it will make you say wait Brah where are all the cornfields?The Black Hills are home to two ski areas. The first it Terry Peak, an 1,100-footer with three high-speed quads that is an Indy Pass OG:The second is Deer Mountain, which disappeared for around six years before an outfit called Keating Resources bought the joint last year and announced they would bring it back as a private ski area for on-mountain homeowners. They planned a large terrain reduction to accommodate more housing. I put this revised trailmap together last year based upon a conversation with the organization's president, Alec Keating:The intention, Keating told me in July, was to re-open the East Side (top of the map above), for this ski season, and the West side (bottom portion) in 2025. I've yet to see evidence of the ski area having opened, however.On Troy the athleteWe talk a bit about Nedved's kayaking adventures, but that barely touches on his action-sports resume. From a 2019 Explore Big Sky profile:Nedved lived in a teepee in Gardiner for two years down on the banks of the Yellowstone River across from the Yellowstone Raft Company, where he developed world-class abilities as a kayaker.“The culture around rafting and kayaking is pretty heavy and I connected with some of the folks around there that were pretty into it. That was the start of that,” Nedved said of his early days in the park. “My Yellowstone days, I spent all my time when I was not working on the water.” And even when he was working, and someone needed to brave a stretch of Class V rapids for a rescue mission or body recovery, he was the one for the job.When Teton Gravity Research started making kayak movies, Nedved and his friends got the call as well. “We were pioneering lines that had never been done before: in Costa Rica and Nepal, but also stretches of river in Montana in the Crazy Mountains of Big Timber Creek and lots of runs in Beartooths that had never been floated,” Nedved recounted.“We spent a lot of time looking at maps, hiking around the mountains, finding stuff that was runnable versus not. It was a stage of kayaking community in Montana that we got started. Now the next generation of these kids is blowing my mind—doing things that we didn't even think was possible.”Nedved is an athlete's athlete. “I love competing in just about anything. When I was first in Montana, I found out about Powder 8s at Bridger Bowl. It was a cool event and we got into it,” he said in a typically modest way. “It was just another thing to hone your skills as a ski instructor and a skiing professional.”Nedved has since won the national Powder 8 competition five times and competed on ESPN at the highest level of the niche sport in the Powder 8 World Championships held at Mike Wiegele's heliskiing operation in Canada. Even some twenty years later, he is still finding podiums in the aesthetically appealing alpine events with longtime partner Nick Herrin, currently the CEO of the Professional Ski Instructors of America. Nedved credits his year-round athletic pursuits for what keeps him in the condition to still make perfect turns.Sadly, I was unable to locate any videos of Nedved kayaking or Powder 8ing.On employee housing at Big Sky and Winter ParkBig Sky has built an incredible volume of employee housing (more than 1,000 beds in the Mountain Village alone). The most impressive may be the Levinski complex: fully furnished, energy-efficient buildings situated within walking distance of the lifts.Big mountain skiing, wracked and wrecked by traffic and mountain-town housing shortages, desperately needs more of this sort of investment, as I wrote last week after Winter Park opened a similarly situated project.On Big Sky 2025Big Sky 2025 will, in substance, wrap when the new two-stage, out-of-base gondola opens next year. Here's the current iteration of the plan. You can see how much it differs from the version outlined in 2016 in this contemporary Lift Blog post.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 2/100 in 2024, and number 502 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This EP features Paul Laursen, a prominent figure in endurance sports, a versatile athlete, coach, scientist, and entrepreneur, encompassing more than three decades of experience. His academic career includes over 150 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts and the mentorship of more than 20 PhD/Masters students. Paul is also the co-author with this colleague Martin Buckheit, of the bestseller "The Science and Application of High-Intensity Interval Training.”, and its education provider HIITScience.com.On a personal level, Paul has completed over 100 endurance events, including 18 Ironman triathlons. Notably, he has coached accomplished athletes such as Kyle Buckingham and Andi Becherer to triumph in Ironman competitions. Driven by a passion for innovation, Paul co-founded Athletica.ai a pioneering training platform that skillfully combines scientific principles with artificial intelligence, including machine learning and numerical optimization. This dynamic platform is rapidly evolving and is set to redefine the future of athletic training. He lives in Revelstoke, BC with his wife Alison and their daughter Kaia. If you liked this EP, please take the time to rate and comment, share with a friend, and connect with us on social channels IG @Kingopain, TW @BuiltbyScott, LI+FB Scott Livingston. You can find all things LYM at www.LYMLab.com, download your free Life Lab Starter Kit today and get busy living https://lymlab.com/free-lym-lab-starter/Please take the time to visit and connect with our sponsors, they are an essential part of our success:www.MatrixFitness.comwww.VALD.com https://bstrong.training/ - Take advantage of 10% savings and use the coupon code LYMBstrong

As this is bonus content related to episode 300, we don't have the usual show open. There are no loons. There's no music. There's no Mathew here for this. This episode is dedicated entirely to Daniel Jordan Levesque's memory and features my recent conversation with his mother, Stacey Thur, from her home in Revelstoke. B.C. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 300: In June 2011, twenty-year-old musician Daniel Jordan Levesque moved from his family home in Revelstoke, B.C., to Victoria, full of dreams to start a new life and advance his burgeoning musical career. On June 15, seeking work, Daniel went to a 7-Eleven store, where he met Joshua Tyler Bredo, the store's Assistant Manager, who hired Daniel on the spot. Bredo presented himself as a good guy, a helpful friend, but in truth, he quickly became obsessed with Daniel sexually with nefarious motives in mind. Bredo began grooming Daniel, lying to him with promises of a more lavish lifestyle, plying him with drugs and alcohol while telling Daniel he saw him as a “little brother.” The coercion and lies continued until August 3, when Bredo lured Daniel to his apartment under the promise of an interview for Daniel at a non-existent law firm. It was there that Bredo killed Daniel and set up a scene to make it appear to be self-defence, later calling 911. Bredo was arrested that night and charged with Daniel's murder. However, the case was not put to rest until after a mistrial in 2015, numerous other delays and a guilty plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter in 2017. Sources: 2016 BCSC 1843 (CanLII) | R. v Bredo | CanLII 2016 BCSC 2580 (CanLII) | R. v Bredo | CanLII 2016 BCSC 2701 (CanLII) | R. v Bredo | CanLII 2017 BCSC 2134 (CanLII) | R. v Bredo | CanLII Musician lured with lies, then killed; ‘Let me go. Just let me go.' B.C. man in prison for killing friend with hammer released early ATTENTION!! ATTENTION!! For all of ... Stacey Thur Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hailing from Québec, Canada, Matt joins us on this episode to talk about spending the winters in Revelstoke. From his favorite riding area, his involvement in Freerider Filmz, growing his personal brand, and much more.  Be sure to give Matt a follow on IG and check out his YouTube Channel! Matt Dubois IG - https://www.instagram.com/matt_dubois/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@matt_dubois  Check out NEW SledSend Merch Here

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 14. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 21. 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:WhoJim Vick, General Manager of Lutsen Mountains, MinnesotaRecorded onOctober 30, 2023About Lutsen MountainsClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Midwest Family Ski ResortsLocated in: Lutsen, MinnesotaYear founded: 1948Pass affiliations:* Legendary Gold Pass – unlimited access, no blackouts* Legendary Silver Pass – unlimited with 12 holiday and peak Saturday blackouts* Legendary Bronze Pass – unlimited weekdays with three Christmas week blackouts* Indy Pass – 2 days with 24 holiday and Saturday blackouts* Indy Plus Pass – 2 days with no blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Chester Bowl (1:44), Loch Lomond (1:48), Spirit Mountain (1:54), Giants Ridge (1:57), Mt. Baldy (2:11)Base elevation: 800 feetSummit elevation: 1,688 feetVertical drop: 1,088 feet (825 feet lift-served)Skiable Acres: 1,000Average annual snowfall: 120 inchesTrail count: 95 (10% expert, 25% most difficult, 47% more difficult, 18% easiest)Lift count: 7 (1 eight-passenger gondola, 2 high-speed six-packs, 3 double chairs, 1 carpet)View historic Lutsen Mountains trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himI often claim that Vail and Alterra have failed to appreciate Midwest skiing. I realize that this can be confusing. Vail Resorts owns 10 ski areas from Missouri to Ohio. Alterra's Ikon Pass includes a small but meaningful presence in Northern Michigan. What the hell am I talking about here?Lutsen, while a regional standout and outlier, illuminates each company's blind spots. In 2018, the newly formed Alterra Mountain Company looted the motley M.A.X. Pass roster for its best specimens, adding them to its Ikon Pass. Formed partly from the ashes of Intrawest, Alterra kept all of their own mountains and cherry-picked the best of Boyne and Powdr, leaving off Boyne's Michigan mountains, Brighton, Summit at Snoqualmie, and Cypress (which Ikon later added); and Powdr's Boreal, Lee Canyon, Pico, and Bachelor (Pico and Bachelor eventually made the team). Alterra also added Solitude and Crystal after purchasing them later in 2018, and, over time, Windham and Alyeska. Vail bought Triple Peaks (Crested Butte, Okemo, Sunapee), later that year, and added Resorts of the Canadian Rockies to its Epic Pass. But that left quite a few orphans, including Lutsen and sister mountain Granite Peak, which eventually joined the Indy Pass (which didn't debut until 2019).All of which is technocratic background to set up this question: what the hell was Alterra thinking? In Lutsen and Granite Peak, Alterra had, ready to snatch, two of the largest, most well-cared-for, most built-up resorts between Vermont and Colorado. Midwest Family Ski Resorts CEO Charles Skinner is one of the most aggressive and capable ski area operators anywhere. These mountains, with their 700-plus-foot vertical drops, high-speed lifts, endless glade networks, and varied terrain deliver a big-mountain experience that has more in common with a mid-sized New England ski area than anything within several hundred miles in any direction. It's like someone in a Colorado boardroom and a stack of spreadsheets didn't bother looking past the ZIP Codes when deciding what to keep and what to discard.This is one of the great miscalculations in the story of skiing's shift to multimountain pass hegemony. By overlooking Lutsen Mountains and Granite Peak in its earliest days, Alterra missed an opportunity to snatch enormous volumes of Ikon Pass sales across the Upper Midwest. Any Twin Cities skier (and there are a lot of them), would easily be able to calculate the value of an Ikon Pass that could deliver 10 or 14 days between Skinner's two resorts, and additional days on that mid-winter western run. By dismissing the region, Alterra also enabled the rise of the Indy Pass, now the only viable national multi-mountain pass product for the Midwestern skier outside of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. These sorts of regional destinations, while not as “iconic” as, say, Revelstoke, move passes; the sort of resort-hopping skier who is attracted to a multi-mountain pass is going to want to ski near home as much as they want to fly across the country.Which is a formula Vail Resorts, to its credit, figured out a long time ago. Which brings us back to those 10 Midwestern ski areas hanging off the Epic Pass attendance sheet. Vail has, indeed, grasped the utility of the Midwestern, city-adjacent day-ski area, and all 10 of its resorts fit neatly into that template: 75 chairlifts on 75 vertical feet with four trees seated within 10 miles of a city center. But here's what they missed: outside of school groups; Park Brahs who like to Park Out, Brah; and little kids, these ski areas hold little appeal even to Midwesterners. That they are busy beyond comprehension at all times underscores, rather than refutes, that point – something simulating a big-mountain experience, rather than a street riot, is what the frequent Midwest skier seeks.For that, you have to flee the cities. Go north, find something in the 400- to 600-foot vertical range, something with glades and nooks and natural snow. Places like Caberfae, Crystal Mountain, Nub's Nob, and Shanty Creek in Michigan; Cascade, Devil's Head, and Whitecap, Wisconsin; Giants Ridge and Spirit Mountain, Minnesota. Lutsen is the best of all of these, a sprawler with every kind of terrain flung across its hundreds of acres. A major ski area. A true resort. A Midwestern dream.Vick and I discuss the Ikon snub in the podcast. It's weird. And while Alterra, five years later, is clearly doing just fine, its early decision to deliberately exclude itself from one of the world's great ski regions is as mystifying a strategic choice as I've seen any ski company make. Vail, perhaps, understands the Midwest resort's true potential, but never found one it could close on – there aren't that many of them, and they aren't often for sale. Perhaps they dropped a blank check on Skinner's desk, and he promptly deposited it into the nearest trashcan.All of which is a long way of saying this: Lutsen is the best conventional ski area in the Midwest (monster ungroomed Mount Bohemia is going to hold more appeal for a certain sort of expert skier), and one of the most consistently excellent ski operations in America. Its existence ought to legitimize the region to national operators too bent on dismissing it. Someday, they will understand that. And after listening to this podcast, I hope that you will, too.What we talked aboutWhy Lutsen never makes snow in October; Minnesota as early-season operator; the new Raptor Express six-pack; why the Bridge double is intact but retiring from winter operations; why Lutsen removed the 10th Mountain triple; why so many Riblet chairs are still operating; why Moose Return trail will be closed indefinitely; potential new lower-mountain trails on Eagle Mountain; an updated season-opening plan; how lake-effect snow impacts the west side of Lake Superior; how the Raptor lift may impact potential May operations; fire destroys Papa Charlie's; how it could have been worse; rebuilding the restaurant; Lutsen's long evolution from backwater to regional leader and legit western alternative; the Skinner family's aggressive operating philosophy; the history of Lutsen's gondola, the only such machine in Midwest skiing; Lutsen's ambitious but stalled masterplan; potential Ullr and Mystery mountain chairlift upgrades; “the list of what skiers want is long”; why Lutsen switched to a multi-mountain season pass with Granite Peak and Snowriver; and “if we would have been invited into the Ikon at the start, we would have jumped on that.”Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewFor all my gushing above, Lutsen isn't perfect. While Granite Peak has planted three high-speed lifts on the bump in the past 20 years, Lutsen has still largely been reliant on a fleet of antique Riblets, plus a sixer that landed a decade ago and the Midwest's only gondola, a glimmering eight-passenger Doppelmayr machine installed in 2015. While a fixed-grip foundation isn't particularly abnormal for the Midwest, which is home to probably the largest collection of antique chairlifts on the planet, it's off-brand for burnished Midwest Family Ski Resorts.Enter, this year, Lutsen's second six-pack, Raptor Express, which replaces both the 10th Mountain triple (removed), and the Bridge double (demoted to summer-only use). This new lift, running approximately 600 vertical feet parallel to Bridge, will (sort of; more below), smooth out the janky connection from Moose back to Eagle. And while the loss of 10th Mountain will mean 300 vertical feet of rambling below the steep upper-mountain shots, Raptor is a welcome upgrade that will help Lutsen keep up with the Boynes.However, even as this summer moved the mountain ahead with the Raptor installation, a storm demolished a skier bridge over the river on Moose Return, carving a several-hundred-foot-wide, unbridgeable (at least in the short term), gap across the trail. Which means that skiers will have to connect back to Eagle via gondola, somewhat dampening Raptor's expected impact. That's too bad, and Vick and I talk extensively about what that means for skiers this coming winter.The final big timely piece of this interview is the abrupt cancellation of Lutsen's massive proposed terrain expansion, which would have more than doubled the ski area's size with new terrain on Moose and Eagle mountains. Here's what they were hoping to do with Moose:And Eagle:Over the summer, Lutsen withdrew the plan, and Superior National Forest Supervisor Thomas Hall recommended a “no action” alternative, citing “irreversible damage” to mature white cedar and sugar maple stands, displacement of backcountry skiers, negative impacts to the 300-mile-long Superior hiking trail, objections from Native American communities, and water-quality concerns. Lutsen had until Oct. 10 to file an objection to the decision, and they did. What happens now? we discuss that.Questions I wish I'd askedIt may have been worth getting into the difference between Lutsen's stated lift-served vertical (825 feet), and overall vertical (1,088 feet). But it wasn't really necessary, as I asked the same question of Midwest Family Ski Resorts CEO Charles Skinner two years ago. He explains the disparity at the 25:39 mark:What I got wrongI said that Boyne Mountain runs the Hemlock double chair instead of the Mountain Express six-pack for summer operations. That is not entirely true, as Mountain Express sometimes runs, as does the new Disciples 8 chair on the far side of the mountain's Sky Bridge.I referred to Midwest Family Ski Resorts CEO Charles Skinner as “Charles Skinner Jr.” He is in fact Charles Skinner IV.Why you should ski Lutsen MountainsOne of the most unexpected recurring messages I receive from Storm readers floats out of the West. Dedicated skiers of the big-mountain, big-snow kingdoms of the Rockies, they'd never thought much about skiing east of the Continental Divide. But now they're curious. All these profiles of New England girth and history, Midwest backwater bumps, and Great Lakes snowtrains have them angling for a quirky adventure, for novelty and, perhaps, a less-stressful version of skiing. These folks are a minority. Most Western skiers wear their big-mountain chauvinism as a badge of stupid pride. Which I understand. But they are missing a version of skiing that is heartier, grittier, and more human than the version that swarms from the western skies.So, to those few who peek east over the fortress walls and consider the great rolling beyond, I tell you this: go to Lutsen. If you're only going to ski the Midwest once, and only in a limited way, this is one of the few must-experience stops. Lutsen and Bohemia. Mix and match the rest. But these two are truly singular.To the rest of you, well: Midwest Family's stated goal is to beef up its resorts so that they're an acceptable substitute for a western vacation. Lutsen's website even hosts a page comparing the cost of a five-day trip there and to Breckenridge:Sure, that's slightly exaggerated, and yes, Breck crushes Lutsen in every on-mountain statistical category, from skiable acreage to vertical drop to average annual snowfall. But 800 vertical feet is about what an average skier can manage in one go anyway. And Lutsen really does give you a bigger-mountain feel than anything for a thousand miles in either direction (except, as always, the Bohemia exception). And when you board that gondy and swing up the cliffs toward Moose Mountain, you're going to wonder where, exactly, you've been transported to. Because it sure as hell doesn't look like Minnesota.Podcast NotesOn Midwest Family Ski ResortsMidwest Family Ski Resorts now owns four ski areas (Snowriver, Michigan is one resort with two side-by-side ski areas). Here's an overview:On the loss of Moose ReturnA small but significant change will disrupt skiing at Lutsen Mountains this winter: the destruction of the skier bridge at the bottom of the Moose Return trail that crosses the Poplar River, providing direct ski access from Moose to Eagle mountains. Vick details why this presents an unfixable obstacle in the podcast, but you can see that Lutsen removed the trail from its updated 2023-24 map:On the Stowe gondola I referencedI briefly referenced Stowe's gondola as a potential model for traversing the newly re-gapped Moose Return run. The resort is home to two gondolas – the 2,100-vertical-foot, 7,664-foot-long, eight-passenger Mansfield Gondola; and the 1,454-foot-long, six-passenger Over Easy Gondola, which moves between the Mansfield and Spruce bases. It is the latter that I'm referring to in the podcast: On Mt. FrontenacVick mentions that his first job was at Mt. Frontenac, a now-lost 420-vertical-foot ski area in Minnesota. Here was a circa 2000 trailmap:Apparently a local group purchased the ski area and converted it into a golf course. Boo.On the evolution of LutsenThe Skinners have been involved with Lutsen since the early 1980s. Here's a circa 1982 trailmap, which underscores the mountain's massive evolution over the decades:On the evolution of Granite PeakWhen Charles Skinner purchased Granite Peak, then known as Rib Mountain, it was a nubby little backwater, with neglected infrastructure and a miniscule footprint:And here it is today, a mile-wide broadside running three high-speed chairlifts:An absolutely stunning transformation.On Charles Skinner IIISkinner's 2021 Star Tribune obituary summarized his contributions to Lutsen and to skiing:Charles Mather Skinner III passed away on June 17th at the age of 87 in his new home in Red Wing, MN. …Charles was born in St. Louis, MO on August 30, 1933, to Eleanor Whiting Skinner and Charles Mather Skinner II. He grew up near Lake Harriet in Minneapolis where he loved racing sailboats during the summer and snow sliding adventures in the winter.At the age of 17, he joined the United States Navy and fought in the Korean War as a navigator aboard dive bombers. After his service, he returned home to Minnesota where he graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School, served on the law review, and began practicing law in Grand Rapids, MN.In 1962, he led the formation of Sugar Hills Ski and purchased Sugar Lake (Otis) Resort in Grand Rapids, MN. For 20 years, Charles pioneer-ed snowmaking inventions, collaborated with other Midwest ski area owners to build a golden age for Midwest ski areas, and advised ski areas across the U.S. including Aspen on snowmaking.In the 1970s, Scott Paper Company recruited Charles to manage recreational lands across New England, and later promoted him to become President of Sugarloaf Mountain ski area in Maine. In 1980, he bought, and significantly expanded, Lutsen Mountains in Lutsen, MN, which is now owned and operated by his children.He and his wife spent many happy years on North Captiva Island, Florida, where they owned and operated Barnacle Phil's Restaurant. An entrepreneur and risk-taker at heart, he never wanted to retire and was always looking for new business ventures.His work at Sugar Hills, Lutsen Mountains and North Captive Island helped local economics expand and thrive.He was a much-respected leader and inspiration to thousands of people over the years. Charles was incredibly intellectually curious and an avid reader, with a tremendous memory for facts and history.Unstoppable and unforgettable, he had a wonderful sense of humor and gave wise counsel to many. …On the number of ski areas on Forest Service landA huge number of U.S. ski areas operate on Forest Service land, with the majority seated in the West. A handful also sit in the Midwest and New England (Lutsen once sat partially on Forest Service land, but currently does not):On additional Midwest podcastsAs a native Midwesterner, I've made it a point to regularly feature the leaders of Midwest ski areas on the podcast. Dig into the archive:MICHIGANWISCONSINOHIOINDIANASOUTH DAKOTAThe 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 98/100 in 2023, and number 484 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

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

We are back with a new episode of Real Talk with Chad Otterstrom and Mark Sullivan. In this episode we talk about the preseason as well as the beginning of the new snowboarding season. Then we discuss the question, "What is wrong with snowboarding?"   Support independent snowboarding media at http://patreon.com/thesnowboardproject Send us feedback at mark@thesnowboardproject.com    Here is a transcription of the show:   Mark (00:20.844) Today we have another episode of Real Talk on the Snowboard Project. I'm joined by Chad Otterstrom. Chad is a contender for greatest of all time status in the sport of snowboarding. He would never claim that for himself, so I'll just claim it for him. How you doing today, Chad? Chad (00:27.892) Yeah. Chad (00:47.722) I'm good, just, you know, I just moved out of Breckenridge for the season. I'll be back and forth. But I've been living in my truck for the last 16.5 months. Mark (00:57.756) 16.5, okay. You were counting the days, I see. Chad (00:59.963) the Yeah, now I'm back. I'm back and I got a place and you know, for my dogs, I live by a river. It's awesome. I'm doing good. Mark (01:09.464) Okay, well maybe you can explain this. It's like you were living in your truck for 16 and a half months. Why? Chad (01:16.978) Um, because I'm trying to crack the code, uh, of passive income. I was trying to Airbnb my condo and see how that went. And instead of renting a place, I just put a topper on my truck and just went rogue. And, and, uh, that, you know, six months to a year turned into 16 months, which is longer than expected, but, uh, now I've cracked the code and, uh, yeah, I was just going to, yeah, I got a place to sleep. I have a bed. Mark (01:19.535) Mm-hmm. Mark (01:36.22) Mm-hmm. Mark (01:41.772) You cracked the code and you're back in the house? Chad (01:46.186) outside of the back of my truck. Mark (01:47.82) Okay, so you were on the road for 16 and a half months. What's like the coolest thing that you saw while you were on the road? Chad (01:53.274) Um, I saw way too many whole foods parking lots. Uh, I did get hit by a semi and Edwards. I was parked at a rest area and the semi clipped me and then took off. And that cost me thousands of dollars because the insurance didn't cover that because they took off. Um, that wasn't the coolest thing. That was for sure. But, uh, I did, I went to Japan. I went to Canada. I went to Alaska. I went to Mount Hood. I did all these things that didn't require my own home. So, uh. Mark (01:56.684) Okay. Oh. Mark (02:17.372) That's right. Mark (02:21.509) Mm-hmm. Chad (02:22.742) I did all the, yeah, like last year, the only thing I didn't do last year was go to Rick's Grants. And I wanted to put that in the May category. No, it's Colorado, Canada, or Colorado, Japan, Canada, Alaska, Rick's Grants, and then Mount Hood. That would be the ultimate year. Mark (02:29.735) Mm-hmm. Mark (02:40.804) You pretty much like spent the whole year riding. Chad (02:44.49) Yeah, for sure. Mark (02:46.38) Now, is it hard to do works? I know you also are an owner of Academy Snowboards. Was it hard to work for the road or find wifi or whatever? Are we able to pull that off pretty effectively? Chad (02:56.446) Uh, I, you know, what I wasn't able to do was like demos and clinics and things like that. I'd had to do kind of a little more communicating online, but no, I mean, I basically do a lot of the social and organize that. So I, um, I was able to do that wherever I had wifi, which I had everywhere. Mark (03:01.96) Mm-hmm. Mark (03:14.636) Okay cool so it sounds like you were able to maximize your 16 and a half months for your bank account sake. Chad (03:22.546) Yeah, no, I cracked the code. I'm hoping and fingers are crossed, you know the next couple years. We'll see what happens Mark (03:28.216) Okay, so now you've had a couple of months off. I mean, have you been getting ready for this season? What have you been up to? Chad (03:33.858) Um, I mean, I haven't been living in LA going to art shows, but, uh, Mark (03:38.08) Yeah, that's what I've been doing. So, I mean. Ha ha. Chad (03:43.222) No, I, yeah, I mean, what do you do early season? This is the time in the year, like, if you ride till, if you're like really into like riding every day for like meditation is kind of why I do it, but then that ends in July. And you have from July till now to like keep your sanity. So I just find other forms of like, you know, kind of getting out there and doing things. So yeah, I've been, you know, staying in shape. I do, I've gotten into jumping into rivers. It's trending, cold plunging and. Mark (03:59.474) Mm-hmm. Mark (04:12.616) Cold plunging, yes. What's the coldest river you've jumped in? Chad (04:13.974) and it's turning. Oh, it's as close to ice as I can get is what I'm looking for. I want it to be like an ice cube. And I can do like up to five minutes and yeah. And then you do this thing called grounding where you walk around on the ground and then you do, you know, I, yeah, yeah. And then when I do the Wim Hof scene, it's funny cause I listen to a lot of podcasts and then they're telling me what I've already been doing, which is I feel like I'm on the right track, but. Mark (04:21.14) Okay. Mark (04:30.188) like barefooted or something, you're barefoot on the ground. Chad (04:42.878) Yeah, do that and then work out a little bit. Once you're able to hike up hills though, we'll start split boarding just to stay in shape. I'm not a fan of going to the gym, but you're gonna have to a little bit, I guess. Mark (04:54.692) Well, the world is your gym when you're a split-boarder. Ha ha ha. Chad (05:00.696) Yes, this is true. Mark (05:02.816) Yeah, okay. So you're in shape. You're ready for the season. I know resorts are opening, you know, all over the country, but especially in Colorado. I mean, what are you like looking to like get done this season? Do you like goals for this season? Do you like have a list of things that you want to accomplish? Or like, how do you kind of like approach a new season? And like, how do you kind of set yourself up to accomplish things and keep pushing that ball downfield? Chad (05:28.106) Um, pushing the ball down the field. I, uh, well, first of all, I set myself up for a place to live. That's a hard thing to do now in mountain towns because there's, they call it a housing crisis and I think everybody likes to use the word crisis and everything they do these days. We started a production company, you know, with our movies called midlife crisis. So first thing you got to do is find a place to live and then get your season pass. And then, um, yeah, I don't know. Mark (05:46.696) Mm-hmm. Mark (05:56.488) Okay. Chad (05:56.578) just kind of move forward, get the ball rolling. Get your boots broken in, your sticker job done, if you're into getting a good sticker job. Yeah, yeah. Mark (06:02.748) Right? That's all preseason stuff though. I mean, how about for goals for riding? Like, are you like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do 122 foot, you know, 50, 50. What kind of like riding goals? Chad (06:11.278) Oh. Chad (06:15.214) Oh yeah, yeah. Goals. I have, it's just kind of funny, I guess the more aged you become, you get more into like, I wanna ride that mountain as opposed to I wanna do that trick. I think kids are more into I wanna do that trick or I wanna do that challenge rail or I wanna do this and that. But yeah, for me, I have a list of mountains around where I live right now that I wanna go hike and just ride down and enjoy it. I wanna... Mark (06:25.992) Mm-hmm. Chad (06:44.79) Do some more drone filming this year as opposed to GoPro filming. I'm trying to work on figuring out how to make a drone, do a little more follow than, as opposed to your head cam, you know what I mean? And then that, and then yeah, do a lot more split boarding just cause it keeps me in shape and outside and exercising more. Mark (06:48.356) Mm-hmm. Mark (06:58.408) Totally. Mark (07:06.636) Indeed, indeed. And so, you know, I know a lot of people, you're in Colorado, and a lot of people are like, I want to do all the 14ers. Is that kind of your goal? Or is it is it just like, wow, that's a beautiful mountain or that that's got a great line on I want to ride that. Chad (07:21.066) Yeah, I'm more of the aesthetically fun looking line as opposed to the 14ers. There's a lot of 14ers that are not that fun. They're just high mountains and they're far away. It would be cool to kind of go, I do enjoy like kind of go just tacking certain zones off, not exactly every 14er, but just so I could kind of get a lay of the land of Colorado. I went down to this place called Lake City this summer and hiked a 14 year called Uncompatible Peak. Mark (07:43.67) Mm. Chad (07:49.57) And I've never been there. It's kind of like the Eastern San Juans. And that was kind of cool just to go there and see, you could see Telluride from there and you could see a couple of other things. So it's fun, but I'm not into the ticking off teeners lifestyle. I'm more into like, they're fun looking, ripping lines. You know what I mean? Mark (08:07.596) Yeah, totally, totally. Okay. So hopefully, I know you went to Alaska this year. Do you think you're going to make it back this year? Chad (08:15.114) If I do, it will be for fun. Yes, I did go to the natural selection. I stood on top of some of those peaks and you know if I do go back, I'll be going to where you're at the Valdez era area and I'll probably split board and go hike to the top of a you know an area or I'll hitchhike with a snowmobile, you know, something like that. Mark (08:18.353) Okay. Mark (08:30.982) Yeah. Mark (08:40.716) Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's all good. And you know, there's snowmobile rentals, there's other ways to get there. And people are pretty, you know, helpful as far as like helping you bump yourself out to different zones. So hopefully you do make it back. Chad (08:51.722) Yeah. So yeah, no, it was cool. I went there this last winter. I've been there, you know, before, but this last winter, I stood on one of the peaks that you're supposed to ride down as opposed to a blue-green run. And I got to look down. It looked like, you know, you go left and right, maybe backwards and a 2,000-foot run. Looks like a good time, you know? Mark (09:13.128) Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that the, there's a lot of like challenging type of peaks in Alaska. There's, there's mellow ones too, but you know, I think the thing that Alaska is known for these kind of like high consequence or things that kind of require your focus and attention to the best of your ability. And so that's something that I think sets it apart a little bit compared to a lot of other areas, I think in Colorado you get that too, but sometimes. Maybe you're more worried about like the avalanche conditions and other things than just like the treachery of the mountain face. Chad (09:47.654) Yeah, I mean, you know, Trollhagen's pretty intense too, you know, like, uh, Yeah. Mark (09:53.036) Yeah, but that's like the lift lines and like the line and like the rail, you know, runouts from the rails, that kind of thing. It's a different kind of, you know, gripping type of emotion that you feel in Trollhagen. But, but, you know, it doesn't matter really, like what you find enjoyment in snowboarding. It's like, as long as you're enjoying yourself and you're kind of like. Chad (10:02.876) Yeah, no for sure. Mark (10:14.54) you know, pushing yourself and being in that moment, I think that you can do that in Alaska, you can do it in Trollhagen. And like the same feelings I got, you know, riding on the East Coast as a kid or some of the same feelings I got as I kept progressing kind of the mountains and terrain that I was able to ride. So. Chad (10:30.999) Yeah, it's like catching the feeling, but like you say, everybody says it, the Super Bowl of freeride and freestyle freeriding is in Alaska at the top level. You can catch that feeling anywhere, but if you're looking for it, you can go up there. Mark (10:45.094) Yeah. Mark (10:51.288) We just got, by the way, Chad, we got at my cabin in Alaska, I have a cabin up there as you know, but maybe not everyone knows. Anyhow, we got six. Yeah, yeah, that's true. We got we got six feet of snow this week in Alaska, literally one storm. We got six feet. There's a base now. Chad (10:58.742) I mean if they watch the show you definitely know. Chad (11:09.726) at your cabin so that means probably like 12 feet up where you're at, you know? Mark (11:12.544) Oh more. Yeah, yeah. I mean people are starting to head out. So it's like game on in Alaska right now, which is pretty cool. Pretty early, but yeah, it's going. Chad (11:22.032) Nice, yeah. It's the same with here. Like that's early. If we had a six foot storm here, I've actually ridden a hundred inches at Wolf Creek on Halloween before. Still kind of bony always, even with a hundred inches here, we need 20 feet here to have that boniness go away. But we got blue green groomers. You know, we were, I think it was two weeks ago now that we got first share at A Basin. And... Mark (11:31.217) Yeah. Mark (11:45.632) Okay, let's talk about that real quick. So I know like Nate Dogg, Taylor Tom, yourself, you guys have pretty much gotten first chair in the country, maybe the world, like every year in the last like, I don't even know how many years, how long has it been going on? Chad (12:00.551) Um, Nate likes to claim 31 years. I, uh, yeah, it's interesting though, because I, I mean, trailer Tom has had 31 years. I don't know if they've been consecutive, but you know, he's on, on the page, but I think 31 years would put you at 1992, right? Mark (12:03.036) 31 years of first chairs. Wow. Mark (12:18.941) Yeah, I think so. Chad (12:20.15) And I think Maydog moved to Colorado in 1998. So I'm just saying, I don't know, but I still believe him. I don't know. I mean, I wasn't here, so I can't say that, but I know. No, I think I actually do think that he might've driven out here those years. I'm not sure, so. Mark (12:24.096) Oh. Mark (12:27.628) That sounds like a call out. Mark (12:33.2) You better be careful what you say, because Nate Dogg is your property manager. Ha ha ha. Mark (12:42.982) I don't know Chad, a pipe burst. Chad (12:46.07) So it's great, you know, I think last year it was 25 years. I don't know how that six years popped up on him, but either way, it's a great, um, you know. Mark (12:53.911) So what was that scene like? Like what time did you guys get there? I'm sure you got there like the day before or something. Like what does it take to like get first chair? Chad (13:00.362) Yeah, so these are the rules. Nate's really good at articulating it. I'm going to do my best. So you know, you kind of like go to the resorts, you'll see them, there's no other blowing snow, you go talk to the mountain ops in the parking lots, you know, a couple weeks before, kind of get a feel. And then usually on a Monday or a Tuesday, they like to announce that they're going to open. They usually open on weekends just for crowds, so it's usually a Friday. So if they announce on a Tuesday, Mark (13:25.33) Mm-hmm. Chad (13:27.37) You gotta gun it and go lock down Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night. Three days. Mark (13:31.452) Three days. Like when does the second person show up? Like if you're there for three days, when does like chair number two show up? Chad (13:39.434) Oh, that usually happens like within, you know, the last day. So then chair number two usually hangs for a good 24, 36 hours. And then, but usually we, this dude Ant has been kind of a fourth member of the crew, but it's trailer Tom, myself, Nate, and this dude Ant. And I did two days and I slipped straight on the ground this time right out in front of the lot or the lift. I have a baby and a mat, but it's a... Mark (13:42.82) Okay. Mark (13:46.335) Okay. Chad (14:07.69) It's just kind of something entertaining to do. It's like a, you know, when you get, like I said, when you need something to do with your life this time of year and you just want something exciting and people to talk to, people are constantly coming through all day long. So you're hanging out with people for like two days, which is fun. Except for, you know, that period from 10 at night till about 10 the next day is freezing cold. If not even six, cause it gets dark. But otherwise, I do negative 40. Mark (14:28.453) Mm-hmm. Mark (14:31.844) So is it like a negative 20 bag that you have to like stay warm in this negative 20? Okay. Negative 40. Okay. Chad (14:37.406) Actually, yeah, I won it at the love games from the satellite board shop love games. I really pushed hard for that because I knew I'd need it. But yeah, I don't know, it's something to do. And then now they're all opening, like resorts are opening. I think Breck opened today, Veil opened today, Keystone's open, Copper opens Monday. So the groomer lifestyle is on, you know what I mean? Mark (14:42.056) Cool. Mark (14:47.662) And that was at. Mark (14:58.796) Right now are they setting up parks or like little rail features? Like what kind of stuff do they have besides like a white ribbon of death? You know. Chad (15:06.206) Um, yeah, white ribbon of life is what we called it. We did. Mark (15:10.429) Oh, that's because you had first chair. If you were on like the 140th chair, you would have been like right ribbon of death. Oh really? Chad (15:17.19) And it was pretty fun. Actually, it snowed like a foot. So it was like kind of slasher pal on the side with groom slasher pal. But they have I think, Keystone has a little hike park, a base and probably has a couple slide bars. And then I don't really know I do know that Breck was on the verge of like kind of ending their park lifestyle. And now I hear they have a four speed, four pack high speed trailer for the five chair was and they're putting a park in with a half pipe this year. I heard. Mark (15:45.916) Really. Chad (15:46.634) I don't know. I'm not going to be around this year to find out really, but we'll see. You know, I think. Mark (15:50.552) Okay. Yeah. And it's not just Colorado, by the way, Chad, like Mammoth opens today. Wild Mountain is open in Minnesota. Killington, I think, is open right now as well. They may have been the first open. I'm not sure if they beat Colorado this year. Okay. And then also in Canada, you got Lake Louise, Mountain Workway. Chad (15:56.359) Oh yeah yeah. Yeah, troll Ogden as well. Chad (16:09.046) I think Abason was the, I think Abason. Mark (16:17.333) Sunshine Village is going to open this weekend and then you got Sommet Saint-Solvier in Quebec is open as well. So I guess there's riding all over America and Canada right now. Chad (16:29.514) Yeah, it's awesome. Everybody's gonna check out for the next five to six months. You know, it's that kind of a life. Mark (16:34.228) Yup. Yeah, well it seems like it's shaping up. I know we have like a Super El Nino coming this year. What does that mean for Colorado? Chad (16:45.29) Um, well last year La Niña was supposed to end, you know, mid late winter. And then El Niño is going to kick in and El Niño is better than La Niña. I don't really know what it means. It has to do with the weather pattern, I think. But, uh, I, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it just means, yeah, more fresh blue green groomer, you know, for Colorado. Mark (16:59.6) Yeah. Mark (17:03.565) More powder. Mark (17:08.909) Okay, right on. Well, it sounds like you're ready though. It sounds like you've gotten prepared as far as, you know, traveling and working out and your sticker job is done. Your board has probably been waxed a couple of times already. And yeah, it sounds like you're ready to get things going here. Chad (17:29.406) Yeah, I mean, if I was in Valdez, I'd be like potato sacking off cliffs, but I'm here. So it's just going to be groomer. I'm excited. Mark (17:38.404) Yeah, well, it should be fun. So have you been checking out any of the snowboard movies this fall? I know there've been, you know, obviously every year, there's like this time of year, there's movies that have been coming out for a couple of months now. Anything standing out to you so far this year? Chad (17:54.538) Um, uh, there's a few there's, I'm, uh, I went to the, I was back in Minnesota a couple of weeks ago and I went to the ride premiere and that was cool because it was kind of an industry event. Uh, and I was going to say the last time I went to a premiere in Minnesota was with Gillian Yoder and I went and saw a fear of a flat planet and the movie never showed up, so we just hung out on like Hannappin or something and he didn't know who I was, but I knew who he was. He would have randomly was back in Minnesota. Mark (18:02.248) Mm-hmm. Mark (18:14.257) Heh. Chad (18:22.934) That was like 1994. And then I went to this premiere in Minnesota this last time, the ride premiere was really good. Jed Anderson, I mean the movie was a great, it was a jib movie. Jed Anderson's awesome and he ended up hitting this rail at the end of his part that my dad is an usher for at the church. It's the cathedral in St. Paul and he had this double line and I was always telling my dad, if you ever see kids hitting the rails out of it on those stairs, don't kick them out. So my dad wasn't there the day they were doing it, but. Mark (18:24.729) Yep. Chad (18:52.886) So that was a good one. And then I see that you wrote East bump up. Mark (18:56.752) That was my favorite like video that I saw just because it had a different approach. It was like somehow fresh and it was like one dude, three shovels, one tripod. That's how I made this. And it was just cool. And like all the shots were steady, no shaky cam because it was on a tripod for all of it. But for me, it was just different. And I guess, you know, I'm less into. a lot of the tricks, you know, I watch a lot of these movies and there's like people doing pillow lines, you know, in BC or whatever. And I love powder riding. But then it's like, wow, Jonathan Moore did that in like 1998. You know, and it was just as good then as it is now. But it's not really that much different now than it was then. And so to me, it's kind of like a little bit of repetition when you see all these people just riding powder or doing basic tricks into powder. It's fairly consistent with the kind of footage we've seen over the last 20 years. And so to me, East Bumfuck was something new. Chad (20:01.166) 100% hold on. I agree with you. I think I really enjoy like he didn't talk in his video but he was kind of telling a story the whole way through. And I love watching that dude ride. He's like pigeon-toed. It seems like he's riding negative three, negative three. And for snowboard movies, I think I was looking earlier the Quicksilver movies up to 1.7 million views. Mark (20:13.126) Yep. Mark (20:19.865) Yeah. Mark (20:29.544) That's a lot of views. Chad (20:30.73) And I think those guys are great, but it was just like you just talked about it. It was like, cool, we saw the same movie last year and the year before and the year before and the year before. But I think that they have the outlet to put it out there. So it got that many views. But I mean, these kids from Michigan, I know this kid, Derek Lemke, Brent Bann and Drake Warner put together a movie that's going to come out in the next couple of weeks. I'm really excited to see it's probably going to be a lot of challenge rails and a lot of dangerous kinks and things like that. But I really enjoy like local movies or people I know or, you know, movies that are gonna have a feel as opposed to like a kind of a been there done that. We owned two movies from here last night and we're like, cool. And that was happened at Buck Hill 30 years ago. You know? Mark (21:15.692) Yeah, but you know you guys actually made a movie this year called Midlife Crisis. What did you do for that one to make it stand out? Chad (21:24.315) Um, we... Um... Chad (21:30.814) We just, you know, we filmed and edited and put it up on slush to make it stand out, I guess. But it's more of an, I would always open it or end it and Blaze would open it and end it as well. And then we would put people in the middle of it, if that makes sense. And it was more about midlife crisis, like vintage snowboarders. And then we would put like the up and coming kids in the middle, you know? So we weren't just like all vintage. Mark (21:59.524) You guys aren't vintage, you guys are like, you know, seasoned. I would say seasoned. Like you're like a fine wine. You've gotten better with age. Yeah. Chad (22:03.166) Season, yeah, Season's a good name, yeah. Yeah, aged, all right. Aged, classic, you know, kind of classic. But yeah, I mean, what did we do to make it stand out? Nothing besides edit, and we made three movies this year called, the first one is Rock Bottom, the second one is Spring Chickens, and then the third one is the full meltdown, a play on MacDog Productions, The Meltdown Project. Mark (22:13.061) Yeah. Mark (22:22.78) Mm-hmm. Chad (22:31.67) and that was in Mount Hood. And then, so we did that and yeah, you know, just pushing forward, we're actually making another one this year. We're gonna do a couple other things. I could ramble on, Blaze is way better at rambling on about it than I am. But, yeah, I am the editor of all the things. I'm the editor, Blaze is the talker. We're trying to make a brand. We're selling T-shirts and hoodies and hats. Mark (22:31.783) Right. Mark (22:51.432) But you're the co-host of this show, so damn it, it's up to you to ramble on. Chad (23:01.434) And we're going to sell t-shirts to the kids and just say, life crisis with the mid crossed out. So we can kind of include everybody. Mark (23:08.473) Okay. Mark (23:11.881) life crisis of living in mountain towns. Chad (23:14.118) Yeah, and then, so we're doing that. But yeah, I mean, it's just something to keep the dream alive, you know what I mean? Something to take away at life as opposed to sit there on the couch. Mark (23:22.669) Yeah. Mark (23:28.104) Well, that's cool. I'm glad you're doing stuff and it sounds like for this year, you're going to try to film yourself with a drone, which seems like it could add like a layer of complexity, but also, you know, just get a whole new kind of, you know, different kinds of shots for the films you're making. Chad (23:44.926) Yeah, no, it should be exciting. I feel like I can sell film or whatever other friends to any kind of a 1500 foot line, uh, the way I'm going to approach it. We'll see if it works. I'm ordering the drone here in a week. So I'm waiting for black Friday so I can get a discount on one, but, uh, yeah, but no midlife crisis is, yeah, we we're actually coming out with a Mark (23:58.442) Okay. Right? That's the time to buy your drones, folks. Clock is ticking. Chad (24:11.81) Blaise and I have full video parts coming out the next week on Slush. It's called Yearbook, where we put some old shots of Friends that didn't make it in like the other movies, not because they weren't good shots, but because they didn't really fit in the narrative of the movie. And then Blaise is going to have a full part. So he's got a 50-year-old full video part, like amazing part. Like I don't think anybody's ever really done that well anyways. Once you get to 50, a lot of people just start turning and give up. So he's got... Mark (24:16.677) Okay. Mark (24:40.956) So like who else is in that category? You got Todd Richards, film and video parts. You got... Chad (24:45.874) Yeah, I don't know. He's not filming video parts, is he? He's filming clips. Mark (24:49.496) I don't know. I mean he had a part in the in the. In the what's called Quicksilver movie. He was in that so. Chad (24:57.218) Oh yeah yeah, I mean what kind of clip was it Parkshots? Mark (25:01.744) I'm not sure I just remember him talking on the chairlift. I think he does a couple of shots. He always does like a switch McTwist. I'm not sure if it was a full part. I kind of like, I kind of fast forwarded through some of that to watch Powder and to watch Travis Rice and then when I was watching Travis Rice, I was actually just watching the mountains that he was riding. So I definitely agree with you on the, on the, you know, getting old and looking at mountains instead of like tricks and riding. So. Chad (25:04.17) Yeah, he's got a couple. Um, he's got a full part though. Thank you very much. Chad (25:26.483) And I mean, Todd does have a part in my, a couple clips in my part that I'm dropping this week. But Blaze has a full part is what I'm saying. Like back country, park jumps, rails. You know what I mean? Like this is like a full four minute, like single part. Full song, yeah, full everything. And yeah, that's what I'm saying. But I mean, I wrote Richard's is. Mark (25:33.319) Okay. Mark (25:40.402) Yeah. Mark (25:45.064) full song. Chad (25:52.634) older than all of us. He's like 53, 54, maybe he's your age, maybe you're older than him. Yeah, so he's, you know, he's in that, you know, probably Tony Hawk era of snowboarders and I like, I rode with him at Woodward this May and he actually, just for, you know, showing up and riding, he warmed up pretty quick and he's pretty good. I think surfing might keep him in shape, you know. Mark (25:57.592) I'm younger than him by a few years. Mark (26:04.637) Yep, completely. Mark (26:18.528) Yeah, yeah, for sure. I know he lives down in Carlsbad, so he's close to the beach, gets to go out any day of the surf. So that's probably pretty good. But you know, right now, aside from all these video parts, it's kind of coming to the end of video season, and we're kind of getting into the beginning of event season. And so I know that coming up in like a week or so, they have that event in, I think it's Innsbruck called Do It Yourself Extreme. Chad (26:25.029) Yeah. Mark (26:47.328) Or Dix, if you will, DIYX. Um, and it sounds like that'll be a pretty good one. Uh, you know, what do you know about the Dix event, Chad? Chad (26:51.34) Yeah. Chad (27:01.335) I mean, yeah, I know that there'll be a lot of dicks there and a lot of not-dicks there. And I hung out with a lot of the kids that went to it last year when I was in Minnesota right before they went and they said it's not really even a contest. They just set up spots in cities. And you know, there's a group of 20 kids that get invited to come up and... Mark (27:18.502) Yep. Mark (27:23.212) Yep, and it looks like Max Warbbington, Benny Malam, Dusty Hendrickson, Zeb, Jib Girl. So it sounds like a lot of the Americans will be there. I'm sure there's a full card of Europeans as well. Chad (27:26.94) Bye bye. Chad (27:36.262) Yeah. It's kind of like an Aaron style, but for jibbing and way more public. If that makes sense, not more as much of an arena style, but if you go and you see the video of it, there's hundreds of people surrounding like a rail or a flaming circle with Dylan Henderson back flip through that circle last year. Um, and they're all just hanging out and, you know, sipping on beverages and having a good time. It looks like a fun early season. Mark (27:46.28) Mm-hmm. Mark (27:56.377) Yeah. Chad (28:06.102) You know, I wouldn't say warm up, because everything they do is pretty aggressive. But the early season, you know, kind of a raw, natural street contest, you could call it. Mark (28:18.548) Yeah, it should be a pretty cool event. It's coming up 16th, the 20th of this month here in November. And then, you know, they also, I saw that they just recently announced the natural selection. And I know that last year you were a judge, so you got to go to BC and Alaska. What can you tell us about this year's natural selection? Chad (28:39.027) Um, the only thing I can tell you is what has been gone on. Spoken to anybody just yet about anything there, but I know there are three stops in Colorado. One down by Durango and two in Crested Butte. So yeah, yeah. Mark (28:54.544) And I think those are for like the duels segment where they have like the riders face off. It says they're going to do it in Switzerland around Crested Butte and the, the what the Irwin Lake Lodge, Red Mountain BC and Purgatory Adventures in Durango. And somewhere in Japan sounds like they're going to be able to do as well. Chad (29:06.623) Yeah. Chad (29:13.262) Yeah, that'll be interesting. And then it looks like two stops in Revy, one at Selkirk's and then one off of the resort where I think they might've built some stuff, but I don't know. And then that's gonna be middle of March. Mark (29:23.201) Mm. Mark (29:27.284) Yeah, that's the 10th to the 17th of March. We'll look forward to that. But I was actually pretty disappointed that there wasn't a Alaska stop because to me it's like Alaska represents the pinnacle of free riding. It's where people can test themselves on like a higher level. And so, you know, and I thought that, you know, they were kind of able to do that last year and then no Alaska stopped this year kind of has me scratching my head because it's like, well, How can it be the absolute pinnacle of free riding if you're not in the pinnacle place for free riding? Chad (30:02.622) Yeah, that's a point. It's, I think they are trying to hone it in and figure things out, I would imagine. I mean, I would imagine that one day they wanna go back to Alaska, you know? For now, I think it's a little bit on hold. I know that the natural selection did have almost a 10-year break anyways, right? So I think that it's just kind of like a wave. It's like life, you know? Like... Mark (30:15.212) Yep. Well... Mark (30:24.432) That's true. That is true. Chad (30:30.398) Some years, it might not be this five feet dropping in Jackson Hole or those pillows like last year at Rebel Stoke, where some years it might be kind of crusty Jackson Hole and Tomahawk King down ball face. So that's kind of how I see it. I think they have the same sights that you do. I think that they're just trying to work out the kinks and make it happen. Mark (30:45.217) Yeah. Mark (30:56.16) Yeah, I mean, I think the thing with Alaska, which they found out probably the hard way this year is that it is crazy expensive and, and there's a lot of curveballs in Alaska and so you can't, you know, you can't really plan things out to the day or the minute nature has the final say on everything in Alaska. And, uh, and so it, it can, it can lead to cost overruns if you're running an event. Chad (31:22.014) Yeah, we were out there, we did a scope day hoping that we, riders would drop. Everybody went up and it just ended up being a rehearsal day that costs like in the fives of thousands, you know, the five figures of thousands of dollars just to go hang out and come back. So yeah, they're figuring it out. You know, they gotta, you gotta get those non endemic snowboard sponsors like, like Red Bull and, and donkey juice and whatever else there is, you know. Mark (31:39.276) Yeah, yeah, so anyhow, but I... Mark (31:50.516) Right. I mean, that's the thing is like a natural selection could bring that kind of free riding and what a lot of the athletes consider kind of like the, the most desirable part of riding, you know, to a larger audience. And so to me, that's like kind of the promise of natural selection. So I hope they can deliver on that this year from Revelstoke and from the dual series, and hopefully they can come back to Alaska soon. Chad (32:06.391) Yeah. Chad (32:19.31) Yeah, we'll see. I mean, there's a whole nother element too of the Olympics kind of buying the scene that they're probably gonna try to get their feet wet in a interesting way that we're gonna be able to watch. I'm more like kind of into sitting in the backgrounds and watching it unfold and enjoying myself snowboarding. These days. Mark (32:40.681) It's crazy that you were in Alaska for like, I think about two weeks last year. And I was there the whole time you were there, we didn't see each other even though we were both hanging out in Valdez. So, but anyhow, well, hopefully you can make it back this year because I definitely know that's a place for you and I think you know it too. Chad (32:50.286) Yeah, for sure. Chad (32:57.873) Yeah, yeah. Honestly, the reason I took that job at Natural Selection was to go stand on a peak and kind of be involved. And now that that's been done, we'll see where it goes, you know? Mark (33:09.132) Yeah, well, I mean, I think that you're one of the most qualified judges they could have. So let's hope they get you back. Chad (33:16.81) Yeah, I kind of like snowboarding, so we'll see. I'd rather, I'd rather ride than judge, but I'm not going to say anything about that. Mark (33:20.569) Okay. Mark (33:26.164) Right, sometimes you gotta judge to ride. Okay. That's true, that's true. Sometimes you gotta not compete to ride as well. Otherwise, they're going to be standing around the top of a, uh, of a half pipe for half your life. Chad (33:28.822) Yeah, no, not really. Sometimes you've got to not judge to ride. Chad (33:37.503) Yeah, yeah, true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was the hard part about trying to go to the Olympics those years. It was like, wow, you have been complete riding half pipe from, you know, beginning of the year all the way till end of February. And you're like, but now that we've become more of a, you know, expert at figuring out the terrain and where to go and how to ride, you don't really start riding good stuff till after February anyways unless, you know, depending on where you're at. Mark (34:06.38) Yeah, I mean you can in Japan, but that's just like for the powder. Chad (34:10.921) And motorboat and power in Japan is the best. Mark (34:13.076) Yeah. So, you know, I went to dinner last night with Scott Zergabel, who started holding with LeBlanc. You know, Scott? Yeah, he's yeah, he's a really cool dude. And he was telling me last night that ISPO, the European trade show, is going to be November 28th to 30th this year. And I was like, what? Chad (34:20.346) Oh wow. I know Scott, yeah M3 remember? Yeah, M3 I see. Mark (34:36.924) they've moved it now out of January. I remember when it was in March, when I first got involved in the snowboard industry, it was like the beginning of March every year in Vegas and they moved it to Colorado, I wanna say, and then they moved it up to like January or I guess before they moved to Colorado, they moved it up to the end of January. And now in Europe, they've decided to put it in November. Now, it's... Kind of interesting because to me trade shows are kind of dead in America. I went to the outdoor retailer maybe three years ago, maybe four years ago. And it was like the endemic snowboard brands had pretty much given up on, on going to trade shows to kind of, to, to approach shops and to get new orders or try to increase their distribution. And, you know, it occurs to me that like moving the trade shows up to November makes it harder. on small brands, I think it plays to people like Burton who want to run production all year long, or you know, a capita who has their own factory, they want to keep those people employed and not have to like ramp up seasonal laborers and then let them, you know, and lay them off at the end of production season for like six months or whatever. So it makes sense for these like big brands. How does it affect a brand like Academy though, that's what I'm curious about, because it doesn't make sense to me for this like You know, just for like the organic grassroots aspect of the industry, it seems like that really plays into the hands of these like large major brands. Chad (36:06.642) Yeah, I think even Never Summer quit doing, or Burton definitely quit doing trade shows a long time ago. Remember they had their own like, Denver, they had their own showroom there. And I mean, the one in Denver is gone, from what I understand. And I didn't even know Ispo was really still going. It's just, it's more of a, yeah, it's more of an event for people, brands that make a lot of money. Mark (36:13.282) Yeah. Mark (36:27.174) What? Chad (36:34.054) non-independent snowboard brands, I guess you could call it. Like, you know, your Solomons and K2s and Arc'teryx and Smartwools and, you know, North Faces, these brands that, like, that's just kind of part of their program and they do it. But for us, it doesn't really affect us because we just call shops and, you know, we have our reps and we have our, we're pretty self-sustainable. as opposed to these bigger brands kind of have to show face, I guess. Where I mean, it'd be great for us to be there if there was still a Denver trade show, it would be super fun to do because you get to see everybody. But every year, like the shops less and less would show up because it would cost them, you know, $5,000 or whatever to get four of their employees out there to go do loops and get hotel rooms for four days. And food and things would be... Mark (37:29.272) No, it used to be like a family reunion at the trade show. Like every year you'd see people you haven't seen in a year. And then I went like three years ago to the last one I went to in Denver. And it was like, nobody was there. And so it wasn't a family reunion. I was just sitting there. I saw maybe five or seven people that I knew, but literally, I mean, the snowboard industry was absent almost completely. Chad (37:50.174) Yeah, I think that's just e-commerce or whatever you want to call it. Everything kind of went to the internet and your computer and kind of how we are now as opposed to social interaction. Mark (37:56.828) Yeah, it's kind of interesting because even ispo, they used to have 18 trade show halls. And so each trade show hall at ispo was about, I don't know, half the size of the entire si a trade show or outdoor retailer trade show, and they had 18 halls of this and they had also beyond skiing and snowboarding, they would also have like the outdoor industry. And then also even stuff like gym equipment would be at that trade show. But I saw that they have a map and now Um, there are only 11 halls being filled in seven of the halls. They used to fill up with brands and, and people and, you know, and the industry are now empty and they don't even put anything in those halls. And so to me, that's like kind of a sign of the times, you know, between the internet and kind of how the retail environment has changed and, you know, the kind of direct consumer and these kind of macro big box. online retailers, like your back countries or EVOs or whatever. It seems like it's really kind of changed the face of snowboarding as far as like the ability for people to get FaceTime with each other, you know? And to me as a kid, it was like, I would get that FaceTime in a snowboard shop and the sales reps would drop by and we get to hang out with them and understand all the different lines. And then we'd go and hang out after school at the shop. And, and we would have this kind of like. you know, connection with the sport of snowboarding, even in the off season, like five days a week, we'd go hang out at a shop. And to me, it's like, now you get to hang out on Instagram and it's not quite the same thing. Chad (39:39.226) Yup, it definitely is not the same thing. No, splitboarding is the answer, hanging out with your friends is the answer. It's the business. I feel like it's not just snowboarding. I would imagine it's like in every business, right? Mark (39:43.727) Yeah. Mark (39:51.688) Yeah, I mean, I would say every business has faced that, but snowboarding, especially, I mean, I just did some simple math earlier today. And so when I started Snowboard Magazine, there were about 800 snowboard shops that we would distribute to. And then I just looked on Slush the Magazine's website, and currently there's about 216 shops in the country. That's a 74% Percent reduction in the amount of doors, right? That people can walk into to like interact with the culture of snowboarding. And so that's a negative thing. I mean, obviously people are getting it in other ways and other places, but. You know, to have that ability to just walk in and feel that culture of snowboarding. I think that's affected, you know, the. The overall size and scope of the industry and case in point is like. At that time, the overall winter sports business between skiing and snowboarding was about $10.7 billion a year. And now it's about $4.28 billion a year. So despite the fact that 74% of shops have closed in the last 20 years, there's also a 60% reduction in overall revenue. And I would attribute that, and this is me, there's no science behind this or anything, but I would attribute that to... just the lack of people being able to just like make snowboarding like a part of their identity by being able to walk into a snowboard shop five days a week or whatever as a 16 year old kid. That was my identity. I was a snowboarder first and foremost and today you know you do a lot of different things but snowboarding is kind of something you do in your own private time you know when you're sitting in front of your computer something like that. Chad (41:42.426) Yeah, it's, it's true. You got to really, really search for it. I went to actually underground snowboards in Breckener's through their locals appreciation party last night. And there was a few hundred people at the Riverwalk center in Breck and we watched movie premieres and they gave away stuff and you know, but it's still, it's still, you know, it was still the, your, your 200 people as opposed to the thousands of people that live in Summit County. If you think about it. Mark (42:00.173) Old times. Mark (42:10.606) Yeah. Chad (42:11.102) And it is interesting too, like things like lift lines and traffic and things like that have become more centralized or however you want to say it. Like if you look at I-70 coming up to Summit County, if you look at the canyons in Utah or I-80 coming up from San Francisco, they're just packed with vehicles and the parking lots are full and lift lines are crazy and resorts are tracked at, you know, before they even open if you're talking Jackson Hole. Like what is that compared to like what it was when those billions of dollars were being made compared to what they are now? Mark (42:47.416) And it's kind of crazy because it's like, there's less money involved, but there's also this other thing that's going on, like the Lyft Pass products where like, it used to be like to get a season pass at Sun Valley, it was like $3,500, some ridiculous amount of money. And now you can get like one of these kind of group season, epic icon, mountain collective passes, and, and they're affordable for pretty much anywhere. And, and To me, at least it's affected the traffic on the 70, the 80, like all these like road corridors to the mountains, but it hasn't resulted in more money being spent in the sport overall. And so my question to you is, are these past products a good thing? Like, is this good for the industry or is this just a way for the resort companies to make more money in the short term? Is it... Chad (43:24.238) True, they just smart cheeseburgers in real estate. Mark (43:38.224) benefiting in the short term at the expense of the long term longevity and health of the sports. Chad (43:44.614) Um, that's interesting. It's like a wonder where the, if there is, if you could do the comparison on board sales compared to like, you know, resort traffic. Mark (43:55.328) Yeah, we'll look into that further as time goes on. That just occurred to me as we were sitting here talking, but it is kind of a question that I have is like, what's happening to snowboarding? We'll get a little bit more into that. One more piece of news, Slush the Magazine is about to launch Slush the App. And so you can actually download it right now. They haven't promoted it yet, but it's out there. And yeah, and so they have like copies of their stories and magazines online through the app that you can download through the App Store. Chad (43:57.943) Yeah. Mark (44:25.768) So that's kind of cool. Yeah. Chad (44:27.018) That's awesome. I'm gonna be interested to have a Slush the Magazine app on my phone. It'll be my first kind of like snowboard app. What other app? Yeah, yeah, it's like Instagram or Slush. Which one are you gonna click? Facebook. What apps have I been using lately? I've been doing YouTube a lot. Just cause it's, I don't know, whatever. I'm trying to just load everything on my hard drives on YouTube just for fun for some reason. Mark (44:32.824) Yep, just another icon on your phone to make you a snowboarder. Mark (44:56.088) Mm-hmm. You get to like a point of like, you know, where you have enough videos that are getting plays here and there where it really adds up, you know, so the more videos the merrier, I guess. Chad (44:57.462) and I'll... Chad (45:05.097) Hmm. we'll see what happens. But speaking of app, I would imagine this is gonna be on the app, the 2160 by Hirota Ogawara. Yeah. Mark (45:19.188) Yeah, man, I'm kind of torn on the 2160, I gotta say, Chad, because, you know, yes, it is progression. No one's done a 2160 before, and I know you have thoughts on the 2160, but to me, it's like they've added a 180, you know, to what happened before, you know, and I don't know, I mean, Chad (45:23.401) Yeah. Mark (45:46.104) According to you Chad, you're like the matrix is complete now you can stop bullets with your teeth. Is that is that how it goes? Chad (45:52.498) Yes, this is the truth 100% like I thought it was at five, but apparently 2160 is six pins. So this is another 360 pass bullet catching bullets. So that's pretty cool. When I was a coach, I always like to say I would always tell the kids that your trick doesn't count unless you did it on something never touched by a human or modified by human. So how many tricks do you got the kids to be like? Mark (46:11.068) Mm-hmm. Chad (46:16.99) If you went to, you know. and it was like, how many tricks do you got? I bet he might not have any tricks either, but he does have a 2160 and a park jump, but technically somebody else built that kicker for him. So it doesn't really count. He doesn't own that trick, but I do enjoy the more spins, you know, like it's just entertaining. I don't think it's marketable or something that people wanna do, but I like to see. The possibility is pushed in every direction. I wouldn't say it's necessarily good for the sport or for sales, but it's like, why not? I don't know. Mark (46:59.656) I mean, you could definitely define it as progression. It's never been done before. Now it's been done. So that is progression, right? By maybe definition. But to me, it's like there's something missing from that. Right? It's like, when you watch that 2160, I mean, he is whipping around and it's getting closer and closer to helicopter status with each like added 180, but. Chad (47:05.952) Right. Chad (47:20.314) He might, if he put a little tweak on his board, he might like be able to just kind of levitate. You know what I mean? If you think about it, if he puts his board at the right angle, he might actually be able to helicopter and just kind of hang out up there. Mark (47:26.607) Yeah. Mark (47:33.716) Yeah, I mean, that's true. That might be the next level beyond stopping bullets with your teeth, it's just levitating. So we'll have to wait and see where this goes. But to me though, it's like, it's still missing like this essential creative element. It's like back in the day, let's go back to like the early 90s. It's like you watch Jamie Lynn do a method, you watch Chris Roach do a method, you watch Dave Alden do a method, and they were all different tricks, but they were the same trick. And it's like the way that each person Chad (47:38.663) Man. Yeah. Mark (48:03.736) made that trick their own was part of the essence of like, of the creativity of snowboarding. It's like you would put your own mark on every trick you did. And once we got into like nine hundreds and beyond, that's when you kind of stopped making tricks your own. You just had to get it around to the landing, but. I kind of miss the days where it was like your creative approach and how you did it. And I guess that's what I identified with like East bum fuck is like the way that he like just approached making a movie differently. Um, but to me, it's like that creative element doesn't exist when it's just a matter of adding rotations. Chad (48:44.274) 100%. Yeah. I mean, Sean, like, like they like the claims that he was inventing tricks, but like you said, it was it's just not in our eyes is not really the progression we want to see. It's just more rotations. Mark (48:56.344) Yeah, and I do see that there is some progression in the sport. I don't think progression is dead. And by the way, it's like, I don't consider like a 50-50 on a challenge rail necessarily progression, even if you go 20 feet longer than the last guy or whatever that to me isn't necessarily progression, but I do see progression in like the pullback tricks that you see guys, you know, like Marcus Cleveland and Ted Powell doing a little bit and, and I, so I see that as something cool, obviously like natural selection, they're bringing you know, kind of like just back country kind of filming and then making it into full lines where you have to like really do multiple tricks on one face. And so that to me is a kind of progression. And then this other thing to me, where really I see the progression of free riding is in what I consider like adventure free riding, where people are going out and like discovering new areas or exploring to get to these areas and then riding them and then making it back out in one piece. And to me, that's kind of like this. very potentially dangerous, but also rewarding part of freeriding that, that has kind of like really been progressing in the last like, like five or 10 years as far as like people going really to like further lengths. I know people have been using snowmobiles to access areas for about 20 years, but really I've seen like this progression in the last 10 years of crews going out to like new areas and going to places that literally have never been gotten to before. And so to me, that's like a whole new level of exploration and therefore progression to me anyway. Chad (50:31.334) I agree with you. I enjoy watching those movies as more documentary style and in-depth and what's going on. Like I didn't like watching Jeremy Jones's video parts ever. The big mountain, Jeremy Jones until he started telling his story. And then you're like, Whoa, that's pretty cool. Like what you're doing besides that. It was just kind of like, you know, turning down a hill or a steep hill, you know? And, uh, once you hear the story and you hear what's going on behind, it's great. Mark (50:54.285) Yeah, we get- Mark (50:58.968) Yeah, it's like I took it for granted when all those TV movies were coming out in the 90s. You just see Tom Burt on a mountain face a fly on the wall making his way down a mountain. And you didn't really appreciate all the thought and calculation and you know, figuring out what would go into like a big mountain line. And then when Jeremy Jones started talking about that's when I think the regular viewer kind of started to gain an appreciation of what goes on in like big mountains and And really just how a risky it is, but B then how much more calculation you put into each line you're doing. Chad (51:36.11) Yeah, like the story behind it is the progression I feel like. I did notice and I paid attention. I saw a lot of movies come out in the last couple of years, a lot of big brands, like big outdoor brands are sponsoring expeditions. And they do a lot of sponsoring expeditions to a lot of skiers and snowboarders. It might not be the best skiers and snowboarders. So they just go out and struggle and come back and tell their story. That's kind of degression to me. Like a lot of these adventure movies that have come out that Travis and Jeremy put out over the last couple of years have kind of spawned a lot of people trying to go make their own and they don't have the talent that Jeremy and Travis do so it's kind of a boring... Yeah. I see a lot of those on YouTube. I'm like, oh, but they're still interesting to watch. And if they go to cool places, you know. Mark (52:17.037) It's like a watered down version of that progression, you know? Mark (52:25.204) Is it progression if you struggle more? Is that progression? It's like the bigger the struggle, the more the progression. I don't think so. Yeah. Chad (52:31.71) Yeah, like DMX says to live is to struggle, to die is to feel good. You know, but anyways, yeah, yeah. So, but I do, I really love enjoy like, you know, all those climbing adventure movies, as opposed to your standard trick movie that happened here before. But like I said, unless it's very unique, like used bumfuck, or if I personally know them, then I'm excited to watch it. Like I just saw Jed at that. Mark (52:38.504) Yup. Chad (53:00.086) you know, premiere in Minneapolis. And I was like, what's up, Jed? I'm like, we're here for you. We heard you got a two song part. I wanna watch it, you know what I mean? And then my dad was at the usher at the rail at the end of his part. So there was like a little connection there, but otherwise it's just another challenge rail to me when I'm watching it. Mark (53:08.124) Yeah. Mark (53:18.788) Yeah, interesting. Well, you know, we I had another subject that I was going to talk about here, but I think we'll save it for our next episode. I think it's a pretty juicy subject that we could get really into. And so maybe we'll save that for the next time around. But I think we've kind of covered a lot of bases here for the preseason. Is there anything else that you want to talk about? I mean, I think that we got an open mic, we got, you know, an open platform for you to speak your mind, Chad. Chad (53:33.111) Yeah. Chad (53:47.502) Speak my mind, I'm like the more and more I'm involved in the snowboarding industry, the more and more I want to be more involved in just snowboarding, not outside of it, which a lot of brands are these days and I notice it. So I'm really excited at what we're doing with Academy and I hope on the next episode, I plan on this next November, December, I want to go ride Minnesota and then go surf the North Shore of Lake Superior. Mark (54:17.58) Interesting. Chad (54:18.674) And with a wetsuit because I guess it's really good in the winter and my buddy Mark (54:22.5) I got a guy who's like a big Chicago surfer. Now I know that's like kind of an oxymoron to some people, but he's the guy for Great Lakes surfing apparently. It's snowboard or two. So he might be able to show you some spots, some secret spots on the Great Lakes. Chad (54:26.09) none. Chad (54:33.267) Yeah. Chad (54:40.002) Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Like a, well, damaged Duluth. I'm gonna, there's a shop up in Duluth and that's kind of where we're going. We're going to go east of there, but I mean, there are secrets, but they're not because it's so cold up there that no one does it. You know what I mean? Mark (54:42.084) I think they're all kind of secret. Mark (54:57.144) Right. It's not like you're fighting for waves. Chad (55:01.002) Yeah, my buddy Matt that I'm going to do it go surf with he lived in San Diego for 15 years and he's like a you know He's got a sailboat in Mexico and he's like the best place to surf is You know the great lace because no one's there Yeah, you just got to be able to deal with the cold Mark (55:12.856) Really? Interesting. Okay, well, I guess now with all your cold plunge training, you should be ready. Chad (55:18.051) We'll see. Chad (55:21.523) I'm going that's kind of the goal. Yeah. Mark (55:23.596) You know, if you really want to impress me, you're going to trunk it. Right on. Well, thank you for taking the time to jump onto this real talk. This has been real Chad, and I enjoy talking to you, uh, snowboarding. And, you know, I, I've, um, been progressing my, my interest in snowboarding and, and part of that progression though, is, is. Chad (55:27.142) I'll die, are you? Yeah, we'll see. Chad (55:37.642) It has, it's been a couple years. Mark (55:50.132) as you have, I'm less interested in the snowboard industry and, and more interested in kind of what snowboarding can do for the individual, you know, and how that can impact your life and what it can contribute to your peace and happiness in your life. And so I think that snowboarding can still bring that to you. It's just I'm not looking at it through the same lens as I used to, as far as the industry and you know, then this kind of daily in and out of, you know, Instagram posts or whatever. Chad (56:21.002) Yup, you know, there's only one person made for Instagram that's Zeb Powell, you know? Mark (56:25.9) Exactly. It's like you just have to watch what Zeb does and it's like, what are you going to do? What? You know, you can watch Marcus Cleveland too, you know, yeah, there's a there's a handful, but you can get your full fill pretty quick. Just saying. Time to figure out some new ways to sell yourself through Instagram, maybe. Chad (56:33.978) Yeah, yeah, true. For sure. Five. Chad (56:40.846) For sure. Chad (56:45.43) Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean Who knows of my plan this winter is to go snowboarding every day I can and I live in an area where once I leave my house with my cell phone Mark (56:55.076) That's, that's why you're a real contender for goat status is because your passion for snowboarding is like real. And you know, there's a lot of people who like just being around snowboarding for 30 years, there's like a lot of people who like became pros and like, we're all about it, had video parts and all this stuff. And then they lost their sponsor deal or whatever and haven't been seen from since. And to me, that was always disappointing. It's like, were you after the, you know, the accolades or were you after kind of the joy of snowboarding? You know, and for me, I have no question in my mind about you, Chad. You love snowboarding more than anyone else. I know. I think so. Chad (57:32.45) Thank you, I appreciate that. You are correct, snowboarding's not really that hard. So, well it is and it isn't, but some people are really naturally talented and then their passion doesn't really go along with their scene. So once they're done, they're done. And I love it, it's gonna be a good time. It's just a great way to get outside. Mark (57:45.853) Yeah. Mark (57:49.844) Well, apparently we're not done yet with the snowboard project. We're going to keep doing it. And we're not doing it with sponsors anymore because we just want to keep the talk as real as possible. So I think that's a good thing. And I want to thank you all for tuning into our first episode in about nine months. And you got to take a break from time to time. I mean, I literally worked in the snowboard industry from the 19, I think 1991. is when I first got involved and I just, I worked a ridiculous amount of time in it for all these years and it was time for a break, you know, so. Chad (58:28.49) Yeah, I'm down to get back on once we come up with another good list of awesome things to talk about. Mark (58:34.228) I think it won't take long because we didn't even get to the juiciest part of this list this week. So we'll be back soon. I talked to Bjorn, by the way, he wants to jump back on as well. So we'll get, we'll get both of you guys back on here. I'm not counting Bjorn out, but he was busy with Cardiff business today. So he was doing that. There's some kind of snow safety kind of deal in Utah right now. And, you know, he's, he's involved with that. So more power to him. Chad (58:40.138) Oh yeah, yeah. All right. Chad (58:45.65) Nice. Chad (58:52.238) Ah, that's it. Mark (59:01.972) And more power to you, Chad. And I'm glad that you've got a roof over your head, some photos on the wall that you shot and a couple of Vordivox bags behind you. Chad (59:11.462) Those aren't my photos, those are Jeff's. But yeah, a couple of order box bags, so you know. Pretty good gear. Speaking of, well, yeah, thank you. They do have a, I'm not sponsored by them, but they do have a beacon that his voice talks to you while you're searching. It says, go left, go right, start digging. Things like that, I believe so, yeah. It's pretty advanced, you know. Hopefully you never have to have that happen, but. Mark (59:13.904) Okay. Yep, you're ready for any kind of mishap. Mark (59:30.604) Like what, go left, go right, five meters? Really? That is pretty cool. Chad (59:40.706) They do that. Mark (59:41.144) Maybe, maybe for our next episode, we can kind of do a review because it seems like, you know, like all this backcountry technology is still evolving as far as the airbag backpacks, you know, there's the canister ones, the electric ones. There's beacons seem to evolve every year. Now radios are part of the game. Um, they always have been, but they kind of have been refined a little bit by the industry. So maybe we could talk about some of the backcountry tools next time around as well. Cool. Chad (01:00:07.362) That sounds awesome. I'm way into that. Mark (01:00:10.284) Well, thank you everyone for tuning in and yeah, we will be back with some more snowboard projects soon. Chad (01:00:18.539) Thank you. Mark (01:00:19.592) And, uh, Chad, just

Care Less, Do More. – E24 – Janelle Yip Janelle Yip has long been one of my favorite skiers to watch. A professional skier originally from Calgary, Alberta she grew up competing in slopestyle events through high school before her passion for skiing landed her in Revelstoke. Janelle gave herself [...] The post Care Less, Do More. – E24 – Janelle Yip appeared first on Out Of Collective.

On this episode we not only get to read listener email, but then we sit down with Canadian extreme horror author Steve Stred to talk about his new memoir, "The Color of Melancholy"! We also talk about growing up in a small town (not far from Revelstoke, actually), the time he got punched with brass knuckles, his bobsledding career, and Bigfoot, just to name a few topics. What can we say? The man has range! To contribute to Anthony's GoFundMe, please head to: https://www.gofundme.com/f/anthony-and-krista You can read Steve's memoir "The Color of Melancholy" for free via your Kindle Unlimited subscription, or pick it up in various formats on Amazon Our musical guest on this episode is Darko Richards, with the track "Junkie" from his just-released album, "Synthesis 1.0" Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on June 13. It dropped for free subscribers on June 16. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoDarcy Alexander, Vice President and General Manager of Sun Peaks, British ColumbiaRecorded onMay 23, 2023About Sun PeaksClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Nippon Cable CompanyLocated in: Sun Peaks, British ColumbiaYear founded: 1961, as Tod MountainPass affiliations: Ikon Pass: 5 or 7 days; Mountain Collective: 2 daysReciprocal partners: 2 days at Silver StarClosest neighboring ski areas: Harper Mountain (58 minutes), Silver Star (2 hours, 20 minutes)Base elevation: 3,930 feetSummit elevation: 6,824 feetVertical drop: 2,894 feetSkiable Acres: 4,270Average annual snowfall: 237 inchesTrail count: 138 trails and 19 glades (32% advanced/expert, 58% intermediate, 10% beginner)Lift count: 13 (3 high-speed quads, 4 fixed-grip quads, 2 platters, 4 carpets - view Lift Blog's inventory of Sun Peaks' lift fleet) – Sun Peaks will build a fourth high-speed quad, West Bowl Express, in 2024Why I interviewed himBecause this freaking province, man. Twenty-nine ski areas with vertical drops over 1,000 feet. Fourteen soar beyond 2,000. Five cross the 3,000-foot mark. Four pass 4,000. And BC is home to the only two ski areas in North America that give you 5,000 or more vertical feet: Whistler and King Revelstoke. Thirteen BC bumps deliver 1,000-plus acres of terrain, and at least 20 load up on 200 inches or more of snow per season. Check these stats:British Columbia is like the Lamborghini dealership of skiing. Lots of power, lots of flash, lots of hot damn is that real? No duds. Nothing you'd be embarrassed to pick up a date in. A few community bumps, sure. But the BC Bros can stack their power towers – Big White, Fernie, Kicking Horse, Kimberley, Panorama, Red, Revelstoke, Silver Star, Sun Peaks, Whistler, and Whitewater – against any collection of ski areas anywhere on the planet and feel pretty good about winning that knife fight.And yet, even in this Seal Team Six of ski resorts, Sun Peaks looks heroic, epaulets and medals dangling from its dress blues. This is the second-largest ski area in Canada. Ponder that BC ski roster again to understand what that means: Sun Peaks gives you more acreage than anything on the famed Powder Highway, more than Revy or Red or Kicking Horse or Fernie. Turn north at Kamloops, east at Hefley Creek, and get lost at the end of the valley.But Sun Peaks' sheer size is less impressive than how the resort won those big-mountain stats. “British Columbia has probably the most progressive ski resort development policy in the world,” Alexander tells me in the podcast. When he arrived at the bump that was then called “Tod Mountain” in 1993, the place was three chairlifts and some surface movers serving a single peak:Over the next 30 years, Nippon Cable transformed the joint into a vast ski Narnia not only because they were willing to funnel vast capital into the hill, but because the BC government let them do it, under a set of rules known as the B.C. Commercial Alpine Ski policy. While inspiring, this is not an unusual ski area evolution tale for Western Canada. Compare the 10 largest BC ski areas today to the 10 largest in 1994:The acreage explosions at all but Whistler-Blackcomb (which at the time operated as independent ski areas), are astonishing. To underscore the point, check out the same years' comparison for the 10-largest U.S. ski areas:Certainly, the U.S. has seen some dramatic shuffling, especially as Vail and Alterra combined Canyons with Park City and Alpine Meadows with the ski area formerly known as Squaw Valley to form the megaresorts of Park City and Palisades Tahoe. That Big Sky didn't measure on the top 10 in 1994 – the tram didn't arrive until 1995 – is amazing. But the Western U.S., in 1994, was already home to legions of enormous ski resorts. That Heavenly, Mammoth, and Jackson Hole are the exact same size today as they were 29 years ago illustrates the difference between the two countries' attitudes toward ski resort expansion and development. Canada nurtures growth. The U.S. makes it as difficult as possible. Indeed, the reason Big Sky was able to ascend to monster status is that the resort sits entirely on private land, immunizing it from Forest Service bureaucracy and the endless public challenges that attend it.Sun Peaks is a case study in BC's development-friendly policies actualized. More important: the resort's evolution is a case study in smart, transit-oriented, pedestrian-friendly development. Alexander explains in the podcast that the long-range goal has been to build not just walkable base villages, but a walkable community stretching from one end of the valley to the other. This is the point that's so often missed in the United States: not all growth and development is bad. The reckless, developer-driven, luxury-focused, disconnected sprawl that is U.S. America's default building mode is terrible and inhuman and ought to be curtailed. Deliberate, dense, interconnected, metered development based upon a community masterplan - which is what Sun Peaks is doing - should be encouraged.This sort of thoughtful growth does not dilute mountain communities. It creates them. Rather than trying to freeze development in time – a posture that only kicks sprawl ever farther out from the mountains and leads directly to the traffic addling so many Western U.S. ski towns – BC has enabled and empowered the sort of place-building that will create sustainable mountain communities over the long term. It's an inspiring model, and one that The Storm will examine intensely as I focus more deliberately on Canada.What we talked aboutRecord skier visits; bringing back that international vibe; touring Western Canada; Sun Peaks' first season on the Ikon Pass; the secret giant; how to dodge what few liftlines the resort has; the Mountain Collective as Ikon test run; Tod Mountain in the early 1990s; ski area masterplanning; Sunshine Village; growing Sun Peaks from backwater to the second-largest ski area in Canada; Nippon Cable, the Japanese lift manufacturer that owns Sun Peaks; why Sun Peaks doesn't use Nippon lifts; why Sun Peaks changed its name from “Tod Mountain” in 1993; an interesting tidbit about Whistler ownership; whether Sun Peaks ever considered joining the Epic Pass; Sun Peaks' masterplan; potential terrain expansions; upgrade potential for Sunburst and Sundance lifts; future lift additions; “the guy who serves the most ski terrain with the fewest lifts is the most efficient”; going deep on the coming West Bowl Express quad and the new terrain that will go along with it; why Sun Peaks retired the West Bowl T-bar before replacing it; better access to Gil's; why Sun Peaks is building the lift over three summers; the amazing Burfield lift, a fixed-grip quad that stretches nearly 3,000 vertical feet; potentially shortening that lift; why Burfield will likely never be a high-speed lift; prioritizing lift projects after West Bowl; converting – not replacing – Orient from a fixed-grip quad to a high-speed quad or six-pack; village-building; the potential major lift that's not on Sun Peaks' masterplan; and potentially connecting the resort to the Trans-Canada highway by paved road from the east.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIn April, Sun Peaks announced construction of a new high-speed quad in West Bowl for the 2024-25 ski season. The lift will replace the West Bowl T-bar, visible on this circa 2019 trailmap, on a longer line that pushes the boundary away from the 7 Mile Road trail:The resort will lengthen the existing trails to meet the new lift's load point down the mountain, as Alexander explains in the podcast.This will be Sun Peaks' third new chairlift in three years, following new fixed-grip quads at Crystal and Orient in 2020 and 2018, respectively. Sun Peaks approaches chairlift construction in a unique manner, with a history of building lifts as fixed-grip machines and then upgrading them to high-speed lifts later on. Orient, for example, may evolve into a high-speed six-pack that lands several hundred more feet up the mountain. Slowly, deliberately, endlessly, Sun Peaks grows and evolves.While Alexander and his team continue to stack bricks into the resort's foundation, they simultaneously grow the mountain's profile. A few years back, the resort joined the Mountain Collective. Last October, it joined Ikon. And, kaboom: no more secret at the end of the road.That's a good thing. If these BC giants are to thrive, they're going to need help outside the province, which hosts a population of approximately 5 million in an area the size of California (39 million residents), Colorado (5.8 million), and Utah (3.4 million) combined. That means bringing skiers burned out on Summit County and Wasatch liftlines across the border, where big ski resorts continue to get bigger and the liftlines rarely form (outside of the West Coast).I don't want to overstate the scale of what's happening in BC – certainly big projects still can and do happen in America. And even as they grow fat by North American standards, most of the province's biggest ski areas still look like birdbaths compared to the ski circuses of Europe. But imagine if, over the next 30 years, 480-acre Ski Cooper transformed into 5,317-acre Vail Mountain. That is essentially what's happened at Sun Peaks since 1993, where a small community bump evolved into an international destination resort 10 times its original size. And they're nowhere near finished – Sun Peaks' masterplan (pg. 141), outlines a monster facility at full build-out:The Mountain Master Plan … will ultimately include a total of 26 ski lifts, including one pulse gondola, one 10G/8C Combi lift one detachable grip six-passenger chairlift, four detachable quadruple chairlifts, nine fixed grip quadruple chairlifts, four platter lifts and approximately two beginner moving carpet lifts, with a total combined rated capacity of about 41,186 passengers per hour … The overall Phase 4 [Skier Comfortable Carrying Capacity] will be approximately 14,830 skiers per day. … there will be 225 trails providing 177.5 kilometers of skiing on [1,895 acres] of terrain.Here's a conceptual map of Sun Peaks at full build-out:While plenty of BC ski areas have evolved over the past several decades, no one has accomplished the trick more steadily or with such deliberate, constant momentum as Sun Peaks. It was time to check in to see how they'd done it, and what was going to happen next.What I got wrongAs is my habit, I introduced Sun Peaks as defined by our U.S. American measurement system of feet and acres. Which is not that unusual – this is a U.S. American-based podcast. However, as a courtesy to my Canadian guests, listeners, and readers, I should have also offered the equivalent measurements in meters. Only I am a dumb U.S. American so I don't actually know how to do these conversions. Sorry about that.Why you should ski Sun PeaksThe Ikon Pass is an incredible thing. Purchase one in the spring and spend the following winter bouncing across the snowy horizons. Hit half a dozen of the continent's greatest resorts in Utah, big-mountain hop in Colorado, spend a week in Tahoe or skimming between peaks at Big Sky. Or go to Canada – 10 Ikon destinations sit in the northland, and seven of them crouch in a neat circle straddling BC and Alberta: Norquay, Lake Louise, Sunshine, Panorama, Red, Sun Peaks, and Revelstoke:You could complete that circle in around 17 hours of driving. Which is not much if you're rolling through a two-week roadie and spending two or three days at each resort. Some of them could occupy far more time. Sun Peaks can eat up a week pretty easily. But for the resort-hoppers among us, an Ikon or Mountain Collective pass includes days at Canada's second-largest ski area on its ready-to-eat buffet. Here's a look at every Canadian ski area that participates in a U.S.-based megapass:So the first reason to ski Sun Peaks is that you probably already have access to it. But there's something else – you can just go there and ski. As much as I love the ski resorts of Colorado and Utah, they are just too easy to access for too many people. That's great, but skiing in those powder holes requires a certain patience, an expectation of some kind of madness, a willingness to tweak the algorithm to see what combination of snowfall, open terrain, day of the week, and time of day yields the most open path between you and turns.That calculus is a little easier at Sun Peaks: just show up whenever you want and start skiing. Outside of Whistler, the big-mountain resorts of BC resemble the big-mountain resorts of the American West 40 years ago. Endless labyrinths of untamed terrain, no one to race off the ropeline. BC's collective ski resorts have evolved much faster than the market's realization that there is another set of Rocky Mountain resorts stacked on top of the Rocky Mountain resorts of U.S. America. That's a lot of terrain to roam. And all you need is a passport. Go get it.Podcast NotesOn building an alternate route into Sun Peaks from the eastMost visitors to Sun Peaks are going to spend some time traveling to the resort along the Trans-Canada Highway. Eastbound travelers will simply turn north at Kamloops and then right at Heffley Creek. Westbound travelers pass within five miles of the resort's southeast edge as they drive through Chase, but must continue toward Kamloops before turning toward Sun Peaks – nearly an hour and a half on clear roads. There is a mountain road, unpaved and impassable in wintertime (marked in yellow below), and long-simmering plans for an alternate, less death-defying paved path that could be open year-round (market in blue below). Alexander and I discussed this road, and he seemed optimistic that it will, eventually, get built. Given Sun Peaks' record of actualizing the improbable, I share his outlook. Here's a map of the whole mess:On Nippon Cable and WhistlerWhile Sun Peaks presents as an independent ski area, it is in fact part of a Japan-based conglomerate called Nippon Cable. This is primarily a lift manufacturer, but Nippon also owns a number of ski areas in Japan and 25 percent of Whistler (seriously). Read more about their properties here.On Big Bam ski areaAlexander mentions Big Bam ski area, which sits along the Pine River just west of the Alaska Highway and south of Fort St. John. Here's a homemade trailmap that someone codenamed “Skier72” posted on skimap.org, with the caption, “Approx. Trails at Big Bam. Made with Google Earth. Top lift is future quad chair, bottom lift is rope tow”:Big Bam is a volunteer-run, weekends-only organization with 180 feet of vert. You can follow them on Facebook (their last Instapost was in 2014). Alexander mentioned that the ski area had moved from its original location, though I couldn't find any information on the old hill. The place has had a rough go – it re-opened (I believe in the current location), in 2009, and was closed from 2016 to 2019 before turning the lifts on again. They seem desperate for a chairlift. If anyone knows more about the Big Bam story, please let me know.On Sun Peaks spare lift fleetAlexander notes that Sun Peaks “might have the least number of lifts for a resort of our size” on the continent. Indeed, the ski area has the third-fewest number of lifts among North America's 10 largest ski areas:On the Burfield chairliftStow this one for ski club trivia night: Sun Peaks is home to what is very likely the longest fixed-grip chairlift in the world. The Burfield quad rises 2,890 vertical feet on a 9,510-foot-long line. According to Lift Blog, ride time is 21 minutes, and the carriers are 115 feet apart. The lift's hourly capacity is just 470 riders – compare that to the Crystal fixed-grip quad right beside it, which can move up to 2,400 skiers per hour.The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast 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 50/100 in 2023, and number 436 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 May 26. It dropped for free subscribers on May 29. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoPete Woods, President of SkiBig3, the umbrella organization for Banff Sunshine, Lake Louise, and Mt. Norquay, AlbertaRecorded onMay 4, 2023About SkiBig3SkiBig3 “works in conjunction with all three ski resorts within Banff National Park to allow you access to everything this winter destination has to offer,” according to the organization's LinkedIn page. Each ski area – Banff Sunshine, Lake Louise, and Mt. Norquay – is independently owned and operated.Banff SunshineClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Ralph, Sergei, and John ScurfieldLocated in: Sunshine Village, AlbertaYear founded: Sometime in the 1930sPass affiliations: Ikon Pass: 5 or 7 combined days with Lake Louise and Mt. Norquay; Mountain Collective: 2 daysClosest neighboring ski areas: Norquay (23 minutes), Sunshine (41 minutes), Nakiska (1 hour) - travel times vary considerably depending upon weather and time of day.Base elevation: 5,440 feetSummit elevation: 8,954 feetVertical drop: 3,514 feetSkiable Acres: 3,358Average annual snowfall: 360 inchesTrail count: 137 (25% advanced/expert, 55% intermediate, 20% beginner)Lift count: 12 (1 gondola, 7 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog's inventory of Sunshine's lift fleet)Sunshine chops its trailmap into three pieces on its website. This is slightly confusing for anyone who isn't familiar with the ski area and doesn't understand how the puzzle pieces fit together. I've included those three maps below, but they'll make more sense in the context of this 2010 trailmap:Sunshine's current maps:Lake LouiseClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Charlie Locke (he first owned the ski area from 1981 to 2003, then sold it to Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, and re-bought it from them in 2008)Located in: Lake Louise, AlbertaYear founded: 1954Pass affiliations: Ikon Pass: 5 or 7 combined days with Banff Sunshine and Mt. Norquay; Mountain Collective: 2 daysClosest neighboring ski areas: Sunshine (41 minutes), Norquay (44 minutes), Nakiska (1 hour, 22 minutes) - travel times vary considerably depending upon weather and time of day.Base elevation: 5,400 feetSummit elevation: 8,650 feetVertical drop: 3,250 feetSkiable Acres: 4,200Average annual snowfall: 179 inchesTrail count: 164 (30% advanced/expert, 45% intermediate, 25% beginner)Lift count: 11 (1 gondola, 1 six-pack, 3 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 3 carpets - view Lift Blog's inventory of Lake Louise's lift fleet)Mt. NorquayClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Adam and Janet WaterousLocated in: Improvement District No. 9, AlbertaYear founded: 1926Pass affiliations: Ikon Pass: 5 or 7 combined days with Banff Sunshine and Lake LouiseClosest neighboring ski areas: Sunshine (23 minutes), Lake Louise (43 minutes), Nakiska (54 minutes) - travel times vary considerably depending upon weather and time of day.Base elevation: 5,350 feetSummit elevation: 6,998 feetVertical drop: 1,650 feetSkiable Acres: 190Average annual snowfall: 120 inchesTrail count: 60 (44% advanced/expert, 25% intermediate, 31% beginner)Lift count: 6 (1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 double, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog's inventory of Mt. Norquay's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himThere are places that make sense, and places that just don't. Lakes and grocery stores and movie theaters and sand dunes and pizza places and interstate highways. As a U.S. American, these things always squared with my worldview. Then I stepped out of the car in New York City at age 19 and I'm like what the actual f**k is happening here? A vertical human swarm in a sprawling sideways nation. Or to take another example: cornfields and baitshops and gas stations and forests. As a Midwesterner I could understand those things. But then Lord of the Rings dropped and I was like what planet did they shoot this on and then I was like OK I guess that's New Zealand.Arriving in Banff is like that. Most visitors travel there via Calgary. Nothing against Calgary, but I'm not sure it's a place that most of us go to on purpose. Skiers drop into the airport, leave the city, drive west. Flat forever. Then, suddenly, you are among mountains. Not just mountains, but the most amazing mountains you've ever seen, striated goliaths heaving skyward like something animate and immensely powerful, spokes of a great subterranean machine primed to punch through the earth like invaders from Cybertron.Here, so surrounded, you arrive in Banff National Park. Within its boundaries: two towns, three ski areas. The towns are tight, walkable, lively, attractive. None of the hill-climbing megamansion claptrap that clutters the fringes of so many U.S. ski towns. Just a pair of glorious grand hotels airlifted, it seems, from the Alps. Two of the ski areas are Summit County scale, with lift plants and trail footprints to match Breck or Keystone or Copper. The third is a quirky locals' bump with mogul fields studded like cash crops up the incline. All framed by those wild mountains.It feels sort of European and sort of fantasyland Rockies and sort of like nothing else on Earth. It is, at the very least, like nothing else in North America. The texture here is rich. Banff's most commonly cited attribute is its beauty. The most consistent point against is relatively low snowfalls compared to, say, SkiBig3's Powder Highway neighbors or Whistler. But there is so much in between those gorgeous views and that modest snowfall that makes these three mountains one of the continent's great ski destinations.Like the towns themselves. In many ways, this is Canadian Aspen, with its multiple mountains knitted via shuttlebus, rich cuisine, walkable mountain villages. In other ways, it is what Aspen could have been. You have to work in Banff National Park to live there – that's the law. The richness that adds to the community is incalculable. Imagine a Colorado so built? No second homes, no runaway short-term rental market. The ripple effects on traffic, on cost, on mood and energy are tangible and obvious. This is a place that works.It's not the only place that works, of course. And many of Banff's bedrock operating principles would not be culturally transferable to the south. Including, perhaps, the spirit of bonhomie that unites three independently owned, competing ski areas under a single promotional umbrella called SkiBig3. Remember when Vail yanked its Colorado resorts out of Colorado Ski Country USA because the company didn't want its dues to support competitors' marketing? What's happening in Banff is the opposite of that. It's unique and it's cool and it's instructive, and it was worth a deep look to see exactly what's going on up there.What we talked aboutThe surprising international markets that Banff draws from; a welcome back to skiing's melting pot; the tradition of the long season at Lake Louise and Sunshine; putting the ski areas' relatively low average snowfall totals (compared to, say, Revelstoke), in context; which of the three mountains to visit based upon conditions; Banff's immature uphill scene and massive potential; growing up in Boulder and ratpack skiing Summit County; the angst of the front-desk hotel clerk; the strange dynamic between ski resorts and their local airports; selling Purgatory to out-of-state tourists; the quirks of living and working in Telluride; the vastly different ski cultures in the two Colorados; the existential challenge of Copper Mountain; the power of Woodward; first reaction to Banff: “how can this even exist?”; defining SkiBig3 and who owns each of its three partner ski areas; how mass transit fills in for ski-in-ski-out lodging; Banff's unique “need to reside” clause that enables workers of all levels to live right in town; the park's incredible bus system; the proposed Norquay gondola up from town; a potential train from Calgary airport to Banff; Norquay's wild North American pulse double chair; the history of Banff's spectacular Fairmont hotels; the history of SkiBig3 and why the coalition has worked; competing with the Powder Highway; how Sunshine gets by with a single snowgun; why Sunshine gets double the snowfall of Lake Louise; why none of the three ski areas has ever hosted Olympic events, even when Calgary was the host city; decoding Parks Canada's lease requirements that ski areas gift their assets to the agency or remove them at the end of their contracts; masterplans; why SkiBig3 was an early adopter of the Ikon Pass and why it's stuck around; why the three ski areas offer combined days on Ikon; why Norquay isn't part of Mountain Collective; why the Mountain Collective has been so resilient after the debut of Ikon; whether the Mountain Collective could add more Northeast ski areas; and why the ski areas have yet to transition to RFID cards.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIt has always been inevitable that The Storm would enter Canada. Just as it was always inevitable, back in 2019 and '20, that it would outgrow New England. This template, I've realized, is adaptable to almost any ski market. Everywhere there is a ski area, there are skiers talking about it. And there is someone running it. And these two groups do not always understand each other. The mission of The Storm is to unite these them on a common platform.There is a difference, of course, between scaling in a sustainable way and scaling for the sake of doing so. I've been very deliberate about The Storm's growth so far. I started in the Northeast – New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania – because it was my local market and I understood it well. I stayed there – mostly – for two years before aggressively moving West in 2021. I learned to ski as a teenager in the Midwest, and I'd been skiing the West annually for decades, so none of this was new turf for me. Still, I had a lot to learn, and over the past two years, I have secured contacts and hosted a series of podcast interviews that gave me a far more nuanced understanding of every ski corner of the country.Canada was the obvious next move. Culturally, the nations' ski areas are very similar, with a western focus on off-piste powder-bombing and an eastern affinity for grooming. The trail markings, lift systems, and primacy of the automobile-as-access-point are consistent across the continent. And every U.S.-based megapass has integrated a substantial Canadian footprint as a selling point. International border aside, major U.S. and Canadian ski areas are as knotted together as those in Utah and Montana and Colorado.So, where to begin? I wanted to start big. The Storm launched in 2019 with a podcast featuring Killington, the largest ski area in the East. Western podcast coverage began with Taos and Aspen. So Canada starts here, in one of its most glorious locales. Next stop: Sun Peaks, the second-largest ski area in the country. I recorded that one a few days ago. I'd had a Whistler podcast booked too, but their top executive moved to Aspen, so we called it off.So, here we are, in Canada. Now what? Again, I'm going to move slowly. While America and Canada are culturally similar in many ways, they are enormously different in others. The ski regions here are many, vast, and nuanced. It's going to take me a while to get to Quebec, which is home to something like 90 ski areas and a sizeable (for me), language barrier. The country is huge, and while I've traveled to and across Canada dozens of times, I'm not taking for granted that presence equals understanding.I'll probably stop at Canada. That's not to say that I won't occasionally dip into other ski regions, both as a visitor and as a journalist. I've scheduled an interview with the general manager of Valle Nevado, Chile for July. But I don't think I'm capable of expanding this enterprise into other continents without diluting my coverage at home. Canada is purely additive. The region complements everything I already cover in the United States, especially multi-mountain passes. The world's other ski regions are so vastly different and complex that it wouldn't be like just adding more ski areas – it would be like adding coverage of sailing or surfing, completely different things that would only confuse the main plotline.Questions I wish I'd askedYou may wonder why we don't explore specifics of the ski areas as deeply as I normally do, particularly with all three being in possession of significant and well-articulated masterplans. It's important, here, to understand what SkiBig3 is: an umbrella organization that promotes the mountains as a whole. I can pursue more meaningful conversations on granular plans with each operator at a later time.What I got wrong* I intimated that Vail, Aspen, and Telluride were “10 times bigger” than Purgatory. This is grossly incorrect. Purgatory checks in at 1,635 acres, while Vail Mountain measures 5,317 acres, Telluride is 2,000, and Aspen Mountain is just 673 (though it will grow substantially with the Pandora's expansion this coming winter). If you combine Aspen Mountain with Aspen Highlands (1,010 acres), Buttermilk (435 acres), and Snowmass (3,342 acres), they add up to 5,460 – nowhere near 10 times the size of Purgatory. What I meant was that those three ski entities – Aspen, Vail, and Telluride – had far greater name recognition than Purgatory, which is tucked off the I-70 mainline in Southwest Colorado (as is Telluride).* On the other end of that spectrum, I vastly over-estimated the size of Norquay, saying it was 1/10th the size of Sunshine and Lake Louise. At 190 acres, Norquay is 5.7 percent the size of Sunshine (3,358 acres), and just 4.5 percent the size of Lake Louise (4,200 acres).* I said that Mountain Collective “keeps losing partners.” This is true, but it is a fact that must be considered within the context of this complementary note: Mountain Collective currently has one of the largest rosters in its 12-season history (the coalition is down one partner after Thredbo left this year). The pass has continued to grow in spite of the losses of Telluride, Mammoth, Palisades Tahoe, Sugarbush, Stowe, Whistler, and others over the years.Why you should ski Sunshine, Lake Louise, and Mt. NorquayEarlier I compared the three Banff ski areas to Summit County. That's not really fair. Because Summit County has one thing that Sunshine, Lake Louise, and Norquay don't really have to deal with: gigantic, relentless crowds.For two years, U.S. Americans were shut out of Canada. Now we're not. If you've been filling your winters with Ikon Pass trips around Salt Lake, I-70, and Tahoe, you might be wondering what the hell happened to skiing. Man it's so busy now, all the freaking time. I hear you Bro. Go north. It's this weird kind of hack. Like discount America (that exchange rate, Brah). Like time-machine America. Back to that late-‘90s/early-2000s interregnum, when the lifts were all built out and the reigns had been loosened on skiing off-piste, but the big passes hadn't shown up with the entire state of Texas just yet.I exaggerate a little. You can find liftlines in Canada if you do all the predictable things at all the predictable times. And the Ikon Pass and its destination checklist has blown the cover for lots of formerly clandestine places. But these are big mountains with long seasons. Woods tells me on the podcast that the locals' favorite time at the SkiBig3 areas is April. The terrain is mostly all still live but the outsiders stop showing up. If you want to crowd-dodge your way north, you have a six-month season to figure it out.As for the skiing itself, it's as big and varied as anything on the continent. Lake Louise is sprawling and many-sided, with fast lifts flying all over the place and plenty more inbound. Sunshine is big and exposed, and the gondola is the only way up to the ski area, lending the place a patina of wild adventure. Both will give you as much off-piste as you can handle. Norquay is kind of like Pico or June Mountain of Snow King – a very good ski area that's overlooked by its proximity to a far larger and more famous ski area. Don't skip it: the place is a riot, with some of the longest sustained bump runs you'll find anywhere.Together, the three ski areas add up to 7,748 acres. Whistler is 8,171. So, samesies, basically. If you're looking for a place to spend a week of skiing and you're tired of the stampede, here you go.Podcast NotesOn Banff's UNESCO World Heritage sites designationI note in the introduction that Banff National Park is on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The designation actually applies more broadly, to a group of parks dubbed “Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks.” This includes, according to UNESCO's website, “the contiguous national parks of Banff, Jasper, Kootenay, and Yoho, as well as the Mount Robson, Mount Assiniboine and Hamber provincial parks…” You can view an interactive map of all UNESCO World Heritage sites here.On Intrawest owning Copper MountainIt can be tempting to consider our current multi-mountain pass allegiances to be inevitable and permanent. So much so that I often stir each mountain's ownership histories up in the flow of conversation. This is what happened when I gave Powder Corp., the current owner of Copper Mountain, credit for installing the Woodward concept on that mountain. Woods pointed out that it was Intrawest, precursor to Alterra, that actually owned Copper at the time of Woodward's debut, and that they had also considered planting the concept at another of their properties: Whistler. Here's a list of all of Intrawest's ski areas, and where they ended up. It's fun to imagine a world in which they'd stayed together:On SkiBig3 Resort masterplansEach of the three resorts has master development plans on file with Parks Canada:Lake LouiseHere is a link to the full 2019 masterplan, and a summary image of proposed upgrades - note that the Lower Juniper and Summit chairlifts have already been installed, and Upper Juniper and Sunny Side are scheduled for a 2024 installation. The Summit Platter is no longer in service:SunshineSunshine's latest full masterplan dates to 2018. The resort proposed amendments last year, and those are still under review by Parks Canada. Here's an overview of proposed major lift upgrades:Mt. NorquaySometimes tracking down these masterplan documents can be like trying to locate Amelia Earhart's plane. I know it's out there somewhere, but good luck finding it. The best I can do on Norquay is this link to their Vision 100 site, which lays out plans to replace the North American chair with a gondola, as shown below:On Marilyn Monroe on the North American chairSo apparently this happened:On the North American chairI wrote about this chairlift a couple weeks back:I've ridden a lot of chairlifts. I don't know how many, but it's hundreds. By far the strangest of these is the North American chair at Mt. Norquay. Once a regular fixed-grip double, the ski area converted it into a pulse lift with chairs running in groups of four. The operators manually slow the entire line as the chairs enter the top and bottom stations (I'm assuming the line is set so that chairs reach the base and summit at the same time). This chair serves some bomber terrain, a vast mogul field with dipsy-do double fall-lines and the greatest views in the world.It's a strange one, for sure:The Storm Skiing 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 46/100 in 2023, and number 432 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

On today's show in our Cryptids in the News and other oddities segment, Kevin covers a train disaster from1920 in the Cascade Mountains. And in part two, Bill reviews a detailed Bigfoot encounter in Mt. Revelstoke National Park in British Columbia, Canada. And in part three, we've got some excellent listener mail which we will be reviewing, that you don't want to miss Thank you for listening! www.bigfootterrorinthewoods.com Produced by: "Bigfoot Terror in the Woods L.L.C."

It's Chris Rubens, everyone's favorite skier, part 2, and another deep dive into the life and times of a guy who makes his money farming snow and food. This week we talk about money, filming, the trip that changed his life, accidents in the mountains, becoming a farmer, and much more. Chris's brother-in-law and Powell Movement alumni, Greg Hill asks the Inappropriate Questions Chris Rubens Show Notes: 3:00: Pranks, MSP trips, marketing Rubens, late payments that impact his filming career, and seasons that don't work out. 13:00:  The Sherpa's "All I Can," winning awards, JP Auclair, and death in the mountains 20:30:  Rollerblade: They invented inline skating and make the best skates on the planet. Best Day Brewing:  All of the flavor of your favorite IPA or Kolsch, without the alcohol, the calories and sugar. Elan Skis:  Over 75 years of innovation that makes you better. 23:00:  Personal favorite year of filming, Blank, Guilt Trip, and starting the journey to reducing his carbon footprint. 34:00:  Internet hate, Greg Hill and "The Curve of Time" Movie, and skiing in electric cars    41:00:  Stanley:  Get 30% off sitewide with the code drinkfast Peter Glenn Ski and Sports:  Over 60 years of getting you out there JT Holmes (Episode 38:00: Who was Billy Poole, going on shoots uninvited 43:00:  Accidents in the backcountry, tinkering with product, sponsor switching after 19 years 52:00:  Atomic and farming 63:00:  Inappropriate Questions with Greg Hill

 Chris Rubens is the pro skier that pro skiers want to ski with. A badass in the mountains with a pro ski career that has spanned over 20 years, Chris graduated from the world of helicopters and sleds to totally changing the curve of his carbon footprint. In part 1 of his podcast, we talk about ski racing, growing up with Hoji, finding freeride, sponsorship, the eclipse photo adventure, and his big break with Matchstick Productions. It's another good one with the nicest of Canadians. Ski Legend Mike Douglas asks the Inappropriate Questions Chris Rubens Show Notes: 3:00:  USA v. Canadian athletes, coming from a British oil family, and ski racing 12:00:  Hjorleifson family, his and his Olympian sister's ski racing careers, going to a sports school, joining the Rocky Mountain Freeride program, and when did he realize he could go further in skiing 20:30:  Rollerblade: They invented inline skating and make the best skates on the planet. Best Day Brewing:  All of the flavor of your favorite IPA or Kolsch, without the alcohol, the calories and sugar. Elan Skis:  Over 75 years of innovation that makes you better 23:00:  First free pair for skis, being productive, hating contests, is there  a benefit going head to toe with a brand, and money 35:00:  Everyone is replaceable, and moving to an undeveloped Revelstoke 39:00:  Stanley:  Get 30% off site wide with the code drinkfast Peter Glenn Ski and Sports:  Over 60 years of getting you out there JT Holmes (Episode 38:00: Who was Billy Poole, going on shoots uninvited 41:30:  What development does to Revelstoke, The Eclipse Adventure and photos, and getting cold feet 52:00:  Learning to snowmobile, filming with Matchstick Productions early on, figuring out filming, and movie tours 62:00:  Inappropriate Questions with Mike Douglas 

Episode 261: On September 5th, 1998, between 11:00 and 11:30 pm, Brianne Ruth Wolgram was last seen at the 7-11 store in Revelstoke, BC., in the company of three young females whose identities are unknown. Five days later, Brianne's abandoned car was discovered 30 km south of Revelstoke, towards the Akolkolex Falls & River, on Echo Lake Road. Inside the car was her wallet, driver's license and $200, but there was no sign of Brianne. Nearly 25 years later, Brianne's family and friends are left wondering whatever became of the shy 19-year-old. Police have not ruled out foul play in her disappearance. If you have any information on Brianne Wolgram's disappearance or whereabouts, please email the Missing Children Society of Canada (MCSC) at tips@mcsc.ca or contact Crimestoppers at 1.800.222.TIPS (8477) or the Revelstoke RCMP non-emergency number at 250-837-5255. You can also leave an anonymous message through the contact page at findbreanne.wordpress.com. You can also email darkpoutinepodcast@gmail.com, and we will pass the information to the proper authorities. Sources: The History of Revelstoke — Revelstoke Museum & Archives Find Brianne Wolgram Cold Case BC - MISSING: Brianne Wolgram | Facebook Reddit: Breanne Wolgram MCSC - Home Brianne Wolgram | Missing Children Society of Canada | Archived 287. Use of Hypnosis—Purpose | JM | Department of Justice Hypnosis Decision SCC: 2007 SCC 6 (CanLII) | R. v. Trochym | CanLII Sotirios Konstantinos Kaviris - California Missing Person Directory Second person, Allan Ellsworth, reported missing in Beaton area - Revelstoke Mountaineer Public help sought as Revelstoke RCMP search for missing man - Okanagan | Globalnews.ca The Ghost Story Guys Podcast A Strange Little Place: The Paranormal Secrets of Revelstoke, British Columbia by Storr, Brennan | Amazon.ca Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices