Podcasts about Seven Springs

Prohibition and how it affected TN Agriculture – the hard numbers of how Tennessee Vineyards are an important part of our state's economy, and how vineyards preserve the family farm. Our guest is Rick Riddle – Co-Owner of The Winery at Seven Springs in Maynardville, TN, in Union County. TN Whiskey Experience. As part of the Southern Skies Musical Festival, Saturday, May 10th, from 2 – 5 p.m., The TN Whiskey Experience, a new collaboration with the TN Distillers Guild bringing the top distilleries from across the state to Knoxville during the Southern Skies Music Festival. The distillers will be there if you would like to learn more about the art of distilling, barrel aging, and the history and growth of each distillery. This takes place at a private tasting tent on the North end of the Festival Lawn with comfortable seating, shade, and a bar. Each participating distillery will do its own tastings and bottle sales for you to take home after the music show. This is a ticketed experience with tickets purchased in addition to the Southern Skies Music Festival tickets

In this episode the Ski Moms welcome Lutricia Eberly, Executive Director of PORA (Pennsylvania Outdoor Recreation Association), to discuss skiing in the Keystone State. Lutricia shares her journey from college skiing at Round Top Mountain to her current leadership role, transitioning from an IT career through various positions in the ski industry. Pennsylvania's winter sports landscape includes 23 member resorts, ranging from day facilities to full-service lodging properties like Seven Springs, Liberty Mountain, Camelback, and Bear Creek. The state's resorts are known for extensive snowmaking capabilities, night skiing options, and family-friendly base areas, typically operating from mid-December through mid-March. Lutricia highlights Pennsylvania's significant outdoor recreation economy, with skiing contributing nearly $1 billion to the state's $17 billion outdoor recreation sector. As PORA's leader, she focuses on workforce development and promoting outdoor recreation careers, while maintaining the organization's "Start Here" philosophy that positions Pennsylvania as an accessible destination for families beginning their outdoor adventures. Resources for planning a Pennsylvania ski trip can be found at SkiPA.com, while those interested in industry careers can visit PathToOutdoorRecJobs.com.Keep up with the latest from Ski PA:Website: https://www.skipa.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoSkiPA/Path To Outdoor Rec Jobs: https://pathtooutdoorrecjobs.comReady for your next adventure? Download the Vrbo app or check out Vrbo.com for trusted, family-friendly getaways and plan a stay everyone will love! If your skis and boards are feeling sluggish, it's time for a tune-up! A fresh wax and edge sharpening can make all the difference. Treat your gear right, and it'll treat you to your best ski days yet! Head to SkiHaus to get your skis and boards in great shape. Pick from three locations Woburn and Framingham, MA, and shop Tax-Free in Salem, NH. Check them out at skihaus.com Start planning your trip here visitulstercountyny.comThe Ski Moms are so excited to be partnering with Ulster County this year. Located in New York State, Ulster County is tucked into the Hudson Valley and offers families a chance to get out in nature all year long.Support the showKeep up with the Latest from the Ski Moms!Website: www.theskimoms.coSki Moms Discount Page: https://www.theskimoms.co/discountsSki Moms Ski Rental HomesJoin the 13,000+ Ski Moms Facebook GroupInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/theskimoms/ Send us an email and let us know what guests and topics you'd like to hear next! Sarah@skimomsfun.comNicole@skimomsfun.com

Welcome to the third collaboration between Deep in the Weeds' Producers podcast and AgriCultured, a festival which showcases and connects the produce and people of northern Tasmania, or Lutruwita as it's called in Aboriginal culture. This is a special part of the world, with beautiful, fertile lands, true seasons, and rich traditions.  Today, we meet Wouter Sels from Seven Springs Farm. Wouter farms pretty, hilly country nestled in forest almost two hours west of Launceston. Born into a Belgian farming family, Wouter, his wife and their three young children live off-grid, feeding themselves and supplying the community and a select group of chefs with delicious and nutritious produce. Life is somewhat isolated, but it's rich in connection. https://www.agricultured.com.au/ https://www.sevenspringsfarm.com.au/ SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER FOR EXCLUSIVE ARTICLES, NEWS, GIVEAWAYS AND BEHIND THE SCENES https://deepintheweeds.us6.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=d33e307cf7100cf947e2e6973&id=d17d8213f5 Follow The Producers on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/producerspodcast/ Host Dani Valent  https://www.instagram.com/danivalent Host Anthony Huckstep https://www.instagram.com/huckstergram/ Executive Producer Rob Locke https://www.instagram.com/foodwinedine/ LISTEN TO OUR OTHER FOOD PODCASTS https://linktr.ee/DeepintheWeedsNetwork The Producers is a food podcast telling the stories of producers, farmers, growers and makers.. A Deep in the Weeds Production An Australian Food Podcast from the Deep in the Weeds Network.

Send us a textJoin us with our friends from the Broken Nock Podcast, Ken Reece and Megan DiPerna, live from the Total Archery Challenge in Seven Springs, PA.  In this episode we talk about Ken and Megan's journey of starting up a new podcast. Megan also discusses her new love for hunting, her obsession for shooting a bow and the anticipation of her first full hunting season!

Bowhunting big woods bucks isn't just a fall hobby — it's a year-round grind. Beau Martonik of East Meets West joins host Matt Morrett at the Total Archery Challenge in Seven Springs to discuss ways to improve your archery skills in the offseason, effective summer scouting strategies, and how to take advantage of the millions...

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

in this episode we follow the path that took Josh from the small mountains of rural Pennsylvania all the way to Alaska. At one time in the sport Alaska was considered the domain of the professional athlete or the super rich. NO MORE. Today recreational riders are pushing the bounderies of access further than riders with corporate budgets ever have.     This is the journey that one rider took to become a local in one of the best areas to be a skier or rider - Valdez, Alaska.    Consider supporting this independant voice in snowboard media at: http://patreon.com/thesnowboardproject  

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on March 30. It dropped for free subscribers on April 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. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoBridget Legnavsky, President & CEO of Sugar Bowl, CaliforniaRecorded onMarch 13, 2024About Sugar BowlClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: A group of shareholdersLocated in: Donner, CaliforniaYear founded: 1939Pass affiliations: Mountain Collective: 2 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Donner Ski Ranch (:02), Soda Springs (:07), Boreal (:10), Kingvale (:14), Tahoe Donner (:24), Northstar (:27), Palisades Tahoe (:30), Homewood (:44), Diamond Peak (:52), Mt. Rose (:58), Sky Tavern (1:03) - travel times vary considerably given time of day, time of year, and weather conditions.Base elevation: 6,883 feetSummit elevation: 8,383 feetVertical drop: 1,500 feetSkiable Acres: 1,650 acresAverage annual snowfall: 500 inchesTrail count: 103 (38% advanced, 45% intermediate, 17% beginner)Lift count: 12 (1 four-passenger gondola, 5 high-speed quads, 3 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 platter, 1 carpet) - view Lift Blog's inventory of Sugar Bowl's lift fleet.View historic Sugar Bowl trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed herLagnavsky muses, toward the end of our interview, that Lake Tahoe in general is home to “the best skiing I've ever had in my life,” and that she can't fathom why it's not more of a national and international ski destination. This is coming from someone who has spent 30-plus years in the industry; who's worked in Europe, Colorado, and New Zealand; who has freeskier credentials etched on her resume. She knows what she's talking about.And I agree with her. More or less**. Tahoe is spectacular. The views, the snow, the terrain, the vibe, the energy, the variety, the sheer audacity of it all. Sixteen ski areas rung around a 191-square-mile lake at the top of California*^. An improbable wintertime circus, one of the greatest concentrations of ski areas on the continent.And no one would say there is any lack of people there. This is, again, California, home to 39 million Americans. Traffic and housing are big problems. But, being based in the East, I'm dialed into the way that much of the country thinks about Tahoe as a destination ski region. Which is to say, they mostly don't.And I don't quite get why. It's not hard to get to. Reno's airport is closer to the major Tahoe ski areas than Denver's is to Summit County. It's not a huge facility, but it's served by direct flights from 24 airports, including New York City and Chicago. While the roads can get nasty mid-storm, they're mostly well-maintained federal and state highways. There are plenty of accommodations on or near the larger resorts. But anytime I ask an Epic- or Ikon-Pass wielding East Coast city skier where they're going out west, they say the Wasatch or Colorado or Big Sky or Jackson Hole. And if I'm like “what about Tahoe,” they're usually like, “there's skiing in California? How strange.”Not that the Epic and Ikon Tahoe mountains need more skiers. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story a couple weeks ago about how fed-up Bay Area skiers were jetting to Utah and Colorado to outsmart the crowds (slow clap for that hack, Fellas). But there is a lot more to this sprawling, captivating ski region than Palisades, Heavenly, Northstar, and Kirkwood. And one of the most overlooked but also magical pieces of it is Sugar Bowl. And the fact that it's not, for whatever reason, a destination to anyone outside of a 250-mile radius might make it exactly the kind of place that a lot of you are searching for.**Settle down, Utah.*and Nevada^”Ummmm, the highest point in California is Mt. Whitney, which is nowhere near Lake Tahoe.” Thanks Doesn't-Understand-Intentional-Hyperbole Bro. P.S. I hate you.What we talked about127 inches in one storm and yes that's real; how do you even measure that?; the “storm troopers” living at Sugar Bowl; storm mode in Tahoe; adjustable lifts; this crazy door:A season extension; how late Sugar Bowl could stay open and why it usually shuts down before that; ski New Zealand; Treble Cone; Cardrona; the global seasonal ski resort work cycle; never-summer; the biggest cultural adjustment coming to America after running resorts in New Zealand; who owns Sugar Bowl and how committed they are to independence; “We're an independent resort surrounded by Ikon and Epic, and that's making it really hard for Sugar Bowl to survive”; could Sugar Bowl join the Ikon Pass?; joining Mountain Collective; “part of the beauty of Sugar Bowl is that it's uncrowded”; Shhhhhh-ugar Bowl; the three things that set Sugar Bowl apart in a crowded ski market; operating below comfortable carrying capacity; the village gondola; what happens when you live in a car-free village; considering a gondola upgrade; considering the lift fleet; why the Crow's Peak lift is a triple chair, rather than a high-speed quad; “I do believe we could have the best beginner's experience in the U.S.”; Sugar Bowl's masterplan; village evolution; the curiosity of the small ski areas surrounding Sugar Bowl; “it's got the best skiing I've ever had in my life here”; why isn't California a destination ski market?; yes snowmaking is still helpful in Tahoe, and not just in the winter.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewAs far as mid-to-large-sized ski areas go, Sugar Bowl is about as well placed as any in the world. Its four peaks sit walking distance from Interstate 80, which mainlines Bay Area skiers into the mountains in under three hours (without traffic; yes, I know, there's always traffic). Sugar Bowl is the first big ski area you hit riding east, and arguably the easiest to access. And it gets clobbered with 500 inches of average annual snowfall. Those are Alta-Snowbird numbers (keep moving, Canyon Bro; yes, it's heavier snow, in general; I already told you LCC delivers the best skiing in America, so stop arguing about something we agree on).And yet, skiing circa 2024 has set up a challenging obstacle course for Sugar Bowl to navigate. At least as a business. Legnavsky is frank in the podcast, telling us that, “we're an independent resort surrounded by Ikon and Epic, and that's making it really hard for Sugar Bowl to survive.” To underscore just how fierce competition for skiers is in Lake Tahoe, look how close Sugar Bowl is to Northstar, an Epic resort that is more than twice its size, and Palisades Tahoe, the 6,000-acre Ikon Pass monster just to its south:It's a tough draw. Though not as tough as that of the pass' namesake Donner Party, who spent what would have been the bomber ski winter of 1846-47 snowbound at a nearby lake eating each other (reading the fevered history of this ordeal derailed me for half an hour while writing this article; I will just say that I've never been happier to live in the future). Still, for a business trying to make a go in the U.S. America of 2024, Megapass Monopoly is a tough game to play.So if Sugar Bowl can't beat them, why not join them? The mountain has, after all, already jumped on the Mountain Collective train. Why not just join Ikon and be done with it?The answer, as you can imagine, is nuanced and considered. How does a ski area shape and retain an identity and remain a sustainable business in a vibrant ski region that is stuffed with snow and skiers, but also plenty of larger – and, frankly, less expensive (Sugar Bowl's season pass is $1,099, more than the $982 Epic Pass) – ski areas? That, for now, is Sugar Bowl's biggest challenge.Questions I wish I'd askedSugar Bowl also owns the expansive Royal Gorge cross-country ski center, which they claim is North America's largest, with more than 140 kilometers of trails. And while this trailmap resembles a Rorschach test slide (I see a bat, or maybe a volcano, or maybe a volcanic bat) more than any sort of guide I would be capable of following in and out of the wilderness, I can only assume this is impressive:What I got wrongI lumped Boreal in with Soda Springs, Tahoe Donner, and Donner Ski Ranch as a “small, family-oriented ski area.” That's not really accurate. While Boreal, which, like Soda Springs, is owned by big bad Powdr Corp, is small by Tahoe standards, it's really been transformed into a giant terrain park in line with the company's Woodward Brand. It's the only night-skiing operation in Tahoe, so the Park Brahs can Park Out Brah.Why you should ski Sugar Bowl“Part of the beauty of Sugar Bowl is that it's uncrowded,” Legnavsky tells us in the podcast.I'm sold.To access the best version of modern U.S. skiing, you have to, I believe, find the ski areas with all the attributes of the destination resorts, minus their cost, congestion and Instapost-braggy name recognition. Places like Saddleback (a high-speed lift, lots of snow, great terrain, no people), Loveland (easy access, huge terrain, everyone sitting in their cars on the highway below, waiting to go skiing), or Sundance (modern lifts, great snow and scenery, minus the huge crowds just north; this also happens to be where I'm posted up at the moment, writing this article).Sugar Bowl is one of these places. Five high-speed lifts and craptons of snow, without an access road that looks like the first draft of a caveman rollercoaster. While its 1,500-foot vertical drop ranks ninth among Tahoe ski areas, it clocks in at sixth in skiable acreage, with 1,650. Both numbers, in any context, are respectable, and will give an average skier more than enough to work with for a few days.Vail has sold more Epic Passes every year since 2008. While new mountain acquisitions surely drove much of that growth, the company's last new domestic pickup was Seven Springs and its sister resorts in 2021. That suggests that more Epic Pass holders are visiting the same number of ski areas each winter. I don't know how many Ikon Passes Alterra sells, but no one at Palisades Tahoe is looking around and saying, “Man, Alterra really needs to spread the word about this place.”I get it. The Epic and Ikon Passes are fabulous deals and fantastic products, granting Californians access to the big four Tahoe resorts and destinations far beyond. If you want to put skiing at the center of your winter, it's hard not to buy one or the other or both. But there's a tradeoff for everything. Every year, more people (probably; I'm speculating on Ikon) buy those passes. And every year, those resorts stay more or less the same size (with occasional expansions, like the sizeable expansions at Steamboat, Aspen, and Keystone this winter), implementing chessboard parking plans and building bigger lifts to keep the cauldron just at a boil. But you can turn down the heat yourself. Here's the hack: exit Interstate 80 eastbound at exit 174, Donner Pass Road, drive three miles, park, and ski while everyone else is waiting to cash in their cheap Ikon Passes down highway 89.Podcast NotesOn Cardrona and Treble ConeLegnavsky spent a large chunk of her career running Cardrona and Treble Cone, a pair of large ski areas 40 road miles apart on New Zealand's South Island. Both sit largely above treeline. Treble Cone rises around 2,300 vertical feet:Cardrona's vert is just shy of 2,000 feet on 1,149 acres. While New Zealand is known for “nutcracker” surface lifts, Cardrona runs a legit lift fleet, with a chondola, two high-speed quads, two fixed-grip quads, a platter, and three conveyors:If you do happen onto a nutcracker, here are some tips:On the dense concentration of ski areas around Lake TahoeResetting ye' old Tahoe ski areas inventory:And here's how close Sugar Bowl sits to its four small neighbors – Donner Ski Ranch is right across the street; Soda Springs and Boreal are right up the road; and Tahoe Donner is just a few miles east off Interstate 80:On the Sugar Bowl gondolaSugar Bowl runs what I believe is the last classic four-passenger gondola in the United States (Loon's four-person gondola sports a more modern design):On the old Crow's Peak liftPrior to expanding skier's left into Crow's Nest Peak in 2013, a Heron double chair that was also known as Crow's Nest ran parallel to the Disney chair. Here's the 2012 trailmap:After the new triple chair opened, Sugar Bowl changed the double's name to “Pony Express,” and eventually removed the lift around 2018.On The Art of SkiingWe don't discuss this in the pod, but here's a Disney short from like 1702 or something that shows Goofy crushing it at Sugar Bowl: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 22/100 in 2024, and number 522 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

Nicola Campogrande"Storia della musica classica"Il racconto di un'avventura straordinaria, dal Medioevo a SpotifyPonte alle Graziewww.ponteallegrazie.itAnche quando non ne sappiamo nulla, la musica classica ci colpisce perché ci mette in contatto con la bellezza e lo struggimento, con la gioia e la melanconia, con lo stupore e con la potenza delle nostre emozioni. Ma conoscerne la storia, il contesto, le radici arricchisce la nostra fruizione di altre dimensioni, rendendola più articolata e consapevole, più ricca, più intensa, più profonda. Sapere come nasce e come evolve una forma musicale, capire perché una partitura segue la grammatica di un'epoca o come la sovverte, distinguere una tecnica dall'altra, uno stile dall'altro, un linguaggio da un altro linguaggio, ci consente di mettere in relazione un compositore e le sue opere con lo spirito del suo tempo, con gli echi del passato, con gli stimoli che provengono dal futuro. Dal canto gregoriano alla musica elettronica, da Monteverdi a Philip Glass, passando da Bach e Beethoven, Mozart e Schubert, Verdi, Wagner, Stravinskij, Nicola Campogrande traccia una parabola che dall'Alto Medioevo conduce ai nostri giorni, offrendoci una chiave di lettura non specialistica, nutrita di presente, viva. E poiché la musica non è niente senza la possibilità di farne esperienza, compone, grazie a semplici qr code che affiancano i brani di cui parla, uno straordinario mosaico di ascolti, che non si limita ad accompagnare la lettura ma ne è il vero, glorioso protagonista.Seven Springs Il suono della Holden7 concerti, alle 7 di sera, a 7 euro, per 7 anni2 aprile – 14 maggio 2024General Store della Scuola Holden, TorinoI direttori artistici Gloria Campaner e Nicola Campogrande l'hanno immaginata non come una stagione di concerti, ma come «una serie di vibrazioni». Si chiama Seven Springs perché, per sette primavere, sette concerti verranno proposti alle sette di sera, e con un biglietto di sette euro il pubblico potrà immergersi nel nuovo suono della Holden. Musicisti e musiciste non solo canteranno e suoneranno, ma lasceranno anche entrare l'ascoltatore nel loro mondo, in un'esperienza ad alta intensità narrativa in cui si accenderà un dialogo sui temi più diversi: «si parlerà di arte, di cucina, di sport, di meditazione o magari di geopolitica – dicono i direttori artistici. Alla fine ci sarà un aperitivo e si continuerà a rimanere in compagnia, chiacchierando in libertà fino all'ora di cena.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarewww.ilpostodelleparole.itDiventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.

Donald Trump's financial world is crumbling, and there is little he can do to stop it. New reporting shows: he may be forced to sell Mar-a-Lago in a "fire sale"; he has a court-appointed monitor watching his every move to make sure he doesn't move, transfer, dispose of or hide any of his assets; and New York Attorney General Letitia James has now filed a lien on Trump's Westchester County mansion Seven Springs.

Donald Trump's financial world is crumbling, and there is little he can do to stop it. New reporting shows: he may be forced to sell Mar-a-Lago in a "fire sale"; he has a court-appointed monitor watching his every move to make sure he doesn't move, transfer, dispose of or hide any of his assets; and New York Attorney General Letitia James has now filed a lien on Trump's Westchester County mansion Seven Springs.

Kevin O'Leary, an iconic investor best known as 'Mr. Wonderful' from reality television show 'Shark Tank', has aired his concern regarding the potential consequences of New York Attorney General Letitia James's office possibly confiscating the belongings of former President Donald Trump. This move is pursued as part of a settlement in a civil fraud lawsuit of $454 million against the former president. Such a decision, as O'Leary indicates, could potentially disrupt investor confidence in the United States economic system. This successful investor, who raised to fame due to his stern yet discerning demeanor on 'Shark Tank', passed his comments during a Fox News broadcast. In his opinion, the prime attribute that sets the United States aside as the leading global economy is its staunch respect for property rights. Such values underline the significance of the American economic hegemony and its attractiveness for international investments. The Canadian native, O'Leary, expressed his dismay at this ongoing case in New York to Fox News last Friday. He affirmed that such action would notably tarnish the image of the US, a brand synonymous with unyielding adherence to property rights and the rule of law. Such respect for property rights forms the bedrock of the world's largest economy, and in O'Leary's view, tampering with it may lead to severe consequences. O'Leary further elaborated on the noteworthy queries he faces from international forums when he tries to raise capital. They posed their concerns to him, threading on the lines of 'What exactly is transpiring in New York?' His response encapsulates his belief that such events are anomalies, which do not reflect the true essence of America as a nation. Last week, official documents reflecting judgments against Trump were filed in Westchester County. This move is perceived as a preliminary step towards the potential confiscation of Trump's Seven Springs golf course and his private estate in Mount Kisco by Attorney General James. James has hinted towards her intention of taking over the former president's assets in the event of his failure to secure a bond by the due date while his appeal against the verdict is being considered. The deadline set for Trump to obtain this bond was last Monday but reports from Trump's legal team suggest that securing such a bond was unsuccessful despite reaching out to various financial institutions. O'Leary has opined that the timeline set for Trump to secure the bond was unrealistically stringent. He went on to describe it as a veiled attempt to seize his assets, casting doubt over the integrity of the process. In his argument, O'Leary pointed out that property rights are discussed in the American Constitution multiple times, emphasizing the importance of due process. The famed investor questioned the rush of this process, asking why the accused was not given more time to gather the required funds. It was not about Trump himself, as O'Leary asserted, but about the groundwork being set that could affect anyone else in a similar situation. O'Leary emphasized that his qualms were not about Trump as a person, rather about the principles at stake. He asserted that such a precedent would make him think twice before making future investments in New York, considering that this approach to justice might be used arbitrarily, going past Trump to target other politicians not in alignment with James. According to a Manhattan judge's verdict last month, there were multiple instances when Trump excessively estimated his wealth on financial documents, thereby misleading banks and other involved parties in his attempts to secure loans and establish deals. The judge further decreed that Trump is liable for surrendering profits from certain real estate transactions and money he accrued through achieving lower interest rates on loans due to his deceptive practices. The former president continues to refute these claims, denying any attempts at misrepresentation. He has approached an appellate court with the request to consider a reduction, rescheduling or an outright dismissal of the bond requirement. This situation highlights the ongoing tension between the law enforcement machinery and high-profile individuals over infringement of property rights. In sum, the present situation involving Donald Trump and the New York Attorney General's office is a prominent example of the potential tension between property rights, rule of law, and the application of justice in the face of high-profile accusations. O'Leary's thoughts provide a unique perspective, foregrounding the potential implications not just for this particular case but for investor confidence and the perceived integrity of the American economic system. Although it remains to be seen how this standoff will resolve, its resolution will undoubtedly leave a significant impact on the perception of property rights in the United States. It is a crucial beacon for international investors, and its potential altering can muster the sort of ripple effects that would reach far beyond the borders of the United States. Real News Now Connect with Real News Now on Social Media Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealNewsNowApp/ X Twitter: https://twitter.com/realnewsapp Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realnews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realnewsnowapp Threads: https://www.threads.net/@realnews/ Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/realnewsnow Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@RealNews YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@realnewsnowapp End Wokeness: https://endthewokeness.com #realnewsnow See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New York Attorney General Letitia James may have her sights set on Donald Trump's Westchester golf course and Seven Springs estate as her team formally registered judgments in Westchester County, indicating that his properties there may be in jeopardy. Plus the GOP's new anti-woman policies are so severe that these new laws can actually force women to have dangerous, life threatening and unnecessary operations. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

SEASON 2 EPISODE 145: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: His Republican minions in the House thought releasing the previously unreported January 6 Committee transcript of an interview with a White House valet would help the desperate need to "prove" Trump tried to stop January 6th. Instead it shows that he was told that Ashli Babbitt had been shot in the chest and he did and said nothing and now he uses her at his fascist rallies and his inhumanity and selfishness is more apparent than ever. The testimony also shows Trump thought to call General Mark Milley and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the National Guard (the GOP will play that part up) and then... didn't (the GOP will ignore that part). And it details how he threatened Mike Pence that morning and even as the coup failed his only concern was himself, and how Pence "let me down." It is an amazing self-own by Trump's congresswhores. ALSO the NY Attorney General has begun the paperwork to seize at least one Trump property, the NYC DA says that 100,000 page document dump is virtually irrelevant to the case and trial should begin April 15. And Merrick Garland makes a jackass out of himself yet again. (16:46) THE SHOHEI ME THE MONEY SCANDAL: Yesterday, I said they had to answer – as quickly as possible – the old Watergate cliché: What did Shohei Ohtani Know And When Did He Know It? Since then, the actions of Ohtani and his representatives and the Dodgers and Baseball (keeping Ohtani away from the press; insisting there's no MLB investigation) have QUINTUPLED the number of questions that must be satisfied as quickly and thoroughly as possible: WHY have you issued two or maybe three different official versions of this story; HOW could Ohtani have acknowledged he sent the bookie four and a half million dollars then insist the money had been stolen from him AND then insist he knew nothing about any of this; HOW long did the TEAM know about this disaster; IS the interpreter just trying to take the fall for Ohtani; WHY did a Dodgers source remind ESPN that whatever happened, it happened when Ohtani was playing for the Angels (the answer is: the Dodgers are covering their asses if Ohtani goes down); and maybe most saliently: the fired translator Mizuhara told ESPN his annual salary was between 300-thousand and 500-thousand dollars. What kind of self-respecting bookie would let a guy with THAT level of income, run up four and a half million dollars in unpaid gambling losses? B-Block (28:19) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The Tampa Bay Rays spoil it. The pitcher for whom they just traded will NOT become Joe Rock of The Rockies. A Republican congressman retweets the GOP's favorite news source: Russian State TV. And Liz Harrington thinks Peter Navarro can appeal the Supreme Court's verdict to...Jesus. (Jesus!) C-Block (36:00) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: It's the start of another baseball season (and maybe another baseball scandal of biblical proportions!) so let's celebrate with Thurber's epic mixture of Brooklyn Dodgers Play-by-Play and the jujitsu of the little man: The Catbird Seat.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Five things to do to keep your mind sharp.Trump's Seven Springs estate, the first property, Leticia James plans on seizing.Aaron Rodgers on Jeopardy. Intro music by Coma-Media obtained from Royalty-free music on Pixabay.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREE Exit bumper Not A Democracy Podcast Network made by @FuryanEnergySupport the showTip Jar for coffee $ - Thanks Blog - Carol ReMarksX - Carol ReMarks Instagram - Carol.ReMarksFacebook Page - Carol ReMarks BlogCohosting LIVE Twitter Spaces every Sunday at 3:00 central time

The New York Attorney General's office is laying the groundwork to potentially seize former President Donald Trump's properties, including his notable Seven Springs estate, north of Manhattan. This comes on the heels of a staggering $464 million judgment against Donald Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization by Judge Arthur Engoron. With judgments already entered in New York City, affecting Trump Tower and other key assets, and with a pressing need to satisfy the judgment or convince an appeals court for leniency, the stakes couldn't be any higher. The intricate structure of Trump's business, with over 300 LLCs, complicates the process but doesn't make it impossible for the attorney general's office to pursue levies, liens, and other measures to enforce the judgment. The situation threatens not only Trump's operations in New York but potentially his global brand. His legal team is battling suggestions from the AG's office on how to secure the necessary funds, arguing that the proposed measures are impractical and unjust, highlighting the challenges of posting a half-billion-dollar bond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New York attorney general Letitia James is busy preparing to seize former President Donald Trump's golf course and private estate in Westchester County, known as Seven Springs. President Trump has just four more days to pay the $464-million bond in the New York civil fraud trial. The Biden administration has announced that it will cancel roughly $6 billion in federal student loans. The latest group to benefit includes 78,000 former students who went on to become public service workers such as teachers, nurses, and firefighters. Congressional leaders have unveiled the second set of spending bills to fund the government through fiscal year 2024. Lawmakers have to pass the $1.2-trillion package by midnight on Friday to avert a partial shutdown. Senate Republicans have said they want to pass the “Laken Riley Act” as an amendment to the government funding bills. The Act would require ICE to detain illegal immigrants charged with theft. It would also allow states to sue the federal government if it doesn't enforce certain aspects of immigration law. ⭕️ Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

9am-10am Definite commitment to reopen Seven Springs centre   Book of condolence opens for Saoirse Ruane  Community looks to Stop the Development of a 26-acre Aquaculture Farm in Aughinish Bay  Family Resource Centres in Galway call for long-term funding for proven therapeutic services  == ‘Galway Talks with John Morley' broadcasts every weekday morning from 9am on Galway Bay FM

In this week's episode of The Venue Rx podcast, our host Jonathan Aymin welcomes Janet Mckee owner of Sanaview Farms, a 52-acre Historic Landmark farm located in the heart of the Laurel Mountains of Pennsylvania. Janet shares her story of transforming a historic farm into the beloved wedding venue. From her corporate background to her journey into holistic health and farm ownership, Janet reflects on the challenges and triumphs along the way. Initially envisioned as a space for teaching natural living, the farm encountered financial struggles until weddings emerged as a key source of stability. Janet highlights the significance of energy, mindset, and gratitude in navigating both her personal evolution and business success. Over time, Sanaview Farms has expanded its offerings, introducing amenities such as a cafe, winery, lodging and a space for workshops and retreats. Janet's unwavering commitment to delivering value and fostering positive experiences for clients is what drives her to show up day in and day out.  About Our Guest:  The 52-acre historic landmark farm in Champion, PA, nestled in the Laurel Mountains near Seven Springs and Hidden Valley Mountain Resorts, Ligonier, Falling Water, and Ohiopyle State Park, serves as a picturesque mountain destination attracting thousands of visitors annually. Functioning as a venue for events, weddings, and retreats, the farm offers a space for others to experience and enjoy. With a focus on education and healing, it operates as a teaching farm, providing opportunities for learning and growth. Utilizing sustainable techniques that surpass organic standards, the farm features production gardens, fruit orchards, herb and flower gardens, and greenhouses for year-round cultivation. SanaView Farms boasts an array of workshops and events within its premises. The property, designated as a Pittsburgh Historic Landmark, showcases meticulously restored structures such as the springhouse, bunkhouse, and a grand historic barn, which serve as venues for special occasions, meetings, and overnight stays for guests. The farm offers classes and services encompassing various holistic health concepts aimed at promoting overall well-being, including healthy eating, harmonious living with nature, emotional wellness, stress reduction, yoga, and meditation. Expert gardeners proficient in organic techniques lead classes on gardening and sustainability. Additionally, the farm hosts music, dance events, and themed festivals, enriching the experience for visitors. Find Them Here:  Email:  janet@sanaview.com Tel: (724) 417-6695 Address: 280 Roaring Run Road, Champion, PA  15622 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sanaviewfarms/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sanaviewfarms/

Gloria Campaner"Seven Springs"Il suono della HoldenScuola Holdenwww.scuolaholden.itSeven Springs Il suono della Holden7 concerti, alle 7 di sera, a 7 euro, per 7 anni2 aprile - 14 maggio 2024General Store della Scuola Holden Holden, 1994-2024.Dopo trent'anni di lavoro era ora di berci un bicchieree di metter su un po' di musica: la nostra.Alessandro BariccoSarà diversa da qualunque altra la prima avventura musicale della Scuola Holden aperta a tutte e tutti, dal titolo Seven Springs | Il suono della Holden. Sette i concerti in programma ogni martedì alle sette di sera, dal 2 aprile al 14 maggio 2024 nel General Store.L'energia travolgente delle sorelle Katia e Marielle Labèque, a quattro mani e a due pianoforti. La musica classica indiana dei Mohan Brothers, per la prima volta in Italia. L'incontro mistico tra Simone Cristicchi e Amara. Il ridere e l'amare col pianista Hyung-Ki Joo, la voce di Serena Gamberoni, e le acrobazie di due pattinatori professionisti. Un raduno notturno di violoncellisti con un ospite speciale: Giovanni Sollima. E ancora Sergej Krylov, Miriam Prandi e il Trio Kronthaler.Seven Springs sarà anche l'occasione per dare il via ai festeggiamenti per il trentesimo compleanno della Holden, che per tutto il 2024 celebrerà le storie e la storia trentennale della Scuola con ospiti, eventi e progetti speciali.I direttori artistici Gloria Campaner e Nicola Campogrande l'hanno immaginata non come una stagione di concerti, ma come «una serie di vibrazioni». Si chiama Seven Springs perché, per sette primavere, sette concerti verranno proposti alle sette di sera, e con un biglietto di sette euro il pubblico potrà immergersi nel nuovo suono della Holden. Musicisti e musiciste non solo canteranno e suoneranno, ma lasceranno anche entrare l'ascoltatore nel loro mondo, in un'esperienza ad alta intensità narrativa in cui si accenderà un dialogo sui temi più diversi: «si parlerà di arte, di cucina, di sport, di meditazione o magari di geopolitica – dicono i direttori artistici. Alla fine ci sarà un aperitivo e si continuerà a rimanere in compagnia, chiacchierando in libertà fino all'ora di cena.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarewww.ilpostodelleparole.itDiventa un supporter di questo podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/il-posto-delle-parole--1487855/support.

Craig Shoemaker the Lovemaster is performing this Saturday night at Seven Springs and he calls in this morning to discuss doing stand up in the post covid times and how he's navigating the dating world.

We've got a few more months of miserable, gray, cold weather to get through, but someone on our team has a plan to beat the winter blues. City Cast producer and lifelong Pittsburgher Elizabeth Kauma shares her love of ski season, crafting, and a few surprise gifts for her Pittsburgh team. You can find out more about Elizabeth's old ski racing team: WPRC. Hit the slopes at Seven Springs, Blue Knob, and Boyce Park. Get crafty at McWalker Yarns in Millvale and Yarns by Design in Oakland. Get hiking at Riding Meadow Park and the Schenley Park. The City Cast Pittsburgh Episodes Elizabeth recommends are: The Legend of Pittsburgh's Glowing ‘Green Man', The Most-Hated Parker in Pgh Breaks His Silence, and Paczki, Parades and a Very Yinzer Mardi Gras. Become a founding member at membership.citycast.fm You too can level up your thrift flips at Cut and Sew Studio's Alter, Repair, Remake Class. Want some more Pittsburgh news?  Make sure to sign up for our daily morning Hey Pittsburgh newsletter. We're also on Instagram @CityCastPgh! Not a fan of social? Then leave us a voicemail at 412-212-8893. Interested in advertising with City Cast? Find more info here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Oct. 26. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 2. 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:WhoBen Wilcox, President and General Manager of Cranmore Mountain Resort, New HampshireRecorded onOctober 16, 2023About CranmoreClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Fairbank GroupLocated in: North Conway, New HampshireYear founded: 1937Pass affiliations: NoneReciprocal partners: 1 day each at Jiminy Peak and BromleyClosest neighboring ski areas: Attitash (:16), Black Mountain (:18), King Pine (:28), Wildcat (:28), Pleasant Mountain (:33), Bretton Woods (:42)Base elevation: 800 feetSummit elevation: 2,000 feetVertical drop: 1,200 feetSkiable Acres: 170 acresAverage annual snowfall: 80 inchesTrail count: 56 (15 most difficult, 25 intermediate, 16 easier)Lift count: 7 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 1 double, 2 carpets)Why I interviewed himNowhere does a high-speed quad transform the texture and fate of a mountain so much as in New England. Western mountains, geographically dispersed and disposed to sunshine, can still sell you a ride on a 1,700-vertical-foot fixed grip triple, as Montana Snowbowl did with their new Transporter lift last year, and which Mt. Spokane has promised to do should the ski area ever upgrade its Jurassic Riblets. Midwest hills are too short for lift speed to matter as anything other than a novelty.But in the blustery, frenetic East, a single detachable lift can profoundly alter a ski area's reach and rap. Such lifts have proven to be stabilizing mechanisms at Burke, Gunstock, Ragged, Bromley, and Saddleback – mountains without the terrain or marketing heft of their much-larger neighbors. In each case, one high-speed quad (and a sixer at Ragged), cracked the mountain open to the masses, uniting all or most of the terrain with one six-minute lift ride and, often, stabilizing operations that had struggled for decades.Cranmore is one such mountain. Had the Skimobile Express quad not gone up in 1995, Wilcox tells us on the podcast, he's not so sure that the ski area hanging over North Conway would have gotten out of the last century alive. A “dark period” followed the Skimobile's 1990 demolition, Wilcox says, during which Cranmore, tottering along on a double chair strung to the summit, fell behind its high-dollar, high-energy, rapidly consolidating competitors. The Skimobile had been pokey and inefficient, but at least it was freighted with nostalgia. At least it was novel. At least it was cool. An old double chair was just an old double chair, and local skiers had lost interest in those when high-speed lifts started rising up the New England mountainsides in the late 1980s.It's true that a handful of New England ski areas continue to rely on antique doubles: Smugglers' Notch, Magic, Black Mountain in New Hampshire, Mt. Abram. But Smuggs delivers 300 inches of snow per winter and a unique, sprawling terrain network. The rest are improbable survivors. Magic sat idle for half the ‘90s. We nearly lost Black earlier this month. All anybody knows about Mt. Abram is that it's not Sunday River.The Skimobile Express did not, by itself, save Cranmore. If such a lift were such a magic trick, then we'd still be skiing the top of Ascutney today (yes Uphill Bro I know you still are). But the lift helped. A lot.There is a tendency among skiers to conflate history with essence. As though a ski area, absent the trappings of its 1930s or ‘40s or ‘50s origins, loses something. These same skiers, however, do not rip around on 240s clapped to beartrap bindings or ski in top hats and mink shawls. Cranmore could not simply be The Ski Area With The Skimobile forever and ever. Not after every other ski area in New England, including Cranmore, had erected multiple chairlifts. There is a small market for such tricks. Mad River Glen can spin its single chair for 100 more years if the co-op ownership model holds up. But that is a rowdy, rugged hunk of real estate, 2,000 feet of nasty, a place where being uncomfortable is half the point. Cranmore… is not.So Cranmore changed. It is now a nice, modern, mid-sized New England ski area, with a 1,200-foot vertical drop and a hotel at the base. More important, it is an 86-year-old New England ski area, one that began in the era when guys named Harv and Mel and Bob and Jenkins showed up with a hacksaw and a 12-pack and started building a lift-served snowskiing operation, and transitioned into a new identity suited to a new world. Wilcox, with his grasp of the resort's sprawling, mad history, is a capable ambassador to tell us how they did it.What we talked aboutThe new Fairbank base lodge; what Cranmore found when they tore down the old lodge; the future of Zip's Pub; who the lodge is named after; the base lodge redevelopment plan; what happened when the Fairbanks purchased Cranmore; North Conway; traffic; Bretton Woods; Booth Creek; Cranmore pride; “if [the Skimobile Express] hadn't gone in in the mid-90s, I'm not sure if we'd still be here”; the Skimobile Express upgrade and why Cranmore didn't replace it with a new lift; the history of America's Zaniest lift, the original Skimobile; why Cranmore ultimately demolished the structure; potential upgrades for Lookout; the long-rumored but never-built Blackcap expansion; the glory and grind of southern exposure; night skiing; what happened when Vail came to town; competing against discount Epic Passes; why the days of car-counting are over; the history and logic behind the White Mountain Super Pass and the Sun and Snow Pass; Black Mountain; staffing up when your biggest rival raises minimum wage to $20 an hour; and whether Cranmore has considered a Jiminy Peak-esque wind turbine.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe Fairbank Group did something unsung and brilliant over the past two years. While major resorts across the continent razed and replaced first-generation detachables at a per-project cost approaching or exceeding double-digit millions, Cranmore (which Fairbank owns), and Bromley (which they operate), modernized in a more modest way. Rather than tearing down the high-speed quads that act as base-to-summit people-movers for each ski area, they gut-renovated them. For around $1 million per lift, Bromley's Sun Mountain Express and Cranmore's Skimobile Express got new, modern drives, comms lines, safety systems, and more. The result: two essentially brand-new lifts with three-plus decades of good life ahead of them.Skiers may not see it that way, and most won't even know about the upgrades. The aesthetics, mostly, remain unchanged. But for independent ski area operators knocked into eyes-bulging terror as they see price quotes for a Double Clutch Z-Link Awesomeness 42-passenger Express Lift, the Fairbank model offers an approachable alternative. Knock down the walls, but keep the building intact, a renovation rather than a rebuild.Boyne does this all the time, mostly with lifts the company is relocating: the Kanc quad at Loon becomes the Seven Brothers quad; Big Sky's Swift Current quad becomes Sugarloaf's Bucksaw Express; Sunday River's Jordan quad is, someday, maybe, supposedly going to land at Pleasant Mountain. Sugarloafers may grumble on their message boards about getting a used quad while Sunday River erects its second D-Line bubble lift in two years, but, as Loon President/GM Brian Norton told me about the Seven Brothers upgrade on the podcast last year, the effect of such projects are that skiers get “a new lift… you won't recognize it.” Other than the towers and the chairs, the machine parts of these machines really are brand new.Cranmore and its sister resorts have found a different way to sustainably operate, is my point here. The understated chairlift upgrades are just one expression of this. But both operate, remember, in impossible neighborhoods. Bromley is visible from almost any point on Alterra-owned Stratton, Southern Vermont's Ikon Pass freight train. Cranmore sits just down the road from Vail-owned Attitash and Wildcat, both of which are larger, and both of which share a pass – which, by the way, is less expensive than Cranmore's – with each other and with their 20 or 50 or 60 best friends, depending upon how Epic you want your winter to be. The local lift-served skiing market is so treacherous that Black Mountain, less than 11 miles north of Cranmore and in continuous operation since 1935, was saved from permanent closure last week only when Indy Pass called in the cavalry.Yet, Cranmore thrives. Wilcox says that season pass sales continue to increase every year. Going into year five of Northeast-specific Epic Pass offerings and year six of the Ikon Pass, that's an amazing statistic. Cranmore's pass is not cheap. The early-bird adult price for the 2023-24 ski season came in at $775. It's currently $1,139. For a 1,200-vertical-foot mountain in a state full of 2,000-footers, with just one high-speed lift in a neighborhood where Sunday River runs five, statistical equivalencies quickly fail any attempt to explain this momentum.So what does explain it? Perhaps it's the resort's massive, ongoing base area renovation that landed a new hotel and lodge onsite within the past year. Perhaps it's consumer habit and proximity to North Conway, looming, as the mountain does, over town. Perhaps it's the approachable, just-right size of the mountain or, for families, the fact that all trails funnel back to a single base. Perhaps it's the massive seasonal youth and race programs. It is, most likely, a combination of all of these things, as well as atmospheric intangibles and managerial competence.Whatever it is, Cranmore shows us that a pathway exists for a Very Good Mountain to thrive in the megapass era without being a direct party to it. It's worth noting that Black, which nearly failed, is a fifth-year member of Indy Pass, which Cranmore has declined to join. While this conversation with Wilcox does not exactly explain how the mountain has been so successful even as it sidesteps megatrends, it's easy enough to appreciate, as you listen to his passion for and appreciation of the place, why it does.What I got wrongI noted that the Skimobile Express quad had been upgraded “last year, or maybe the year before.” Cranmore completed the lift overhaul in 2022.I referred to Vail's Northeast Value Epic Pass as the “Northeast Local Pass.”Why you should ski CranmoreThe New England Ski Safari is not quite the social media meme that it is in the big-mountain West, where Campervan Karl and Bearded Bob document their season-long adventures over switchbacking passes with their trusty dog, Labrador Larry. Alta/Snowbird to Jackson to Big Sky to Sun Valley to Tahoe with a sickness Brah. Hella wicked rad. Six weeks and 16 storms, snowshovels in the roof box and Larry pouncing through snow in IG Stories.Distance is not such an obstacle in the East. New England crams 100 ski areas into a six-state region half the size of Montana (which is home to just 17, two of which it shares with Idaho). Between pow runs we can just… go home. But the advent of the megapass in the Northeast over the past decade has enabled this sort of resort-hopping adventure. Options abound:* Epic Pass gives you three of Vermont's largest ski areas (Okemo, Mount Snow, Stowe); one of New England's best ski areas (also Stowe); and four stops in New Hampshire, three of which (Mount Sunapee, Wildcat, and Attitash), are sizeable. Crotched gives you night skiing.* Ikon Pass delivers four of New England's biggest, best, and most complete ski areas: Killington, Sugarbush, Sunday River, and Sugarloaf; as well as two of its best lift systems (Stratton and Loon – yes, I know the gondolas are terrible at both); and a sleepy bomber in Pico.* Indy Pass gives you perhaps New England's best ski area (Jay Peak); three other mountains that stack up favorably with anything on Epic or Ikon (Waterville Valley, Cannon, Saddleback); and a stack of unheralded thumpers where light crowds and great terrain collide (Black Mountain of Maine, Black Mountain NH, Magic, Bolton Valley, Berkshire East); and a bunch of family-friendly bumps (Whaleback, Dartmouth Skiway, Pats Peak, Saskadena Six, Mohawk, Catamount, Bigrock).Hit any of those circuits, and you're bound for a good winter. So why tack on an extra? Cranmore is one of the few large New England independents (along with Bretton Woods, Smugglers' Notch, Mad River Glen, Bromley), to so far decline megapass membership. That makes it a tricker sell to the rambling resort-hopper.But this is not Colorado. You can score a Cranmore lift ticket for as little as $65 on select Sundays, even in mid-winter, (including, as of this writing, the always raucous St. Patrick's Day). If you're skiing Attitash and staying in North Conway, you can roll up to Cranmore starting at 2 p.m. on Wednesday or Saturday for a $69 night-ski and some pre-dinner turns.And it's worth the visit. This is a very good ski mountain. The stats undersell the place. It skis and feels big. The fall lines are sustained and excellent. Glades are more abundant than the trailmap suggests. The grooming is outstanding. It faces south – a not unimportant feature in often-frigid New England.Even if you're megapass Bro (and who among us is not?), this one fits right into the circuit, close to Attitash, Black, Wildcat, Cannon, Loon, Waterville. It's easy to ski multiple New England mountains on a single trip, or even in a single day. The last time I skied Cranmore, I cranked through 17 high-speed laps in three hours and then bumped over to Pleasant Mountain, half an hour down the road.Podcast NotesOn Hans SchneiderHenry Dow Gibson, who New England Ski History refers to as an “international financier” founded Cranmore in 1937, but it was Austrian ski instructor Hannes Schneider who institutionalized the place. Per New England Ski History:Hannes Schneider was born on June 24, 1890 in Stuben, a small town west of Arlberg Pass in Austria. At the age of 8, Schneider started skiing on makeshift skis.While becoming a renowned skier in his teenage years, Schneider developed the Arlberg technique. The Arlberg technique quickly caught on, resulting in Schneider becoming in demand for demonstrations, films, and military training.Following Nazi Germany taking Austria in the Anschluss, Schneider was imprisoned March 12, 1938.In January of 1937, international financier Harvey Gibson purchased land on Cranmore Mountain in Conway with the aim to make North Conway a winter destination. Two years later, after lawyer Karl Rosen managed to transfer Schneider from prison to house arrest, Gibson leveraged his firm's German holdings and negotiated with Heinrich Himmler to get Schneider and his family released from Germany and transported to the United States. Following a massive welcoming party in North Conway in February of 1939, Schneider took over Cranmore and worked quickly to make it one of the best known ski areas in the country.One of Schneider's first big decisions at Cranmore was to expand lift service to the summit, which was accomplished during his first full season when the upper section of the Skimobile was installed. With top to bottom Skimobile coverage, Cranmore was second only to Cannon's tram in terms of continuous lift served vertical drop in New England.With the onset of World War II, Hannes was reportedly involved in the training and providing intelligence for United States and British ski troops. His son Herbert served in the 10th Mountain Division during World War II, earning a Bronze Star for his heroic actions in Italy. Following the war, Herbert returned to North Conway to work for his father.In 1949, Hannes Schneider was hired to oversee construction of the new Blue Hills ski area outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Schneider referred to the ski area was "Little Cranmore."In the spring of 1955, Schneider was actively working to open new terrain at Cranmore, serviced by its first chairlift. Following a day of laying out new terrain in what would become the East Bowl, Schneider died of a heart attack. Schneider's son Herbert assumed control of the Cranmore ski school and, circa 1963 started a two decade run as owner of the ski area.Schneider's name lives on at Cranmore, as a trail (Schneider in the East Bowl) and the annual Hannes Schneider Meister Cup Race.On the Fairbank GroupCranmore is owned by the Fairbank Group, whose chairman and namesake, Brian Fairbank, transformed Jiminy Peak from a Berkshires backwater into the glimmering modern heart of Massachusetts skiing. The company also operates Bromley (which is owned by Joseph O'Donnell), and owns a renewable energy operation (EOS Ventures), a ski industry e-learning platform (Bullwheel Productions), and a snowmaking outfit (Snowgun Technologies). For all this and more, including Jiminy Peak's early embrace of clean energy to power its operation, Brian Fairbank earned a spot in the Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2020. I hosted him on the podcast that autumn to discuss his career and achievements:On Booth Creek Ski HoldingsIn an alternate universe, Booth Creek may stand today on Alterra's throne, Vail's foil in the Skico Wars. For a brief period in the late ‘90s, the company, founded by former Vail and Beaver Creek owner George Gillett Jr., owned eight ski areas across the United States: Cranmore, Loon, Waterville Valley, Grand Targhee, Summit at Snoqualmie, Bear Mountain (now part of Big Bear), Northstar, and Sierra-at-Tahoe. In 1998, the company attempted to purchase Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. But, as this summary chart from New England Ski History shows, Booth Creek began selling off resorts in the early 2000s. Today, it owns only Sierra-at-Tahoe:On the SkimobileHad Cranmore's monolithic Skimobile survived to the present day, most visitors would probably mistake it for a mountain coaster. When it went live, in 1938, skiers likely mistook it for the future. “Well, by gum, a contraption that just takes you right up the mountain while you sit on your heinie. This will change skiing forever!”Instead, the Skimobile, a two-track monster that toted skiers uphill in single-passenger carts, passed five decades as a beloved novelty before Cranmore demolished it in 1990. The New England ski diaspora is still sore about this. But imagine building a Great Wall of China vertically up your mountain. It would kind of make it hard for skiers, Patrol, groomers, etc. to move around the bump. And someone came up with a better idea called a “chairlift.” When the only feasible alternative was the ropetow, the Skimobile probably seemed like the greatest invention since electricity. But once the chairlift proliferated, the shortcomings of a tracked lift became obvious.The Skimobile rose Cranmore's full 1,200 vertical feet in two sections: the lower, built in 1938, and the upper, constructed the following year. Skiers had to disembark the first to take the second. Here's how they laid out in a circa 1951 trailmap:On the potential Black Cap expansionWilcox and I discussed Cranmore's long-proposed Black Cap expansion, which would give Cranmore a several-hundred-acre, several-hundred-vertical-foot boost off the backside. New England Ski History includes the following details in its short write-up of Black Cap:In 1951, Cranmore obtained an easement on 500 acres of land on Black Cap, a ledgy peak located to the east of the ski area. If the ski area were expanded to the top of Black Cap, Cranmore would see an increase of 700 vertical feet to 1,800 feet, making it the second highest in the Mount Washington Valley.Wilcox provides slightly different numbers, but doesn't rule out the possibility of this significant expansion at some future point. The current trailmap shows Black Cap looming in the background: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 91/100 in 2023, and number 477 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

Attorney Rich Lenkov, partner at Downey and Lenkov Law Firm break down the Trump news:-What does this mean for the Trump Organization, his golf courses and Trump hotels--The  judge made reference to the Trump financials and to quote the judge “That is a fantasy world, not the real world”-Former President Donald Trump did indeed inflate the values of his golf courses, his hotels, his homes at Mar-a-Lago and Seven Springs on all his financial statements.  What does this all mean?-How do they dissolve the properties?-Senator Bob Menendez-The Feds raided his house and found $1 million dollars, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz -What's nextPhoto Courtesy: AP News 

A New York judge says former President Trump and his oldest sons are liable for fraud after providing false financial statements for roughly a decade. The judge's decision comes days before the former president and the New York attorney general's office is set to go to court for a civil trial. Trump has argued he didn't inflate the values of his golf courses, hotels and homes at Mar-a-Lago and Seven Springs on financial statements that were repeatedly used in business. Investigative reporter and Syracuse University law professor David Cay Johnston explains to AC360 what this means for the Trump Organization and if they can operate their businesses in New York state. Plus, Senate leaders have reached a bipartisan deal for a short-term spending bill to keep the government funded and avoid a shutdown. There's still no guarantee that it will pass in the Republican majority House, where there are deep divisions. Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill tells Anderson Cooper how confident she is that a government shutdown can be avoided. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

Major financial blow to the Trump Organization! A New York judge says Donald Trump and his two adult sons provided false financial statements for almost ten years! For persistent fraud, the judge canceled the Trump Organization's business certification. A receiver will be appointed to “manage the dissolution” of the corporate entities. In addition to the Trump Organization, two New York properties are part of the lawsuit, including a commercial tower on Wall Street and the Trump family compound at Seven Springs. We will talk politics with John Rothmann around 11:30 and at noon, we welcome Anthony Davis He's our favourite British broadcaster and host of The Weekend Show. The Mark Thompson Show 9/27/23 0:00 Show Preview 4:23 UAW Pres slams Trump 23:46 WGA Strike deal 30:23 Kim's News 40:40 John Rothmann 1:02:55 Kim's News 1:12:21 Stories from the Sky 1:16:15 Anthony Davis 1:36:11 Kim's News 1:43:10 Conservatorships, emails

Derrick Knopsnyder will be taping his first ever comedy special 'Everywhere but Famous' next Saturday night at Seven Springs. Larry Ogunjobi shares what it's like lining up next to TJ Watt and Alex Highsmith. Craig Wolfley needs the Steelers offense to finally put up some points. Sean Collier reviews Expendables 4 and has a retro pick. Dave Dameshek is still worried about the Steelers but doesn't see them losing to the Raiders this Sunday night.

In today's episode, we are bringing you a pretty special episode. Cameron sat down with David Powell at the 2023 Total Archery Challange at Seven Springs to talk about his once in a lifetime buck that he called Bootsie. This hermaphroditic deer stands out not only for its rare reproductive organs but also for its distinctive rack. David shares the details of his encounter with this extraordinary creature, shedding light on its unconventional behavior and characteristics. From Bootsy's powder wig-like headgear to his social outcast status among other deer, this captivating journey follows a davids years of observation before finally catching up with Bootsy. We discuss: Bootsy was identified as a buck with organs of both antlers and a doe The deer exhibited abnormal physical features, such as an underdeveloped neck and head Bootsie had an irregular rack that looked like a headdress and carried velvet way into the season Other deer avoided Bootsy, making it challenging to target him for hunting David hunted and observed the rare hermaphrodite deer in Kansas for six years The deer had a core area of only 75 to 80 acres, focusing solely on cover and disregarding food and water It took three years for David to realize that rut activity was not a way to target this deer The deer had bases 15" in circumference, not diameter with 21 total points The deer panel scored as a "freak of nature" and doesn't carry an official Boone and Crockett or Pope and Young score Understand the significance of this deer being classified as a "freak of nature" rather than receiving a formal scoring It is listed as 1 of 1 in the Boone and Corckett records under whitetail freak of nature And So Much More!   Click Here To Build Your Set Of Exodus NIS Arrows:  https://exodusoutdoorgear.com/collections/custom-arrows/products/the-nis    #VelvetFest Is Here! Use the code "VFEST23" for 15% off the entire store: https://exodusoutdoorgear.com   CONNECT:  -https://linktr.ee/exodustrailcamera -https://bit.ly/TheDeerGearPodcast -https://linktr.ee/TheLandPodcast

The part of starting the Blueline Bowhunters has been the people we have met and the friendships we have made.  One of our first friendships was with Scott Bakken who worked at a bow sight company.  Scott and his business partners had a desire to create a better bow sight.  Together the created Dialed Archery, bow sights designed on purpose.  Creating a business during Covid was not an easy task, but Scott and the boys made it through with a piece of art we can all now enjoy.  Join us to hear about the Dialed Archery sight in our whirlwind podcast with Scott at the Total Archery Challenge in Seven Springs, PA.

754: Daniel Sweeney on Seven Springs Farm Supply Pt 2What is Healthy Soil?In This Podcast:Greg recently interviewed Daniel Sweeney and part of that conversation was worth it's own breakout podcast episode. This episode is focused on the questions around what healthy soil is and how to improve your own soil. Listen in and see what Greg found out. Daniel has been the Crop Adviser at Seven Springs since 2018 and he enjoys working with farmers and helping them find solutions. Prior to joining Seven Springs, Daniel managed, large fruit and vegetable farms. He now raises a flock of registered Shetland sheep and experiments with sunflowers and other fun cover crops.Seven Springs Farm Supply has been serving farmers and gardeners since 1990. They offer a comprehensive selection of soil amendments, growing mixes, pest and disease control products, and cover crop seeds for the organic grower.Visit www.urbanFarm.org/sevensprings2 for the show notes and links on this episode!Click HERE to shop at Seven Springs and support the Urban Farm at the same time. Use code URBAN7 at check out.Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 775 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. You can chat with Greg, Janis or Ray to get permaculture based feedback.Click HERE to learn more!**Sponsor Disclosure: This podcast is with a sponsor to our podcast program. We will only partner with sponsors that meet a rigorous criterion of values and offer products that we can feel good about endorsing. By being a sponsor, the business or organization has entered into a financial agreement which may include a direct payment, an affiliate commission, or other compensation. It is through these sponsorships that we are able to continue bringing our podcast to you. We encourage our audience to show check out the website by following the links in our show notes which will identify you as an Urban Farm Podcast listener.*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to...

752: Daniel Sweeney on Seven Springs Farm SupplyBringing farming supplies to the organic grower In This Podcast:Greg has a great chat with Daniel Sweeney to more about how the Seven Spring Farm Supply organization began and what they are doing now. Greg really wanted to know more about their values and how they treat their customers. Listen in and see what Greg found out. Plus see what special Seven Springs has for our listeners.Daniel has been the Crop Adviser at Seven Springs since 2018 and he enjoys working with farmers and helping them find solutions. Prior to joining Seven Springs, Daniel managed, large fruit and vegetable farms. He now raises a flock of registered Shetland sheep and experiments with sunflowers and other fun cover crops.Seven Springs Farm Supply has been serving farmers and gardeners since 1990. They offer a comprehensive selection of soil amendments, growing mixes, pest and disease control products, and cover crop seeds for the organic grower.Click HERE to shop at Seven Springs and get the special discount using code URBAN7Visit www.UrbanFarm.org/SevenSprings for the show notes and links on this episode!Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. You can chat with Greg, Janis or Ray to get permaculture based feedback.Click HERE to learn more!Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 775 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.**Sponsor Disclosure: This podcast is with a sponsor to our podcast program. We will only partner with sponsors that meet a rigorous criteria of values and offer products that we can feel good about endorsing. By being a sponsor, the business or organization has entered into a financial agreement which may include a direct payment, an affiliate commission, or other compensation. It is through these sponsorships that we are able to continue bringing our podcast to you. We encourage our audience to show check out the website by following the links in our show notes which will identify you as an Urban Farm Podcast listener.*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

10am-11am A Legacy of Discrimination, Brutally Unfair and Unjust. Six decades of failed policies stemming from the 1963 Commission of Itinerancy report.  Connacht Tribune Headlines with Dave O' Connell Day Care Centre, Seven Springs, Loughrea  Handbell Concert Announcement ==  'Galway Talks with Keith Finnegan' broadcasts every weekday morning from 9am on Galway Bay FM.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on June 7. It dropped for free subscribers on June 10. 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:WhoMike Hussey, General Manager of Middlebury College Snowbowl, VermontRecorded onMay 15, 2023About Middlebury SnowbowlClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Middlebury CollegeLocated in: Hancock, VermontYear founded: 1936Pass affiliations: Indy Pass Allied ResortReciprocal partners: NoneClosest neighboring ski areas: Sugarbush (38 minutes), Mad River Glen (43 minutes), Pico (45 minutes), Killington (49 minutes)Base elevation: 1,720 feetSummit elevation: 2,720 feetVertical drop: 1,000 feetSkiable Acres: 100 on-trail; 600+ woods and gladesAverage annual snowfall: 200 inchesTrail count: 17 (8 advanced/expert, 4 intermediate, 5 beginner) + 11 gladesLift count: 4 (1 fixed-grip quad [to replace Sheehan double for 2023-24 ski season], 2 triples, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Middlebury Snowbowl's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himI've held Michigan Wolverines football season tickets for the past 15 years. The team's 12-game schedule acts as a sort of life framework for three months each fall. Where the team goes, I often go: Oklahoma in 2025, Texas in 2027, Washington in 2028. Plus Ann Arbor, all the time, for home games. I like big games, ranked opponents, rivalries. This year's home schedule is a stinker: East Carolina, UNLV, Bowling Green, Rutgers, Indiana, Purdue, Ohio State. To be a Michigan fan is to assume the boys will win those first six easily before a fistfight with the Buckeyes. In college football, big brand names get nearly all the glory nearly all the time.Skiing is a little bit like that. Ask your friend who skis three to 10 days per year where they go, and you'll likely get a list of familiars: Mammoth, Park City, Breck, Vail. In New England or New York, the list will be some mix of Stratton, Mount Snow, Okemo, Killington, Sugarbush, Hunter, Windham. All fine mountains, and all worthy of three-day Dan's discretionary skiing dollars. They will get his social media posts and elevator chats too. In skiing, as in college football, legacy and brand mean a hell of a lot.Which takes us to Middlebury Snowbowl (though you're probably wondering how). Being a thousand-vertical foot ski area in Vermont is a little like being the Rutgers football team in the Big 10. You know you're going to lose most of your games most of the time: Rutgers is 12-58 in Big 10 play since joining the conference in 2014. And no wonder: officials slotted the team in the East division, alongside blue chips Ohio State (69-6 in Big 10 play since 2014), Michigan (53-22), and Penn State (49-30). Rutgers is 1-26 against those three teams over that span (the one win was versus Michigan in 2014; yes, I was at that game; yes, it was clear that the Rutgers fans had not been there before).Vermont state highway 100 is the Big 10 East of New England skiing: Mount Snow, Okemo, Killington, Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, Stowe, and Smugglers' Notch all sit along or near this north-south route. So does Middlebury Snowbowl. Here's how they all stack up:It's all a little incongruous, this land of giants and speedbumps and not much in between. Skiers have shown little mercy for mid-sized ski areas in Vermont. Snow Valley, Plymouth Notch, and Maple Valley have all gone extinct. Ascutney, now a surface-lift bump, was once an 1,800-footer with a high-speed quad. Magic was shuttered for years before pinpointing a scrappy-rebel narrative upon which it could thrive. Saskadena Six and Quechee are both attached to larger entities who maintain the ski hills as guest and resident amenities. Even Bolton Valley missed a season in the late ‘90s during a problematic ownership transition period.Middlebury Snowbowl, of course, has survived since 1936 as a protectorate of Middlebury College, which owns the facility. But money-losing ski areas subsidized by larger entities are out of fashion. The world knows such arrangements are unnecessary; ski areas can and should be self-sustaining. See: Gunstock, Bogus Basin, Bridger Bowl, Mt. Ashland. Mike Hussey knows this, and he has a vision to make the Snowbowl a strong independent business. Oddly, the small ski area's proximity to giants may finally be a positive – as Killington and Sugarbush have driven peak-day lift ticket prices over $200, the Snowbowl has remained an affordable alternative that delivers a scaled-down but still substantial ski experience. Is this Middlebury's moment? I had to find out.What we talked aboutMiddlebury's huge increases in skier visits over the past few seasons; XC snowmaking at Rickert; miracle March; competing in a rapidly changing Vermont and why megapasses and consolidation have been good for most independent ski areas; Middlebury's parking problem; why Middlebury College owns a ski area; the coolest college graduation ceremony in skiing; Middlebury College 101; the relationship between the college and the ski area; whether the ski area does or can make money; a brief history of HKD Snowmakers; transforming Rikert from a locals' slidepath to a modern Nordic ski area; how the college's board of trustees reacted to suggestions that the school close down Rickert and Snowbowl; how Snowbowl lured students back by changing its season pass structure; the Sheehan chairlift upgrade; reflecting on the Worth Mountain lift upgrade to a triple and why Middlebury went with a quad this time; the importance of Skytrac; why Middlebury is introducing night-skiing and where that footprint will sit; why Middlebury keeps only a minimalist terrain park; navigating Act 250 approval; what's fueling Snowbowl's massive investment; potential future snowmaking and parking upgrades; Lake Pleiad; doing the math on Middlebury's massive acreage counts; glade culture; that wacky trailmap; expansion opportunities; so many season pass options; the season pass punch-card benefit; and the Indy Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewSuddenly, Middlebury is booming. Skier visits popped 20 percent this past winter, after soaring 60 percent during the 2021-22 ski season. And while the college still subsidizes ski area operations, management is reinvesting with the hopes of reaching self-sufficiency long term. This summer, Middlebury will install night-skiing and replace the Sheehan double with a brand-new Skytrac quad.What's going on? Why is a thousand-footer jammed between Killington and Sugarbush exploding? Wasn't the Epkon Godzilla supposed to leave nothing but craters and a dozen super resorts as it bulldozed its way across New England?Skiers seem to be telling us that there is room in the marketplace for a ski area that acts like ski areas did for 80 years. Before $200 lift tickets. Before Colorado HQ. Before checklist tourism. Before the social media flex. Before chairlifts could load the population of Delaware into a single carrier.At Middlebury Snowbowl, a minivan filled with the six members of the Parker family of Hancock Vermont can roll into the parking lot on a weekend morning, pay rack rate for lift tickets, and ski all day without waiting in line. They can wander and explore and not get bored. Middlebury's trail network is limited by big-mountain Vermont standards, but there's plenty there. Especially if there's snow on the ground and the Parker clan can handle some light trees. The place sprawls over hundreds of acres, deceptively large.There's a desire and a demand for places like Middlebury Snowbowl right now. For something easier and cleaner and cheaper. More atmosphere and less circus. A day on skis that's just about the skiing.What I got wrongI described Vermont's Act 250 as a state law that governs how ski areas can develop. That's partially correct but somewhat misstates the purpose and intent of the law, which applies to land use and development as a whole across the state. From Vermont's official Natural Resources Board website:Act 250 (10 V.S.A. Chapter 151) is Vermont's land use and development law, enacted in 1970 at a time when Vermont was undergoing significant development pressure. The law provides a public, quasi-judicial process for reviewing and managing the environmental, social and fiscal consequences of major subdivisions and developments in Vermont. It assures that larger developments compliment Vermont's unique landscape, economy and community needs. …The effects of Act 250 are most clear when one compares Vermont's pristine landscape with most other states.  Protecting Vermont's environmental integrity and the strength of our communities benefits everyone, forming a strong basis for both our economy and our quality of life.The Act 250 process balances environmental and community concerns; a tall order which at times can be complex. Developers, engineers and consultants best navigate the Act 250 process by planning their project, from the earliest stages, with the 10 criteria in mind.As a result of Act 250 and the planning process, project designs, landscaping plans and color schemes fit the landscape.  Act 250 has helped Vermont retain its unsurpassed scenic qualities while undergoing the substantial growth of the last 5 decades.  Act 250 is also critical because it requires development to conform to municipal and regional plans and Vermont's land use planning goals.The Act 250 criteria have protected many important natural and cultural resources — water and air quality, wildlife habitat and agricultural soils (just to name a few) — that have long been valued by Vermonters and that are an important part of the state's economy. No single law can protect all of Vermont's unique attributes — but Act 250 plays a critical role in maintaining the quality of life that Vermonters enjoy.The law, for all its benefits, is often viewed as a regulatory burden that considerably stunted the potential of Vermont's ski areas over the long term. The late Chris Diamond examined the impacts of Act 250 at length in his book, Ski Inc. 2020:In short order, the ski area operators became the bad guys, the most visible incarnation of the capitalist beast, to these newcomers [in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s]. Over time, the enmity – or, at a minimum, distrust – was formalized in a regulatory structure that made day-to-day business life incredibly difficult. Capitalism brings a certain messiness and unpredictability, something the new political majority would not tolerate. Vermont basically tried to have it both ways: a healthy economy and some of the nation's most restrictive land-use laws. Given a ski area's impact on the natural and social environment, they were disproportionately impacted. Water-quality regulations made it impossible or extraordinarily expensive to expand snowmaking operations. Other criteria under the state's landmark environmental law, Act 250, were aimed at growth issues. The permitting process gave significant influence to those representing the status quo. So it shouldn't be surprising to note that, generally, the status quo was protected. For most rural areas, that meant zero or slow growth. An unintended but inevitable result: As decades passed and people moved on, the population base began to shrink. …My view is that the current situation would be less dire if the state's ski communities were as economically vigorous as their Western counterparts. …During the ‘90s, growth in most of Vermont's ski towns ground to a halt. A notable exception was Okemo, where the Mueller family managed a significant terrain expansion, a second base area, and a related real-estate development. Although their operating competence and focus on service were largely the catalysts, they also benefited from their location in the former manufacturing-based economy of Ludlow. Here the status quo was arguably more focused on economic survival. The Muellers also proved themselves exceptionally skilled at navigating the permit process.The bigger challenge for most Vermont resorts remained water for snowmaking. Most have finally managed to navigate their way to a solution and now offer a competitive product, albeit at great cost and with significant delays. (For Mount Snow that process took over 30 years). With that, and all the other changes that are occurring within the ski realm, I do believe they face a brighter future. Vermont ski towns will continue to evolve into important economic centers. But in my view, they will not be what they might have been.Diamond was a smart guy, and ran Mount Snow and Steamboat over the course of several decades. Ski Inc. 2020 and its companion book, Ski Inc. are must-reads for anyone who enjoys this newsletter. But while I agree with much of Diamond's analysis above, I floated this notion of Act 250-as-development killer to a prominent Vermont resort operator last year. That individual waved their hand toward the base area we were sitting in and the stacks of condos rolling up the hillside. “Well, we built all this,” they said. And Vermont does offer considerably more ski-in, ski-out accommodations than, say, New York. Killington is finally moving ahead with their base village, and the state is home to the best and most-advanced lift systems in the Northeast.So something's working there. The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in between the extremes of the build-it-all and build-nothing-at-all fundamentalists.Why you should ski Middlebury SnowbowlEvery year, more megapasses move into the marketplace. But neither Vail nor Alterra has added a new ski area in the Northeast since Windham joined the Ikon Pass in 2020 (Seven Springs, which joined the Epic Pass in 2022, really serves the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest). It's fair to assume that more skiers are trying to cram into an unchanging number of ski areas each season. And while the mountains can somewhat mitigate peak-day crowds with advanced reservations, lift-ticket limitations, and higher-capacity chairlifts, skiers also have a crowd-control mechanism at their disposal: go somewhere else.Savvy Northeast skiers know how to people-dodge. Sure, go to Killington, Sugarbush, Stowe, Loon, and Cannon. They are all spectacular. But on weekends, unlatch the secret weapons on the ski-area utility belt: Plattekill, Berkshire East, Elk, Black Mountain in New Hampshire and Black Mountain of Maine. Excellent ski areas, all, lacking their competitors' size and crowds but none of their thrill and muscle.Middlebury Snowbowl belongs on this list. True, 1,000 feet of vert makes Middlebury the 16th-tallest ski area in the state of Vermont. And unlike people, the ski area can't just buy a bigger pickup truck to compensate. But 1,000 vertical feet is a good ski run. Especially when it's fed by 200 inches of average annual snowfall that doesn't get shredded by Epkonitron hordes trampling off high-speed chairlifts.At some point, each skier has to decide: will they ski the same dozen ski areas they've always skied and that everyone else they know has always skied, or will they roam a bit, taste test, see if they need that high-speed lift as much as they think you do. Or do they give that up – even if just for a day – to view the snow from a different angle?Podcast NotesOn Vermont being a sparsely populated stateDespite its outsized presence in the U.S. ski industry – the state typically ranks fourth in skier visits behind Colorado, California, and Utah – Vermont is tiny by just about any measure. It's the seventh-smallest U.S. state by size and the second-smallest by population, with around 650,000 residents (Wyoming is last with just 580,000). This surprised me, mostly because the state is so close to so many population centers (New England is home to nearly 15 million people; New York to another 20.5 million).On the U.S. ski industry's massive investmentHussey and I briefly discuss the U.S. ski industry's massive capital investment for this past season. The exact number was $812.4 million, according to the National Ski Areas Association.On that punchcardMiddlebury Snowbowl offers one of the best season pass perks of any ski area in New England: each pass includes a punch card good for four lift tickets. This solves a season passholder's greatest irritation: dragging along cheap-ass procrastinating friends who can't be bothered to buy anything in advance but also don't want to donate a lung to pay for a Saturday lift ticket. Or the friend who has an Ikon Pass and is horrified by the idea of paying for another day of skiing beyond that massive investment. The card is transferrable and has no blackouts. On the Indy Pass Allied and XC programsThe Indy Pass has done a marvelous job adapting to a complex industry. This can be a bit confusing, as Hussey outlines in the podcast – some Indy Pass holders show up to Middlebury expecting “free”* lift tickets. But the ski area is part of the Allied Resorts program, which gets skiers half off on non-holiday weekdays, and 25 percent off at other times. I analyzed the Allied program at length here.Lift tickets to Rickert Nordic Center, which Hussey also manages, are included on the Indy Pass and the drastically discounted Indy XC Pass. I discussed that pass here.*Megapass lift tickets are also characterized as being “free,” but that is incorrect: the passholder paid for the pass in advance, and is simply redeeming a product they've pre-purchased.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing all year round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 49/100 in 2023, and number 435 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

In this episode of The Deer Gear Podcast I am joined by 13 Year Old, Mason Springer. I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Mason at Total Archery Challenge in Seven Springs learning all about becoming a better archer. Mason has only been shooting a compound bow for 2 years and already holds 3 (actually 4) Ohio State Records for Archery Competition. Age aside, Mason takes his bow and arrow setup to another level and in this podcast we get to learn all about it. If you are struggling with target panic, or just simply want to be a better shot; this podcast is for you! Bowhunting Ohio Whitetails: https://bowhuntingohiowhitetails.com/ Bowhunting Ohio Whitetails Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bowhuntingohiowhitetails/ The Exodus 8 Year Anniversary Sale is LIVE! Save 25% on the entire website with the promo code "DG" at checkout! https://exodusoutdoorgear.com/discount/DG CONNECT WITH US: https://linktr.ee/TheDeerGearPodcast https://linktr.ee/exodustrailcameras http://linktr.ee/TheLandPodcast

In this episode, we begin digging into the discography of Apink days before their 12th anniversary. Their debut EP, Seven Springs of Apink, was released April 19, 2011, and marked an entry into an arena filled with some of the most fierce female-group competition at that time. Their origins, right after the drop.When you have a lot of companies involved in the success of an act, theres likely a lot of interest before they hit the big stage. In Apinks case, their founding in 2011 was chronicled in a reality show called Apink News. The cable show chronicled their launch process for three seasons with second generation K-pop idols as the hosts, such as members of BEAST, MBLAQ, and 4MINUTE.Then, on April 19 of that year, members Son Na-eun, Park Cho-rong, Oh Ha-young, Jeong Eun-ji, Hong Yoo-kyung, Yoon Bi-mi, and Kim Nam-joo made their debut with their first extended play, Seven Springs of Apink.Featured music by MsBlink"An Album a Day" | "Multifacetedacg Theme"Connect with A3Day onlineThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacyChartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In this episode, we begin digging into the discography of Apink days before their 12th anniversary. Their debut EP, Seven Springs of Apink, was released April 19, 2011, and marked an entry into an arena filled with some of the most fierce female-group competition at that time. Their origins, right after the drop.When you have a lot of companies involved in the success of an act, there's likely a lot of interest before they hit the big stage. In Apink's case, their founding in 2011 was chronicled in a reality show called Apink News. The cable show chronicled their launch process for three seasons with second generation K-pop idols as the hosts, such as members of BEAST, MBLAQ, and 4MINUTE.Then, on April 19 of that year, members Son Na-eun, Park Cho-rong, Oh Ha-young, Jeong Eun-ji, Hong Yoo-kyung, Yoon Bi-mi, and Kim Nam-joo made their debut with their first extended play, Seven Springs of Apink.Featured music by MsBlink"An Album a Day" | "Multifacetedacg Theme"Connect with A3Day onlineThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacyChartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 7. It dropped for free subscribers on April 10. 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:WhoJody Churich, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Breckenridge, ColoradoRecorded onMarch 27, 2023About BreckenridgeClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Breckenridge, ColoradoYear founded: 1961Pass affiliations: Unlimited on Epic Pass, Epic Local Pass; limited access on Summit Value Pass (holiday blackouts), Keystone Plus Pass (unlimited access after April 1), Tahoe Local Pass (5 days shared with Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, Crested Butte, Park City)Closest neighboring ski areas: Frisco Adventure Park (15 minutes), Copper Mountain (25 minutes), Keystone (25 minutes), Arapahoe Basin (30 minutes), Loveland (38 minutes), Ski Cooper (1 hour, 5 minutes) – travel times can vary considerably pending traffic and weatherBase elevation: 9,600 feetSummit elevation: 12,998 feetVertical drop: 3,398 feetSkiable Acres: 2,908Average annual snowfall: 350 inchesTrail count: 187Lift count: 35 (1 gondola, 5 six-packs, 7 high-speed quads, 1 triple, 6 doubles, 3 platters, 1 T-bar, 11 carpets) – Breckenridge plans to replace 5-Chair, a 1970 Riblet double, with a high-speed quad this summer.Why I interviewed herThe audacity of it all. Many ski areas reach. Breck soars. Above the town, above the Pacific Ocean-sized parking lots, above the twisty-road condos and mansions, above the frantic base areas and trail-cut high-alpine - there lie the bowls, sweeping one after the next, southeast to northwest, across the range. Chairlifts, improbably, magnificently, will take you there. Or most of the way, at least. Kensho Superchair – a six-pack, rolls up to 12,302 feet, to the doorstep of Peak 6 – it's a short hike to the tippy top, at 12,573 feet. But Kensho is holding Imperial Superchair's beer, as that monster climbs to 12,840, just 158 feet shy of the 12,998-foot summit of Peak 8.Why don't they go all the way to the summit? Why do you think? Listen to the podcast to get the answer, or go there for yourself and see how those wild winds hit you at the top – or close enough to the top – of America.The Brobots have plenty to say about Breck, Texas North, Intermediate Mountain. A-Basin is where the Summit County steeps live, don't you know? There's some truth to that, but it's a narrative fed by bravado and outdated information. Breck's high-alpine chairs – Imperial in 2005 and Kensho in 2013 – have trenched easy access to vast realms of gut-punching terrain. Beat your chest all you will – the only way out is straight down.Breck is one of the most complete resorts in America, is my point here. And that didn't happen by accident. Since Vail took ownership of the joint in 1997, the company has deliberately, steadily, almost constantly improved it. Sixteen new lifts, including the inbound 5-Chair upgrade (Breck will swap out a 53-year-old Riblet double for a new high-speed quad this summer); massive expansions onto Peaks 6 and 7; steady snowmaking and parking upgrades. If you want to understand Vail's long-term intentions for its other 40 ski areas, look to the evolution of this, one of its original four resorts, over decades of always-better incremental upgrades.Of course, plenty of people know that. Maybe too many. Breck is often – always? – America's busiest resort by pure skier visits. It's easy to access, easy to like, mostly – I said mostly Peak 10, E, 6 chairs – easy to ski if you stay below treeline. The town is the town, one of the great après hubs of North American skiing, thrumming, vibrant, a scene. Don't go unless you want some company.So what becomes of a place like Breck in a 21st century filled with existential questions about what lift-served skiing has become and what it is destined to be? How does a high-alpine but extremely accessible mountain adapt to its parent company's insistence on dropping it onto the budget version of its ultra-affordable Epic Pass? Can the super-modern lifts that these pass sales fuel fix the liftlines that spoil the experience without overloading the trails in a way that spoils the experience? How can a town of 5,000 residents accommodate a daily influx of 17,000-ish skiers without compromising its bucolic essence that drew those visitors to begin with? And to what extent do even our highest ski areas need to fortify themselves against the worst outcomes of a changing climate with ever-more-aggressive snowmaking?Every ski resort-blessed mountain town in the West is grappling with this same set of questions, but Breck, I-70 adjacent and Vail Resorts-bound, is perhaps the most high-profile among them. And where the town and the resort succeed or fail, they inform where our other icons will go. It's a fascinating story, and we're still in the book's early chapters.What we talked aboutUnseasonable Colorado snow and cold; Breck's strong 2022-23 ski season; how late the season could go and what could be available to ski; that California ski life; thoughts on Tahoe's big season; Sierra-at-Tahoe's fire recovery; Alpine Meadows in the pre-Powdr Corp ‘90s; why Alpine Meadows eventually dropped its snowboarding ban and what happened when it did; the early days of terrain parks; reaction when Powdr suddenly sold Alpine; how tiny Boreal and Soda Springs compete in a Tahoe market bursting with mega-resorts; the rise of Woodward; Vail's ongoing efforts to promote women; leaving Powdr for Vail; Breck magic; four giant ski resorts, mere miles apart, but all distinct; the largest employee housing bed base in Vail Resorts portfolio; an assist with childcare; how a ski resort prepares for and responds to on-mountain fatalities; Breck's “better not bigger” masterplan; nudging guests toward underutilized terrain; big plans for Peaks 8 and 9; upgrades on Freedom Superchair, Rip's Ride, and 5-Chair; how a gondola could change Peak 9; a mid-mountain learning center; prioritizing upgrades for Peak 9's 50-plus-year-old Riblet lifts; why Horseshoe T-bar is an unlikely candidate for an upgrade; why Kensho and Imperial Superchair don't go to the very top of Breckenridge; the Peak 8 Super Connect chair detachment in December; how the resort determined that the chairlift was safe to run again; massive snowmaking upgrades and how these sync with Vail Resorts' environmental goals; why Breck is only available on the top-tier Epic Day Pass, but is unlimited on the Epic Local Pass; and why Breck has remained on the Epic Local Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewLate last year, Breck updated its masterplan, as all ski areas operating on U.S. Forest Service land are obliged to do every decade (or so, as it actually ends up working out). Themed “bigger, not better,” the masterplan amounted to a modernization blueprint to maximize the resort's existing footprint with modern lifts and selective trail- and glade-cutting:Breckenridge's goal is to tame its wild peaks. “The structuring vision for the next 10 years at [Breckenridge] is ‘Better not Bigger,'” the master plan states. Noting that the resort's “significant congestion … can diminish the guest experience,” Breck says that its “goal is not to increase overall skier and rider visits on or around peak days, but rather to concentrate on improving the guest experience and better managing visitation.” To accomplish this, the resort hopes to both better move skiers out of its base areas with more and better lifts, and to keep many of them on the upper mountains with a combination of better chairs and a subtly re-imagined trail network.Here's the overview:And a more granular look at what would and would not change in the mountain's massive lift network:The full article is worth a read, as I went peak-by-peak and broke down the proposed changes to each, including upgrades to the snowmaking footprint :So, what better time to discuss America's most vibrant ski resort than at the moment when the folks running it just outlined their vision for the far future? Breck will be an important test case of the extent to which a high-profile flagship can climate-proof and crowd-proof itself in an era of climate uncertainty and megapass maximalism. If Breck can thrive without breaking itself and everything around it – including the town at its base, the county it sits in, and the big road that leads up from the flats – then 21st century skiing will follow, adapt, adjust.Questions I wish I'd askedChurich and I briefly discussed a skier death at Breckenridge from a few weeks ago. Per the Aspen Times:An Illinois man clearing snow from his chairlift seat with the safety restraint up fell out and died at Breckenridge Ski Resort a week ago, the local sheriff's office reported.John Perucco, 60, of Elgin, Illinois, was pronounced dead March 17 at St. Anthony's Summit Hospital in Frisco after the fall, the Summit County Coroner's Office said in an email. He was reportedly wearing a helmet when he fell from the lift.He had not yet reached Tower 1 of Zendo Chair when he fell 25 feet and landed on a hard-packed, groomed trail below, according to the Summit County Sheriff's Office. The department was reportedly notified around 11:20 a.m. of a death at the emergency room.What I would have liked to explore a bit more was the issue of the raised safety bar. This is something I've thought a lot about lately. In New England and New York, all of the lifts have safety bars, and most skiers use them most of the time. Their use is required by law in several states, including Vermont, New York, and Massachusetts – patrollers and lift attendants often aggressively pressure skiers who don't lower them. If you load a lift with strangers and you're not prepared, you're liable to be conked in the head by a down-coming bar – Easterners' etiquette around this is abysmal, as it's polite to at least call out, “coming down.”In the Midwest and the West, bar use is much spottier. Forget the Midwest, where modern lifts are rare and most of the old ones have not been retrofit with bars. But skiing's money is in the West, where most major lifts at most major resorts have been upgraded to detachables, which all have bars. I get a lot of passive-aggressive irritation when I lower the bar (with warning, of course), particularly in Utah and Colorado. This has always puzzled me. What's the resistance? I'm aware of the NSAA research casting doubt on the efficacy of bar use – I'm skeptical, as there is no way to tell how many accidents have been prevented by a lowered bar.Anyway, there is a cultural resistance to chairlift bar usage in the western United States that, as far as I can tell, is unique to the world's major ski cultures. Vail, for its part, retrofits all of its inherited chairlifts with safety bars. So does Alterra. Vail requires its employees to use them at all times. Alterra allows each mountain to set its own policies (Palisades Tahoe and Solitude, for example, require bar use for employees).I want to dig into this more, to understand both why this resistance exists and why it persists, despite the proliferation of modern chairlifts. It's a bigger story than can be explored in a single anecdote, and hopefully it's one I can write about more this offseason. Will this resistance fade, as once-ubiquitous helmet resistance has? Or is this skiing's version of a cultural wedge issue, set to divide the tourists from the locals in an escalating game of Who Belongs Here?What I got wrong* I said that 10 of Vail Resorts' 41 ski areas were currently led by women. The correct number, at the time of recording, was nine out of 41. Here's a complete list (several of Vail's ski areas share a regional general manager: Boston Mills, Brandywine, and Alpine Valley in Ohio; Jack Frost and Big Boulder in Pennsylvania; and Seven Springs, Hidden Valley, and Laurel in Pennsylvania). With yesterday's news that Beaver Creek COO Nadia Guerriero would move up to VP/COO of the Rockies Region (replacing Bill Rock, who was promoted to head of Vail's Mountain Division), that number is now eight, I suppose. But who knows how Vail will stir up its mountain leadership team over the summer.* I also named off all the large ski areas around Lake Tahoe, to give context to Churich's challenge running tiny Soda Springs and Boreal in that realm of monsters. The only thousand-plus-footer I missed in that riff is Homewood, but here's a complete list of Tahoe-region ski areas. It really is amazing how these smaller spots exist (and seem to thrive), alongside some of the nation's largest and most-developed resorts:* Churich and I also discussed what I referred to as “Vail's new app” for the 2023-24 ski season. Its official name will be the My Epic app, and it should be a considerable upgrade from Epic Mix. The app will be your Epic Pass (no more RFID card unless you still want one), and will feature interactive trailmaps, real-time liftline wait times, operational updates, blackout date info on your pass, weather updates, resort charge, and more.Why you should ski BreckenridgeBecause you kind of have to. Trying to navigate life as a U.S. American skier without skiing Breck is kind of like trying to go through life without hearing a Taylor Swift song. It's there whether you want it or not. Even if you're in the habit of driving past to hit the Eagle County resorts, or you prefer A-Basin or Copper, or you avoid the I-70 corridor altogether, eventually your cousin or your boys from college or your aunt Phyllis is going to plan a spring break trip or a bachelor party or a family Christmas get-together at Breck, and you're going to go.And you're going to like it. This is not the busiest ski area in America by accident. It's a damn good ski mountain, even if it has more people and fewer steeps and less snow than some of its high-profile ski-biz peers. Yes, liftlines at Peaks 8 and 9 can test your patience at key times. And, yes, the intermediate superhighways can accumulate interstate-esque traffic. But it only takes a little creativity to find quiet glades off Peak 10 and 6-Chair and E-Chair, and tucked between the groomers off every other peak. As with any big western resort, you can follow the crowds or you can follow your skis. The kind of day you have once you stand up and push off the top of the lift is entirely up to you.Podcast NotesI've hosted several other Colorado-based Vail Resorts leaders on the podcast over the past year. While Bill Rock and Nadia Guerriero have recently moved positions, these conversations are largely still relevant:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing all year long. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 32/100 in 2023, and number 418 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

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To receive new posts and to support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.WhoDennis Eshbaugh, President and General Manager of Holiday Valley, New YorkRecorded onFebruary 13, 2023About Holiday ValleyClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Win-Sum Ski Corp, which Holiday Valley's website describes as “a closely held corporation owned by a small number of stockholders.”Year founded: 1958Pass affiliations: NoneLocated in: Ellicottville, New YorkClosest neighboring ski areas: Holimont (3 minutes), Kissing Bridge (38 minutes), Cockaigne (45 minutes), Buffalo Ski Center (48 minutes), Swain (1 hour, 15 minutes), Peek'N Peak (1 hour, 15 minutes)Base elevation: 1,500 feetSummit elevation: 2,250 feetVertical drop: 750 feetSkiable Acres: 290Average annual snowfall: 180 inchesTrail count: 84 (4 glades, 1 expert, 21 advanced, 21 intermediate, 32 beginner, 5 terrain parks) – the official glade number is a massive undercount, as nearly all of the trees at Holiday Valley are well-spaced and skiable (the trailmap below notes that “woods are available to expert skiers and riders and are not open, closed, or marked”).Lift count: 13­­ (4 high-speed quads, 7 fixed-grip quads, 2 surface lifts) – a high-speed six-pack will replace the Mardis Gras high-speed quad this sumer.Uphill capacity: 23,850 people per hourWhy I interviewed himWestern New York is one of the most important ski markets in America. Orbiting a vast wilderness zone of hilly lake-effect are the cities of Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, and, farther out but still relevant to the market, Pittsburgh. That's more than 20 million people, as Eshbaugh notes in our conversation. They all need somewhere to ski. They don't have big mountains, but they do have options. In Western New York alone: Peek'n Peak, Cockaigne, Kissing Bridge, Buffalo Ski Club, Bristol, Hunt Hollow, Swain, Holiday Valley, Holimont, and a half-dozen-ish surface-lift outfits hyper-focused on beginners.It's one of the world's great new-skier factories. Skiers learn here and voyage to the Great Out There. From these metro regions, skiers can get anywhere else quickly. At least four daily flights connect Cleveland and Denver – you can leave your house in the evening and catch first chair at Keystone or Copper the following morning. But sometimes local is good, especially when you start stacking kids in the backseat and your airplane bill ticks past four digits.Set the GPS for Holiday Valley. In a region of ski areas, this is a ski resort. The terrain is varied and expansive. Downtown Ellicottville, a Rust Belt industrial refugee that has remade itself as one of the East's great resort towns, is minutes away. The mountain is easy enough to get to (in the way that anything off-interstate is an easy-ish pain in the ass requiring some patience with two-lane state highways and their poke-along drivers). And lift tickets are affordable, topping out at $87 for an eight-hour session.As a business, Holiday Valley is one of the most well-regarded independent ski areas in the country, on the level of Wachusett or Whitefish or Smugglers' Notch. But it wasn't the inevitable King of Western New York. When Eshbaugh showed up in 1975, the place was a backwater, with a handful of double chairs and T-bars and a couple dozen runs. It took decades to build the machine. But for at least the past 20 years, Holiday Valley has led all New York ski areas in annual visits, keeping company with New England monsters Mount Snow and Sunday River at around half a million skiers per season. That's incredible. I wanted to learn how they did it, and how they keep doing it, even as the ski world evolves rapidly around them.What we talked aboutThe wild Western New York winter; what's driving record business to Holiday Valley; the busiest ski area in New York State; learning from Sam Walton in the best possible way; competing with Colorado; the history and remaking of Ellicotville; from ski school instructor to resort president; staying at one employer for nearly five decades; who owns Holiday Valley and how committed they are to independence; a brief history of the ski area; setting season pass prices at $1,000 in the megapass era – “we have 10,000 buyers of these other pass programs as well”; the importance of night-skiing; the bygone days of skiing all-nighters; why Holiday Valley hasn't joined the Epic, Ikon, or Indy Passes, and whether it ever would; thoughts on reciprocal coalitions and why the Ski Cooper partnership went away; a picture of Holiday Valley in the mid-1970s; the landmine of too much real-estate development; going deep on the new Mardi Gras Express six-pack; why they're building the lift over two years; how and why Holiday Valley self-installs chairlifts (one of the few ski areas to do so); remembering 20-minute double-chair rides on Mardi Gras; the surprising potential destination of the Mardi Gras quad; long-term potential upgrades for Sunrise, Eagle, Cindy's, and Chute; the next lift that Holiday Valley will likely upgrade to a detachable; why Holiday Valley upgraded the 20-year-old Yodeler fixed-grip quad to a detachable quad two years ago; how much more it costs to maintain a detachable lift than a fixed-grip lift, and whether Holiday Valley could one day get to an all-high-speed fleet; “you have to keep a balance between what your customer base wants and what your customer base can support”; Dave McCoy's thumbprint on Mammoth Mountain; potential expansion opportunities; where the next all-new liftline could sit; potential glade expansion; remembering when insurance carriers were paranoid of glade-skiing and why they backed off that notion; and why Holiday Valley implemented RFID but didn't install gates.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewHoliday Valley is one of the few large regional destination ski areas that continues to stand alone. No pass allegiance. No reciprocal deals. The pass is good here and only here.And it works. Like Wolf Creek or Baker or Mount Rose or Smugglers' Notch or Bretton Woods, Holiday Valley is proving that the one-mountain model isn't dead just yet. Even with a headliner season pass that runs $1,049*, just $30 cheaper than the good-at-63-mountains Ikon Pass and a couple hundred dollars more than the equally expansive Epic Pass. Many of the mountain's passholders do also purchase these passes, Eshbaugh told me, but they keep buying the Holiday Valley Pass too.Why? My guess is the constant, conspicuous investment. A new high-speed quad to replace a 20-year-old fixed-grip quad in 2021. Holiday Valley's first six-pack – to replace a 27-year-old high-speed quad – next season. And the place is pristine. Everything looks new, even if it isn't. The lodges – and it feels like there are lodges everywhere – are expansive and attractive. Snowguns all over. I haven't walked around the joint opening closet doors or anything, but I bet it I did, I'd find the towels sorted by color and shelves labelled accordingly.In the era of sprawling and standardized, there is still a lot to like in this hyper-local approach to ski resort management. Eshbaugh is in no hurry to chase his peers over the horizon. He admits there may be vast treasure and security waiting there, but there may also be a bottomless void. Holiday Valley and its eclectic and somewhat secretive group of owners will wait and see. In the meantime, we may as well enjoy the place for what it is.*Holiday Valley offered several more affordable pass options for the 2022-23 ski season, including a nights-only version for $504, a Sundays pass for $313, a pass good for 10 weekdays or evenings for $285, and a nine-use night pass for $213.Questions I wish I'd askedI'd wanted to get a bit into Holimont, and ask my usual stupid question about whether the two resorts had ever discussed some sort of lift or ski connection. From a pure engineering standpoint, it wouldn't be an especially difficult project: the hill that rises from the far side of the Holiday Valley parking lot is the backside of Holimont. You would just need trails down from the top of Holimont's Exhibition Express or Sunset double to the bottom of Holiday Valley's Tannenbaum lift, then a return lift up the mountain to Holimont. Here's a crappy concept sketch I put together:Of course, there are problems with my elaborate plans, starting with the fact that I have no idea who owns the property that I just designated for new trails and chairlifts. The bigger issue, however, is that Holimont is a private ski club, and it's closed to the public on weekends and holidays. That won't change. But if you're curious, you can roll up and buy a lift ticket midweek, which is pretty cool. The place is substantial, with 56 trails and eight lifts, including a high-speed quad:A union of these two ski areas seems highly improbable. But it would create an enormous ski area, and it was fun to fantasize about for a few minutes.Why you should ski Holiday ValleyHoliday Valley skis far larger than the trailmap would suggest. Rolling from Spruce Lake over to Snowpine can take all morning. There's lots of little offshoots, quirks and nooks to explore. Glades everywhere. Lifts everywhere. Most runs are substantially shorter than the advertised 750 vertical feet, but they cling to the fall line, and there are a lot of them: 84 trails feels like an undercount.I said in the podcast that Holiday Valley felt like a half dozen or so ski areas stitched together, and it does. Creekside and Sunrise feel like that town bump, with gentle wide-open meadows. Morningstar is big broadsides, park kids and a speedy lift. Yodeler and Chute are raw and steep, tight glades between groomed-out boomers. Eagle is restless and wild and underdeveloped. And Tannenbaum is a sort-of idyll, a rich glen dense with towering pines, a detachable lift line threading low and fast through the trees.It's just a very good ski area, with everything except a headline vertical drop. But the sprawling lift system makes fastlaps easy, and if the snow is deep, pretty much all the trees between the trails are skiable. The place is likely to wear you out before you wear it out, and then you can head down the street for a beer and a pillow.Podcast NotesOn operating hoursI guessed on the podcast that Holiday Valley was open more hours per week than most other ski areas in the country. Their regular schedule is 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. That adds up to 89 hours per week. I'm not sure exactly where that ranks among U.S. American ski areas, but its in the upper five percentile.On Mountains of DistinctionEshbaugh mentions the Mountains of Distinction program. This is a discount program started by Jiminy Peak before the megapass craze. It currently includes Jiminy, Wachusett, Cranmore, Holiday Valley, Bromley, and Crystal Mountain, Michigan. Passholders at any of these ski areas generally get half off on weekdays and $15 off on weekends and holidays at any of the other resorts. The program was far larger at one time, but it's lost many members – such as Seven Springs – to consolidation.On the incredible migrating chairliftI mentioned a chairlift at Hunt Hollow – a ski area that operates on the same public/private model as Holimont – that relocated one of Snowbird's old chairs. The chair was Snowbird's old Little Cloud double, which they removed in 2012 to make way for a high-speed quad. You can read more about it here (pages 13 to 14). Lift Blog documented the lift when it stood at Snowbird, and then again at Hunt Hollow.On lost ski areas of Western New YorkIn the podcast intro, I mention a pair of onetime competitors to Holiday Valley that failed to evolve in the same way and went bust. One was Wing Hollow, a 750-footer just 20 minutes south of Holiday Valley that is now best known for a never-solved 1975 double-murder. Here's the 1978 trailmap, showing two T-bars and a double chair - about the same setup that Holiday Valley had in that period.I also mention Bluemont, which was just half an hour north of Holiday Valley and claimed an 800-foot-vertical drop, a double chair, a T-bar, and two ropetows. Here it is around 1980:The land that Bluemont sat on is currently for sale for $5.95 million. I wrote about this in May:Man I don't know what happens to these places. Eight hundred vertical feet would make this the second-tallest ski area in Western New York, after Bristol, and poof. Just gone. NELSAP says that the last investors “never received enough capital to get their idea off the ground.” The chairlifts are apparently long gone. Who knows if you would even be able to build on the land if you owned it – everything is impossible these days, especially in New York. But here it is if you have the money and the gumption to try.These were just the two largest of many lost ski areas in Western New York. You can poke around the lost New York ski areas page on the New England Lost Ski Areas project for more info.On Holiday Valley's evolutionEshbaugh talks about the deliberate way they've built out Holiday Valley over the decades. The oldest trailmap I can find for the ski area is from 1969 – 11 years after the resort opened, and six years before Eshbaugh arrived. It shows what is currently the area from Mardi Gras over to Tannenbaum, including Yodeler and Chute:The mountain added the first Cindy's lift – a double chair – in 1978. Here's the trailmap circa 1981 - Cindy's is lift 3:Morning Star – a triple – arrived in 1983. The Snowpine double came the following year. This circa 1988 trailmap shows both (Morning Star is lift 5; Snowpine lift 6), and also teases the Eagle quad, which was slated to open the following year (it did, but as a quad, rather than as the triple teased below):The Sunrise quad rose in 1992. Here it is on a circa 1997 trailmap (lift 10):The Spruce Lake quad arrived for the 2007-08 season (lift 11):Which basically takes us to modern Holiday Valley, though the ski area continues to upgrade lifts regularly. Impressive as this growth has been, I don't think they're anywhere near finished.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 13/100 in 2023, and number 399 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

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

Winter is a time of hibernation, but if you spend the season bundled up in bed, you'll be missing out. The City Cast team is here to soften the blow that the snowiest season can bring to our social lives by sharing some of our the favorite winter activities in the ‘Burrrgh.  Activities we mentioned: The Holiday Magic! Winter Flower Show and Light Garden at Phipps Conservatory Dazzling Nights at the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden Kennywood's Holiday Lights Show Skiing and snow tubing at Hidden Valley, Seven Springs, and Boyce Park Ice skating at the UPMC Rink at PPG Place and the Schenley Park Skating Rink Visiting Fallingwater Going on a guided winter hike with the Audubon Society or Allegheny County Parks Ordering a tea set at Ka-Fair Cafe Warming up with a wintery latte from Adda Coffee & Tea House, De Fer Coffee & Tea, or Commonplace Coffee The Miracle on 6th pop-up Christmas bar The Tipsy Elf Our newsletter is fresh daily at 6 a.m. Sign up here. We're also on Twitter @citycastpgh & Instagram @CityCastPgh! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, we've come back after a long break! And frankly, we need a refreshing drink of water, preferably from a beautiful, Giardia-free mountain spring. Fortunately, Mike knows where to find them.

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 23. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 26. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoDaren Cole, President of Leitner-Poma of AmericaRecorded onNovember 10, 2022About Leitner-Poma of AmericaHere's the website boilerplate:Leitner-Poma of America offers a complete line of cable transport systems, including surface lifts, chairlifts, gondolas, MiniMetro® urban transport, trams, inclined elevators, and industrial trams.And this, which makes me go cross-eyed:Leitner-Poma of America, Inc. is a North American subsidiary of Poma S.A., a corporation with headquarters in Voreppe, France and a sister company of Leitner AG, a corporation with headquarters in Sterzing, Italy. Leitner–Poma of America engineers, manufactures, installs and services all types of ropeway systems for the ski industry, amusement parks, and urban transport.Cole and I sort through all of this on the podcast. What you need to understand though is that Leitner-Poma is basically one half of the U.S. ski-lift industry. The company also owns Skytrac, which only builds fixed-grip lifts. The other half of the industry is Doppelmayr, though saying “half” is not exactly correct: Doppelmayr claims more market share than Leitner-Poma. Other companies also claim a handful of lift projects most years - MND is building Waterville Valley's new six-pack, for example, and Partek is building the new Sandy quad at Saddleback.Why I interviewed himThe Storm is built around a very specific ethos: that machines are good, and that we should allow them to transport us to mountaintops. I respect and admire Uphill Bro. If I lived in the mountains, perhaps I would be him. But I do not and I am not. I am a tourist. Always and everywhere. I want to arrive to an organized experience. Uphilling is too much work, too much gear, too much risk for my coddled city soul.And so I ride lifts, and I've very specifically focused this newsletter and podcast on the world of lift-served skiing. This is the disconnect between 99 percent of skiers and 99 percent of ski writers. The former live in cities and suburbs and ski Seven Springs three to eight days per year and take a weeklong trip to Park City in February. The latter live in ski towns and hunt the novel by trade, normalizing the fringe. And while I enjoy the occasional Assault Mission recap of the skin up Mount Tahoe Grizzly Ridge, I don't really care (though I do enjoy following - and highly recommend - the WFG on Twitter or simpleskiing.com).What I care about is The Machine: how is this sprawling, tangled world of lift-served skiing continuously morphing into the wintertime realms of the 21st century, in which a relatively unchanging number of ski areas must accommodate a megapass-driven increase in skiers armed with rectangular megaphones capable of instantly broadcasting #LiftFails to Planet Earth's 5 billion internet users? How will an industry still spinning a not-immaterial number of Borvig, Hall, Riblet, and Yan lifts that pre-date the invention of written language modernize without bankrupting the hundreds of family-owned ski areas that still dot the continent? How far can technology push these simple but essential machines, and how high can that technology push their pricetags? How far can ski areas tap them to suck skiers out of the base before they multiply, Midwest cityhill-style, like ants across the mountain and create something more dangerous than congested liftlines – congested, and perilous, trails?This podcast does not really answer any of those questions, though all are recurring themes within The Storm. Instead, it acts as a primer on what is essentially one half of the U.S. ski industry: what is Leitner-Poma (and how, for God's sake, do you pronounce it)? What do they build, and where and how? Why are ski areas building so many lifts all of a sudden, and why are those projects encountering so many and so varied delays, from labor shortages to supply chain knots to permitting issues to locals rocking their pitchfork-and-bag-of-rotten-tomatoes NIMBY starter kits to town meetings? Is all this construction sustainable, and can Leitner-Poma and their main competitor, Doppelmayr, adapt to this demand and streamline their processes to forestall future construction delays?Lift design, construction, and installation is a fascinating, complicated world tucked into - and a fundamental component of - the fascinating, complicated world of lift-served skiing. And it is evolving as fast as skiing itself. Here's a peek inside.What we talked aboutThe wild and unexpected travel routes of an old-school salesman for Purgatory-Durango ski resort; working for Vail Associates in the Arrowhead/pre-Summit County days; Wild West days at Crested Butte; the insane, rapid evolution of the U.S. lift industry; the days when you could order a lift in August and have it spinning by Christmas; how Covid changed the lift game; when you take over a giant company just before a global pandemic; U.S.A.!; the legacies Leitner and Poma, and why the companies merged in 2000; Grand Junction as old-school ski hub and why it's a great place for manufacturing; how the Leitner-Poma subsidiary-parent company relationship works between Europe and America; Direct Drive; U.S. America hates mass transit; “a chairlift or a gondola is essentially an electric vehicle”; what it will take to spur greater urban lift development in America; what Leitner-Poma of America (LPOA) builds in Grand Junction, and what's imported from Europe; why LPOA bought Skytrac; expansion time; why the fixed-grip lift persists in our era of bigger-faster-better; how long can America's antique lift fleet last?; what may finally push independent ski areas rocking ancient Halls and Riblets to upgrade; a record year for LPOA; the changing culture around chairlift permits; breaking down the delays in Jackson Hole's Thunder lift as a mirror for lift-installation delays around the country; why haul ropes aren't made in America, and whether they could be; “at the end of the day, I own those delays”; building a better supply chain; are two-year lift builds the future?; labor shortages and building a better place to work; examining the lifts that are on time and why; building the Palisades Tahoe Base-to-Base Gondola; the differences between building on an all-new liftline versus building a replacement lift; how LPOA, the ski area, and the ski area planner work together to decide which lifts to put where; the return of the high-speed quad; and designing a better 2023 lift-construction season.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewWe are witnessing one of the busiest lift-construction seasons in modern times: 66 new or relocated lifts are rising across North America, according to Lift Blog. Some monsters, too: new gondolas at Palisades Tahoe, Whistler, and Steamboat; eight-packs at Boyne Mountain and Sunday River; 13 high-speed six-packs. Here's an overview of the 25 (or 26, if you insist) lifts that Leitner-Poma of America and its subsidiary, fixed-grip specialists Skytrac, are building:Cole joined Leitner-Poma of America in 2014. The company built six lifts that year (Skytrac, then an independent company, built another six). Scaling up any business is challenging, but scaling up amidst a re-ordering of the global economy and geopolitical environment, and in the midst of a pandemic, is flipping the game to MAXIMUM CHALLENGE mode.The modern world is both miraculous and mysterious. Where does all this crap come from? An incomprehensible network of mines and foundries and factories and warehouses and tools and vehicles and fuel and laborers and engineers and designers transform the raw materials of planet Earth into medicine and chairs and soccer balls and televisions and Broncos and yard furniture and suitcases and Thule boxes and Hanukkah candles and plastic dinosaurs and Optimus Prime toys. And chairlifts. A book documenting that journey would be an atlas of modern life and this spinning ball it occupies. It would also expose the enormous risks and faults in this impossibly far-flung system, and how a haul rope spun out of a European factory can impact construction on a lift rising up a Wyoming mountainside.Questions I wish I'd askedCole said that LPOA had re-sourced all the materials it had been getting in China to U.S. suppliers. I should have followed up to get a clearer understanding of why the company pulled out of China, and which parts had been flowing from that country.What I got wrong* In our discussion of urban gondola networks and whether we could ever see one in the United States, I pointed to how well existing systems had worked in “South America, Central America, and Mexico.” While such networks exist throughout South America (in Colombia, Bolivia, and Venezuela), and Mexico, none yet exist in Central America, as far as I can tell. While such systems have been proposed for Panama and Honduras, the one that appears closest to approval is an 8.9-kilometer, 11-station network in Guatemala City that would be built by Doppelmayr.* I stated that only seven of New York's 51 ski areas ran high-speed chairlifts. The correct number is eight: Belleayre (1), Windham (4), Hunter (3), Gore (2), Whiteface (1), Holiday Valley (4), Bristol (2), and Holimont (1).* I pronounced the name of the company as “Lee-tner-Poma” several times throughout the interview. I actually butchered it so bad that I re-recorded Cole's introduction – during which I included the name four times – after we spoke. Sorry dudes.Podcast NotesCole, in discussing his time with what was then known as “Vail Associates,” referred to the “Arrowhead days.” This is a reference to what is now the Arrowhead section of Beaver Creek, but was for a short time in the 1980s and ‘90s a separate ski area. Here's the 1988 trailmap:The modern Beaver Creek retains some of the old trailnames on what tends to be a very empty part of the resort:Additional thoughts on urban gondolasIt took about four seconds from the invention of the chairlift for engineers to realize they could attach a little house to the overhead cable instead of a chair. Tada: the gondola. Let's go skiing.But a gondola, it turns out, is a pretty efficient means of transit just about anywhere. It just took the world a while to realize it. Since 2014, La Paz, the high-altitude (12,000 feet!) Bolivian capital city, has built a massive gondola network stringing together its far-flung districts:While Mi Teleférico – as the system is known – was not the world's first urban gondola system, it is the first to consist solely of cable cars – other systems complement trains or buses. It is also the longest and most extensive. And it is getting longer – at full buildout, the system could consist of 11 lines and 30 stations. The only thing more astonishing than the speed with which this network has materialized is how incredibly inexpensive it has been to build: gondolaproject.com puts the total cost of the 11-line network at around $1.4 billion. For comparison's sake, New York City's three-station expansion of the Q subway line, which opened in 2017, ran $4.5 billion.Gondolas are relatively cheap, efficient, environmentally friendly, and insanely easy to build compared to new roads or rails. Which of course means U.S. Americans are terrified of them. It's true that the nation, as a whole, is allergic to mass transit, preferring to tool around in 18-wheel-drive F-950s. Fighting anything new is the U.S. American way (where were these NIMBYs when we were punching interstate highways through city centers in the 1950s?). But generations raised in the backs of minivans seem especially horrified by gondolas. The hysteria around the proposed Little Cottonwoods gondola – which would substantially mitigate atrocious powder-day and weekend traffic on a road that probably never should have been built to begin with – is indicative of U.S. American reaction toward non-ski gondolas in general. Everywhere such systems – or even simple, two-station lines – are proposed, they meet instant and widespread resistance.There are practical reasons why the U.S. has not yet developed an urban gondola network: most of our cities are too sprawling to tie together with anything other than surface transportation (i.e. buses). La Paz, the Bolivian model city cited above, is hilly and tight, laced with narrow webs of centuries-old roads that would be difficult to widen. But there are places such systems would make sense, either as standalone networks or as complements to existing train-and-bus lines: Chicago, Portland (Oregon), New York City, many college towns. A forthcoming gondola connecting a Paris suburb to the city's metro, soaring over a “hellish carscape” of highways, demonstrates the potential here.Any such proposal in U.S. America, however, will have to overcome the reflexive opposition that will attend it. In Utah, Little Cottonwood gondola proponents are fighting a basket of idiotic arguments ranging from aesthetic concerns over the height of the towers (as though a car-choked paved road is not atrocious) to indignance over taxpayer funding for the machine (as though tax dollars don't build roads) to warped arguments that mass transit is somehow elitist (instead insisting that we all need personal vehicles equipped with $1,000 sets of winter tires). It's all a little pathetic. And that's for a simple, three-station line way up in the mountains. Just wait until some Portland resident launches a Save Our Cats campaign because a rider in a passing gondola car might glimpse Fluffy pissing in her litterbox.I'm cynical, but Cole, fortunately, is far more optimistic and diplomatic, suggesting that it will really only take one successful instance of a non-ski, non-tourist-attraction gondola for the notion to take hold in America. I hope he's right.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 126/100 in 2022, and number 372 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, which, given the Little Cottonwood take above, I fully expect). You can also email skiing@substack.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

We just had our first snow day in Pittsburgh! While some local ski bums might be ready to hit the slopes, both Seven Springs and Hidden Valley are set to open later than in previous years. Why? You can probably guess: climate change. Vail Resorts, which bought both hills, announced that they wouldn't open Seven Springs until after Thanksgiving and Hidden Valley until December 23rd. Charles Donnellan, the head coach of Western Pennsylvania Racing Club, is here to talk about what change looks like on the hill. Our newsletter is fresh daily at 6 a.m. Sign up here. We're also on Twitter @citycastpgh & Instagram @CityCastPgh! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome to episode 125 of the Antler Up Podcast! Today's episode is brought to you by @spartan.forge. I was joined by AJ Iaqunita, Isaac Aleman Sr. And Isaac Aleman Jr. Since we were all together for the first time in person, we hopped the mics to record this podcast. Each guest shared a quick story from the past hunting season, what they've been up to and what is to come. It was great catching up with these guys and especially being able to record this one in person! Excited for what these guys have coming out this upcoming year! Enjoy today's episode & thanks for tuning in!! Enjoy this fun episode! ANTLER UP!! USE CODE: Podcast at The Elk Collective to save $30 USE CODE: Antlerup to save 20% at Spartan Forge USE CODE: ANTLER to save 20% at Black Rifle Coffee USE CODE: ANTLERUP21 to save 10% at HALF-RACK USE CODE: Antlerup15 to save 15% at Vapor Trail & Stokerzied —————————————————————— Our podcast can be found on all major platforms like iTunes, Spotify, and MORE! Just follow the link in our bio to take you there! Thank you for the support and ANTLER UP!! —————————————————————— A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU FOR THE CONTINUED SUPPORT AND ESPECIALLY THANK YOU TO ALL OF OUR AMAZING PARTNERS. BE SURE TO CHECK THEM OUT OVER ON OUR WEBSITE AT WWW.ANTLERUPOUTDOORS.COM Again, thank you for listening, I hope you enjoy today's show...until next time ANTLER UP! Check us out at the following channels: Website: https://www.antlerupoutdoors.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/antler_up_outdoors/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5JBVVa0aVNqAd0ec-752YQ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/antlerupoutdoors/ Check us out our partners: Spartan Forge America's Best Bowstrings First Lite Tethrd Shay Butler Knives Domain Outdoor Vortex Optics Half-Rack GoWild --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/antleruppodcast/support

Over the last month, we have collected some thoughts on how to fix the current EMS recruitment and retention issues.  Thanks to those who commented on Facebook, Instagram, called the podcast hotline and talked to us live at the EMS West Update at Seven Springs. 

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Prices increase and a partial paywall activates on March 14. Organizations can email skiing@substack.com or reply to this email to add multiple users on one account.The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Spot and Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.WhoAndrew Halmi, General Manager of Mount Pleasant of Edinboro, PennsylvaniaRecorded onMarch 1, 2022Why I interviewed himCold and hilly, with the Appalachian spine slashing southwest-to-northeast across the map, Pennsylvania is a monster ski state, with 28 lift-served mountains. Most of these are bunched across the southern tier, in Vailville from Seven Springs to Roundtop, or along the eastern border with New Jersey, from Spring Mountain up to Elk.And then there’s Mount Pleasant, drifting alone in the state’s far northwest corner, hundreds of miles and hours of driving from the next-closest in-state ski areas. It’s like one of those nature documentaries with a drone floating over the lone baby buffalo standing apart from the herd, bunched and snorting about the quality of this year’s grass crop. You look for the circling wolves or lions and wait for the poor thing to be transformed into lunch. It’s isn’t entirely clear how any other outcome is possible.But Mount Pleasant is the Spud Webb of Pennsylvania skiing, the unassuming 5’6” kid who wins the NBA Slam Dunk Contest (that actually happened). The ski area is, first of all, well-positioned, seated less than 17 miles off the shores of the Lake Eerie snow factory. The ski area often leads the state in snowfall, with up to 200 inches in a bomber year. Again, this is in Pennsylvania. Every ski area in the Poconos combined doesn’t get 200 inches some years.Second, while it’s separated from its in-state ski-area homeboys by at least three hours of highway, Mount Pleasant is quite well-positioned from a business point of view. Eerie, population 97,000-ish, is just 20 miles away. The county has around 270,000 residents altogether. Other than Peek’n Peak, stationed 32 miles away across the New York state line, Mount Pleasant has those skiers all to itself.But neither of those things is the essential ingredient to Mount Pleasant’s improbable survival amid the graveyard of lost ski areas haunting Pennsylvania’s mountains. Cliché alert: the secret is the people. Launched as a notion in the 70s and crushed by the snow droughts and changing economy of the 80s, Mount Pleasant hung on through the 90s, barely solvent as a ski club running on the clunky machinery of faded decades. When the current owners bought the joint in the mid-2000s, it was a time machine at best and a hospice patient at worst, waiting to be guided toward the light.Since then, the place has punched its way out of the grave, and it’s now a thriving little ski area, with a modern triple chair and improving snowmaking. The owners, Doug and Laura Sinsabaugh, are local school teachers who have poured every dollar of profit back into the ski area. They have invested millions and, according to Halmi, never put a cent in their own pockets. They’ve shown remarkable resilience and ingenuity, installing the chairlift – which came used from Granite Peak, Wisconsin – themselves and slowly, methodically upgrading the snowmaking plant.The place still has a long way to go. Only half the trails have snowmaking. The lodge – a repurposed dairy barn – is perhaps the most remarkable building in Northeast skiing, but it’s roughly the size of an F-350 truckbed. The beginner area is still served by a J-bar that makes the VCR look like a miracle of modern machinery.Improvements for all of these elements are underway, as we discuss in the podcast. Last year’s Covid-driven outdoor boom accelerated Mount Pleasant’s renaissance, re-introducing the little ski area to a jaded local population who had, not unfairly, dismissed it as a relic. When they showed up in 2021 for their first visit in seven or 10 or 15 years, they found the formerly problematic T-bar sitting in a pile in the parking lot and a glimmering chairlift staggering up the incline and a place with a spark and a future. It’s really an incredible story, and I’m as excited to share this one as any I’ve ever recorded.What we talked aboutMount Pleasant’s strong Instagram account; I told Halmi to get Mount Pleasant onto Twitter and then he got it onto Twitter so give the joint a follow; how hard it is for someone who works at a ski area to ski sometimes; Mount Pleasant in its member-owned, ragtag days under the Mountain View name; how close the ski area came to not opening for the 2020-21 ski season and how that season re-ignited Mount Pleasant’s business; when and why the ski area failed and what resurrected it; puttering through 28-day operating seasons; the couple who saved the ski area and hauled it into modernity; “this was as close as you could get to starting a ski area from scratch”; why the owners have returned 100 percent of the ski area’s profit back into rebuilding it; Pennsylvania as a ski state; why Mount Pleasant survived as so many small ski areas across the state went extinct; the Lone Ranger of Pennsylvania skiing; the enormous challenge of moving a used triple chair from Granite Peak, Wisconsin, to Mount Pleasant; how a team of people from a ski area that had never had a chairlift demolished their old T-bar and installed a new lift over the course of one offseason; getting the lift towers installed with a crew of “three or four,” and without a helicopter; oops the chairs arrived with no safety bars; the vagaries of safety-bar cultures across the United States; how the chairlift changed the character and energy of the ski area; pouring one out for the T-bar; how many people you can get on a single T-bar; where the old T-bar is today and the inventive way Mount Pleasant may repurpose it; what kind of chairlift Mount Pleasant would like next and where that would go; the other upgrades that have to happen before a new chair is a possibility; how much it costs to install snowmaking on a single trail; how the ski area’s beginner area could evolve; why Mount Pleasant has a carpet lift sitting in its parking lot; yes there is such a thing as 200 inches of snow in a single Pennsylvania ski season; the mountain’s long-term snowmaking plans; Mount Pleasant’s threaded-through-the-forest trail network and border-to-border ski philosophy; why the ski area has minimal terrain park features and whether that could change; what happened to the old Minute Man trail and whether it could ever come back into the trail network; how Mount Pleasant managed to stay open seven nights per week in a challenging labor market; what would happen to the ski area were it to change its operating schedule after its season-pass sale; what happened when Vail moved into nearby Ohio; Mount Pleasant’s unique baselodge; whether we could see Mount Pleasant on the Indy Pass or any other pass coalitions; and season passes.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewSmall ski areas, I think, are having a moment. I don’t have any data to prove that, but everywhere I look, megapass burnout it palpable. I love the rambling adventure of big ski areas. The sport could not be mainstream without them. But that doesn’t mean that a big ski area is the best ski area for every ski day. Sometimes a slowpoke day through the slowpoke woods is all you need. You don’t have to fight for your life to find a parking spot or line up for the chairlift or buy a Rice Krispy Treat. You just ski. It’s a different enough kind of skiing that it feels like a different sport altogether.There’s a bit of a positive feedback loop going on here. Skiers – especially skiers with kids – seek out an experience that isn’t defined by Times-Square-on-New-Year’s-Eve crowds. They find little back-of-the-woods bumps like Mount Pleasant or Maple Ski Ridge, New York or Whaleback, New Hampshire. They like it. They tell their friends. The incremental revenue generated from this word-of-mouth uptick in visits goes straight back into the mountain. A place like Mount Pleasant trades a Roman-era T-bar for a modern chairlift. That baseline experience in place, its future becomes more certain, and all of skiing benefits from a healthier beginner mountain.Mount Pleasant is pretty much exactly all of this. It’s just big enough to not bore a seasoned skier while remaining approachable enough for someone who’s never clicked in. It’s not an easy balance to achieve. Halmi, the owners, everyone involved with this place have accomplished something pretty cool: saved a dying ski area without a huge airdrop of cash. It’s a story that others who want to do the same could surely benefit from hearing.Why you should ski Mount Pleasant of EdinboroI said this to Halmi on the podcast, and I’ll repeat it here: I liked Mount Pleasant a lot more than I was expecting to. Not that I thought I would dislike it. I am a huge fan of small ski areas. But many of them, admirable as their mission is, are not super compelling from a terrain point of view, with a clear-cut hillside stripped of the deadly obstacles (read: trees), that their first-timer clientele may have a habit of smashing into.What I found was a neat little trail system woven through the woods. It’s a layout that encourages exploration and find-your-own lines inventiveness. I’ll admit I hit it after a storm cycle, when the snow stood deep in the trees and the old T-bar line was skiable. That did favorably color my impression of the place – snow makes everything better. But the overall trail-management approach resonated with me in a way that’s rare for sub-400-vertical-foot ski areas. It felt like a ski area run by skiers, which is not as universal as you may suppose.It also just feels cool to be there. The dairy barn/lodge alone would be an attraction even if you had no interest in anything above it. The fact that the ski area not only still has, but still uses a 1976 Tucker Sno-Cat is one of the raddest things in America (the mountain also has modern groomers). The place bristles with life and energy, a real kids-and-families joint materializing out of the Pennsylvania backroads.The place has some quirks. The steepest part of the main slope is near the bottom – a nightmare for a beginner’s-oriented hill. If you follow the abandoned T-bar all the way down, you find yourself on the far side of the tubing hill, and it’s an adventure in poling, a ride up the J-bar, and a duck-walk back up to the chairlift to find your way home. But it’s all part of the adventure, and all part of the character of this fabulous little ski area. It feels well-loved and well-cared-for, and that is clear the minute you arrive.More Mount Pleasant of EdinboroLift Blog’s inventory of Mount Pleasant’s lift fleetHistoric Mount Pleasant trailmaps on skimap.orgMount Pleasant season passesA trailmap and brochure from Mount Pleasant’s inaugural season, 1970-71:Here’s a photo of the lodge prior to its conversion from a dairy barn:The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Prices increase and a partial paywall goes up on March 14. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

We take a trip to Seven Springs to meet Madeline the Swan who learns that being pretty isn't as important as being kind.

The Blade Dive Episode 22 - We are joined by Joe Genovese. Originally from Northern Virginia, Genovese eventually relocated to Massanutten, Virginia and lived 3 miles from the base of the resort chairlifts. Enter Aaron Hawkins, the creator of the Terrain Park at Massanutten Resort.  From their Genovese's interest in snowboarding began to explode and would eventually take him to the west coast, Superpark and eventually would return to the East Coast to Manage Seven Springs, Pennsylvania's Terrain Park. • Black listed from Massanutten as a kid,  Joe Genovese got an opportunity to join the snowmaking team via the Mountain Manager, Mike Mueller. Operating snowcats is a part of the job, so Genovese was literally thrown into a machine and has memories of his first blade dives. •Joe Genovese has contributed to programs at Mountain High, June Mountain, Mt. Hood, Park City, Wintergreen & Seven Springs. Genovese will attest to the fact that creating an opportunity comes from developing a solid foundation for the skill sets that you're passionate about. Episode 22 is packed full of guest questions from previous guests, past & current snow industry contributors & 7th grade math teachers. Joe loves to laugh and that's evident from our conversation. This carries over into his work philosophy of not taking things too seriously. We discuss what accessible snowboarding for future guests looks like, we talk about employee turnover and employee motivation beyond paychecks. We cover many memorable moments within Joe's career including advice from Jeff Flood. Enjoy...  and if you're in the machine, go ahead and TURN THE VOLUME UP!Follow us on:https://www.instagram.com/thebladedive/https://www.facebook.com/thebladedive

Last weekend I drove up to Seven Springs, PA to check out the Total Archery Challenge. I got to meet some super cool characters in the industry and brought my mobile podcasting rig. This bonus episode is a mash up some of the brief conversations I had with a few of the folks at the event, including Beau Martonik from East Meets West Hunt, Tyr from Black Rifle Coffee and Sean Degray, the owner of Total Archery Challenge, just to name a few. See below if you want to check any of these great companies out! High quality technical hunting clothing, 100% sourced and made in USA www.forloh.com @forloh_official @travishough_ @maranda.hough"The Carbon Arrow Experts," Victory Archery www.victoryarchery.com @victory_archeryEast Meets West, @eastmeetswesthunt @beau.martonik www.eastmeetswesthunt.com"Grab Your Bow and Go," Bow Spider @bowspider www.bowspider.com JAKT Gear @jakt.gear www.jaktgear.comTethrd Nation Tree Saddles and more @Tethrdnation www.tethrdnation.com Black Rifle Coffee, Amazing veteran owned and operated coffee company @blackriflecoffee www.blackriflecoffee.com Total Archery Challenge www.totalarcherychallenge.com @totalarcherychallenge

“For The Love Of The Game”  - The Blade Dive Podcast, Episode 11 we are joined by Jeremy Cooper.  A giant in the snow industry, Cooper has always been passionate about progression. Whether it's people, Terrain Parks or his own life... the current local to Utah from Lovettesville, Virginia is not afraid to step outside of the box in order to advance programs and brands that he has led such as June Mountain Terrain Parks, I Ride Park City, Snowbasin Terrain Parks and Boyne Resorts. Growing up, taking childhood family ski trips to places like Seven Springs, Pennsylvania or Snowshoe, West Virginia, Jeremy Cooper was seeing first hand just how captivating the mountains can be. Off the snow, Coopers passion for Baseball developed, right along side an interest in skiing.  Coopers weekend warrior vibe for skiing continued at White Tail Resort, Pennsylvania, during High School, and from there the passion for skiing only grew . As a last minute adventure across country, in 1998, Cooper applied  for a job as an Alpine Groomer with Vail, Colorado and was hired as a rookie operator. Not totally in love with the job, but absolutely hooked on operating heavy equipment, Cooper moved back to Virginia that Spring, to run dump trucks and rock crusher units. Fast forward to 2002  and a Marketing / Print Ad for Mammoth Mountain, California.... this sparks for Jeremy Cooper, his next idea for a trip across country with his brother, mapping out not only the road, but housing and a job. Cooper's season at Vail helped him land an opportunity  grooming at Mammoth Mountain, under Clifford Mann and Oren Tanzer as a co-managed, Snow Surfaces Department. During Cooper's time at Mammoth,  he contributed to projects like Superpark and the Orage Masters, amongst big name operators such as Peter Colombo, Joe Genovese & Mike Gerstner. Cooper went on to spend time operating at Falls Creek, Australia, and while down under, would help build the then signature event in the country, Style Wars. June Mountain, California and then Park City Mountain Resort, Utah would eventually become Terrain Park canvases for Jeremy Cooper, not only for building features, but for the recruitment and development of employees who would go on to pursue passions of their own, within the snow industry. With events such as Women's Superpark, Grenade Games, Holy Bowly and The Launch, as well as managing the Park City All Star team, the caliber of athlete and quality of people around Cooper would eventually help him rebound after his position was made redundant during the Vail acquisition of Park City Mountain Resort. Jeremy Cooper is currently the Vice President of Mountain Sports Development for Boyne Resorts but that heavy hitter title doesn't mean he won't pick up a rake or install snowmaking pipe, in fact it's quite the opposite. Episode 11 is a deep dive into the journey of Coopers awe inspiring career. An incredible storyteller, Cooper discusses his time in Mammoth, living in mountain towns, detailed memories of Australia, his passion for Baseball as well as what it's like to surround yourself with like minded positive people. A believer and straight up advocate for team work, Cooper is currently most excited about mentoring the next generation of operators. Enjoy...  and if you're in the machine, go ahead and TURN THE VOLUME UP!Follow us on:https://www.instagram.com/thebladedive/https://www.facebook.com/thebladedive