Podcasts about Stevens Pass

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

Christian Historical Fiction Talk is listener supported. When you buy things through this site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Become a patron and enjoy special perks and bonus content.Lauralee Bliss returns to the podcast this week to discuss her latest release, When the Avalanche Roared. We talk about the history behind this fascinating slice of history, why it contains the theme of bullying, and what hikes she has planned for the future. Patrons get to hear about her garden and her plans for it this year.When the Avalanche Roared  by Lauralee BlissThe Day Hope Seemed Swept Away Enjoy a series of 6 exciting novels featuring historic disasters that transformed landscapes and multiple lives. Whether by nature or by man, these disasters changed history and were a day to be remembered. Lillian Hartwick has been in the small railroad town of Wellington, Washington, caring for her cousin and assisting the postmaster when February snows bring all train traffic to a halt. Slow-witted but kind Griffin Jones, who works odd jobs for the railway while enduring taunts from other workers, has tried his best to gain Lillian's interest, but she is engaged and waiting her fiancé's arrival from California. Predawn thunderstorms on Tuesday, March 1, 1910, trigger a devastating avalanche, sweeping two trains down Stevens Pass. Lillian and Griffin work together to help survivors, including Griffin's tormentors. In the midst of the catastrophe their feelings for each other grow. But is it enough when Lillian's fiancé finally arrives in the spring, ready to claim her as his own?Get your copy of When the Avalanche Roared.The rest of the Day to Remember series:Book One: When the Waters Came by Candice Sue PattersonBook Two: When the Flames Ravaged by Rhonda DragomirBook Three: When Hope Sank by Denise WeimerBook Four: When the Mountain Crumbled by Angela K. CouchBook Six: When the Sky Burned by Liz TolsmaMeet Lauralee:Lauralee Bliss is a published author of over thirty romance novels and novellas, both historical and contemporary. Lauralee's prayer is that readers will come away with both an entertaining story and a lesson that speaks to the heart and soul. When she is not writing, Lauralee is an avid adventurer in the great outdoors where she has logged over 10,000 miles of hiking and enjoys speaking and writing about her hiking adventures at Blissful Hiking Adventures.

Send us a textSki News & Updates:Ski Sunday: While it's beloved by hardcore fans, they discuss how it could appeal to wider audiences and promote skiing in general.Ski centers like Ski-Allenheads in Northumberland and Yad Moss in Cumbria are seeing great snow conditions, while Snowdonia has received deep powder.L2A (Les 2 Alpes): €145 million being invested into improvements, including a new gondola and updates to the glacier and beginner areas. A drone show is planned for the new Jandri 3S gondola inauguration on January 17.Top Destinations for Snow & Skiing:Austria: Fresh snow and perfect conditions in Skiwelt, Saalbach Hinterglemm, and Arlberg France: Resorts like Portes du Soleil and 3 Valleys have recoveredItaly: Fresh snow at Madonna di Campiglio and Livigno, with most resorts now 90% open.Switzerland: Verbier and Zermatt boast solid snow, but high winds and rain at lower altitudes challenge conditions at times.Pyrenees: Fresh snow improves conditions in Andorra, St Lary, and Baqueira Beret.Scandinavia: Cold temperatures and heavy snowfall in Norway, with top resorts like Hemsedal and Trysil offering great powder.Eastern Europe: Bansko (Bulgaria) and Špindlerův Mlýn (Czechia) are seeing good snow conditions and well-maintained slopes.Scotland: Snowmaking efforts are keeping resorts like Cairngorm and Glencoe open despite mild weather earlier in the season.Canada: Western resorts like Lake Louise and Whistler Blackcomb are thriving with excellent snow coverage.USA: The Pacific Northwest (e.g., Crystal Mountain, Stevens Pass) is experiencing deep powder, while the Rockies and Eastern US are seeing fresh snow.Ski Gear Guide & Competition Alert:Win a GoPro HERO Speciality Accessory Bundle.  To enter, leave a podcast review!Rob and Dom discuss all-mountain ski gear.Men's All-Mountain Skis:Black Crows Camox: Versatile, playful, and responsive at speed, perfect for both groomed runs and off-piste adventures.Salomon QST 92: Lightweight, responsive freeride ski, ideal for side-country exploration and carving.Rossignol Arcade 88: Expert-level ski offering a balance of stability and responsiveness, with Line Control Technology for smooth control.Women's All-Mountain Skis:Line Pandora 85: Lightweight, stable, and great for hardpack conditions, perfect for piste skiers who occasionally venture off-piste.Volkl Blaze 86: Fast and responsive, designed for sporty skiers who enjoy off-piste skiing.Destination of the Week: La Plagne with Mountain HeavenLa Plagne celebrates Mountain Heaven's 21st Anniversary, highlighting their exclusive focus on La Plagne for catered chalets and self-catered apartments.Located in the Paradiski area, La Plagne is a favorite for families and seasoned skiers, offering a vast network of slopes across 11 villages.Mountain Heaven stands out for its personalized service and commitmenIn the meantime Enjoy the mountains :) And Please do leave a review as it's the only way other like minded travellers get to find us! And don't forget to check us out on the following channels inthesnow.cominstagram.com/inthesnowTikTok@inthesnowmag youtube.com/inthesnowmagfacebook.com/inthesnowTo contact us with your suggestions for further episodes at dom@InTheSnow.com / robert@ski-press.com

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

Join host Jeremiah Byron from Bigfoot Society as he interviews John, a BFRO investigator from Washington state. John shares thrilling first-hand accounts of Bigfoot encounters during BFRO expeditions in areas like Mount Rainier, the Mountain Loop Highway, Stevens Pass, and various sites in the Cascades. From mysterious footsteps and eerie nighttime visits to sightings of glowing eyes, this episode delves into fascinating and chilling experiences in Washington's dense forests and rugged landscapes. Whether it's the Olympic Peninsula or secluded logging roads, John's stories highlight the enigmatic presence of Bigfoot and provide an unforgettable glimpse into the unknown.

"We're excited to sit down with Dustin to discuss his upcoming vendor participation at this year's Northwest Mountain Shoots. Plus, we'll delve into his upcoming giveaway and get a firsthand look at the latest products from Squatch Juice and Rec Pack. Don't miss out on the upcoming Stevens Pass shoot – we'll see you there!"https://www.squatchnut.com/products/squatchjuicehttps://www.recpak.co/https://www.phelpsgamecalls.com/ use code: ridgeline10 for 10% offhttps://www.crazyelkcompany.com/ use code: ridgeline20 for 20% offhttps://ghostscream.com/ use code: ghost20 for 20% offhttps://www.theduckcamp.net/ Book your waterfowl hunts now tell them Ridgeline Hunting sent you.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ridgeline-hunting-podcast--5476683/support.

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

PNSAA sits down with Vince Arthur, whose inspiring journey from the Marine Corps to the ski industry showcases the unique parallels between military service and ski area operations. Vince shares his story, from enlisting in the United States Marine Corps to finding his passion in the ski industry as a ski patroller and eventually leading mountain operations at Stevens Pass, WA Learn some components of the WWII 10th Mountain Division and its foundational impact on the US ski industry. Vince and PNSAA president Jordan Elliott explore the gap between the military and the ski industry workforce, discussing the untapped potential of veterans transitioning into ski area careers. Learn practical steps to establish a recruitment pipeline, leveraging local military units and the unique skill sets veterans bring. This episode is packed with insights on leadership, career transitions, and the importance of a healthy culture in ski resorts. Whether you're a ski industry professional or a veteran, this conversation offers valuable perspectives and inspiration. Keywords: Military to Ski Industry, Veteran Recruitment, 10th Mountain Division, Ski Area Operations, Leadership, Career Transition, Ski Patroller, Stevens Pass.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on May 3. It dropped for free subscribers on May 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 to the free tier below:WhoJosh Jorgensen, CEO of Mission Ridge, Washington and Blacktail Mountain, MontanaRecorded onApril 15, 2024About Mission RidgeClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Larry ScrivanichLocated in: Wenatchee, WashingtonYear founded: 1966Pass affiliations:* Indy Pass – 2 days with holiday and weekend blackouts (TBD for 2024-25 ski season)* Indy+ Pass – 2 days with no blackouts* Powder Alliance – 3 days with holiday and Saturday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Badger Mountain (:51), Leavenworth Ski Hill (:53) – travel times may vary considerably given weather conditions, time of day, and time of year.Base elevation: 4,570 feetSummit elevation: 6,820 feetVertical drop: 2,250 feetSkiable Acres: 2,000Average annual snowfall: 200 inchesTrail count: 70+ (10% easiest, 60% more difficult, 30% most difficult)Lift count: 7 (1 high-speed quad, 3 doubles, 2 ropetows, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Mission Ridge's lift fleet)View historic Mission Ridge trailmaps on skimap.org.About BlacktailClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Larry ScrivanichLocated in: Lakeside, MontanaYear founded: 1998Pass affiliations:* Indy Pass – 2 days with holiday and weekend blackouts (TBD for 2024-25 ski season)* Indy+ Pass – 2 days with no blackouts* Powder Alliance – 3 days with holiday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Whitefish (1:18) - travel times may vary considerably given weather conditions, time of day, and time of year.Base elevation: 5,236 feetSummit elevation: 6,780 feetVertical drop: 1,544 feetSkiable Acres: 1,000+Average annual snowfall: 250 inchesTrail count: (15% easier, 65% more difficult, 20% most difficult)Lift count: 4 (1 triple, 2 doubles, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Blacktail's lift fleet)View historic Blacktail trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himSo much of Pacific Northwest skiing's business model amounts to wait-and-pray, hoping that, sometime in November-December, the heaping snowfalls that have spiraled in off the ocean for millennia do so again. It's one of the few regions in modern commercial skiing, anywhere in the world, where the snow is reliable enough and voluminous enough that this good-ole-boy strategy still works: 460 inches per year at Stevens Pass; 428 at Summit at Snoqualmie; 466 at Crystal; 400 at White Pass; a disgusting 701 at Baker. It's no wonder that most of these ski areas have either no snowguns, or so few that a motivated scrapper could toss the whole collection in the back of a single U-Haul.But Mission Ridge possesses no such natural gifts. The place is snowy enough – 200 inches in an average winter – that it doesn't seem ridiculous that someone thought to run lifts up the mountain. But by Washington State standards, the place is practically Palm Beach. That means the owners have had to work a lot harder, and in a far more deliberate way than their competitors, to deliver a consistent snowsportskiing experience since the bump opened in 1966.Which is a long way of saying that Mission Ridge probably has more snowmaking than the rest of Washington's ski areas combined. Which, often, is barely enough to hang at the party. This year, however, as most Washington ski areas spent half the winter thinking “Gee, maybe we ought to have more than zero snowguns,” Mission was clocking its third-best skier numbers ever.The Pacific Northwest, as a whole, finished the season fairly strong. The snow showed up, as it always does. A bunch of traditional late operators – Crystal, Meadows, Bachelor, Timberline – remain open as of early May. But, whether driven by climate change, rising consumer expectations, or a need to offer more consistent schedules to seasonal employees, the region is probably going to have to build out a mechanical complement to its abundant natural snows at some point. From a regulatory point of view, this won't be so easy in a region where people worry themselves into a coma about the catastrophic damage that umbrellas inflict upon raindrops. But Mission Ridge, standing above Wenatchee for decades as a place of recreation and employment, proves that using resources to enable recreation is not incompatible with preserving them.That's going to be a useful example to have around.What we talked aboutA lousy start to winter; a top three year for Mission anyway; snowmaking in Washington; Blacktail's worst snowfall season ever and the potential to add snowmaking to the ski area; was this crappy winter an anomaly or a harbinger?; how Blacktail's “long history of struggle” echoes the history of Mission Ridge; what could Blacktail become?; Blacktail's access road; how Blacktail rose on Forest Service land in the 1990s; Blacktail expansion potential; assessing Blacktail's lift fleet; could the company purchase more ski areas?; the evolution of Summit at Snoqualmie; Mission Ridge's large and transformative proposed expansion; why the expansion probably needs to come before chairlift upgrades; Fantasy Lift Upgrade; and why Mission Ridge replaced a used detachable quad with another used detachable quad.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewWashington skiing is endangered by a pretty basic problem: more people in this ever-richer, ever more-populous state want to ski than there are ski areas for them to visit. Building new ski areas is impossible – you'd have better luck flying an American flag from the roof of the Kremlin than introducing a new mountain to Washington State. That shortage is compounded by the lack of slopeside development, which compels every skier to drive to the hill every day that they want to ski. This circumstance reflects a false commitment to environmental preservation, which mistakes a build-nothing philosophy for watching over Mother Earth, an outmoded way of thinking that fails to appreciate the impacts of sprawl and car culture on the larger natural ecosystem.Which is where Mission Ridge, with its large proposed ski-and-stay expansion, is potentially so important. If Mission Ridge can navigate the bureaucratic obstacle course that's been dropped in its path, it could build the first substantial slopeside village in the Pacific Northwest. That could be huge. See, it would say, you can have measured development in the mountains without drowning all the grizzly bears. And since not everyone would have to drive up the mountain every day anymore, it would probably actually reduce traffic overall. The squirrels win and so do the skiers. Or something like that.And then we have Blacktail. Three-ish years ago, Mission Ridge purchased this little-known Montana bump, one of the West's few upside-down ski areas, an unlikely late addition to the Forest Service ski area network seated south of Whitefish Mountain and Glacier National Park. I was surprised when Mission bought it. I think everyone else was too. Mission Ridge is a fine ski area, and one with multi-mountain roots – it was once part of the same parent company that owned Schweitzer (now the property of Alterra) – but it's not exactly Telluride. How did a regional bump that was still running three Riblet doubles from the ‘60s and ‘70s afford another ski area two states away? And why would they want it? And what were they going to do with it?All of which I discuss, sort of, with Jorgensen. Mission and Blacktail are hardly the strangest duo in American skiing. They make more sense, as a unit, than jointly owned Red Lodge, Montana and Homewood, California. But they're also not as logical as New York's Labrador and Song, Pennsylvania's Camelback and Blue, or Massachusett's Berkshire East and Catamount, each of which sits within easy driving distance of its sister resort. So how do they fit together? Maybe they don't need to.Questions I wish I'd askedThere's a pretty cool story about a military bomber crashing into the mountain (and some associated relics) that I would have liked to have gotten into. I'd also have liked to talk a bit more about Wenatchee, which Mission's website calls “Washington's only true ski town.” I also intended to get a bit more into the particulars of the expansion, including the proposed terrain and lifts, and what sort of shape the bedbase would take. And I didn't really ask, as I normally do, about the Indy Pass and the reciprocal season pass relationship between the two ski areas.What I got wrongI said that Mission Ridge's first high-speed quad, Liberator Express, came used from Crystal Mountain. The lift actually came used from Winter Park. Jorgensen corrected that fact in the podcast. My mis-statement was the result of crossing my wires while prepping for this interview – the Crystal chairlift at Blacktail moved to Montana from Crystal Mountain, Washington. In the moment, I mixed up the mountains' lift fleets.Why you should ski Mission RidgeMission Ridge holds echoes of Arapahoe Basin's East Wall or pre-tram Big Sky: so much damn terrain, just a bit too far above the lifts for most of us to bother with. That, along with the relatively low snowfall and Smithsonian lift fleet, are the main knocks on the place (depending, of course, upon your willingness to hike and love of vintage machinery).But, on the whole, this is a good, big ski area that, because of its snowmaking infrastructure, is one of the most reliable operators for several hundred miles in any direction. The intermediate masses will find a huge, approachable footprint. Beginners will find their own dedicated lift. Better skiers, once they wear out the blacks off lifts 2 and 4, can hike the ridge for basically endless lines. And if you miss daylight, Mission hosts some of the longest top-to-bottom night-skiing runs in America, spanning the resort's entire 2,250 vertical feet (Keystone's Dercum mountain rises approximately 2,300 vertical feet).If Mission can pull off this expansion, it could ignite a financial ripple effect that would transform the resort quickly: on-site housing and expanded beginner terrain could bring more people (especially families), which would bring more revenue, which would funnel enough cash in to finally upgrade those old Riblets and, maybe, string the long-planned Lift 5 to the high saddle. That would be amazing. But it would also transform Mission into something different than what it is today. Go see it now, so you can appreciate whatever it becomes.Why you should ski BlacktailBlacktail's original mission, in the words of founder Steve Spencer, was to be the affordable locals' bump, a downhome alternative to ever-more-expensive Whitefish, a bit more than an hour up the road. That was in 1998, pre-Epic, pre-Ikon, pre-triple-digit single-day lift tickets. Fast forward to 2024, and Whitefish is considered a big-mountain outlier, a monster that's avoided every pass coalition and offers perhaps the most affordable lift ticket of any large, modern ski area in America (its top 2023-24 lift ticket price was $97).That has certainly complicated Blacktail's market positioning. It can't play Smugglers' Notch ($106 top lift ticket price) to neighboring Stowe ($220-ish). And while Blacktail's lift tickets and season passes ($450 early-bird for the 2024-25 ski season), are set at a discount to Whitefish's, the larger mountain's season pass goes for just $749, a bargain for a 3,000-acre sprawl served by four high-speed lifts.So Blacktail has to do what any ski area that's orbiting a bigger, taller, snowier competitor with more and better terrain does: be something else. There will always be a market for small and local skiing, just like there will always be a market for diners and bars with pool tables and dartboards hanging from the walls.That appeal is easy enough for locals to understand. For frequent, hassle-free skiing, small is usually better than big. It's more complicated to pitch a top-of-the-mountain parking lot to you, a probably not-local, who, if you haul yourself all the way to Montana, is probably going to want the fireworks show. But one cool thing about lingering in the small and foreign is that the experience unites the oft-opposed-in-skiing forces of novelty and calm. Typically, our ski travels involve the raucous and the loud and the fast and the enormous. But there is something utterly inspiring about setting yourself down on an unfamiliar but almost empty mountain, smaller than Mt. Megaphone but not necessarily small at all, and just setting yourself free to explore. Whatever Blacktail doesn't give you, it will at least give you that.Podcast NotesOn Mission Ridge's proposed expansionWhile we discuss the mountain's proposed expansion in a general way, we don't go deep into specifics of lifts and trails. This map gives the best perspective on how the expansion would blow Mission Ridge out into a major ski area - the key here is less the ski expansion itself than the housing that would attend it:Here's an overhead view:Video overviews:The project, like most ski area expansions in U.S. America, has taken about 700 years longer than it should have. The local radio station published this update in October:Progress is being made with the long-planned expansion of Mission Ridge Ski & Board Resort.Chelan County is working with the resort on an Environmental Impact Statement.County Natural Resources Director Mike Kaputa says it'll be ready in the next eight months or so."We are getting closer and closer to having a draft Environmental Impact Statement and I think that's probably, I hate to put a month out there, but I think it's probably looking like May when we'll have a draft that goes out for public comment."The expansion plan for Mission Ridge has been in the works since 2014, and the resort brought a lawsuit against the county in 2021 over delays in the process.The lawsuit was dismissed earlier this year.Kaputa gave an update on progress with the Mission Ridge expansion before county commissioners Monday, where he said they're trying to get the scope of the Environmental Impact Statement right."You want to be as thorough as possible," Kaputa said. "You don't want to overdo it. You want to anticipate comments. I'm sure we'll get lots of comments when it comes out."In 2014, Larry Scrivanich, owner of Mission Ridge, purchased approximately 779 acres of private land adjacent to the current Mission Ridge Ski and Board Resort. Since then, Mission Ridge has been forging ahead with plans for expansion.The expansion plans call for onsite lodging and accommodations, which Mission Ridge calls a game changer, which would differentiate the resort from others in the Northwest.I'm all about process, due diligence, and checks-and-balances, but it's possible we've overcorrected here.On snowfall totals throughout WashingtonMission gets plenty of snow, but it's practically barren compared to the rest of Washington's large ski areas:On the founding of BlacktailBlacktail is an outlier in U.S. skiing in that it opened in 1998 on Forest Service land – decades after similarly leased ski areas debuted. Daily Inter Lake summarizes the unusual circumstances behind this late arrival:Steve Spencer had been skiing and working at Big Mountain [now Whitefish] for many years, starting with ski patrol and eventually rising to mountain manager, when he noticed fewer and fewer locals on the hill.With 14 years as manager of Big Mountain under his belt, Spencer sought to create an alternative to the famous resort that was affordable and accessible for locals. He got together with several business partners and looked at mountains that they thought would fit the bill.They considered sites in the Swan Range and Lolo Peak, located in the Bitterroot Range west of Missoula, but they knew the odds of getting a Forest Service permit to build a ski area there were slim to none.They had their eyes on a site west of Flathead Lake, however, that seemed to check all the right boxes. The mountain they focused on was entirely surrounded by private land, and there were no endangered species in the area that needed protection from development.Spencer consulted with local environmental groups before he'd spent even “two nickels” on the proposal. He knew that without their support, the project was dead on arrival.That mountain was known as Blacktail, and when the Forest Service OK'd ski operations there, it was the first ski area created on public land since 1978, when Beaver Creek Resort was given permission to use National Forest land in Colorado.Blacktail Mountain Ski Area celebrates its 25th anniversary next year, it is still the most recent in the country to be approved through that process.On Glacier National Park and Flathead LakeEven if you've never heard of Blacktail, it's stuffed into a dense neighborhood of outdoor legends in northern Montana, including Glacier National Park and Whitefish ski area:On WhitefishWith 3,000 skiable acres, a 2,353-foot vertical drop, and four high-speed lifts, Whitefish, just up the road from Blacktail, looms enormously over the smaller mountain's potential:But while Whitefish presents as an Epkon titan, it acts more like a backwater, with peak-day lift tickets still hanging out below the $100 mark, and no megapass membership on its marquee. I explored this unusual positioning with the mountain's president, Nick Polumbus, on the podcast last year (and also here).On “Big Mountain”For eons, Whitefish was known as “Big Mountain,” a name they ditched in 2007 because, as president and CEO at the time Fred Jones explained, the ski area was “often underestimated and misunderstood” with its “highly generic” name.On “upside-down” ski areasUpside-down ski areas are fairly common in the United States, but they're novel enough that most people feel compelled to explain what they mean when they bring one up: a ski area with the main lodge and parking at the top, rather than the bottom, of the hill.These sorts of ski areas are fairly common in the Midwest and proliferate in the Mid-Atlantic, but are rare out west. An incomplete list includes Wintergreen, Virginia; Snowshoe, West Virginia; Laurel, Blue Knob, Jack Frost, and Ski Big Bear, Pennsylvania; Otsego, Treetops, and the Jackson Creek Summit side of Snowriver, Michigan; and Spirit Mountain and Afton Alps, Minnesota. A few of these ski areas also maintain lower-level parking lots. Shawnee Mountain, Pennsylvania, debuted as an upside-down ski area, but, through a tremendous engineering effort, reversed that in the 1970s – a project that CEO Nick Fredericks detailed for us in a 2021 Storm Skiing Podcast.On LIDAR mappingJorgensen mentions LIDAR mapping of Mission Ridge's potential expansion. If you're unfamiliar with this technology, it's capable of giving astonishing insights into the past:On Blacktail's chairliftsAll three of Blacktail's chairlifts came used to the ski area for its 1998 opening. The Crystal double is from Crystal Mountain, Washington; the Olympic triple is from Canada Olympic Park in Alberta; and the Thunderhead double migrated from Steamboat, Colorado.On Riblet chairliftsFor decades, the Riblet double has been the workhorse of Pacific Northwest skiing. Simple, beautiful, reliable, and inexpensive, dozens of these machines still crank up the region's hills. But the company dissolved more than two decades ago, and its lifts are slowly retiring. Mission Ridge retains three (chairs 1, 3, and 4, which date, respectively, to 1966, 1967, and 1971), and has stated its intent to replace them all, whenever funds are available to do so.On the history of Summit at SnoqualmieThe Summit at Snoqualmie, where Jorgensen began his career, remains one of America's most confusing ski areas: the name is convoluted and long, and the campus sprawls over four once-separate ski areas, one of which sits across an interstate with no ski connection to the others. There's no easy way to understand that Alpental – one of Washington's best ski areas – is part of, but separate from, the Summit at Snoqualmie complex, and each of the three Summit areas – East, Central, and West - maintains a separate trailmap on the website, in spite of the fact that the three are interconnected by ski trails. It's all just very confusing. The ski area's website maintains a page outlining how these four ski areas became one ski area that is still really four ski areas. This 1998 trailmap gives the best perspective on where the various ski nodes sit in relation to one another:Because someone always gets mad about everything, some of you were probably all pissed off that I referred to the 1990s version of Summit at Snoqualmie as a “primitive” ski area, but the map above demonstrates why: 17 of 24 chairlifts were Riblet doubles; nine ropetows supplemented this system, and the mountain had no snowmaking (it still doesn't). Call it “retro” or whatever you want, but the place was not exactly Beaver Creek.On Vail and Alterra's Washington timelineI mentioned Washington's entrance onto the national ski scene over the past decade. What I meant by that was the addition of Summit and Crystal onto the Ikon Pass for the 2018-19 ski season, and Stevens Pass onto the Epic Pass the following winter. But Washington skiing – and Mt. Baker in particular – has always been a staple in the Temple of the Brobots, and Boyne Resorts, pre-Ikon, owned Crystal from 1997 to 2017.On Anthony LakesJorgensen mentioned that he applied for the general manager position at Anthony Lakes, a little-known 900-footer lodged in the western Oregon hinterlands. One triple chair serves the entire ski area:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 33/100 in 2024, and number 533 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 18. It dropped for free subscribers on April 25. 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:WhoPete Korfiatis, General Manager of Bluewood, WashingtonRecorded onApril 4, 2024About BluewoodClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Local investorsLocated in: Dayton, WashingtonYear founded: 1980Pass affiliations:* Indy Pass and Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Cottonwood Butte, Idaho, 3 hours eastBase elevation: 4,545 feetSummit elevation: 5,670 feetVertical drop: 1,125 feetSkiable Acres: 355Average annual snowfall: 300 inchesTrail count: 24 (30% difficult, 45% intermediate, 25% easy)Lift count: 4 (2 triples, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Bluewood's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himSomeday, if it's not too late, I'm going to track down the old-timers who snowshoed into the wilderness and figured this all out. The American West is filled with crazy little snow pockets, lesser-known mountain ranges spiraling off the vast plateaus. Much of this land falls under the purview of the United States Forest Service. In the decades immediately before and after World War II, the agency established most of our large western ski areas within its 193 million-acre kingdom. That's a lot of land – approximately the size of Texas – and it's not all snowy. Where there is snow, there's not always roads, nor even the realistic possibility of plowing one through. Where there are roads, there aren't always good exposures or fall lines for skiing.So our ski areas ended up where they are because, mostly, those are the best places nature gave us for skiing. Obviously it snows like hell in the Wasatch and the Tetons and the Sierra Nevadas. Anyone with a covered wagon could have told you that. But the Forest Service's map of its leased ski areas is dotted with strange little outposts popping out of what most of us assume to be The Flats:What to make of Brian Head, floating alone in southern Utah? Or Mt. Lemmon, rising over Tucson? Or Ski Apache and Cloudcroft, sunk near the bottom of New Mexico? Or the ski areas bunched and floating over Los Angeles? Or Antelope Butte, hanging out in the Wyoming Bighorns?Somewhere, in some government filing cabinet 34 floors deep in a Washington, D.C. bunker, are hand-annotated topo maps and notebooks left behind by the bureaucrat-explorers who determined that these map dots were the very best for snowsportskiing. And somewhere, buried where I'll probably never find it, is the story of Bluewood.It's one of our more improbable ski centers. Not because it shouldn't be there, but because most of us can't imagine how it could be. Most Washington and Oregon ski areas line up along the Cascades, stacked south to north along the states' western thirds. The snow smashes into these peaks and then stops. Anyone who's driven east over the passes has encountered the Big Brown Endless on the other side. It's surreal, how fast the high alpine falls away.But as Interstate 90 arcs northeast through this rolling country and toward Spokane, it routes most travelers away from the fecund Umatilla National Forest, one of those unexpected islands of peaks and green floating above our American deserts. Here, in this wilderness just to the west of Walla Walla but far from just about everything else, 300 inches of snow stack up in an average winter. And this is where you will find Bluewood.The Umatilla sprawls over two states and 1.4 million acres, and is home to three ski areas (Anthony Lakes and inactive Spouts Springs, both in Oregon, are the other two). Three map dots in the wilderness, random-looking from above, all the final product of years in the field, of hardy folks pushing ever-deeper into the woods to find The Spot. This is the story of one of them.What we talked aboutGrowing up Wenatchee; “the mountains are an addiction”; THE MACHINE at Mammoth; Back-In-The-Day Syndrome; Mammoth's outsized influence on Alterra Mountain Company; how the Ikon Pass strangely benefited Mammoth; the accidental GM; off the grid; Bluewood and southeast Washington's unique little weather pattern; “everybody that knows Bluewood comes for the trees”; why the Forest Service is selling a bunch of Bluewood's trees; massive expansion potential; when your snowline is 50 feet above your base area and you have no snowmaking; the winter with no snow; Skyline Basin and dreams that never happened; ambitious lift-upgrade plans; summer and “trying to eliminate the six-month revenue drought”; “if you take the North American lifts right now, they're only coming out because they're pieces of crap”; potential future chairlifts; Bluewood's owners and their long-term vision; mountaintop lodging potential; whether night skiing could ever happen; power by biomass; the Indy Pass; Southeast Washington ski culture; free buddy tickets with your season pass; Bluewood's season pass reciprocal program; why Bluewood's lift ticket prices are so low; and the absolute killer expense for small ski areas.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewOne of the more useful habits I've developed is attending offseason media events and consumer ski shows, where ski area managers and marketers tend to congregate. The regional gatherings, where mountain booths are stacked side by side like boxes in a cereal aisle, are particularly useful, allowing me to connect with reps from a dozen or more resorts in an hour. Such was the setup at the Snowvana “stoke event” in Portland, Oregon last November, which I attended both to host a panel of ski area general managers and to lay deeper roots in the rabid Pacific Northwest.Two podcasts emerged directly from connections I made that day: my February conversation with Red Mountain CEO Howard Katkov, and this one, with Korfiatis.So that's the easy answer: a lot of these podcasts happen simply because I was finally able to connect with whomever runs the mountain. But there's a certain amount of serendipity at work as well: Bluewood, right now, is on the move.This is a ski area that is slowly emerging from the obscurity I caged it into above. It has big-picture owners, an energetic general manager, a growing nearby population, and megapass membership. True, it also has no snowmaking and outdated, slow chairlifts. But the big, established ski centers to its west are overwhelmed, exhausted, and, with a few exceptions, probably un-expandable. Bluewood could be a big-deal alternative to this mess if they can do what Korfiatis says they want to do.There are a lot of millions standing between vision and reality here. But sometimes crazy s**t happens. And if it goes down at Bluewood, I want to make sure we're sitting right there watching it happen.What I got wrongI said that Mammoth was an independent mountain when Korfiatis arrived there in 2000. This is incorrect. Intrawest owned a majority stake in Mammoth from 1997 to 2006.Why you should ski BluewoodUsually, when casual skiers ask me where they ought to vacation, their wishlist includes someplace that's relatively easy to get to, where they can stay slopeside, where the snow will probably be good [whenever their kids' spring break is], and that is a member of [whatever version of the Epic or Ikon pass they purchased]. I give them a list of places that would not be a surprising list of places to anyone reading this newsletter, always with this qualifier: expect company.I like big destination ski areas. Obviously. I can navigate or navigate around the crowds. And I understand that 24-chairlifts-and-a-sushi-bar is exactly what your contemporary megapass patron is seeking. But if someone were to flip the question around and ask me which ski area characteristics were likely to give them the best ski experience, I'd have a very different answer for them.I'd tell them to seek out a place that's hard to get to, where you find a motel 40 miles away and drive up in the morning. Make it a weekday morning, as far from school breaks as possible. And the further you get from Epkon branding, the farther you'll be from anything resembling a liftline. That's the idea with Bluewood.“Yeah but it's only 1,100 vertical feet.”Yeah but trust me that's plenty when most of your runs are off-piste and you can ski all day without stopping except to ride the lift.“But no one's ever heard of it and they won't be impressed with my Instastory.”You'll live.“But it's not on my Ultimo-Plus Pass.”Lift tickets are like $50. Or $66 on weekends. And it's on the Indy Pass.“But it's such a long drive.”No it isn't. It's just a little bit farther than the busier places that you usually go to. But it's not exactly in Kazakhstan.“Now you're just making things up.”Often, but not that.Podcast NotesOn Bluewood's masterplanHere's the basic map:And the lift inventory wishlist:On Mission Ridge and WenatcheeKorfiatis grew up in Wenatchee, which sits below Mission Ridge. That mountain, coincidentally, is the subject of an already-recorded and soon-to-be-released podcast, but here's the trailmap for this surprisingly large mountain in case you're not familiar with it:On Mission Ridge's expansionAgain, I go deep on this with Mission CEO Josh Jorgensen on our upcoming pod, but here's a look at the ski area's big proposed expansion, which Korfiatis and I discuss a bit on the show:And here's an overhead view:On “The Legend of Dave McCoy”The Dave McCoy that Korfiatis refers to in the pod is the founder of Mammoth Mountain, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 104. Here's a primer/tribute video:Rusty Gregory, who ran Mammoth for decades, talked us through McCoy's legacy in a 2021 Storm Skiing Podcast appearance (18:08):On Kim Clark, Bluewood's last GMIn September 2021, Bluewood GM Kim Clark died suddenly on the mountain of a heart attack. From SAM:Longtime industry leader and Bluewood, Wash., general manager Kim Clark died of an apparent heart attack while working on the mountain Tuesday. He was 65. Clark had been the Bluewood GM since 2014.In a statement sharing the news of Clark's death, Bluewood said, “significant rescue efforts were unsuccessful. Kim passed away doing what he loved, with people he loved, on the mountain he loved.”Clark was an influential leader during his career in the mountain resort industry, much of which was spent at resorts in the Pacific Northwest. He is remembered by his peers as a mentor, a teacher, and a leader with a passion for the industry who cared deeply for the teams he led and the resorts he helped to improve.Prior to becoming GM at Bluewood, Clark led Mt. Ashland, Ore., as its general manager from 2005 to 2014.On the Tri-Cities of WashingtonImagine this: I'm 18 years old and some dude on the lift at Copper Mountain asks me where I'm from. I say “Michigan” and he says “where” and I say, “the Tri-Cities area” and he says “what on earth is that?” And I say “Oh you've never heard of the Tri-Cities?” as though he'd just told me he'd never heard of Paris. And he's like “no, have you ever heard of the Quad Cities?” Which apparently are four cities bunched along the Iowa-Illinois border around Interstate 80 and the Mississippi River.It was my first real-time lesson in hyper-regionalism and how oft-repeated information becomes so ingrained that we assume everyone must share it, like the moon or the wind. The Tri-Cities of Michigan are Bay City, Saginaw, and Midland. But no one who doesn't live there knows this or cares, and so after that chairlift conversation, I started saying that I was from “two hours north of Detroit,” which pretty much every American understands.Anyway imagine my surprise to learn that America had room for a second Tri-Cities, this one in Washington. I asked the robots to tell me about it and this is what they said:The Tri-Cities are three closely linked cities (Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland)[2][3] at the confluence of the Yakima, Snake, and Columbia Rivers in the Columbia Basin of Eastern Washington. The cities border one another, making the Tri-Cities seem like one uninterrupted mid-sized city. The three cities function as the center of the Tri-Cities metropolitan area, which consists of Benton and Franklin counties.[4] The Tri-Cities urban area consists of the city of West Richland, the census-designated places (CDP) of West Pasco, Washington and Finley, as well as the CDP of Burbank, despite the latter being located in Walla Walla County.The official 2016 estimate of the Tri-Cities MSA population is 283,869, a more than 12% increase from 2010. 2016 U.S. MSA estimates show the Tri-Cities population as over 300,000. The combined population of the three principal cities themselves was 220,959 at the 2020 census. As of April 1, 2021, the Washington State Office of Financial Management, Forecasting Division estimates the cities as having a combined population of 224,640.[5]And actually, it turns out that there are tri-cities all over the country. So what the hell do I know? When I moved east to New York in 2002, it took me about five years to figure out what the “Tri-State Area” was. For a long time I thought it must be New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. But it is New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, from which many people commute into NYC daily to work.On Scot Schmidt For those of you who don't know who “that guy” Scot Schmidt is:On the Greyhawk lift at Sun ValleyKorfiatis refers to the “Greyhawk lift” at Sun Valley as an example of a retiring high-speed quad that is unlikely to have a useful second life. He was referring to this lift, which from 1988 until last year ran parallel to the monster Challenger lift:Last summer, Sun Valley replaced both lifts with one Challenger six-pack with a mid-station, and built a new high-speed quad called Flying Squirrel (which replaced a shorter double chair of the same name that met death-by-fire in 2014):On the number of Washington ski areasWashington, while home to several legendary ski areas, does not have nearly as many as its growing, active population needs. Of the state's 17 active ski areas, five operate only surface lifts, and I'm not even certain whether one of them – Badger Mountain – operated this past ski season. Sitzmark also failed to spin its lift. There are really only nine volume-capable ski areas in the state: 49 Degrees North, Crystal, Mission Ridge, Baker, Mt. Spokane, Stevens Pass, Summit, Alpental, and White Pass. Here's an inventory: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 2024, and number 532 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 16. It dropped for free subscribers on April 23. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoSteve Paccagnan, President and CEO of Panorama Mountain, British ColumbiaRecorded onMarch 27, 2024About PanoramaClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Panorama Mountain Village, Inc., a group of local investorsLocated in: Panorama, British Columbia, CanadaYear founded: 1962Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts* Ikon Base Pass: 5 days, holiday blackouts* Mountain Collective: 2 days, no blackouts* Lake Louise Pass: view details hereClosest neighboring ski areas: Fairmont Hot Springs (:45), Kimberley (1:43), Kicking Horse (1:54) – travel times will vary considerably depending upon road conditions and time of yearBase elevation: 3,773 feet/1,150 metersSummit elevation: 8,038 feet/2,450 metersVertical drop: 4,265 feet/1,300 metersSkiable Acres: 2,975Average annual snowfall: 204 inches/520 centimetersTrail count: 135 (30% expert, 20% advanced, 35% intermediate, 15% beginner)Lift count: 10 (1 eight-passenger pulse gondola, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 1 platter, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Panorama's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himU.S. America is making a mistake. In skiing, as in so many other arenas, we prioritize status quo protectionism over measured, holistic development that would reorient our built environments around humans, rather than cars, shrinking our overall impact while easing our access to the mountains and permitting more people to enjoy them. Our cluttered and interminable western approach roads, our mountain-town housing shortages, our liftlines backed up to Kansas are all the result of deliberate generational decisions to prioritize cars over transit, open space over dense walkable communities, and blanket wilderness protection over metered development of new public ski areas in regions where the established businesses - and their surrounding infrastructure - are overwhelmed.I write about these things a lot. This pisses some of you off. I'm OK with that. I'm not here to recycle the broken ideas that have made U.S. skiing into the mess that (in some fundamental ways, in certain regions) it is. I'm here to figure out how it can be better. The skiing itself, mind you, tends to be fabulous. It is everything that surrounds the mountains that can spoil the experience: the cost, the hassle, the sprawl. There are better ways to do this, to get people to the mountains and to house them there, both to live and to vacation. We know this because other countries already do a lot of the things that we ought to be doing. And the most culturally similar and geographically cozy one is so close we can touch it.U.S. America and U.S. Americans are ceding North American skiing's future to British Columbia. This is where virtually all of the continent's major resort development has occurred over the past three decades. Why do you suppose so many skiers from Washington State spend so much time at Whistler? Yes, it's the largest resort in North America, with knockout terrain and lots of snow. But Crystal and Stevens Pass and Baker all get plenty of snow and are large enough to give most skiers just about anything they need. What Whistler has that none of them do is an expansive pedestrian base village with an almost infinite number of ski-in, ski-out beds and places to eat, drink, and shop. A dense community in the mountains. That's worth driving four or more hours north for, even if you have to deal with the pain-in-the-ass border slowdowns to get there.This is not an accident, and Whistler is not an outlier. Over the past 30-plus years, the province of British Columbia has deliberately shaped its regulatory environment and developmental policies to encourage and lubricate ski resort evolution and growth. While all-new ski resort developments often stall, one small ski area after another has grown from community bump to major resort over the past several decades. Tiny Mount Mackenzie became titanic Revelstoke, which towers over even mighty Whistler. Backwater Whitetooth blew upward and outward into sprawling, ferocious Kicking Horse. Little Tod Mountain evolved into Sun Peaks, now the second-largest ski area in Canada. While the resort has retained its name over the decades, the transformation of Panorama has been just as thorough and dramatic.Meanwhile, in America, we stagnate. Every proposed terrain expansion or transit alternative or housing development crashes headfirst into a shredder of bureaucratic holdups, lawsuits, and citizen campaigns. There are too many ways to stop things, and too many people whose narrow visions of what the world ought to be blockade the sort of wholesale rethinking of community architecture that would make the mountains more livable and accessible.This has worked for a while. It's still sort of working now. But each year, as the same two companies sell more and more passes to access a relatively stable number of U.S. ski areas, the traffic, liftlines, and cost of visiting these large resorts grows. Locals will find a way, pick their spots. But destination skiers with a menu of big-mountain options will eventually realize that I-70 is not a mandatory obstacle to maneuver on a good ski vacation. They can head north, instead, with the same ski pass they already have, and spend a week at Red or Fernie or Kimberley or Revelstoke or Sun Peaks or Kicking Horse.Or Panorama. Three thousand acres, 4,265 vertical feet, no lines, and no hassle getting there other than summoning the patience to endure long drives down Canadian two-laners. As the U.S. blunders along, Canada kept moving. The story of Panorama shows us how.What we talked aboutA snowmaking blitz; what happened when Panorama joined the Ikon Pass; how Covid savaged the international skier game; Panorama in the ‘80s; Intrawest arrives; a summit lift at last; village-building; reviving Mt. Baldy, B.C.; Mont Ste. Marie and learning French; why Intrawest sold the ski area; modernizing the lift system; busy busy Copper; leaving for Kicking Horse; Resorts of the Canadian Rockies arrives; who owns Panorama; whether the resort will stay independent; potential lift replacements and terrain expansions; could we ever see a lift in Taynton Bowl?; explaining those big sections of the trailmap that are blocked off with purple borders; and whitebark pine conservation.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIt wouldn't be fair to call Panorama a Powder Highway sleeper. The place seems to be doing fine as a business, with plenty of skier traffic to support continuous expansive infrastructure upgrades. But with lower average annual snowfall totals than Revy and Whitewater and Fernie and Red, Panorama does tend to get fewer shout-outs through the media and social media megaphones. It's Northstar to Palisades Tahoe, Keystone to A-Basin, Park City to the Cottonwoods: the less-snowy, less-intense neighbor that collects families in wholesome Build-A-Bear fashion.But Panorama is wrapping up its second full season on the Ikon Pass, and its second winter since Canada finally unlocked its Covid-era borders. What impact, if any, would those two developments have on Panorama's famously uncrowded slopes? Even if Colorad-Bro would never deign to turn his Subaru north, would Kansas Karl or North Dakota Norman load the kids into the minivan for something farther but less annoying?Not yet, it turns out. Or at least, not in great enough numbers to wreck the place. But there is another angle to the Panorama story that intrigues me. Like Copper Mountain, Mountain Creek, and Whistler, Panorama once belonged to Intrawest. Unlike Winter Park, Steamboat, Stratton, and Snowshoe, they did not remain part of the enterprise long enough to live second lives as part of Alterra Mountain Company. But what if they had? Our big-mountain coalitions have somewhat ossified over these past half-dozen years, so that we think of ski areas as Ikon mountains or Epic mountains or Indy mountains or independent mountains. But these rosters, like the composition of sports teams or, increasingly, leagues, can fluctuate wildly over time. I do wonder how Whistler would look under Alterra and Ikon, or what impact Mountain Creek-as-unlimited-Ikon mountain would have had on the megapass market in New York City? We don't really know. But Panorama, as a onetime Intrawest mountain that rejoined the family through the backdoor with Ikon membership, does give us a sort-of in-between case, a kind of What If? episode of skiing.Which would be a fun thought experiment under any circumstances. But how cool to hear about the whole evolution from a guy who saw it all happen first-hand over the course of four decades? Who saw it from all levels and from all angles, who knew the players and who helped push the boulder uphill himself? That's increasingly rare with big mountains, in this era of executive rotations and promotions, to get access to a top leader in possession of institutional knowledge that he himself helped to draft. It was, I'm happy to say, as good as I'd hoped.What I got wrongI said that Panorama was “one of the closest B.C. ski areas to the United States.” This is not quite right. While the ski area is just 100 or so miles from the international border, more than a dozen ski areas sit closer to the U.S., including majors such as Kimberley, Fernie, Whitewater, and Red Mountain.Why you should ski PanoramaLet's acknowledge, first of all, that Panorama has a few things working against it: it's more than twice as far from Calgary airport – most skiers' likely port of entry – than Banff and its trio of excellent ski areas; it's the least powdery major ski resort on the Powder Highway; and while the skiable acreage and vertical drop are impressive, skiers must ride three lifts and a Snowcat to lap much of the best terrain.But even that extra drive still gets you to the bump in under four hours on good roads – hardly an endurance test. Sure, they get more snow in Utah, but have you ever been in Utah on a powder day? Enjoy that first untracked run, because unless you're a local who knows exactly where to go, it will probably be your only one. And lapping multiple lifts is more of a psychological exercise than a practical one when there are few to no liftlines.And dang the views when you get there:There are plenty of large, under-trafficked ski resorts remaining in the United States. But they tend to be hundreds of miles past the middle of nowhere, with 60-year-old chairlifts and little or no snowmaking, and nowhere to sleep other than the back of your van. In BC, you can find the best of America's Big Empties crossed with the modern lift fleets of the sprawling conglomerate-owned pinball machines. And oh by the way you get a hell of a discount off of already low-seeming (compared to the big-mountain U.S.) prices: an American dollar, as of April 16, was worth $1.38 Canadian.Podcast NotesOn IntrawestPanorama, as a former Intrawest-owned resort, could easily have been part of Alterra Mountain Company right now. Instead, it was one of several ski areas sold off in the years before the legacy company stuffed its remainders into the Anti-Vail:On Mont Ste. MarieMont Ste. Marie is one of approximately 45,000 ski areas in Quebec, and the only one, coincidentally, that I've actually skied. Paccagnan happened to be GM when I skied there, in 2002:On Kicking HorseIt's incredible how many U.S. Americans remain unaware of Kicking Horse, which offers what is probably the most ferocious inbounds ski terrain in North America, 4,314 vertical feet of straight down:Well, almost straight down. The bottom bit is fairly tame. That's because Kicking Horse, like many B.C. ski areas, began as a community bump and exploded skyward with an assist from the province. Here's what the ski area, then known as “Whitetooth,” looked like circa 1994:This sort of transformation happens all the time in British Columbia, and is the result of a deliberate, forward-looking development philosophy that has mostly evaporated in the U.S. American West.On the Powder HighwayPanorama lacks the notoriety of its Powder Highway size-peers, mostly because the terrain is overall a bit milder and the volume of natural snow a bit lower than many of the other ski areas. Here's a basic Powder Highway map:And a statistical breakdown:On the Lake Louise PassI already covered this one in my podcast with Red Mountain CEO Howard Katkov a couple months back:Katkov mentions the “Lake Louise Pass,” which Red participates in, along with Castle Mountain and Panorama. He's referring to the Lake Louise Plus Card, which costs $134 Canadian up front. Skiers then get their first, fourth, and seventh days free, and 20 percent off lift tickets for each additional visit. While these sorts of discount cards have been diminished by Epkon domination, versions of them still provide good value across the continent. The Colorado Gems Card, Smugglers' Notch's Bash Badge, and ORDA's frequent skier cards are all solid options for skiers looking to dodge the megapass circus.On Panorama's masterplan:On Mt. Baldy, B.C.Paccagnan helped revitalize a struggling Mt. Baldy, British Columbia, in the 1990s. Here was the ski area's 1991 footprint:And here's what it looks like today – the ski area joined Indy Pass for the 2023-24 ski season:On Panorama's evolutionPanorama, like many B.C. ski areas, has evolved significantly over the past several decades. Here's what the place looked like in 1990, not long after Paccagnan started and before Intrawest bought the place. A true summit lift was still theoretical, Taynton Bowl remained out of bounds, and the upper-mountain lifts were a mix of double chairs and T-bars:By 1995, just two years after Intrawest had purchased the ski area, the company had installed a summit T-bar and opened huge tracts of advanced terrain off the top of the mountain:The summit T ended up being a temporary solution. By 2005, Intrawest had thoroughly modernized the lift system, with a sequence of high-speed quads out of the base transporting skiers to the fixed-grip Summit Quad. Taynton Bowl became part of the marked and managed terrain:On Whitebark Pine certificationA bit of background on Panorama's certification as a “whitebark pine-friendly ski resort” – from East Kootenay News Online Weekly:The Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada has certified Panorama Mountain Resort as a Whitebark Pine Friendly Ski Area, the first resort in Canada to receive this designation.The certification recognizes the resort's long and continued efforts to support the recovery of whitebark pine within its ski area boundary, a threatened tree species that plays a critical role in the biodiversity of mountain ecosystems. ,,,Found across the subalpine of interior B.C., Alberta and parts of the U.S, this slow growing, five needle pine is an integral part of an ecosystem that many other species depend on for survival. The tree's cones hold some of the most nutritious seeds in the mountains and sustain Grizzly bears and birds, including the Clark's nutcracker which has a unique symbiotic relationship with the tree. The deep and widespread roots of the whitebark pine contribute to the health of watersheds by stabilizing alpine slopes and regulating snowpack run-off.Over the past decade, whitebark pine numbers have fallen dramatically due in large part to a non-native fungal disease known as white pine blister rust that has been infecting and killing the trees at an alarming rate. Since 2012, the whitebark pine has been listed as endangered under the Government of Canada's Species at Risk Act (SARA), and was recently added to the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service's threatened species list.Panorama Mountain Resort has collaborated with the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation of Canada to facilitate restoration projects including cone collection and tree plantings within the resort's ski area.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 31/100 in 2024, and number 531 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

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

On March 1st, 1910, the nation's deadliest avalanche occurred near Stevens Pass, Washington. This Podcast reviews the weather that led up to that disaster and highlights avalanche awareness and safety before heading to the backcountry.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Feb. 9. It dropped for free subscribers on Feb. 16. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoCharles Hlavac, Owner of Teton Pass, MontanaRecorded onJanuary 29, 2024About Teton PassClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Charles HlavacLocated in: Choteau, MontanaYear founded: 1967Pass affiliations: NoneClosest neighboring ski areas: Great Divide (2:44), Showdown (3:03)Base elevation: 6,200 feetSummit elevation: 7,200 feet (at the top of the double chair)Vertical drop: 1,000 feetSkiable Acres: 400 acresAverage annual snowfall: 300 inchesLift count: 3 (1 double, 1 platter, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Teton Pass' lift fleet)View historic Teton Pass trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himThere was a time, before the Bubble-Wrap Era, when American bureaucracy believed that the nation's most beautiful places ought to be made available to citizens. Not just to gawk at from a distance, but to interact with in a way that strikes awe in the soul and roots the place in their psyche.That's why so many of our great western ski areas sit on public land. Taos and Heavenly and Mt. Baldy and Alta and Crystal Mountain and Lookout Pass. These places, many of them inaccessible before the advent of the modern highway system, were selected not only because they were snow magnets optimally pitched for skiing, but because they were beautiful.And that's how we got Teton Pass, Montana, up a Forest Service road at the end of nowhere, hovering over the Rocky Mountain front. Because just look at the place:Who knew it was there then? Who knows it now? A bald peak screaming “ski me” to a howling wilderness for 50 million years until the Forest Service printed some words on a piece of paper that said someone was allowed to put a chairlift there.As bold and prescient as the Forest Service was in gifting us ski areas, they didn't nail them all. Yes, Aspen and Vail and Snowbird and Palisades Tahoe and Stevens Pass, fortuitously positioned along modern highways or growing cities, evolved into icons. But some of these spectacular natural ski sites languished. Mt. Waterman has faltered without snowmaking or competent ownership. Antelope Butte and Sleeping Giant were built in the middle of nowhere and stayed there. Spout Springs is too small to draw skiers across the PNW vastness. Of the four, only Antelope Butte has spun lifts this winter.Remoteness has been the curse of Teton Pass, a fact compounded by a nasty 11-mile gravel access road. The closest town is Choteau, population 1,719, an hour down the mountain. Great Falls, population 60,000, is only around two hours away, but that city is closer to Showdown, a larger ski area with more vertical drop, three chairlifts, and a parking lot seated directly off a paved federal highway. Teton Pass, gorgeously positioned as a natural wonder, got a crummy draw as a sustainable business.Which doesn't mean it can't work. Unlike the Forest Service ski areas at Cedar Pass or Kratka Ridge in California, Teton Pass hasn't gone fallow. The lifts still spin. Skiers still ski there. Not many – approximately 7,000 last season, which would be a light day for any Summit County ski facility. This year, it will surely be even fewer, as Hlavic announced 10 days after we recorded this podcast that a lack of snow, among other factors, would force him to call it a season after just four operating days. But Hlavic is young and optimistic and stubborn and aware that he is trying to walk straight up a wall. In our conversation, you can hear his belief in this wild and improbable place, his conviction that there is a business model for Teton Pass that can succeed in spite of the rough access road and the lack of an electrical grid connection and the small and scattered local population.The notion of intensive recreational land use is out of favor. When we lose a Teton Pass, the Forest Service doesn't replace it with another ski area in a better location. We just get more wilderness. I am not against wild places and sanctuaries from human scything. But if Teton Pass were not a ski area, almost no one would ever see it, would ever experience this singular peak pasted against the sky. It's a place worth preserving, and I'm glad there's someone crazy enough to try.  What we talked aboutWhen your ski area can't open until Jan. 19; the tight-knit Montana Ski Areas Association; staffing up in the middle of nowhere; a brief history of a troubled remote ski area; the sneaky math of purchasing a ski area; the “incredibly painful” process of obtaining a new Forest Service operating permit after the ownership transfer; restarting the machine after several years idle; how Montana regulates chairlifts without a state tramway board; challenges of operating off the grid; getting by on 7,000 skier visits; potential for Teton Pass' dramatic upper-mountain terrain; re-imagining the lift fleet; the beautiful logic of surface lifts; collecting lifts in the parking lot and dreaming about where they could go; why Teton Pass' last expansion doesn't quite work; where Teton Pass' next chairlifts could sit; the trouble with mid-stations; the potential to install snowmaking; the most confusing ski area name in America, and why it's unlikely to change anytime soon; a problematic monster access road; why Teton Pass hasn't joined the Indy Pass; and mid-week mountain rentals.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThis may have actually been the worst possible time in the past several years to conduct this interview, as the ski area is already closed for the winter, leaving inspired listeners with no realistic method of converting their interest into immediate support. And that's too bad. Unfortunately, I tend to schedule these interviews months in advance (we locked this date in on July 24). Yes, I could've rescheduled, but I try to avoid doing that. So we went ahead.I'm still glad we did, though I wish I'd been able to turn this around faster (it wouldn't have mattered, Teton Pass' four operating days all occurred pre-recording). But there's a gritty honesty to this conversation, taking place, as it does, in the embers of a dying season. Running a ski area is hard. People write to me all the time, fired up with dreams of running their own mountain, maybe even re-assembling one from the scrap heap. I would advise them to listen to this episode for a reality-check.I would also ask anyone convinced of the idea that Vail and Alterra are killing skiing to reconsider that narrative in the context of Teton Pass. Skiing needs massive, sustained investment to prepare for and to weather climate change. It also needs capable marketing entities to convince people living in Texas and Florida that, yes, skiing is still happening in spite of a non-ski media obsessed with twisting every rain shower into a winter-is-disappearing doomsday epic.That doesn't mean that I think Vail should (or would), buy Teton Pass, or that there's no room for independent ski area operators in our 505-resort ecosystem. What I am saying is that unless you bring a messianic sense of purpose, a handyman's grab-bag of odd and eclectic skills, the patience of a rock, and, hopefully, one or more independent income streams, the notion of running an independent ski area is a lot more romantic than the reality.What I got wrongI said that “Teton Pass' previous owner” had commissioned SE Group for a feasibility study. A local community volunteer group actually commissioned that project, as Hlavac clarifies.Also, in discussing Hlavic's purchase of the ski area, I cited some sales figures that I'd sourced from contemporary news reports. From a Sept. 11, 2019 report in the Choteau Acantha:Wood listed the ski area for sale, originally asking $3 million for the resort, operated on a 402-acre forest special-use permit. The resort includes three lifts, a lodge with a restaurant and liquor license, a ski gear rental shop and several outbuildings. Wood later dropped his asking price to $375,000.Then, from SAM on Sept. 17, 2019:Former Teton Pass Ski Resort general manager Charles Hlavac has purchased the resort from Nick Wood for $375,000 after it had been on the market for two years. Wood, a New Zealand native, bought the ski area back in 2010. He and his partners invested in substantial upgrades, including three new lifts, a lodge renovation, and improvements to maintenance facilities. The resort's electrical generator failed in 2016-17, though, and Wood closed the hill in December 2017, citing financial setbacks.While the original asking price for Teton Pass was $3 million, Wood dropped the price down to $375,000. Hlavac, who served as the GM for the resort under Wood's ownership, confirmed on Sept. 6 that he had purchased the 402-acre ski area, located on Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest land, through a contract-for-deed with Wood's company.Hlavic disputes the accuracy of these figures in our conversation.Why you should ski Teton PassThere's liberty in distance, freedom in imagining a different version of a thing. For so many of us, skiing is Saturdays, skiing is holidays, skiing is Breckenridge, skiing is a powder day in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Traffic is just part of it. Liftlines are just part of it. Eating on the cafeteria floor is just part of it. Groomers scraped off by 9:45 is just part of it. It's all just part of it, but skiing is skiing because skiing is dynamic and fun and thrilling and there's a cost to everything, Man, and the cost to skiing is dealing with all that other b******t.But none of this is true. Skiing does not have to include compromises of the soul. You can trade these for compromises of convenience. And by this I mean that you can find a way to ski and a place to ski when and where others can't and won't ski. If you drive to the ass-end of Montana to ski, you are going to find a singular ski experience, because most people are not willing to do this. Not to ski a thousand-footer served by a double chair that's older than Crocodile Rock. Not to spend $55 rather than drive down the per-visit cost of their precious Ikon Pass by racking up that 16th day at Schweitzer.Among my best ski days in the past five winters have been a midweek powder day at 600-vertical-foot McCauley, New York; an empty bluebird weekday at Mt. Baldy, hanging out above Los Angeles; and a day spent ambling the unassumingly labyrinthian terrain of Whitecap Mountains, Wisconsin. Teton Pass is a place of this same roguish nature, out there past everything, but like absolutely nothing else in skiing.Podcast NotesOn closing early for the seasonHere is Hlavac's Feb. 8 letter, addressed to “friends and patrons,” announcing his decision to close for the season (click through to read):On Sleeping GiantAnd here's a similar letter that Sleeping Giant, Wyoming owner Nick Piazza sent to his passholders on Jan. 12:We are disappointed to announce that this latest winter storm mostly missed us. Unfortunately, we are no closer to being able to open the mountain than we were 2-3 weeks ago. We have reached a point where the loss of seasonal staff would make it difficult to open the mountain, even if we got snow tomorrow. For these reasons, we feel that the responsible thing to do is to pull the plug on this season.With a heavy heart we are announcing that Sleeping Giant will not be opening for the 23/24 winter season.We would like to thank everyone for their support and patience as we battled this terrible weather year.  We will be refunding all season pass holders their money at the end of January. This will happen automatically, and the funds will be returned to the payment method used when purchasing your season pass.***For those that would like to roll over their season pass to the 24/25 Winter Season, we will announce instructions early next week.***We have heard from some of our Season Pass Partner Mountains who have shared that they will be honoring our season pass perks, for those of you choosing to rollover your pass to 24/25. Snow King, 3 Free Day Lift Tickets with either a season pass or their receipt; Ski Cooper, 3 Free Day lift tickets; Bogus Basin, 3 Free Day lift tickets; and Soldier Mountain, 3 Free Day lift tickets.Additionally, please note that if you received any complimentary passes for the 23/24 season, they automatically carry over to next season. The same applies for passes that were part of any promotion, charity give away, or raffle.Should you have any questions about season passes please email GM@skisg.com.While we are extremely disappointed to have to make this announcement, we will go lick our wounds, and - I am confident - come back stronger.Our team will still be working at Sleeping Giant and I think everyone is ready to use this down time to get to work on several long-standing projects that we could not get to when operating. Moreover, we are in discussions with our friends at the USFS and Techno Alpine to get paperwork done so we can jump on improvements to our snow making system in the spring.I would like to thank the whole Sleeping Giant team for the hard work they have put in over the last three months. You had some really unlucky breaks, but you stuck together and found ways to hold things together to the very end. To our outdoor team, you did more in the last 9 months than has been done at SG in a generation. Powered mainly with red bull and grit. Thank you!It's never pleasant to have to admit a big public defeat, but as we say in Ukrainian only people that do nothing enjoy infallibility.  We did a lot of great things this year and fought like hell to get open.After we get season pass refunds processed, we plan to sit down and explore options to keep some of the mountain's basic services open and groomed, so snowshoers and those that wish can still enjoy Sleeping Giant's beauty and resources.We hope this will include a spring ski day for season pass holders that rollover into next year, but there are several legal hurdles that we need to overcome to make that a possibility. Stay tuned. Sincerely,NickOn Montana ski areasWe discuss Montana's scattered collection of ski areas. Here's a complete list:On “some of the recent things that have happened in the state” with chairlifts in MontanaWhile most chairlift mishaps go unreported, everyone noticed when a moving Riblet double chair loaded with a father and son disintegrated at Montana Snowbowl in March. From the Missoulian:Nathan McLeod keeps having flashbacks of watching helplessly as his 4-year-old son, Sawyer, slipped through his hands and fell off a mangled, malfunctioning chairlift after it smashed into a tower and broke last Sunday at Montana Snowbowl, the ski hill just north of Missoula.“This is a parent's worst nightmare,” McLeod recalled. “I'm just watching him fall and he's looking at me. There's nothing I can do and he's screaming. I just have this mental image of his whole body slipping out of my arms and it's terrible.”McLeod, a Missoula resident, was riding the Snow Park chairlift, which was purchased used from a Colorado ski resort and installed in 2019. The chairlift accesses beginner and intermediate terrain, and McLeod was riding on the outside seat of the lift so that his young son could be helped up on the inside by the lift attendant, who was the only person working at the bottom of the lift. McLeod's other 6-year-old son, Cassidy, was riding a chair ahead with a snowboarder. McLeod recalled the lift operator had a little trouble loading his older son, so the chair was swinging. Then he and his younger son got loaded.“We're going and I'm watching Cassidy's chair in front of me and it's just, like, huge, violent swings and in my mind, I don't know what to do about that, because I'm a chair behind him,” McLeod recalled. “I'm worried he's gonna hit that next tower. And it's like 40 feet off the ground at that point. As that's going through my head, all of a sudden, our chair smashes into the tower, the first one, as it starts going up.”He described the impact as “super strong.”“And just like that, I reach for my son and he just slips from my arms,” McLeod said.He estimates the boy fell 12-15 feet to the snow below, which at least one other witness agreed with.“I'm yelling like ‘someone help us' and the lift stops a few seconds later,” he said. “But at the same time, as Sawyer is falling, the lift chair just breaks apart and it just flips backwards. Like the backrest just falls off the back and so I'm like clinging on to the center bar while the chair is swinging. My son is screaming and I don't know what to do. I'm like, ‘Do I jump right now?''”The full article is worth a read. It's absurd. McLeod describes the Snowbowl staff as callous and dismissive. The Forest Service later ordered the ski area to repair that lift and others before opening for the season. The ski area complied.On Marx and Lenin at Big SkyHlavic compares Teton Pass' upper-mountain avalanche chutes to Marx and Lenin at Big Sky. These are two well-known runs off Lone Peak (pictured below). Lenin is where a 1996 Christmas Day avalanche that I recently discussed with Big Sky GM Troy Nedved took place.On the evolution of Bridger BowlHlavic compares Teton Pass to vintage Bridger Bowl, before that ski area had the know-how and resources to tame the upper-mountain steeps. Here's Bridger in 1973:And here it is today. It's still pretty wild – skiers have to wear an avy beacon just to ski the Schlasman's chair, but the upper mountain is accessible and well-managed:On Holiday Mountain and TitusI compared Hlavic's situation to that of Mike Taylor at Holiday Mountain and Bruce Monette Jr. at Titus Mountain, both in New York. Like Hlavic, both have numerous other businesses that allowed them to run the ski area at a loss until they could modernize operations. I wrote about Taylor's efforts last year, and hosted Monette on the podcast in 2021.On Hyland HillsHlavic talks about growing up skiing at Hyland Hills, Minnesota. What a crazy little place this is, eight lifts, including some of the fastest ropetows in the world, lined up along a 175-vertical-foot ridge in a city park.Man those ropetows:On Teton Pass, WyomingThe Teton Pass with which most people are familiar is a high-altitude twister of a highway that runs between Wyoming and Idaho. It's a popular and congested backcountry skiing spot. When I drove over the pass en route from Jackson Hole to Big Sky in December, the hills were tracked out and bumped up like a ski resort.On Rocky Mountain HighHlavic notes that former Teton Pass owners had changed the ski area's name to “Rocky Mountain High” for several years. Here's a circa 1997 trailmap with that branding:It's unclear when the name reverted to “Teton Pass.”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 10/100 in 2024, and number 510 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

Search on near Stevens Pass for Sultan man who went missing. James Carville suspects Trump might have syphilis after a photo emerged of the former President with sores on his right hand. JP Morgan CEO derides the Left for their scorn of Trump and his supporters and notes some good he did as commander in chief. KNOW IT ALL: 1) Iran and Pakistan trade attacks. 2) Interruptions in global trade could mess up the world. 3) Native blessing at Davos was weird. // Davos fuels conspiracy theorists who have concerns about world leaders determining the trajectory of global affairs. // Bryan highlights a sad story of Golden State Warriors assistant coach dying of a heart attack at age 46. Looking ahead to this weekend's NFL playoff games.

Tlingit skier Ellen Bradley is an advocate, athlete, scientist and storyteller. Fierce and thoughtful, she defies the narrative that wild Alaska is there only to be conquered by heli operations and other extractive industries. She loves to slide on snow, and wants more Indigenous people to share in her joy. Born and raised in the Seattle area, Bradley started skiing Stevens Pass at age 4. For her, skiing has always been a source of connection to both the land and her ancestors, especially because she grew up away from her traditional homelands in Southeast Alaska.  Today, she's working with tribal organizations and the greater ski community to make the sport more accessible for native kids. That resulted in a partnership between Ikon Pass and Natives Outdoors for the 2023-24 season, in which 30 scholarships have been awarded to Indigenous people who receive passes, rentals and lessons. In this episode, Bradley speaks about how her background in science and passion for skiing complement each other. She reflects on the challenges of growing up away from her Alaska homeland and why we should let Indigenous peoples tell their own stories. This episode is brought to you by Arva Backcountry Magazine Website | Instagram | Facebook Get the print mag and more…. www.backcountrymagazine.com Host: Adam Howard Producer + Engineer: Mike Horn

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Dec. 11. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 18. 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:WhoShaun Sutner, snowsports columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Telegram.comRecorded onNovember 20, 2023About Shaun SutnerShaun is a skier, a writer, and a journalist based in Worcester, Massachusetts. For the past 19 years, he's written a snowsports column from Thanksgiving to April. For the past three years, he's joined me on The Storm Skiing Podcast to discuss that column, but also to talk all things New England skiing (and beyond). You should follow Shaun on social media to stay locked into his work:Why I interviewed himLast month, I clicked open a SNOWBOARDER email newsletter and found this headline slotted under “trending news”:Yikes, I thought. Not again. I clicked through to the story. In full:Tensions simmered as disgruntled Stevens Pass skiers, clutching their "Epic Passes," rallied against Vail Resorts' alleged mismanagement. The discontent echoed through an impassioned petition, articulating a litany of grievances: excessive lift lines, scant open terrain, inadequate staffing, and woeful parking, painting a dismal portrait of a beloved winter haven.Fueled by a sense of betrayal, the signatories lamented a dearth of ski-ready slopes despite ample snowfall, bemoaning Vail Resorts' purported disregard for both patrons and employees. Their frustration soared at the stark contrast to neighboring ski areas, thriving under similar conditions.The petition's fervor escalated, challenging the ethics of selling passes without delivering promised services, highlighting derisory wages juxtaposed against corporate profiteering. The collective call-to-action demanded reparation, invoking consumer protection laws and even prodding the involvement of the Attorney General and the U.S. Forest Service.Yet, amidst their resolve, a poignant melancholy pervaded—the desire to relish the slopes overshadowed by a battle for justice. The signatories yearned for equitable winter joys, dreaming of swift resolutions and an end to the clash with corporate giants, vowing to safeguard the legacy of snow sports for generations to come.As the petition gathered momentum, a snowstorm of change loomed on the horizon, promising either reconciliation or a paradigm shift in the realm of winter recreation.The “impassioned petition” in question is dated Dec. 28, 2021. In the nearly two intervening years, Vail Resorts has fired Stevens Pass' GM, brought in a highly respected local (Tom Fortune) who had spent decades at the ski area to stabilize things (Fortune and I discussed this at length on the podcast), and installed a new, young GM (Ellen Galbraith), with deep roots in the area (I also hosted Galbraith on the podcast). Last ski season (2022-23), was a smooth one at Stevens Pass. And while Skier Mob is never truly happy with anything, the petition in question flared, faded, and went into hibernation approximately 18 months before Snowboarder got around to this story. Yes, there were issues at Stevens Pass. Vail fixed them. The end.The above-cited story is also overwritten, under-contextualized, and borderline slanderous. “Derisory wages?” Vail has since raised its minimum wage to $20 an hour. To stand there and aim a scanny-beepy thing at skiers as they approach the lift queue. Sounds like hell on earth.Perhaps I missed the joke here, and this is some sort of snowy Onion. I do hate to call out other writers. But this is a particularly lazy exhibit of the core problem with modern snowsports writing: most of it is not very good. The non-ski media will humor us with the occasional piece, but these tend to be dumbed down for a general audience. The legacy ski media as a functioning editorial entity no longer exists. There are just a few holdouts, at newspapers across the country, telling the local story of skiing as best they can.And in New England, one of the best doing his best to produce respectable snowsports writing is Shaun Sutner.What we talked aboutNew England resort-hopping; how to set and meet a season ski-days goal; Brobots hate safety bars; the demise and resurgence of Black Mountain, New Hampshire; why Magic Mountain works; what it means that Ski Ward was the first ski area in America to open for the 2023-24 ski season; the Uphill New England pass; why Vail and Alterra still offer free uphill access at all their New England ski areas; how to not be an uphill A-hole; the No Boundaries Pass; which passes New England's remaining big independent ski areas could join; the proposed Stowe-Smuggs gondola connection; when development benefits the environment; could Vail buy Smuggs?; the Little Cottonwood Canyon gondola; finally replacing the Attitash triple; Vail's New England lift-building surge; Boyne goes bonkers in New England; the new Barker lift at Sunday River; the West Mountain expansion at Sugarloaf; the South Peak expansion at Loon; New England's chairlift renaissance; Black Quad at Magic; a Cannon tram upgrade; Berkshire East's first high-speed lift; Wachusett lift upgrades; and Quebec's secret snow pocket.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewSutner and I have this conversation every Thanksgiving week, which is when his column launches. I think I need to start scheduling it earlier, because I haven't been able to turn this around so fast the past two seasons. Here are excerpts and links to his first few columns of the 2023-24 ski season:Nov. 23Snow sports: Ski resort lift upgrades should boost industry in New EnglandThe most despised lift in New England ski country is no more.The ponderously slow, sometimes treacherous summit triple chair at Attitash that has long been a staple of hardcore Massachusetts skiers and snowboarders, is gone."No one ever thought this was ever going to really happen," Brandon Swartz, general manager of the Mount Washington Valley classic ski area in Bartlett, New Hampshire, told me. "I just couldn't be more excited to help build the lift that no one ever thought was going to get built."Whether the old summit lift's swift new replacement, the high-speed detachable Mountaineer quad, will be ready for Christmas week as Colorado-based owner Vail Resorts expects, is yet to be seen as Attitash is still furiously working on it in the eighth month of the project. But it's the most welcome ski-lift replacement in our region in decades, I think, finally providing convenient access to the passel of glorious snaking steep and challenging intermediate runs from the top in half the 16-18-minute ride time of the old 1986 triple. Read more…Nov. 29'It was shocking and beautiful': Trip to Argentina, Antarctica memorable for Lunenburg's RiddleThis wasn't Riddle's first time tackling demanding backcountry terrain in forbidding terrain, nor is this the first time I've written about him, having chronicled his previous trips to Chamonix in the French Alps and Norway. Riddle is the guy who got me into alpine touring – the Alpine-Nordic hybrid that involves hiking up mountains on skis with climbing skins affixed to the bases and then removing the skins and locking down the boot heels for the descent – seven or eight years ago. He's also won the Wachusett Mountain pond skim contest three times, leading to word on the street that he's been banned from taking that coveted title ever again.But this adventure was of a bigger order of magnitude than his previous ventures into big mountains. Read more…Dec. 6New BOA ski boot hopes its unique fit will provide a leg up on competitionNo, it's not named after a boa constrictor, though it does wrap around your foot kind of like a snake.BOA stands for "boot opening adjustment" and it's the trademarked brand name of the company that has made the lace and wire and dial adjust-based closure systems since 2001 and adapted them to snowboard and race bike boots, Nordic gear, ice and in-line skates and other applications,Now BOA has brought the system to Alpine ski boots. Oversized protruding knobs and an intricate wire system go over the forefoot instead of buckles and wrap the instep and can make micro-adjustments in either direction – tighter or looser. Proponents say they just fit better, while skeptics point out they're a bit heavier and their durability still hasn't been proven on a wide scale yet for the Alpine version. Read more…His column lands every Wednesday through spring.What I got wrongAbout Magic Mountain, VermontI said that Magic was out of business for “five years.” The best info I can find (on New England Ski History), suggests that the ski area closed following the 1990-91 season, and didn't re-open until December 1997, which would put the closure at closer to six-and-a-half years.About the Indy PassI referred to Erik Mogensen as the “Indy Pass founder.” He is the pass' current owner, but Doug Fish, who has joined me on the podcast many times, founded the product.About SaddlebackI didn't hear Sutner correctly when he asked if Saddleback was “a B corporation,” which is a business that “is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials.” I thought he'd asked if they were owned by a larger corporation, and my answer reflects that understanding (but does not answer his question), as I go into the history of Arctaris Impact Fund's purchase of Saddleback. The only ski area that has achieved B Corporation certification, as far as I know, is Taos.About words being hardI described Vail and Alterra as “big, corporate conglomerations.” Which, I'm sorry.About there being too many things in this world to keep track ofI forgot the name of Spruce Peak at Stowe when describing the ski area's connection point with Smugglers' Notch. Which is funny because I've written about it extensively over the past several months, skied there many times, and in general try to remember the important components of prominent ski areas.About my personal calendarI said that I skied at Big Sky “last year.” I meant “last season,” as I actually was there in April 2023.On time being fungibleI said that Magic's Black Quad has been sitting in the ski area's parking lot for “about four years.” This is inaccurate for a couple different reasons. First, the lift – Stratton's old Snow Bowl lift – came out in 2018 (so more than five years ago). I don't know when Magic took delivery of the lift. At any rate, installation began several years ago, so it's not accurate to say that the lift has been “sitting in the parking lot.” What I meant was that it's taken Magic a hell of a long time to get this machine live, which no one can dispute.Podcast NotesOn motorcycle helmet lawsWe briefly discuss the almost universal shift to wearing helmets while skiing in the context of motorcycle helmet laws, which are not as ubiquitous as you'd suppose. Only 18 states require all riders to wear helmets at all times. The remainder set an age limit – typically 18 or 21. Three states – Iowa, Illinois, and New Hampshire – have no helmet law at all.On non-profit ski areasErik Mogensen, owner of Entabeni Systems and Indy Pass, is leading the coalition to find a new owner for Black Mountain, New Hampshire. He's said many times that around a quarter of America's ski areas need “another ownership solution.” He expanded on this in SAM a few weeks back:I think about 25 percent of the non-corporate ski areas in North America need another ownership solution. That doesn't necessarily mean that it needs to be nonprofit. There are a lot of liabilities in having a group of volunteers or board of directors try to run a ski area from a nonprofit status. I'm definitely a capitalist, and there can be issues with nonprofits that I don't think we've solved yet in skiing.If we look at the nonprofits that have run very well, Bridger Bowl and Bogus Basin particularly, they focused around running the ski area as a for-profit business with a nonprofit backend, if you will.I've also seen a lot of ski areas struggle with trying to run the nonprofit model. So I don't necessarily believe that a nonprofit model is something that we should copy and paste. But I do believe it's a front runner that needs to be adjusted and adopted. And we do need a solution for the 25 percent. It's very hard to make some of areas commercially viable on their own.On the “unfriendly” lift attendants at Ski WardI recently gave Ski Ward some positive run, highlighting the fact that they were the first ski area to open in America in 2023. It was a cool story and they deserved the attention.However, I have a conflicted history with this place, as Sutner and I joked on the podcast. I had one of my worst ski experiences ever there, mostly because the lift attendants – at least on the day of my visit – were complete a******s. As I wrote after a visit on Feb. 1, 2022:Ski Ward, 25 miles southwest, makes Nashoba Valley look like Aspen. A single triple-chair rising 220 vertical feet. A T-bar beside that. Some beginner surface lifts lower down. Off the top three narrow trails that are steep for approximately six feet before leveling off for the run-out back to the base. It was no mystery why I was the only person over the age of 14 skiing that evening.Normally my posture at such community- and kid-oriented bumps is to trip all over myself to say every possible nice thing about its atmosphere and mission and miraculous existence in the maw of the EpKonasonics. But this place was awful. Like truly unpleasant. My first indication that I had entered a place of ingrained dysfunction was when I lifted the safety bar on the triple chair somewhere between the final tower and the exit ramp and the liftie came bursting out of his shack like he'd just caught me trying to steal his chickens. “The sign is there,” he screamed, pointing frantically at the “raise bar here” sign jutting up below the top station just shy of unload. At first I didn't realize he was talking to me and so I ignored him and this offended him to the point where he – and this actually happened – stopped the chairlift and told me to come back up the ramp so he could show me the sign. I declined the opportunity and skied off and away and for the rest of the evening I waited until I was exactly above his precious sign before raising the safety bar.All night, though, I saw this b******t. Large, aggressive, angry men screaming – screaming – at children for this or that safety-bar violation. The top liftie laid off me once he realized I was a grown man, but it was too late. Ski Ward has a profoundly broken customer-service culture, built on bullying little kids on the pretext of lift safety. Someone needs to fix this. Now.Look, I am not anti-lift bar. I put it down every time, unless I am out West and riding with some version of Studly Bro who is simply too f*****g cool for such nonsense. But that was literally my 403rd chairlift ride of the season and my 2,418th since I began tracking ski stats on my Slopes app in 2018. Never have I been lectured over the timing of my safety-bar raise. So I was surprised. But if Ski Ward really wants to run their chairlifts with the rulebook specificity of a Major League Baseball game, all they have to do is say, “Excuse me, Sir, can you please wait to get to the sign before raising your bar next time?” That would have worked just as well, and would have saved them this flame job. For a place that caters to children, they need to do much, much better.On Uphill New EnglandWe go pretty deep on the purpose and utility of the Uphill New England pass, which allows you to skin up and ski down these 13 ski areas:On the Granite Backcountry AllianceSutner also mentions the Granite Backcountry Alliance, which is a group that promotes backcountry skiing in New Hampshire and Western Maine. Here's the group's self-described mission:New Hampshire and Western Maine are blessed with a rich ski history that includes a deep heritage of backcountry skiing from Mt. Washington's Tuckerman Ravine to the many ski trails developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) of the 1930's (some of which still remain today). The celebration of the sport of skiing is embedded in the culture of the area.While backcountry skiing's resurgence has captivated a new user base, it is also now a measurable, undeniable force in the industry and is the fastest growing segment of the sport. The demand is strong but the terrain in New Hampshire and Western Maine is limited by the tree density, glade supply, and legal access to the forests and mountains.GBA resolves to improve the playing field for backcountry skiers. Creating and developing ski glades, however, is not the only objective of the group. Improving the foundation of the sport is critical to future success, such as creating partnerships and collaboration with public and private landowners, education regarding safety and ecological awareness, and creating a unified culture – one that respects the land and its owners and does not permit unauthorized cutting.We are part of a movement of human-powered activities that is the basis for an emerging outdoor economy. We believe this movement has broad implications on areas like NH's North Country and it can develop with committed folks like yourself .  It's the last frontier!  So join us by stepping up to support the cause; the ability to organize is a powerful tool to steward our own future.On the proposed Stowe-Smuggs gondola connectionI wrote a bit about the proposed gondola connection between Stowe and Smugglers' Notch earlier this year:Seated just a half mile from the top of Smuggs' mainly intermediate Sterling Mountain is the top of Stowe's Spruce Peak. Skiers had been skating between the two resorts for decades. Why not connect the two mountains – both widely considered among the best ski areas in New England – with a fast, modern lift? A sort of Alta-Snowbird – or at least a Solitude-Brighton – of the East? Two owners, one interconnected ski experience.“We have the possibility of creating what we think will be a very unique ski and riding experience by connecting these two resorts,” said Stritzler. “I don't believe in marketing this way, but all you have to do is do trail counts and acreage and elevations, and pretty soon you get to the conclusion that if you can offer Smugglers' guests the opportunity to also take advantage of what Stowe has to offer, and you can offer the two in some kind of combination through a connecting lift, well, now suddenly you're not quite so nervous about all the consolidation taking place, because you've got something to respond with.”Here's the proposed line:Smuggs later withdrew their plans amid a cool reception from state officials. Resort officials are recalibrating their strategy in backrooms, they've told me, re-analyzing the project from an economic-impact point of view. More to come on that.On the Little Cottonwood Canyon gondolaWithout question, the most contentious ski-related development in North America right now is the proposed Little Cottonwood Canyon gondola, which would essentially remove most cars from a cluttered, avalanche-prone road and move the resort base area down below the major snowline. Various protest groups, however, are acting as though this is a proposal to bulldoze the mountains and replace them private mud baths for billionaires. Personally, I think the gondola makes a hell of a lot of sense:But every time I write about it on Twitter, a not-immaterial number of perfectly sane individuals advises me to f**k off and die, so I'd say there's some emotion invested in this one.On the Attitash triple replacementSutner and I go pretty deep on Attitash swapping out its Summit Triple chair for a brand-new high-speed quad. I also discussed this extensively with Attitash GM Brandon Swartz on a recent podcast episode (starting at 6:12):On Ski Inc.We touch briefly on Ski Inc., a fantastic history of the modern ski industry by the late Chris Diamond. If you like this newsletter, Ski Inc. and its sequel, Ski Inc. 2020, are must-reads.On Wachusett's liftsWe discuss Wachusett's proposed upgrade of the Polar Express from a high-speed quad to, perhaps, a six-pack. Here's the trailmap for context:On Wachusett's blocked expansionDespite its immense popularity, Wachusett is probably stuck in its current footprint indefinitely, as Sutner and I discuss. A bit more context from New England Ski History:As the 1993-94 season progressed, Wachusett pushed forward with its expansion plans, requesting to cut two new trails, widen Balance Rock, install a second chairlift to the summit, expand the base lodge, and add 375 parking spots. The plans were met with environmental, archaeological, and water quality concerns. …In August 1995, environmentalists located a stand of 295-year-old oak trees where Wachusett had planned to cut a new expert trail. Though the Crowleys quickly offered to adjust plans to minimize impact, opposition mounted. Plans for the new trail were abandoned a few months later. …In the spring of 1998, Wachusett proposed a scaled back expansion that avoided the old growth forest and instead called for the construction of a snowboard park consisting of two trails and a lift. Around this time, environmentalists announced the discovery of bootleg ski trails on the mountain. The Sierra Club quickly called for the state to terminate Wachusett Mountain Associates' ski area lease, despite not knowing who did the cutting.So, yeah, 99 problems, Man.On two Le Massifs (de Charlevoix and de Sud)So apparently there are two Le Massifs in Quebec, which would have been handy context to have when I wrote about the larger of the two joining the Mountain Collective last year. That Le Massif – Le Massif de Charlevoix – is quite the banger, with 250 inches of average annual snowfall and a 2,526-foot vertical drop on 406 acres:Massif de Sud is still a nice little hill, with 236 inches of average annual snowfall and a 1,312-foot vertical drop, but on just 127 skiable acres:On The Powell MovementSutner mentions an upcoming column he'll write about The Powell Movement podcast. It really is a terrific show, and covers the parts of the ski industry that I ignore (so, like, most of it). Check it out.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 108/100 in 2023, and number 493 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Dec. 8. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 15. 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:WhoBenjamin Bartz, General Manager of Snowriver, MichiganRecorded onNovember 13, 2023About SnowriverClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Midwest Family Ski ResortsLocated in: Wakefield (Jackson Creek Summit) and Bessemer (Black River Basin), MichiganYear founded: 1959 (Jackson Creek, as Indianhead) and 1977 (Black River Basin, as Blackjack)Pass affiliations:Legendary Pass (also includes varying access to Lutsen Mountains, Minnesota and Granite Peak, Wisconsin)* Gold: unlimited access* Silver: unlimited access* Bronze: unlimited midweek access with holiday blackoutsThe Indy Base Pass and Indy+ Pass also include two Snowriver days with no blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Big Powderhorn (:14), Mt. Zion Ski Hill (:17), Whitecap Mountains (:39); Porkies Winter Sports Complex (:48)Base elevation:* Jackson Creek: 1,212 feet* Black River Basin: 1,185 feetSummit elevation:* Jackson Creek: 1,750 feet* Black River Basin: 1,675 feetVertical drop:* Jackson Creek: 538 feet* Black River Basin: 490 feetSkiable Acres: 400 (both ski areas combined)* Jackson Creek: 230* Black River Basin: 170Average annual snowfall: 200 inchesTrail count: 71 trails, 17 glades, 3 terrain parks* Jackson Creek: 43 trails, 11 glades, 2 terrain parks* Black River Basin: 28 trails, 6 glades, 1 terrain parkLift count: 11 (1 six-pack, 6 doubles, 1 T-bar, 2 ropetows, 1 carpet)* Jackson Creek Summit: 6 (1 six-pack, 2 doubles, 1 T-bar, 1 ropetow, 1 carpet)* Black River Basin: 5 (4 doubles, 1 ropetow)View historic Snowriver trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himI could tell this story as a Michigan story, as a young skier still awed by the far-off Upper Peninsula, that remote and wild and snowy realm Up North and Over the Bridge. I could tell it as a weather story, of glacial bumps bullseyed in the greatest of the Great Lakes snowbelts. Or as a story of a run-down complex tumbling into hyper-change, or one that activated the lifts in 1978 and just left them spinning. It's an Indy Pass story, a ski area with better skiing than infrastructure that will give you a where's-everyone-else kind of ski day. And it's a Midwest Family Ski Resorts (MFSR) story, skiing's version of a teardown, where nothing is sacred and everything will change and all you can do is stand back and watch the wrecking ball swing and the scaffolding go up the sides.Each of these is tempting, and the podcast is inevitably a mash-up. Writing about the Midwest will always be personal to me. The UP is that Great Otherplace, where the snow is bottomless and everything is cheap and everyone is somewhere else. Snowriver is both magnificently retro and badly in need of updating. And it is a good ski area and a solid addition to the Indy Pass.But, more than anything, the story of Snowriver is the story of MFSR and the Skinner family. There is no better ski area operator. They have equals but no betters. You know how when a certain actor or director gets involved in something, or when a certain athlete moves to a new team, you think, “Man, that's gonna be good.” They project excellence. Everything they touch absorbs it. Did you know that one man, Shigeru Miyamoto, invented, among others, the Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, and Star Fox franchises, and has directed or produced every sequel of every game for four decades? Time calls him “the Spielberg of video games.” Well, the Skinners are the Spielberg – or perhaps the Miyamoto – of Midwest skiing. Everything they touch becomes the best version of that thing that it can achieve. What we talked aboutSnowriver's new six-pack lift; why Snowriver removed three chairlifts but only added one; the sixer's all-new line; why Midwest Family Ski Resorts (MFSR) upgraded this lift first; the rationale behind a high-speed lift on a 538-vertical-foot hill; knocking 100 vertical feet off Jackson Creek Summit's advertised vertical drop; “Voyager” versus “Voyageur”; swapping out the old Poma for a handletow; the UP snowbelt; the bad old days of get out of the trees you blasted kids!; Gogebic Community College's ski area management program; Mt. Zion, Michigan; Giants Ridge, Minnesota; the Big Snow time capsule; why MFSR purchased Snowriver; Mount Bohemia; changing the name from “Big Snow” to “Snowriver”; where an interconnect lift could run and what sort of lift it could be; why Snowriver renamed all the lifts and many trails on the Black River Basin side; potential future lift upgrades on both sides of the resort; potential terrain expansion; new and renamed trails and 17 new glades on the 2023-24 trailmap; the small parcel of Snowriver that sits on U.S. Forest Service land; why Black River Basin is only open Thursday through Sunday; and a joint pass to Snowriver, Granite Peak, and Lutsen.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe entity now known as Midwest Family Ski Resorts has been running ski areas for decades. I've been running The Storm for four years. So by the time I launched in 2019 and then expanded out of the Northeast in 2021, MFSR had already transformed Granite Peak and Lutsen into modern Midwestern giants. Their work on Granite had been particularly impressive, as they'd transformed Wisconsin's beat-up and decrepit Rib Mountain into a sprawling and modern ski area.I mean look at this dump:And here's the same ski area in 2023:So what a gift when, last year, the company announced the purchase of the side-by-side time capsules then known as Indianhead and Blackjack. A rare chance to see that Skinner magic uncorked on a beat-up backwater, to watch, in real time, that transformation into something humming and hefty and modern.Most multi-mountain operators buy diamonds, ski areas already streamlined and upgraded and laced with modern machines. MFSR digs deeper, finds coal, then pounds it into its final form. It's a rough and expensive way to go, but the strategy carries the great advantage of maximum flexibility to sculpt a mountain into your daydream.The dream at Snowriver is straightforward but impossibly complex: modernize the snowmaking, chairlifts, bedbase, trail network, and grooming; connect the two ski areas with an aerial lift; and establish this snowy but remote complex as a legitimate midwestern destination ski resort. MFSR has, as expected, moved quickly, rebranding the resort; removing five(!) lifts from the Jackson Creek Summit side and building an outrageously expensive six-pack; and making dozens of subtle tweaks to the trail network, adding new runs, renaming lifts and trails, and dropping more than a dozen marked glades onto the trailmap.This period of rapid change, pronounced as it is, will likely be viewed, historically, as a simple prelude. MFSR is not the sort of operator that lays out grand plans and then glances at them through its binoculars every three years. They plan and tear s**t apart and build and build and build. They act how every skier thinks they would act were they to purchase their own ski area. The difference is that MFSR has money, ambition, and a history of transformational action. Watch, amazed, as this thing grows.Questions I wish I'd askedBartz started Ben's Blog, a cool little update series on Snowriver's goings-on. I wanted to get into his motivation and mission here, but we were running long.I also wanted to get into a unique feature of Snowriver a bit more: the huge amount of onsite lodging, which was a big motivating factor in MFSR's purchase, and a large part of the vision for building a sustainable destination ski resort in a region that has struggled to support one.What I got wrongI said that the four Black River Basin Riblet chairlifts dated to the 1970s, and then corrected myself to say that “I believe” one dated to the ‘80s. Ascender, Brigantine, and Draw Stroke date to 1977; Capstan was installed in 1983.Why you should ski SnowriverEver wonder what it's like to ski in 1978? Pull up to Black River Basin, boot up, and walk over to the lifts. There, you just time traveled. Centerpole Riblet doubles, painted ‘Nam chopper green, squeaking uphill, not a safety bar in sight. There's snowmaking, but most of the snow you're skiing on blew in off the big lake 11 miles north. Skiers in their modern fat skis and helmets would blow the illusion, but there are no other skiers to be found.Then a kid skis by, backpack speaker booming, and you're like, “OK phew for a second I thought I'd really time-traveled and would be forced to do things like drive around the block without navigation assistance and carry around a camera that was not also a supercomputer and required $15 to purchase and develop 24 photographs.”If Black River Basin is the past, then Jackson Creek Summit is the future. That sixer landed like an Abrams tank on a Civil War battlefield. I took this video of the old summit double last February:Now look at the top of the six-pack, which sits on more or less the same spot:Wild, right? Snowriver is going to keep changing, and it will keep changing fast. Go see it before you miss what it was, so you can truly appreciate what it will become.Podcast NotesOn the four removed chairlifts on the Jackson Creek Summit sideSnowriver's new six-pack directly or indirectly replaces four old lifts. The resort also switched up the trail network, with a bunch of new glades and a handful of reconfigured trails. Check out the Jackson Creek Summit side of the resort's trailmap from pre-sixer and then today (note, also, all the newly marked glades and renamed trails):On the new trails on the Black River Basin sideMFSR has also renamed most of the lifts and trails on the Black River Basin side, and removed a handle tow (which is now on the Jackson Creek Summit side). Here's a side-by-side of the ski area's 2018 and 2023 trailmaps:On Gogebic Community College and Mt. ZionSo you can actually earn a college degree in ski area management. There are a few schools that do this, one of which is Michigan's Gogebic Community College. From the program's overview page:OverviewThe Ski Area Management Program at GCC is one of the nation's most comprehensive training programs for individuals interested in pursuing a career in the snow sport industry. Technical and academic study is combined with a practical internship which is conducted at major resorts throughout Coast to Coast.  A valid driver's license is required for completion of this program.Unique FeaturesStudents spend their freshman year and the first eight weeks of their sophomore year completing prerequisite courses. During this period, the Mt. Zion Recreation Complex is utilized as a training laboratory. Mt. Zion is our college-owned and operated winter sport complex located on campus which is open to the public.  Co-opThe Cooperative Work Experience assignment (Co-op) is the capstone of the Ski Area Management Program. All sophomore Students participate in the five month internship where they gain important operational experience in an actual resort environment.The huge advantage that Mt. Zion has over similar programs is that it owns an on-site ski area, Mt. Zion. While this is just a 300-vertical-foot bump served by a double chair, it's laced with some twisty fun little runs fed by 200 inches of annual lake effect:On Giants RidgeBartz really launched his career as Mountain Operations Manager at Giants Ridge, a 500-footer in the Northern Minnesota hinterlands. Here's the most recent trailmap:On the UP snowbeltFor such a remote area, the UP is home to one of the densest concentrations of ski areas in America. Five ski areas sit within a 21-mile stretch along the Wisconsin-Michigan border: Whitecap (in Wisconsin), and Mt. Zion, Big Powderhorn, and the two Snowriver ski areas, all in Michigan. Here's how they line up:On the proximity of MFSR's portfolioMFSR's three ski areas are, as a unit, really well positioned to serve the major Midwestern cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Milwaukee, and Chicago. Here's where they sit in relation to one another:And here's the distance table between them:On Rick SchmitzRick Schmitz – who owns Little Switzerland, Nordic Mountain, and The Rock Snowpark in Wisconsin – once owned Blackjack, now Black River Basin. He relays that experience, and why he ultimately sold his interest in the ski area, starting at the 39:40 mark of this podcast we recorded together last year:On Mount BohemiaBoho is, as I've written many times, one of the most amazing and unique ski areas in America. It has no grooming, no snowmaking, and no beginner terrain. It's lodged at the ass-end of nowhere, on a peninsula hanging off a peninsula in the fiery middle of Lake Superior. While regional lore credits (or blames) the renaissance of MFSR's Granite Peak with looting Snowriver's skiers, the rise of Bohemia, which opened in 2000, surely drew more advanced skiers farther north. Here's a trailmap:And here's a conversation I recorded with Boho owner, founder, and president Lonie Glieberman last year:On two ski areas becoming oneFor decades, the two Snowriver ski areas now known as Jackson Creek Summit and Black River Basin were separate, competing entities known, respectively, as Indianhead and Blackjack. Observe the varied style of trailmaps of recent vintage:At some point, the same entity took possession of both hills and introduced the “Big Snow Resort” umbrella name. Each ski area retained its legacy name, as you can see in this joint trailmap circa 2018:Then, last year, MFSR changed the umbrella name from “Big Snow” to “Snowriver,” and changed the name of each ski area (though they framed this as “base area renamings”) from Indianhead and Blackjack to Jackson Creek Summit and Black River Basin, respectively. I broke down the name change when MFSR announced it last September.On the Snowriver interconnectBartz provided outlines of four potential interconnect lines. In all cases, Jackson Creek Summit sits on the left, and Black River Basin is on the right:On US 2The Snowriver ski areas both sit off of US 2, a startling fact, perhaps, for skiers who use the same road to access ski areas as far-flung as Stevens Pass, Washington and Sunday River, Maine. US 2 is, in fact, a 2,571-mile-long road that runs in two segments: from Everett, Washington to St. Ignace, Michigan; then breaking for Canada before picking up in northern New York and running across Vermont and New Hampshire into Maine. It is the northernmost cross-country east-west highway in America. Ski areas that sit along or near the route include Stevens Pass and Mt. Spokane, Washington; Schweitzer, Idaho; Blacktail and Whitefish, Montana; Spirit Mountain, Minnesota; Big Powderhorn, Mt. Zion, Snowriver, Ski Brule, and Pine Mountain, Michigan; Bolton Valley, Vermont; and Sunday River, Titcomb, and Hermon Mountain, Maine; among others.On the Legendary PassFor the 2023-24 ski season, MFSR dispensed with offering single-mountain season passes, and combined all three of its properties onto the Legendary Pass. The gold tier, which is now sold out, debuted at $675 last spring. The Silver tier ran $475 early bird, which is not a material increase from the $419 Snowriver-only 2021-22 season pass (which did not include any Granite or Lutsen access):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 106/100 in 2023, and number 491 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

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 2. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 9. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoDeirdra Walsh, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Park City, UtahRecorded onOctober 18, 2023About Park CityClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Park City, UtahYear founded: 1963Pass affiliations:* Epic Pass: unlimited* Epic Local Pass: unlimited with holiday blackouts* Tahoe Local: five non-holiday days combined with Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Crested Butte, Keystone* Epic Day Pass: access with All Resorts tierClosest neighboring ski areas: Deer Valley (:04), Utah Olympic Park (:09), Woodward Park City (:11), Snowbird (:50), Alta (:55), Solitude (1:00), Brighton (1:08) – or just ski between them all; travel times vary massively pending weather, traffic, and time of yearBase elevation: 6,800 feetSummit elevation: 9,998 feet at the top of Jupiter (can hike to 10,026 on Jupiter Peak)Vertical drop: 3,226 feetSkiable Acres: 7,300 acresAverage annual snowfall: 355 inchesTrail count: 330+ (50% advanced/expert, 42% intermediate, 8% beginner)Lift count: 41 (2 eight-passenger gondolas, 1 pulse gondola, 1 cabriolet, 6 high-speed six-packs, 10 high-speed quads, 5 fixed-grip quads, 7 triples, 4 doubles, 3 carpets, 2 ropetows – view Lift Blog's inventory of Park City's lift fleet)View historic Park City trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed herAn unfortunate requirement of this job is concocting differentiated verbiage to describe a snowy hill equipped with chairlifts. Most often, I revert to the three standbys: ski area, mountain, and resort/ski resort. I use them interchangeably, as one may use couch/sofa or dinner/supper (for several decades, I thought oven/stove to be a similar pairing; imagine my surprise to discover that these words described two separate parts of one familiar machine). But that is problematic, of course, because while every enterprise that I describe is some sort of ski area, only around half of them are anywhere near an actual mountain. And an even smaller percentage of those are resorts. Still, I swap the trio around like T-shirts in the world's smallest wardrobe, hoping my readers value the absence of repetition more than they resent the mental gymnastics required to consider 210-vertical-foot Snow Snake, Michigan a “ski resort.”But these equivalencies introduce a problem when I get to Park City. At 7,300 acres, Park City sprawls over 37 percent more terrain than Vail Mountain, Vail Resorts' second-largest U.S. ski area, and the fourth-biggest in the nation overall. To call this a “ski area” seems inadequate, like describing an aircraft carrier as a “boat.” Even “mountain” feels insubstantial, as Park City's forty-some-odd lifts shoots-and-ladder their way over at least a dozen separate summits. “Ski resort” comes closest to capturing the grandeur of the whole operation, but even that undersells the experience, given that the ski runs are directly knotted to the town below them – a town that is a ski town but is also so much more.In recent years, “megaresort” has settled into the ski lexicon, usually as a pejorative describing a thing to be avoided, a tourist magnet that has swapped its soul for a Disney-esque welcome mat. “Your estimated wait time to board the Ultimate Super Summit Interactive 4D 8K Turbo Gondola is [one hour and 45 minutes]”. The “megas,” freighted with the existential burden of Epic and Ikon flagships, carry just a bit too much cruise ship mass-escapism and Cheesecake Factory illusions of luxe to truly capture that remote wilderness fantasy that is at least half the point of skiing. Right?Not really. Not any more than Times Square captures the essence of New York City or the security lines outside the ballpark distill the experience of consuming live sports. Yes, this is part of it, like the gondola lines winding back to the interstate are part of peak-day Park City. Those, along with the Epic Pass or the (up to) $299 lift ticket, are the cost of admission. But get through the gates, and a sprawling kingdom awaits.I don't know how many people ski Park City on a busy day. Let's call it 20,000. The vast majority of them are going to spend the vast majority of their day lapping the groomers, which occupy a small fraction of Park City's endless varied terrain. With its cascading hillocks, its limitless pitch-perfect glades, its lifts shooting every which way like hammered-together contraptions in some snowy realm of silver-miners - their century-old buildings and conveyor belts rising still off the mountain – Park City delivers a singular ski experience. Call it a “mountain,” a “ski area,” a “ski resort,” or a “megaresort” – all are accurate but also inadequate. Park City, in the lexicon of American skiing, stands alone.What we talked aboutPark City's deep 2022-23 winter; closing on May 1; skiing Missouri; Lake Tahoe; how America's largest ski area runs as a logistical and cultural unit; living through the Powdr-to-Vail ownership transition; the awesome realization that Park City and Canyons were one; Vail's deliberate culture of women's empowerment; the history and purpose of those giant industrial structures dotting Park City ski area; how you can tour them; the novel relationship between the ski area and the town at its base; Park City's Olympic legacy; thoughts on future potential Winter Olympic Games in Utah and at Park City; why a six-pack and an eight-pack chairlift scheduled for installation at Park City last year never happened; where those lifts went instead; whether those upgrades could ever happen; the incoming Sunrise Gondola; the logic of the Over And Out lift; Red Pine Gondola improvements; why the Jupiter double is unlikely to be upgraded anytime soon; Town Lift; reflecting on year one of paid parking; and the massive new employee housing development at Canyons.      Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIf only The Storm had existed in 2014. Because wouldn't that have been fun? Hostile takeovers are rare in skiing. You normally can't give a ski area (sorry, a super-megaresort) away. Vail taking this one off Powdr's lunch tray is kind of amazing, kind of sad, kind of disturbing, and kind scary. Like, did that really happen? It did, so onward we go.Walsh, as it happened, worked at Park City at the time, though in a much different role, so we talked about what is was like to live through the transition. But two other events shape our modern perception of Park City: The Olympics and The Lifts.The Olympics, of course, came to Park City in 2002. On this podcast a few weeks back, Snowbird General Manager Dave Fields outlined the dramatic changes the Games wrought on Utah skiing. Suddenly, everyone on the planet realized that a half dozen ski resorts that averaged between 300 and 500 inches of snow per winter were lined up 45 minutes from a major international airport on good roads. And they were like, “Wait that's real?” And they all starting coming – annual Utah skier visits have more than doubled since the Olympics, from around 3 million in winter 2001-02 to more than 7 million in last year's amazing ski season. Which is cool. But the Olympics are (probably) coming back to Salt Lake, in 2030 or 2034, and Park City will likely be a part of them again. So we talk about that.The Lifts refers to this story that I covered last October:Last September, Vail Resorts announced what was likely the largest set of single-season lift upgrades in the history of the world: $315-plus million on 19 lifts (later increased to 21 lifts) across 14 ski areas. Two of those lifts would land in Park City: a D-line eight-pack would replace the Silverlode six, and a six-pack would replace the Eagle and Eaglet triples. Two more lifts in a town with 62 of them (Park City sits right next door to Deer Valley). Surely this would be another routine project for the world's largest ski area operator.It wasn't. In June, four local residents – Clive Bush, Angela Moschetta, Deborah Rentfrow, and Mark Stemler – successfully appealed the Park City Planning Commission's previous approval of the lift projects.“The upgrades were appealed on the basis that the proposed eight-place and six-place chairs were not consistent with the 1998 development agreement that governs the resort,” SAM wrote at the time. “The planning commission also cited the need for a more thorough review of the resort's comfortable carrying capacity calculations and parking mitigation plan, finding PCM's proposed paid parking plan at the Mountain Village insufficient.”So instead of rising on the mountain, the lifts spent the summer, in pieces, in the parking lot. Vail admitted defeat, at least temporarily. “We are considering our options and next steps based on today's disappointing decision—but one thing is clear—we will not be able to move forward with these two lift upgrades for the 22-23 winter season,” Park City Mountain Resort Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Deirdra Walsh said in response to the decision.One of the options Vail apparently considered was trucking the lifts to friendlier locales. Last Wednesday, as part of its year-end earnings release, Vail announced that the two lifts would be moved to Whistler and installed in time for the 2023-24 ski season. The eight-pack will replace the 1,129-vertical-foot Fitzsimmons high-speed quad on Whistler, giving the mountain 18 seats (!) out of the village (the lift runs alongside the 10-passenger Whistler Village Gondola). The six-pack will replace the Jersey Cream high-speed quad on Blackcomb, a midmountain lift with a 1,230-foot vertical rise. These will join the new Big Red six-pack and 10-passenger Creekside Gondola going in this summer on the Whistler side, giving the largest ski area on the continent four new lifts in two years. …Meanwhile, Park City skiers will have to continue riding Silverlode, a sixer dating to 1996, and Eagle, a 1993 Garaventa CTEC triple (the Eaglet lift, unfortunately, is already gone). The vintage of the remaining lifts don't sound particularly creaky, but both were built for a different, pre-Epic Pass Park City, and one that wasn't connected via the Quicksilver Gondola to the Canyons side of the resort. Vail targeted these choke points to improve the mountain's flow. But skiers are stuck with them indefinitely.On paper, Vail remains “committed to resolving our permit to upgrade the Eagle and Silverlode lifts in Park City.” I don't doubt that. But I wonder if the four individuals who chose to choke up this whole process understand the scale of what they just destroyed. Those two lifts, combined, probably cost somewhere around $50 million. Minimum. Maybe the resort will try again. Maybe it won't. Surely Vail can find a lot of places to spend its money with far less friction.All of which I thought was rather hilarious, for a number of reasons. First, stopping an enormous project on procedural grounds for nebulous reasons is the most U.S. American thing ever. Second, the more these sorts of over-the-top stall tactics are wielded for petty purposes (ski areas need to be able to upgrade chairlifts), the more likely we are to lose them, as politicians who never stop bragging about how “business-friendly” Utah is look to streamline these pesky checks and balances. Third, Vail unapologetically yanking those things out of the parking lot and hauling them up to BC was the company's brashest move since it punched Powdr in the face and took its resort away. It was harsh but necessary, a signal that the world keeps moving around the sun even when a small group of nitwits want it to stop on its axis.Questions I wish I'd askedOn Scott's Bowl accessI wanted to ask Walsh about the strange fact that Scott's Bowl and West Scott's Bowl – two high-alpine sections off Jupiter, suddenly closed in 2018 and stayed shut for four years. This story from the Park Record tells it well enough:Park City Mountain Resort on Tuesday said a high-altitude swath of terrain has reopened more than three years after a closure caused by the inability of the resort and the landowner to reach a lease agreement. …PCMR in December of 2018 indefinitely closed the terrain. The closure also included terrain located between Scott's Bowl and Constellation, a nearby ski run. The resort at the time of the closure said the landowner opted not to renew a lease. There had been an agreement in place for longer than 14 years, PCMR said at the time.A firm called Silver King Mining Company, with origins dating to Park City's silver-mining era, owns the land. The lease and renewals had been struck between the Gallivan family-controlled Silver King Mining Company and Powdr Corp., the former owner of PCMR. A representative of Silver King Mining Company in late 2018 indicated the firm traditionally accepted lift passes as compensation for the use of the land.The lease went to Vail Resorts when it acquired PCMR. The two sides negotiated a one-year extension but were unable at the time to reach a long-term agreement, the Silver King Mining Company side said in late 2018.Land ownership, particularly in the west, can be a wild patchwork. The majority of large western ski areas sit on National Forest Service land, but Park City (and neighboring Deer Valley), do not. While this grants them some developmental advantages over their neighbors in the Cottonwoods, who sit mostly or entirely on public land, it also means that sprawling Park City has more landlords than it would probably like.On Park City Epic Pass accessThis is the first Vail Resorts interview in a while where I haven't asked the question about Epic Pass access. I don't have a high-minded reason for that – I simply ran out of time.On the strange aversion to safety bars among Western U.S. skiersWhen you ski in Europe or, to a lesser-extent, the Northeastern U.S., skiers lower the chairlift safety bar reflexively, and typically before the carrier has exited the loading terminal. While I found this jarring when I first moved to New York from the Midwest – where safety bars remain rare – I quickly adapted, and now find it disconcerting to ride a chair without one.This whole dynamic is flipped in the West, where a sort of tough-guy bravado prevails, and skiers tend to ride with the safety bar aloft as a matter of stubborn pride. Many seem shocked, even offended, when I announce that I'm lowering it (and I always announce it, and bring it down slowly). Perhaps they are afraid their friends will see them riding with a lame tourist. It's all a bit tedious and stupid. I've had a few incidents where I've passed out for mysterious reasons. If that happens on a chairlift, I'd rather not die before I regain consciousness. So I like the bar. Vail Resorts, however, mandates that all employees lower the safety bar when in uniform. That doesn't mean they always do it. This past January, a Park City ski patroller died when a tree fell on the Short Cut liftline, flinging him into a snowbank, where he suffocated. Utah Occupational Safety and Health (UOSH) fined the resort a laughably inadequate sum of $2,500 for failing to clear potential hazards around the lift. UOSH's report did not indicate whether the patroller, 29-year-old Christian Helger, had lowered his safety bar, and experts who spoke to Fox 13 in Salt Lake City said that it may not have mattered. “With that type of hit from the weight of that type of a tree with that much snow on it, I don't know that the safety bar would have prevented this incident,” Travis Heggie, a Bowling Green State University professor, told the station.Fair enough. But a man is dead, and understanding the exact circumstances surrounding his death may help prevent another in the future. This is why airplane travel is so safe – regulators consider every factor of every tragedy to engineer similar failures out of future flights. We ought to be doing the same with chairlifts.Chairlifts are, on the whole, very safe to ride. But accidents, when they do happen, can be catastrophic. Miroslava “Mirka” Lewis, a former Stevens Pass employee, recently sued Vail Resorts after a fall from one of Stevens Pass' antique Riblet chairs in January of 2022 left her permanently disabled. From a local paper out of Everett, Washington:The lawsuit claims the ski lift Lewis was operating was designed in the 1960s by Riblet Tramway Company and lacked several safety precautions now considered standard in modern lifts. The lift suspended two chairs from a single pole in the center, with no safety bars or bails on the outside to confine passengers.Lewis suffered a traumatic brain injury, collapsed lung, four fractured vertebrae and other severe injuries, according to the complaint. She required multiple surgeries on her breasts and knees.The plaintiff also reportedly had to relearn how to speak, walk and write due to the severity of her injuries.It is unclear which lift Lewis was riding, but two centerpole Riblets remained at the resort last January: Kehr's and Seventh Heaven. Kehr's has since been removed. Vail Resorts, as a general policy, retrofits all of its chairlifts with safety bars, but these chairs' early-1960s recessed centerpole design is impossible to retrofit. So the lifts remain in their vintage state. It's a bit like buying a '57 Chevy – damn, does that thing look sweet, but if you drive it into a tree, you're kinda screwed without that seatbelt.Vail Resorts, by retrofitting its chairlifts and mandating employee use, has done more than probably any other entity to encourage safety bar use on chairlifts. But the industry, as a whole, could do more. In the east, safety bar use has been normalized by aggressive enforcement from lift crews and ski patrol and, in some cases (Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York), state laws mandating their use. Yet, across the West and the Midwest, hundreds of chairlifts still lack safety bars, let alone enforcement. That, in turn, discourages normalization of their use, and contributes to the blasé and dismissive attitude among western skiers, many of whom view the contraptions as extraneous.Technology can eventually resolve the issue for us – the new Burns high-speed quad at Deer Valley and the new Camelot six-pack at The Highlands in Michigan both drop the bar automatically, and raise it just before unload. But that's two chairlifts, at two very high-end resorts, out of 2,400 or so spinning in America. That technology is too expensive to apply at scale, and will be for the foreseeable future.So what to do? I think it starts with dismantling the tough-guy resistance. There are echoes here of the shift to widespread helmet use. Twenty years ago, almost no one, including me, wore helmets when skiing. I held out for a particularly long time – until 2016. But wearing them is the norm now, even among Western Bro Brahs. As the leader of a major Vail ski area who has watched the resort evolve first-hand, I think Walsh would have some valuable insights here into the roots of bar resistance and how Vail is tackling it, but we just didn't have the time to get into it.What I got wrongI noted that Nadia Guerriero, who appeared on this podcast last year as the VP/COO of Beaver Creek, had “transitioned to a regional leadership role.” That role is senior vice president and chief operating officer of Vail Resorts' Rockies Region.Park City personnel also provided a few clarifications following our conversation:* When discussing our 2023 closing date and “All the Way to May!” Deirdra said we had already extended our season by a week. In fact, our first extension was for two weeks: from April 9 to April 23. On April 12, we announced an additional eight days.* When discussing how we memorialize our Olympic legacy, Deirdra stated, “We have a mountain in the base area.” That should have been “monument.”* When discussing our lift upgrade permit, Deirdra said, “Our permit was upheld.” This should have been EITHER withheld, OR “The appeal was upheld.”Why you should ski Park CityPark City is a version of something that America needs a lot more of: a walkable community integrated with the ski area above it in a meaningful and seamless way. In Europe, this is the norm. In U.S. America, the exception. Only a few towns give you that experience: Telluride, Aspen, Red River. Park City is worth a visit for that experience alone – of sliding to the street, clicking out of your skis, and walking to the bar. It's novel and unexpected here in the land of King Car, but it feels very natural and right when you do it.The skiing, of course, is outstanding. There's less chest-thumping here than up in the Cottonwoods – less snow, too – but still plenty of steep stuff, plenty of glades, plenty of tucked-away spots where you look around and wonder where everyone went. Zip around off McConkey's or Jupiter or Tombstone or Ninety-Nine 90 or Super Condor and you'll find it. This is not Snowbird-off-the-Cirque stuff, but it's pretty good.But what Park City really is, at its core, is one of the world's great intermediate ski kingdoms. I'm talking here about King Con and Silverlode, the amazing jumble of blues skier's right off Tombstone, Saddleback and Dreamscape and Iron Mountain. You can ride express lifts pretty much everywhere as you skip around the low-angle glory. The mountain does not shoot skyward with the drama of Jackson or Palisades or Snowbird or Aspen. It rises and falls, rolls on forever, gifting you, off each summit, another peak to ride to.Before Vail bought it and stapled the resort together with the Canyons, no one talked about Park City in such epic – no pun intended – terms. It was just another of dozens of very good western ski areas. But that combination with its neighbor created something vast and otherworldly, six-and-a-half miles end-to-end, a scale that cannot be appreciated in any way other than to go ski it.Podcast NotesOn Vail's target opening and closing datesIn previous seasons, Vail Resorts would release target opening and closing dates for all of its ski areas. Perhaps traumatized by short seasons, particularly in the Midwest, the company released only target opening dates, and only for its largest ski areas, for 2023:The remainder of its ski areas, “expect to open consistent with target dates shared in years past,” according to a Vail Resorts press release.On Hidden Valley, MissouriWalsh's first ski experience was at Hidden Valley, a 320-footer just west of St. Louis. It's one of just two ski areas in Missouri (both of which Vail owns). Vail happened to acquire this little guy in the 2019 Peak Resorts acquisition. Here's a trailmap:Not to be confused, of course, with Vail's other Hidden Valley, which is stashed in Pennsylvania:Rather than renaming one or the other of these, I am actually in favor of just massively confusing everything by renaming every mountain in the portfolio “Vail Mountain” followed by its zip code. On the Vail-Powdr transitionI'll reset this 2019 story from the Park Record that I initially shared in the article accompanying my podcast conversation with Mount Snow GM Brian Suhadolc in August, who also worked at Park City during Vail's takeover from Powdr:In some circles, though, the whispers had already started that something was afoot, and perhaps not right, at PCMR. Powdr Corp. for some unknown reason was negotiating a sale of its flagship resort, the most prevalent of the rumblings held. The CEO of Powdr Corp., John Cumming, late in 2011 had publicly stated there was not a deal involving PCMR under negotiation, telling Park City leaders during a Marsac Building appearance in December of that year the resort was “not for sale.” Later that evening, he told The Park Record the rumors “always amuse me.”The reality was far more astonishing and something that would define the decade in Park City in a similar fashion as the Olympics did in the previous 10-year span and the population boom did in the 1990s.The corporate infrastructure in the spring of 2011 had inadvertently failed to renew two leases on the land underlying most of the PCMR terrain, propelling the PCMR side and the landowner, a firm under the umbrella of Talisker Corp., into what were initially private negotiations and then into a dramatic lawsuit that unfolded in state court as the Park City community, the tourism industry and the North American ski industry watched in disbelief. As the decade ends, the turmoil that beset PCMR stands, in many ways, as the instigator of a changing Park City that has left so many Parkites uneasy about the city's future as a true community.The PCMR side launched the litigation in March of 2012, saying the future of the resort was at stake in the case. PCMR might be forced to close if it did not prevail, the president and general manager of the resort at the time said at the outset of the case. Talisker Land Holdings, LLC countered that the leases had expired, suddenly leaving doubts that Powdr Corp. would retain control of PCMR. …Colorado-based Vail Resorts, one of Powdr Corp.'s industry rivals, would enter the case on the Talisker Land Holdings, LLC side in May of 2013 with the aim of wresting the disputed land from Powdr Corp. and coupling it with nearby Canyons Resort, which was branded a Vail Resorts property as part of a long-term lease and operations agreement reached at the same time of the Vail Resorts entry into the case. Vail Resorts was already an industry behemoth with its namesake property in the Rockies and other mountain resorts across North America. The addition of Canyons Resort would advance the Vail Resorts portfolio in one of North America's key skiing states.It was a deft maneuver orchestrated by the chairman and CEO of Vail Resorts, Rob Katz. The agreement was pegged at upward of $300 million in long-term debt. As part of the deal, Vail Resorts also seized control of the litigation on behalf of Talisker Land Holdings, LLC. …The lawsuit itself unfolded with stunning developments followed by shocking ones over the course of two-plus years. In one stupefying moment, the Talisker Land Holdings, LLC attorneys discovered a crucial letter from the PCMR side regarding the leases had been backdated. In another such moment, PCMR outlined plans to essentially dismantle the resort infrastructure, possibly on an around-the-clock schedule, if it was ordered off the disputed land.What was transpiring in the courtroom was inconceivable to the community. How could Powdr Corp., even inadvertently, not renew the leases on the ground that made up most of the skiing terrain at PCMR, many asked. Why couldn't Powdr Corp. and Talisker Land Holdings, LLC just reach a new agreement, others wondered. And many became weary as businessmen and their attorneys took to the courtroom with the future of PCMR, critical to a broad swath of the local economy, at stake. The mood eventually shifted to exasperation as it appeared there was a chance PCMR would not open for a ski season if Talisker Land Holdings, LLC moved forward with an eviction against Powdr Corp. from the disputed terrain.The lawsuit wore on with the Talisker Land Holdings, LLC-Vail Resorts side winning a series of key rulings from the 3rd District Court judge presiding over the case. Judge Ryan Harris in the summer of 2014 signed a de facto eviction notice against PCMR and ordered the sides into mediation. Powdr Corp., realizing there was little more that could be accomplished as it attempted to maintain control of PCMR, negotiated a $182.5 million sale of the resort to Vail Resorts that September.Incredible. Here, if you're curious, was Park City just before the merger:And Canyons:Now, imagine if someone, someday, merged this whole operation with the expanded version of Deer Valley, which sits right next door to Park City on Empire Peak:Here's a closer look at the border between the two, which is separated by ropes, rather than by any geographic barrier:Right around the time Vail took over Park City, all seven major local ski areas discussed a “One Wasatch” interconnect, which could be accomplished with a handful of lifts between Brighton and Park City and between Solitude and Alta (the Canyons/Park City connection below has since been built; Brighton and Solitude already share a ski link, as do Alta and Snowbird):This plan died under an avalanche of external factors, and is unlikely to be resurrected anytime soon. However, the mountains aren't getting any farther apart physically, and at some point we're going to accept that a few aerial lifts through the wilderness are a lot less damaging to our environment than thousands of cars cluttering up our roads.On the Park City-Canyons connector gondolaWe talked a bit about the Quicksilver Gondola, which, eight years after its construction, is taken for granted. But it's an amazing machine, a 7,767-foot-long connector that fused Park City to the much-larger Canyons, creating the largest interconnected ski resort in the United States. The fact that such a major, transformative lift opened in 2015, just a year after Vail acquired Park City, and the ski area is now having trouble simply upgrading two older lifts, speaks to how dramatically sentiment around the resort has changed within town.On Park City's mining historyAn amazing feature of skiing Park City is the gigantic warehouses, conveyor belts, and other industrial artifacts that dot the landscape. Visit Park City hosts free daily tours of these historic structures, which we discuss in the podcast. You can learn more here.On the Friends of Ski Mountain Mining HistoryWalsh mentions an organization called “Friends of Ski Mountain Mining History.” This group assumes the burden of restoring and maintaining all of these historic structures. From their website:More than 300 mines once operated in Park City, with the last silver mine closing in 1982. Twenty historic mine structures still exist today, many can been seen while skiing, hiking or mountain biking on our mountain trails. Due to the ravages of time and our harsh winters, many of the mine structures are dilapidated and in critical need of repair. We are committed to preserving our rich mining legacy for future residents and visitors before we lose these historic structures forever.Over the past seven years, our dedicated volunteers have completed stabilization of the King Con Counterweight, California Comstock Mill, Jupiter Ore Bin, Little Bell Ore Bin, two Silver King Water Tanks, the Silver Star Boiler Room and Coal Hopper, the Thaynes Conveyor and the King Con Ore Bin. Previous projects undertaken by our members include the Silver King Aerial Tramway Towers and two Silver King Water Tanks adjacent to the Silver Queen ski run. Our lecture with Clark Martinez, principal contractor on our projects and Jonathan Richards who is our structural engineer, will provide you insight as to how we saved these monuments to our mining era.Preserving our mining heritage is expensive. Our next challenge is to save the Silver King Headframe located at the base of the Bonanza lift and Thaynes Headframe near the Thaynes lift at Park City Mountain Resort. These massive buildings and adjacent structures will take 6 years to stabilize with an expected cost of $3 million. We are embarking on a capital campaign to raise the funds required to save these iconic structures. You can learn more about our campaign here.Here's a cool but slow-paced video about it:On the 2030/34 Winter OlympicsWe talk a bit about the potential for Salt Lake City – and, by extension, host mountains Park City, Deer Valley, and Snowbasin – to host a future Olympic Games. While both 2030 and 2034 are possibilities, the latter increasingly looks likely. Per an October Deseret News article:It looks like there's no competition for Salt Lake City's bid to host the 2034 Winter Games.International Olympic Committee members voted Sunday to formally award both the 2030 and 2034 Winter Games together next year after being told Salt Lake City's preference is for 2034 and the other three candidates still in the race are finalizing bids for 2030.“I think it's everything we could have hoped for,” said Fraser Bullock, president and CEO of the Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games, describing the decision as “a tremendous step forward” now that Salt Lake City was identified as the only candidate for 2034.Salt Lake City is bidding to host the more than $2.2 billion event in either 2030 or 2034, but has made it clear waiting until the later date is better financially, because that will avoid competition for domestic sponsors with the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.The next step for the bid that began more than a decade ago is a virtual presentation to the IOC's Future Host Commission for the Winter Games during the week starting Nov. 19 that will include Gov. Spencer Cox and Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall. IOC Executive Board members will decide when they meet from Nov. 30 through Dec. 1 which bids will advance to contract negotiations for 2030 and 2034, known as targeted dialogue under the new, less formal selection process. Their choices to host the 2030 and 2034 Winter Games will go to the full membership for a final ratification vote next year, likely in July just before the start of the 2024 Summer Games in Paris. The Summer Olympics have evolved into a toxic expense that no one really wants. The Winter Games, however, still seem desirable, and I've yet to encounter any significant resistance from the Utah ski community, who have (not entirely but in significant pockets) kind of made resistence to everything their default posture.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 96/100 in 2023, and number 482 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on August 11. It dropped for free subscribers on August 14. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoBrian Suhadolc, General Manager of Mount Snow, VermontRecorded onJuly 17, 2023About Mount SnowClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Dover, VermontYear founded: 1954Pass affiliations:* Epic Pass and Epic Local Pass: Unlimited access* Epic Northeast Value Pass: Unlimited access with holiday blackouts* Epic Northeast Midweek Pass: Unlimited access with weekend and holiday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Hermitage Club (9 minutes), Stratton (23 minutes), Bromley (36 minutes), Magic Mountain (39 minutes)Base elevation: 1,900 feetSummit elevation: 3,600 feetVertical drop: 1,700 feetSkiable Acres: 601Average annual snowfall: 150 inchesTrail count: 80 (15% advanced/expert, 70% intermediate, 15% beginner)Lift count: 19 (2 six-packs, 4 high-speed quads, 5 triples, 2 doubles, 1 ropetow, 5 magic carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Mount Snow's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himThis is my second podcast focused on Mount Snow. The first episode featured then-GM Tracy Bartels, in November 2020. Our focus then was Covid: as in, what the hell were we going to do about it? The ski industry had spent eight months from the March shutdowns preparing for a masked world of closed ski bars and social distancing. Was this actually going to work?It did, of course. Sort of. But that podcast from 2020 has little to do with the Mount Snow of 2023, which has evolved substantially in just three years. It was time for an update.I'm also owning the fact that I overcorrected when I took The Storm national in 2021. In the pod's first two years, I'd interviewed the heads of most of New England's largest ski areas. Check, check, check. Done. I needed to establish this thing in the Rockies, the Cascades, the Sierras, the Wasatch. And I did. But a lot of my New England listeners felt snubbed. I'd built this thing on their attention and enthusiasm, and now I was pivoting away.It's time to pivot back a bit. The lift-served ski world is changing fast, especially among those giants with access to capital and ambition. So I've scheduled upcoming podcast conversations with the leaders of Killington and Sunday River, both of which I've profiled in the past. I'll pursue more such follow-ups in the future, in all regions – and not just with mega-resorts, as the recent second installment with the owners of Plattekill demonstrated. The long-term goal is to alternate podcasts so that every other episode focuses on the West, with the East/Midwest/Mid-Atlantic occupying the alternate slots.But setting aside my own admin, I'm focusing on Mount Snow because it's an incredibly important mountain. I'll reset what I wrote in this same section three years ago:Because Mount Snow is where big-time Northeast skiing begins. As the southern-most major Vermont ski area, it is a skier's gateway to mountains that are big enough to get lost on. From its strategic position in the orbit of the East Coast megalopolis, successive owners have gradually built something uniquely suited to the frenetic swarms of wildly varied skiers who bullseye the place each winter: Mount Snow has one of the most outstanding terrain parks in America and one of the best snowmaking systems in the world. The families who swarm here find absolutely unintimidating terrain, blue as the sky and groomed smoother than I-91. It's a perfect family mountain and a perfect bus skier's mountain and a perfect first step from Mount Local to something that shows you how big skiing can be. It was the crown jewel of the Peak Resort's empire, and it's one of the most important pieces to Vail's ever-expanding Epic jigsaw puzzle. I wouldn't call it a special mountain – the terrain is mild and not terribly interesting, and the volume and quality of natural snowfall is best described as adequate. But it is a vital mountain, as the southern-most anchor of Vermont's teeming ski scene, as an accessible ski experience for weekending cityfolk, as an aspirational destination for people stepping more fully into skiing culture, and as a testament to the power of the imagination to transform a big vertical drop and cold skies into a vital and vibrant node of the regional ski scene.What we talked aboutSurveying damage from the July rainstorm; the Epic Promise Foundation; Mount Snow's four-foot March snowstorm; the frantic hilarity of New England powder days; the difference between east and west coast pow; breaking down Mount Snow's lift upgrades at Sundance, Sunbrook, and Heavy Metal; how the Sundance six-pack “changed the dynamic of the ski resort”; why Sundance – unlike the mega-popular Bluebird Express – does not have bubbles; how the resort manages 18 high-speed out-of-base seats; the four most-utilized lifts at Mount Snow; how Mount Snow built the Sunbrook lift in a roadless section of mountain; what it took to convert the Heavy Metal lift from a double to a triple; why Vail auctioned the individual chairs from the old Sunbrook rather than selling the lift – a 1990 CTEC quad – to a smaller ski area; talking through long-term upgrades to Nitro; why the resort doesn't add more chairs to the current Nitro to boost its capacity from 2,100 skiers per hour to 2,400; the status of paid parking two years in; impressions of New England ski culture; the difference between running a mountain in the east and in the west; what happens when Vail surprise-buys your resort; connecting Park City to The Canyons via gondola – “the magnitude of it was not lost on me”; the mining facilities still scattered across Park City; career opportunity within Vail Resorts; Mount Snow's monster snowmaking system; why Mount Snow has become Vail's late-season New England operator, rather than Wildcat; why Carinthia is the mountain's late-operating pod; whether we could ever see another October opening at Mount Snow; potential upgrades for the North Face lifts; assessing the Beartrap double; contemplating the future of Grand Summit; whether we could ever see a detach lift on beginner terrain at Mount Snow; whether the Epic Local Pass is the correct unlimited-access pass for Mount Snow; the popularity of Northeast-specific Epic Passes; the Epic Day Pass; and Vail Resorts' day-ticket limits for the 2022-23 ski season.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewEver since Peak Resorts built the Bluebird Express six-pack in 2011, Mount Snow has had a problem: the lift, with its blue bubbles and ultra-smooth ride, was so flashy and appealing that nobody wanted to ride any other lift on the front side of the mountain. Even the Grand Summit high-speed quad, which runs parallel to Bluebird and serves all the same terrain, had trouble getting attention. This was great for skiers who actively work the mountain, but a real drag for Mount Snow's rap as the most-crowded Southern Vermont ski area.Enter: Vail Resorts' Epic Lift Upgrades of 2022. Mount Snow was the beneficiary of two of the 21 planned lifts (18 of which Vail finished on schedule*): the Sundance and Tumbleweed triples made way for a new six-pack, while the backside Sunbrook lift got a boost from a fixed-grip quad to a detach. Meanwhile, the mountain converted the Heavy Metal double into a triple chair, adding capacity to the popular Carinthia terrain park.Sundance and Sunbrook had one job: give people a reason to ski something besides Bluebird. As far as replacement lifts go, they seemed brilliant. But did the plan work to unknot Mount Snow's gnarliest crowd points?That was one topic Suhadolc and I discussed. Another: was Vail able to recover from its arguably oversold 2021-22 ski season by implementing day-ticket limits and settling into paid-parking plans? And how were those paid parking plans going? And should Mount Snow really be unlimited on the Epic Local Pass?Vail Resorts is entering its fifth winter season operating Mount Snow. With the Peak Resorts transition fully digested and Covid's hassles a memory, the company has no choice but to fully own every piece of the experience. With its size and proximity to New York City, Mount Snow will always be somewhat hectic. New Englanders can tolerate that. Chaos, however, does not belong in this land of picket-fence order. And for a moment post-Covid, Mount Snow seemed to be tilting toward chaos.But no one can say that Vail has not brought big change to the mountain over the past several seasons. Despite daily lift tickets that topped out at $154 this past winter, Mount Snow has never been more affordable to the masses. Unlimited access is just $689 on the Epic Local Pass; subtract holidays with the $567 Northeast Value Pass; minus weekends with the $425 Northeast Midweek Pass. With prices that low at a mountain that big that's as easy to access as Mount Snow is, things could go sideways pretty quick. The new lifts, the parking plans, the lift-ticket limits – all of it is calculated to prevent that from happening.Ski areas are a little bit like novels. They're never really finished. But unlike our great works of literature, we get to edit ski areas after they're published. The version of Mount Snow that we ski today is probably not the best and final version of the hill, but it may also be the best it's ever been,.*Two lifts scheduled to rise in Park City were rerouted to Whistler after spiteful locals revolted; Keystone's Bergman sixer had to wait a year after a construction-road misfire tore up some sensitive high-altitude terrain.What I got wrong* I said that the new Sunbrook high-speed quad clocked a ride time around four minutes. The actual time is closer to six minutes, according to Suhadolc.* I asked Brian why Vail didn't try to re-use the Sunbrook lift – a 1990 CTEC quad that likely had lots of life left on it – at a “smaller ski area.” He explained that Vail does occasionally move a lift within its portfolio. What I had meant to ask, however, was why didn't Mount Snow didn't attempt to sell the lift on the open market to a smaller independent ski area. It's great that Mount Snow sold the chairs and flipped the money to the Epic Promise Foundation, which assists their employees in times of outstanding need, such as the floods that just smashed Okemo. But the company could likely have made more for Epic Promise by selling the entire lift to an independent ski area, many of which are desperate for a modern quad in good working condition.* I said that Vail Resorts purchased Park City Mountain Resort “in 2014 or 2015.” The company bought the resort in 2014, a year after it bought Canyons (which is now part of Park City).* I said the Outpost lift turned 60 this year. Lift Blog, my go-to source for pretty much all things lifts, lists the lift as a 1963 Yan triple. Brian said that it is a 1988 CTEC triple. New England Ski History agrees with Brian. This is not a crack on Lift Blog, which is an excellent resource, so much as on me for not double-checking my references - in fact, I think Tracy Bartels corrected me on the exact same factoid three years ago.* I said that the Northeast Midweek Epic Pass was “less than $400.” This is incorrect. The pass currently costs $425. The early-bird price for the 2023-24 ski season was $416.* When I was running through the various resorts that the Northeast-specific Epic Passes accessed, I left out Mt. Brighton, Michigan.* I noted that Mount Snow had opened in October “once and maybe twice” under Peak Resorts. The only record I can find of Mount Snow opening that early was on Oct. 27, 2018.Why you should ski Mount SnowMount Snow has two big, obvious constituencies: Park Brah and Family Bro.The Carinthia peak is a crucial piece of Peak Resorts' legacy, as important as the Bluebird Express or the tens of millions the company pumped into snowmaking upgrades. Once a separate ski area, the peak is isolated from the mountain proper (though connected both ways by green trails), a thousand vertical feet of straight hits served by a high-speed quad and a triple chair. Park Brahs can park out, Brah. Along with Seven Brothers at Loon, it may be the best terrain park in the eastern United States.Family Bro loves Mount Snow partly because of Carinthia. Radbrah Junior can spend his afternoons there, posted up five wide with his boys, contemplating the hits below. The rest of the mountain, outside of the North Face, is interstate-width and solid blue. Families of almost any ability can manage this terrain. Mount Snow may be home to the best sustained intermediate terrain in New England. It's certainly among the most varied. And the mountain grooms just about every run just about every night, even if I wish they'd chill and let some bumps sprout here and there. Mount Snow's biggest drawback is a relative lack of glades for a mountain of its size. Skiers seeking trees should aim their GPS for Stratton or Magic, both of which have excellent, extensive glade networks.Epic Pass holders need to really pick their spots, though. Both Mount Snow and Okemo reach stampede-level crowding on weekends and holidays (I really don't think either should be unlimited on the Epic Local pass). Head for Stowe at these times if at all possible. Or snag an Indy Pass for peak-day getaways to Magic and Bolton Valley.Podcast NotesOn Heavenly and the Caldor FireWhen discussing Vail Resorts' unified disaster response to the recent Vermont floods, I referred to a similar conversation I'd had with Heavenly COO Tom Fortune in regards to the Caldor Fire that descended on Tahoe two years ago. You can listen to that conversation starting at 56:03 here.On Vermont's monster March snowstormWe discussed a monster snowstorm that descended on Vermont March 14 to 15. Huge snow totals included 45 inches at Bromley, 37 inches at Magic, and 46 inches at Mount Snow.On crushing pow at Mount SnowI discussed the chaos of a pow-day rope-drop at Mount Snow. Unfortunately the only access I have to it is this Twitter video. And since Substack won't embed Twitter videos anymore you'll have to click through to watch it:Too many “suns”I kept getting Mount Snow's “sun” lifts confused. It reminded me of a time I was skiing Snowbird, and a bunch of us were debating where to go next, and my buddy Mike, clearly confused, was just like, “There's too many Gads.” And my God he's right.On the Mount Snow “tram”Brian and I briefly discussed Mount Snow's old “tram,” which transported skiers from a base-area hotel up to the ski hill. It was really more of a whacky speedboat suspended from a cable, as you can see in the rendering on this 1965 trailmap. And yes, that's a double bubble chair beside it:On the Vail Resorts acquisition of Park CityBrian worked at Park City when Vail Resorts swiped it off Powdr Corp's lunch tray after the latter forgot to renew its lease. It was probably the most cartoonishly absurd business transaction in the history of lift-served skiing. Here's Park Record, examining the events as part of a decade-in-review series in late 2019:In some circles, though, the whispers had already started that something was afoot, and perhaps not right, at PCMR. Powdr Corp. for some unknown reason was negotiating a sale of its flagship resort, the most prevalent of the rumblings held. The CEO of Powdr Corp., John Cumming, late in 2011 had publicly stated there was not a deal involving PCMR under negotiation, telling Park City leaders during a Marsac Building appearance in December of that year the resort was “not for sale.” Later that evening, he told The Park Record the rumors “always amuse me.”The reality was far more astonishing and something that would define the decade in Park City in a similar fashion as the Olympics did in the previous 10-year span and the population boom did in the 1990s.The corporate infrastructure in the spring of 2011 had inadvertently failed to renew two leases on the land underlying most of the PCMR terrain, propelling the PCMR side and the landowner, a firm under the umbrella of Talisker Corp., into what were initially private negotiations and then into a dramatic lawsuit that unfolded in state court as the Park City community, the tourism industry and the North American ski industry watched in disbelief. As the decade ends, the turmoil that beset PCMR stands, in many ways, as the instigator of a changing Park City that has left so many Parkites uneasy about the city's future as a true community.The PCMR side launched the litigation in March of 2012, saying the future of the resort was at stake in the case. PCMR might be forced to close if it did not prevail, the president and general manager of the resort at the time said at the outset of the case. Talisker Land Holdings, LLC countered that the leases had expired, suddenly leaving doubts that Powdr Corp. would retain control of PCMR. …Colorado-based Vail Resorts, one of Powdr Corp.'s industry rivals, would enter the case on the Talisker Land Holdings, LLC side in May of 2013 with the aim of wresting the disputed land from Powdr Corp. and coupling it with nearby Canyons Resort, which was branded a Vail Resorts property as part of a long-term lease and operations agreement reached at the same time of the Vail Resorts entry into the case. Vail Resorts was already an industry behemoth with its namesake property in the Rockies and other mountain resorts across North America. The addition of Canyons Resort would advance the Vail Resorts portfolio in one of North America's key skiing states.It was a deft maneuver orchestrated by the chairman and CEO of Vail Resorts, Rob Katz. The agreement was pegged at upward of $300 million in long-term debt. As part of the deal, Vail Resorts also seized control of the litigation on behalf of Talisker Land Holdings, LLC. …The lawsuit itself unfolded with stunning developments followed by shocking ones over the course of two-plus years. In one stupefying moment, the Talisker Land Holdings, LLC attorneys discovered a crucial letter from the PCMR side regarding the leases had been backdated. In another such moment, PCMR outlined plans to essentially dismantle the resort infrastructure, possibly on an around-the-clock schedule, if it was ordered off the disputed land.What was transpiring in the courtroom was inconceivable to the community. How could Powdr Corp., even inadvertently, not renew the leases on the ground that made up most of the skiing terrain at PCMR, many asked. Why couldn't Powdr Corp. and Talisker Land Holdings, LLC just reach a new agreement, others wondered. And many became weary as businessmen and their attorneys took to the courtroom with the future of PCMR, critical to a broad swath of the local economy, at stake. The mood eventually shifted to exasperation as it appeared there was a chance PCMR would not open for a ski season if Talisker Land Holdings, LLC moved forward with an eviction against Powdr Corp. from the disputed terrain.The lawsuit wore on with the Talisker Land Holdings, LLC-Vail Resorts side winning a series of key rulings from the 3rd District Court judge presiding over the case. Judge Ryan Harris in the summer of 2014 signed a de facto eviction notice against PCMR and ordered the sides into mediation. Powdr Corp., realizing there was little more that could be accomplished as it attempted to maintain control of PCMR, negotiated a $182.5 million sale of the resort to Vail Resorts that September.Absolutely brutal and amazing and hard to believe, even nearly a decade later.On Canyons' name historyI mentioned the various names that the former Canyons ski area (now part of Park City), had gone by. Ski Utah provides the complete history:A neighboring ski area and sister resort to Park City Ski Area, called Park City West, opened in 1968. It was renamed ParkWest in 1975 after a change in ownership, then Wolf Mountain in 1995 for just two seasons. In 1997 it became The Canyons after an acquisition by the American Skiing Company before it was purchased by the Talisker Corporation. It was then sold to Vail Resorts in 2014 and subsequently merged with Park City Mountain. Today that base area is known as The Canyons Village at Park City.On Mount Snow's amazing snowmaking systemJust two years before selling its entire portfolio to Vail Resorts, Peak Resorts invested an amazing $30 million into Mount Snow's snowmaking system. The Brattleboro Reformer profiled the system shortly before go-live in 2017:West Lake is actually a sprawling system that begins about 4 miles from Mount Snow.It starts with a small, black, inflatable dam that stretches 18 feet across Cold Brook in Wilmington. From November through March, Mount Snow can inflate that dam as needed, drawing water into the newly constructed reservoir.A sluiceway alongside the dam ensures a flow of water in Cold Brook whether the dam is inflated or not."We were trying to be pretty low-impact, or as low-impact as possible," Storrs said.A nondescript-looking pump house near the dam can send water upward toward Mount Snow at a rate of 11,800 gallons per minute, "which is pretty much double what we used to have in terms of pumping capacity," Storrs said.On a recent morning, crews were putting on finishing touches and conducting tests at that pump house and two others situated farther up the mountain. There's a nearly 600-foot elevation gain between the inflatable dam and the last pump house on Mount Snow's slopes.On Wildcat and the long seasonWe discussed Wildcat's tradition as a late operator. Under Peak Resorts, the ski area would push the season into late April and, occasionally, May. Snowpak has documented Wildcat's closing dates over the past nine years – note the shift to earlier dates after Vail acquired the resort in 2019 (ignore the 2020 date, for obvious reasons):Vail shifted late-season New England operations to Mount Snow for reasons that Brian explains on the podcast. But it's a little incongruous stacked up against the region's other five late operators: Killington, Sugarbush, Jay Peak, Sunday River, and Sugarloaf, all of which are quite a ways north of Mount Snow:On Grand Summit and Yan detachablesI referred to the dreadful safety record of Yan detachable lifts. I broke this history of death and incompetence down in my recent podcast with China Peak GM Tim Cohee (scroll down to the Podcast Notes section).On Epic and Ikon access shifts since 2020I keep asking Vail Resorts' GMs if their ski areas are placed on the appropriate Epic Pass tier, mostly because it's amazing to me that an unlimited season pass to a mountain like Breckenridge or Mount Snow or Stevens Pass could be $676 – the early-bird price of 2023-24 Epic Local Passes. The Ikon Pass, as I noted on the podcast, has shifted its pass structure all over the place the past several seasons, tweaking access to Stratton, Sugarbush, Crystal Mountain, Alta, Aspen, Jackson Hole, Taos, Deer Valley, and Arapahoe Basin. Here's the chart I included in my recent podcast conversation with Alterra CEO Jared Smith to document those changes:I was astonished when Vail kept Stevens Pass on the Epic Local unlimited tier after 2021's well-documented crowding meltdowns. Things got so wild in Washington that Alterra pulled Crystal off the Ikon Pass' unlimited tier and jacked its season pass price up to $1,700 for the 2022-23 ski season. I still don't really understand this super-bargain access strategy, but Vail has made it clear that they're sticking with it.On the phenomenal deal that is the Epic Day PassWe discussed the Epic Day Pass. This thing really is an amazing deal: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 68/100 in 2023, and number 454 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on June 26. It dropped for free subscribers on June 29. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoEllen Galbraith, Vice President and General Manager of Stevens Pass, WashingtonRecorded onJune 5, 2023About Stevens PassClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Skykomish, WashingtonYear founded: 1937Pass affiliations:* Unlimited access on Epic Pass, Epic Local Pass, Stevens Pass Premium Pass* Stevens Pass Select Pass: blacked out during the day on all holidays plus weekends from Dec. 16 to March 10; night skiing allowed on all days* 1- to 7-day access on Epic Day Pass – All Resorts and 32 Resorts versionsClosest neighboring ski areas: Leavenworth Ski Hill (40 minutes), Badger Mountain (1 hour, 28 minutes), Mission Ridge (1 hour, 29 minutes), Echo Valley (1 hour, 58 minutes), Summit at Snoqualmie (2 hours, 4 minutes), Loup Loup (2 hours, 49 minutes) - travel times vary considerably given weather conditions, time of day, and time of yearBase elevation: 3,821 feet at Mill Valley; 4,061 feet at main baseSummit elevation: 5,600 feet at top of Big Chief Mountain, 5,845 feet at top of Cowboy MountainVertical drop: 1,779 from top of Big Chief to bottom of Mill Valley, 1,784 from top of Cowboy to main baseSkiable Acres: 1,125Average annual snowfall: 460 inchesTrail count: 57Lift count: 11 (4 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples [Southern Cross and Double Diamond are one long up-and-over lift], 1 double, 2 carpets – this is the anticipated lift fleet for 2023-24, which includes the upgrade of Kehr's from a Riblet double to a fixed-grip quad) – view Lift Blog's inventory of Stevens Pass' lift fleet.Why I interviewed herThere is a version of reality in which Washington is a sort of Tahoe North, its snow-bombed ski centers defined by condos bunched mountainside and mixed-use base villages Lego-bricked together for the weekender and spring-breaker. In which the state competes with Colorado or Utah or Montana or Wyoming for conventions and competitions and ski clubs by the planeload. In which Washington skiing matters to anyone other than Washington skiers.But this is not the reality we live in. Because despite several defining factors shared by other great ski regions – plentiful snowfall, proximity to a large airport, locations along major highways, plentiful natural snow, large vertical drops – the state's ski areas are, for the most part, day-drivers. There is little slopeside lodging, nothing approximating a pedestrian base village. Just scattered cabins, ubiquitous RV lots, hotels 40 miles from the lifts.Which, when Washington was a scenic American backwater, was fine. But Seattle is the fastest-growing big city in America. And those new arrivals have money to spend: per-capita personal income in the region has more than doubled in the past 20 years, from $39,965 annually in 2003 to $89,274 today, a rate that has significantly outpaced inflation. Thank Amazon or Microsoft or Starbucks or Boeing. But whatever's driving this general affluence, the region's ski infrastructure has simultaneously benefitted from it and failed to keep up.There are good reasons that Vail (Stevens Pass) and Alterra (Crystal) and Boyne (Summit at Snoqualmie) all own ski areas within Seattle's orbit – it's a rabid and monied market, and one with a reliable enough snowtrain that Stevens Pass owns exactly two snowguns. Snoqualmie doesn't have any (well, a few for their tubing park). All of these companies know how to build resorts. But they can't do it in Washington. Hemmed in by national parks or NIMBYs or terrain too severe for building, they are stuck with powder-day and weekend parades of SUVs dozens of miles long.Which takes us to the purpose of this podcast. What is the future of Washington skiing? That it should continue unchanged seems an insane proposition. But absent large-scale infrastructure investment, the state's Seattle-adjacent ski areas have had to get creative to manage crowds. Crystal's season pass price nearly tripled in just two years. Summit at Snoqualmie is trying to build its way out with ever-more, ever-more-high-capacity lifts. And Stevens Pass follows the mothership's policy of limiting day tickets even as access remains unlimited on a variety of highly affordable Epic Passes.Washington will likely never be an epicenter of destination ski resorts like the Wasatch or Summit County or Tahoe. But it does need to evolve into something other than what it is right now: a big-mountain, high-traffic region that is trying to pretend like it's Michigan's Upper Peninsula, isolated and depopulated and wild. Stevens Pass will be an important character in this drama, creating one version of what it means to be a busy Pacific Northwest Ski area in the so-far eruptive 2020s. Hang on.What we talked aboutStevens Pass' relationship to Whistler; whether the ski area has jumped regional destination status; the ski area's lower-than-average snowfall this past season; the often treacherous but indispensable US-2; earning back trust after you lose it; working the 2002 Olympics; Beaver Creek and the art and importance of grooming; why Galbraith volunteered to work at Stevens Pass when everything started to go sideways during the 2021-22 ski season; the moment the ski area turned around; rethinking parking; employee housing; lodging; RV life; the Kehr's chairlift upgrade; why Stevens Pass is upgrading Kehr's before the even older Seventh Heaven lift; thoughts on replacing Seventh Heaven; the unique up-and-over Double Diamond/Southern Cross lift and whether a future version would still combine the two lifts or upgrade to a detach; potential expansions and lift additions; the masterplan; Stevens Pass snowmaking “system”; the night-skiing footprint; why Stevens Pass still has its own Epic Pass and why the mountain remains unlimited on the Epic Local Pass; comparing Crystal and Stevens' varying responses to Washington's population explosion; and limiting lift ticket sales.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewAt some point, we'll be able to stop discussing the disastrous start to Stevens Pass' 2021-22 ski season. But, to both set context around Galbraith's arrival and to distance her from the genesis of the issues, I'll reset it one more time. Gregory Scruggs, writing in The Seattle Times last year:After a delayed start to the season, snow hammered the Cascades during the [2021]holiday week. Severely understaffed, Stevens Pass struggled to open most of its chairlifts for six weeks, including those serving the popular backside terrain.Vail Resorts, which bought Stevens Pass in 2018, had sold a record number of its season pass product, the Epic Pass, in the run-up to the 2021-22 winter, leaving thousands of Washington residents claiming that they had prepaid for a product they couldn't use. A Change.org petition titled “Hold Vail Resorts Accountable” generated over 45,000 signatures. Over 400 state residents filed complaints against Vail Resorts with the state Attorney General's office. In early January, VailDaily reported that Vail's stock price was underperforming by 25%, with analysts attributing the drop in part to an avalanche of consumer ire about mismanagement at resorts across the country, including Stevens Pass.On Jan. 12, Vail Resorts fired then-general manager Tom Pettigrew and announced that [Tom] Fortune would temporarily relocate from his role as general manager at Heavenly Ski Resort in South Lake Tahoe, California, to right the ship at Stevens Pass.Fortune, the current head of Heavenly and Vail's Tahoe Region, had grown up at the ski area, and Stevens' resurrection constituted a deeply personal mission. He laid out the whole experience when he joined The Storm Skiing Podcast back in April. But after jump-starting the machine, he had to get back to Tahoe. Enter Galbraith, who had worked her way up through the Vail ranks and earned her first shot as a mountain general manager last June. Scruggs wrote a follow-up article this past January, to check in on Stevens and assess her first half-year as resort lead:Galbraith, 42, was brought in to help right the ship last season under interim general manager Tom Fortune as Stevens Pass struggled to operate at full capacity, with staff shortages leading to long lines, closed terrain and irate season pass holders. In May, Galbraith became general manager, and by all accounts the guest experience has improved dramatically since its nadir one year ago. For longtime Stevens Pass regulars, their home mountain feels back to normal, with all 10 chairlifts spinning and ski runs open every day, conditions permitting, and lodges fully open for business. And more promised capital upgrades from deep-pocketed Vail are on the way.“Those memories from last year are still very front of mind,” said Galbraith, from her office overlooking the mountain, where a David Horsey cartoon featuring the abominable snowman lampooning the Stevens Pass debacle is tacked above her desk next to a quote from Gen. George S. Patton. …While customers signed a Change.org petition to hold Vail Resorts accountable last winter and filed consumer complaints with the state attorney general, Stevens Pass is generally earning higher marks under Galbraith's tenure.“After last year's D-plus effort, I give this year a solid B-plus,” said Will Roberts, of Edmonds, via email. “My family is having fun and we are happy to come to Stevens Pass.”So, with a season behind her, how was it going? While the Epic and Ikon passes have somewhat scrambled the traditional who-gets-attention calculus, skiers outside of the Pacific Northwest rarely hear about the region's ski areas unless things get terrible. A heat wave ends Timberline's famous summer season three weeks early. The unlimited-Ikon-Base-Pass-inspired Crystal Mountain meltdown of 2020. Stevens Pass goes sideways. When the national ski media ignores the PNW, that typically means everything's going OK.And we didn't hear much about Stevens this year, did we? Lift aficionados are aware of the Kehr's chairlift upgrade. Powderchasers know the ski area came in significantly under its annual snowfall average despite bomber conditions throughout the West. Locals know that the ski area lost several days to road shutdowns on notoriously dicey US 2. But the rest of us mostly forgot about the joint, and for Vail Resorts, that was probably the best possible outcome.Questions I wish I'd askedIf I'd had more time, or if this interview had been 10 years earlier, or if the mountain hadn't been shuffled among owners in the interim, we surely would have discussed the 2012 Tunnel Creek avalanche. The incident killed three skiers in the popular backcountry area adjacent to Stevens Pass. This Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times feature story by John Branch offers a definitive account of what happened that day. It is a long but essential read, and basically scared me away from the backcountry forever.Why you should ski Stevens PassUsually Facebook is a wasteland overrun by morons who either lack brains, lack empathy, or both. As though someone had flushed the contents of the DSM-5 into the digital netherworld. But once in a while, a flash of brilliance. I observed such an exchange around the time Vail Resorts purchased Stevens Pass in 2018. I can't find the original conversation, so I'll paraphrase:PERSON 1: This is terrible, I don't want a bunch of Vail skiers overrunning my ski area.PERSON 2: You have nothing to worry about. No one is coming from Colorado to ski Stevens Pass. Vail is buying it so that Stevens regulars will go to Park City/Vail/Breckenridge/Whistler on vacation.Person two was right, of course, to an extent. Sure, Colorado or Utah skiers are generally happy reminding everyone that they live in Colorado or Utah. But to an Epic Pass holder living in, say, Pennsylvania or Michigan or New York or Wisconsin, an 1,800-foot, 1,100-acre ski area that averages 460 inches of snow annually sounds like a rowdy good time worth traveling for. Particularly since that ski area is pretty easy to reach via Seattle.I asked Galbraith whether, under the Epic Pass, Stevens had begun to attract more destination guests. She said that it had. It is likely a modest increase, and Stevens Pass will never offer the slopeside condos and snow quality of Utah or Colorado. But it is a revered ski center in a gorgeous natural setting with fierce skiing and a well-defined locals' culture. In our checklist era that the Epic Pass has enabled and defined, Stevens Pass is one mountain that every skier ought to hit eventually.Podcast NotesOn Washington's ski area landscapeWashington has just 16 ski areas and nearly 8 million residents. That gives the state one of the lowest numbers of ski areas, by geographic or population size, of any major ski state:While some of the state's ski areas are quite large, only 11 have chairlifts:We have a better chance of seeing Loup Loup on the Epic Pass than we do of ever building another ski area in Washington State. So this is what we have to work with.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 54/100 in 2023, and number 440 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on May 2. It dropped for free subscribers on May 5. 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:WhoTom Fortune, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Heavenly and Vail's Tahoe Region (Heavenly, Northstar, and Kirkwood)Recorded onApril 25 , 2023About Heavenly and Vail's Tahoe RegionHeavenlyClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Stateline, Nevada and South Lake Tahoe, CaliforniaYear founded: 1955Pass affiliations: Unlimited access on Epic Pass; Unlimited access with holiday blackouts on Epic Local Pass, Tahoe Local Pass, Tahoe Value PassClosest neighboring ski areas: Sierra-at-Tahoe (30 minutes), Diamond Peak (45 minutes), Kirkwood (51 minutes), Mt. Rose (1 hour), Northstar (1 hour), Sky Tavern (1 hour, 5 minutes) - travel times vary dramatically given weather conditions and time of day.Base elevation: 6,565 feet at California Lodge; the Heavenly Gondola leaves from Heavenly Village at 6,255 feet – when snowpack allows, you can ski all the way to the village, though this is technically backcountry terrainSummit elevation: 10,040 feet at the top of Sky ExpressVertical drop: 3,475 feet from the summit to California Lodge; 3,785 feet from the summit to Heavenly VillageSkiable Acres: 4,800Average annual snowfall: 360 inches (570 inches for 2022-23 ski season as of May 2)Trail count: 97Lift count: 26 lifts (1 50-passenger tram, 1 eight-passenger gondola, 2 six-packs, 8 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 5 triples, 2 doubles, 2 ropetows, 4 carpets)NorthstarClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Truckee, CaliforniaYear founded: 1972Pass affiliations: Unlimited access on Epic Pass; Unlimited access with holiday blackouts on Epic Local Pass, Tahoe Local Pass; unlimited with holiday and Saturday blackouts on Tahoe Value PassClosest neighboring ski areas: Tahoe Donner (24 minutes), Boreal (25 minutes), Donner Ski Ranch (27 minutes), Palisades Tahoe (27 minutes), Diamond Peak (27 minutes), Soda Springs (29 minutes), Kingvale (32 minutes), Sugar Bowl (33 minutes), Mt. Rose (34 minutes), Homewood (35 minutes), Sky Tavern (39 minutes), Heavenly (1 hour) - travel times vary dramatically given weather conditions and time of day.Base elevation: 6,330 feetSummit elevation: 8,610 feetVertical drop: 2,280 feetSkiable Acres: 3,170Average annual snowfall: 350 inches (665 inches for 2022-23 ski season as of May 2)Trail count: 106Lift count: 19 (1 six-passenger gondola, 1 pulse gondola, 1 chondola with 6-pack chairs & 8-passenger cabins, 1 six-pack, 6 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 1 platter, 5 magic carpets)KirkwoodClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Kirkwood, CaliforniaYear founded: 1972Pass affiliations: Unlimited access on Epic Pass, Kirkwood Pass; Unlimited access with holiday blackouts on Epic Local Pass, Tahoe Local Pass; unlimited with holiday and Saturday blackouts on Tahoe Value PassClosest neighboring ski areas: Sierra-at-Tahoe (48 minutes), Heavenly (48 minutes) - travel times vary dramatically given weather conditions and time of day.Base elevation: 7,800 feetSummit elevation: 9,800 feetVertical drop: 2,000 feetSkiable Acres: 2,300Average annual snowfall: 354 inches (708 inches for 2022-23 ski season as of May 2)Trail count: 94Lift count: 13 (2 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 6 triples, 1 double, 1 T-bar, 2 carpets)Why I interviewed himFor decades, Heavenly was the largest ski area that touched the state of California. By a lot. Four drive-to base areas serving 4,800 acres across two states. Mammoth? Ha! Its name misleads – 3,500 acres, barely bigger than Keystone. To grasp Heavenly's scale, look again at the new North Bowl lift on the trailmap above. A blip, one red line lost among dozens. Lodged near the base like the beginner lifts we're all used to ignoring. But that little lift rises almost 1,300 vertical feet over nearly a mile. That's close to the skiable drop of Sugar Bowl (1,500 feet), itself a major Tahoe ski area. Imagine laying Sugar Bowl's 1,650 acres over the Heavenly trailmap, then add Sierra-at-Tahoe (2,000 acres) and Mt. Rose (1,200). Now you're even.Last year, Palisades Tahoe wrecked the party, stringing a gondola between Alpine Meadows and the resort formerly known as Squaw Valley. They were technically one resort before, but I'm not an adherent of the these-two-ski-areas-are-one-ski-area-because-we-say-so school of marketing. But now the two sides really are united, crafting a 6,000-acre super-resort that demotes Heavenly to second-largest in Tahoe.Does it really matter? Heavenly is one of the more impressive hunks of interconnected mountain that you'll ever ski in America. Glance northwest and the lake booms away forever into the horizon. Peer east and there, within reach as your skis touch a 20-foot snowbase, is a tumbling brown forever, the edge of the great American desert that stretches hundreds of miles through Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.When Vail Resorts raised its periscope above Colorado for the first time two decades ago, Heavenly fell in its sites. The worthy fifth man, an all-star forward to complement the Colorado quad of Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, and Breck. That's not an easy role to fill. It had to be a mountain that was enormous, evolved, transcendent. Someplace that could act as both a draw for variety-seeking Eagle County faithful and an ambassador for the Vail brand as benevolent caretaker. Heavenly, a sort of Vail Mountain West – with its mostly intermediate pitch, multiple faces, and collection of high-speed lifts cranking out of every gully – was perfect, the most logical extra-Colorado manifestation of big-mountain skiing made digestible for the masses.That's still what Heavenly is, mostly: a ski resort for everyone. You can get in trouble, sure, in Mott or Killebrew or by underestimating the spiral down Gunbarrel. But this is an intermediate mountain, a cruisers' mountain. Even the traverses – and there are many – are enjoyable. Those views, man. Set the cruise control and wander forever. For a skier who doesn't care to be the best skier in the world but who wants to experience some of the best skiing in the world, this is the place.What we talked aboutRecords smashing all over the floor around Tahoe; why there won't be more season extensions; Heavenly's spring-skiing footprint; managing weather-related delays and shutdowns in a social-media age; it's been a long long winter in Tahoe; growing up skiing the Pacific Northwest; Stevens Pass in the ‘70s; remember when Stevens Pass and Schweitzer had the same owner?; why leaving the thing you love most can be the best thing sometimes; overlooked Idaho; pausing at Snow King; fitting rowdy Kirkwood into the Vail Resorts puzzle; the enormous complexity of Heavenly; what it means to operate in two states; a special assignment at Stevens Pass; stabilizing a resort in chaos; why Heavenly was an early snowmaking adopter; Hugh and Bill Killebrew; on the ground during the Caldor Fire; snowmaking systems as fire-fighting sprinkler systems; fire drills; Sierra-at-Tahoe's lost season and how Heavenly and Kirkwood helped; wind holds and why they seem to be becoming more frequent; “it can be calm down in the base area and blowing 100 up top”; potential future alternatives to Sky Express as a second lift-served route back to Nevada from California; a lift-upgrade wishlist for Heavenly; how Mott Canyon lift could evolve; potential tram replacement lifts; the immediate impact of the new North Bowl express quad; how Northstar, Kirkwood, and Heavenly work together as a unit; paid parking incoming; and the Epic Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe first half of my life was dominated by one immutable looming fact: the year 2000 would arrive. That's how we all referenced it, every time: “the year 2000.” As though it were not just another year but the president of all years. The turning of a millennium. For the first time in a thousand years. It sounded so fantastical, so improbable, so futuristic. As though aliens had set an invasion date and we all knew it but we just didn't know if they would vaporize us or gift us their live-forever beer recipe. Y2K hysteria added a layer of intrigue and mild thrill. Whatever else happened with your life, wherever you ended up, whoever you turned out to be, this was a party you absolutely could not miss.This winter in Tahoe was like that. If you had any means of getting there, you had to go. Utah too. But everything is more dramatic in Tahoe. The snows piled Smurf Village-like on rooftops. The incredible blizzards raking across the Sierras. The days-long mountain closures. It was a rare winter, a cold winter, a relentless winter, a record-smashing winter for nearly every ski area ringing the 72-mile lake.Tahoe may never see a winter like this again in our lifetimes. So how are they dealing with it? They know what to do with snow in Tahoe. But we all know what to do with water until our basement floods. Sometimes a thing you need is a thing you can get too much of.In March I flew to California, circled the lake, skied with the people running the mountains. Exhaustion, tinted with resignation, reigned. Ski season always sprawls at the top of the Sierras, but this winter – with its relentless atmospheric rivers, the snows high and low, the piles growing back each night like smashed anthills in the driveway – amplified as it went, like an action movie with no comedic breaks or diner-meal interludes. How were they doing now, as April wound down and the snows faded and corn grew on the mountainside? And at the end of what's been a long three years in Tahoe, with Covid shutdowns leading into a Covid surge leading into wildfires leading into the biggest snows anyone alive has ever seen? There's hardship in all that, but pride, too, in thriving in spite of it.What I got wrongI said that the Kehr's Riblet double was “one of the oldest lifts in the country.” That's not accurate. It was built in 1964 – very old for a machine, but not even the oldest lift at the resort. That honor goes to Seventh Heaven, a 1960 Riblet double rising to the summit. And that's not even the oldest Riblet double in the State of Washington: White Pass still runs Chair 2, built in 1958; and Vista Cruiser has been spinning at Mt. Spokane since 1956.Questions I wish I'd askedFortune briefly discussed the paid-parking plans landing at Heavenly, Northstar, and Kirkwood next winter. Limited as these are to weekend and holiday mornings, the plans will no doubt spark feral rage in a certain group of skiers who want to pretend like it's still 1987 and Tahoe has not changed in an unsustainable way. The traffic. The people. The ripple effects of all these things. I would have liked to have gotten into the motivations behind this change a bit more with Fortune, to really underscore how this very modest change is but one way to address a huge and stubborn problem that's not going anywhere.  Why you should ski Heavenly, Northstar, and KirkwoodFrom a distance, Tahoe can be hard to sort. Sixteen ski areas strung around the lake, nine of them with vertical drops of 1,500 feet or more:How to choose? One easy answer: follow your pass. If you already have an Epic Pass, you have a pre-loaded Tahoe sampler. Steep and funky Kirkwood. Big and meandering Heavenly. Gentle Northstar. The Brobots will try steering you away from Northstar (which they've glossed “Flatstar”) or Heavenly (too many traverses). Ignore them. Both are terrific ski areas, with endless glades that are about exactly pitched for the average tree skier. Kirkwood is the gnarliest, no question, but Northstar (which is also a knockout parks mountain, and heavily wind-protected for storm days), and Heavenly (which, despite the traverses, delivers some incredible stretches of sustained vertical), will still give you a better ski day than 95 percent of the ski areas in America on any given winter date.It's easy to try to do too much in Tahoe. I certainly did. Heavenly especially deserves – and rewards – multiple days of exploration. This is partly due to the size of each mountain, but also because conditions vary so wildly day-to-day. I skied in a windy near-whiteout at Kirkwood on Sunday, hit refrozen crust that exiled me to Northstar groomers on Tuesday, and lucked into a divine four-inch refresh at Heavenly on Wednesday, gifting us long meanders through the woods. Absolutely hit multiple resorts on your visit, but don't rush it too much – you can always go back.Podcast NotesOn Schweitzer and Stevens Pass' joint ownerFortune and I discuss an outfit called Harbor Resorts, which at one time owned both Stevens Pass and Schweitzer. I'd never heard of this company, so I dug a little. An Aug. 19, 1997 article in The Seattle Times indicates that the company also once owned a majority share in Mission Ridge and something called the “Arrowleaf resort development.” They sold Mission in 2003, and the company split in two in 2005. Harbor then sold Stevens to CNL Lifestyle Properties in 2011, where it operated under Karl Kapuscinski, the current owner, with Invision Capital, of Mountain High, Dodge Ridge, and China Peak. CNL then sold the resort to the Och-Ziff hedge fund in 2016, before Vail bought Stevens in 2018 (say what you'd like about Vail Resorts, but at least we have relative certainty that they are invested as a long-term owner, and the days of private-equity ping pong are over). Schweitzer remains under McCaw Investment Group, which emerged out of that 2005 split of Harbor.As for Arrowleaf, that refers to the doomed Early Winters ski area development in Washington. Aspen, before it decided to just be Aspen, tried being Vail, or what Vail ended up being. The company's adventures abroad included owning Breckenridge from 1970 to 1987 or 1988, developing Blackcomb, and the attempted building of Early Winters, which would have included up to 16 lifts serving nearly 4,000 acres in the Methow Valley. Aspen, outfoxed by a group of citizen-activists who are still shaking their pom-poms about it nearly four decades later, eventually sold the land. Subsequent developers also failed, and today the land that would have held, according to The New York Times, 200 hotel rooms, 550 condos, 440 single-family homes, shops, and restaurants is the site of exactly five single-family homes. If you want to understand why ski resort development is so hard, this 2016 article from the local Methow Valley News explains it pretty succinctly (emphasis mine):“The first realization was that we would be empowered by understanding the rules of the game.” Coon said. Soon after it was formed, MVCC “scraped together a few dollars to hire a consultant,” who showed them that Aspen Corp. would have to obtain many permits for the ski resort, but MVCC would only have to prevail on defeating one.Administrative and legal challenges delayed the project for 25 years, “ultimately paving the way to victory,” with the water rights issue as the final obstacle to resort development, Coon said.The existing Washington ski resorts, meanwhile, remain overburdened and under-built, with few places to stay anywhere near the bump. Three cheers for traffic and car-first transportation infrastructure, I guess. Here's a rough look at what Early Winters could have been:On Stevens Pass in late 2021 and early 2022Fortune spent 20 years, starting in the late 1970s, working at Stevens Pass. Last year, he returned on a special assignment. As explained by Gregory Scruggs in The Seattle Times:[Fortune] arrived on Jan. 14 when the ski area was at a low point. After a delayed start to the season, snow hammered the Cascades during the holiday week. Severely understaffed, Stevens Pass struggled to open most of its chairlifts for six weeks, including those serving the popular backside terrain.Vail Resorts, which bought Stevens Pass in 2018, had sold a record number of its season pass product, the Epic Pass, in the run-up to the 2021-22 winter, leaving thousands of Washington residents claiming that they had prepaid for a product they couldn't use. A Change.org petition titled “Hold Vail Resorts Accountable” generated over 45,000 signatures. Over 400 state residents filed complaints against Vail Resorts with the state Attorney General's office. In early January, Vail Daily reported that Vail's stock price was underperforming by 25%, with analysts attributing the drop in part to an avalanche of consumer ire about mismanagement at resorts across the country, including Stevens Pass.On Jan. 12, Vail Resorts fired then-general manager Tom Pettigrew and announced that Fortune would temporarily relocate from his role as general manager at Heavenly Ski Resort in South Lake Tahoe, California, to right the ship at Stevens Pass. Vail, which owns 40 ski areas across 15 states and three countries, has a vast pool of ski industry talent from which to draw. In elevating Fortune, whose history with the mountain goes back five decades, the company seems to have acknowledged what longtime skiers and snowboarders at Stevens Pass have been saying for several seasons: local institutional knowledge matters.Fortune is back at Heavenly, of course. Ellen Galbraith is the resort's current general manager – she is scheduled to join me on The Storm Skiing Podcast in June.On Hugh and Bill KillebrewFortune and I touched on the legacy of Hugh Killebrew and his son, Bill. This Tahoe Daily Tribune article sums up this legacy, along with the tragic circumstances that put the younger Killebrew in charge of the resort:By October of 1964, attorney Hugh Killebrew owned more than 60 percent of the resort. … Killebrew was a visionary who wanted to expand the resort into Nevada. Chair Four [Sky] allowed it to happen.In the fall of 1967, [Austin] Angell was part of a group that worked through storms and strung cable for two new lifts in Nevada. Then on New Year's Day, 1968, Boulder and Dipper chairs started running. Angell's efforts helped turn Heavenly Valley into America's largest ski area. …On Aug. 27, 1977 … Hugh Killebrew and three other resort employees were killed in a plane crash near Echo Summit.Killebrew's son, Bill Killebrew, a then-recent business school graduate of the University of California, was one of the first civilians on the scene. He saw the wreckage off Highway 50 and immediately recognized his dad's plane. …At 23, Bill Killebrew assumed control of the resort. A former youth ski racer with the Heavenly Blue Angels, he learned a lot from his dad. But the resort was experiencing two consecutive drought years and was millions of dollars in debt.Bill Killebrew began focusing on snowmaking capabilities. Tibbetts and others tinkered with different systems and, by the early 1980s, Heavenly Valley had 65 percent snowmaking coverage.With a stroke of good luck and several wet winters, Bill Killebrew had the resort out of debt in 1987, 10 years after bankruptcy was a possibility. It was now time to sell.Killebrew sold to a Japanese outfit called Kamori Kanko Company, who then sold it to American Skiing Company in 1997, who then sold it to likely forever owner Vail in 2002.When he joined me on The Storm Skiing Podcast in 2021, Tim Cohee, current GM of China Peak, called Bill Killebrew “the smartest person I've ever known” and “overall probably the smartest guy ever in the American ski industry.” Cohee called him “basically a savant, who happened to, by accident, end up in the ski business through his dad's tragic death in 1977.” You can listen to that at 26:30 here.On Sierra-at-Tahoe and the Caldor FireMost of the 16 Tahoe-area ski areas sit along or above the lake's North Shore. Only three sit south. Vail owns Heavenly and Kirkwood. The third is Sierra-at-Tahoe. You may be tempted to dismiss this as a locals' bump, but look again at the chart above – this is a serious ski area, with 2,000 acres of skiable terrain on a 2,212-foot vertical drop. It's basically the same size as Kirkwood.The 2021 Caldor Fire threatened all three resorts. Heavenly and Kirkwood escaped with superficial damage, but Sierra got crushed. A blog post from the ski area's website summarizes the damage:The 3000-degree fire ripped through our beloved trees crawling through the canopies and the forest floor affecting 1,600 of our 2,000 acres, damaging lift towers, haul ropes, disintegrating terrain park features and four brand new snowcats and practically melted the Upper Shop — a maintenance building which housed many of our crews' tools and personal belongings, some that had been passed down through generations.The resort lost the entire 2021-22 ski season and enormous swaths of trees. Here's the pre-fire trailmap:And post-fire:Ski areas all over the region helped with whatever they could. One of Vail Resorts' biggest contributions was filling in for Sierra's Straight As program, issuing Tahoe Local Epic Passes good at all three ski areas to eligible South Shore students.On wind holdsFortune discussed why wind holds are such an issue at Heavenly, and why they seem to be happening more frequently, with the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this year.On the pastI'll leave you with this 1972 Heavenly trailmap, which labels Mott and Killebrew Canyons as “closed area - dangerous steep canyons”:Or maybe I'll just leave you with more pictures of Heavenly:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 40/100 in 2023, and number 426 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, I share my personal experience of camping at the RV F Lot at Stevens Pass ski resort, a popular ski-in-ski-out spot in the Cascade Mountains. I share tips on my towing experience and offer insights on heating, condensation, and snow management in an RV. In addition, this episode provides an overview of the scene at the F Lot and advises listeners on the best time to leave the resort to avoid any traffic issues.

March 1st, 1910 marks the deadliest avalanche in U.S. history that occurred near Stevens Pass. Listen to the Podcast to learn about this tragic event and what you can do to help avoid avalanches.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Jan. 13. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 16. To receive future pods as soon as they're live and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoJim van Löben Sels, General Manager of Mt. Spokane, WashingtonRecorded onJanuary 9, 2023About Mt. SpokaneClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Mt. Spokane 2000, a nonprofit groupPass affiliations: Freedom Pass – 3 days each at these 20 ski areasReciprocal partners: 3 days each at Mt. Ashland, Mount Bohemia, Great Divide, Loup Loup, Lee Canyon, Snow King, White Pass, Ski CooperLocated in: Mt. Spokane State Park, WashingtonYear opened: 1938Closest neighboring ski areas: 49 Degrees North (1 hour, 45 minutes), Silver Mountain (1 hour, 45 minutes), Schweitzer (2 hours, 10 minutes) – travel times may vary considerably in winterBase elevation: 3,818 feetSummit elevation: 5,889 feetVertical drop: 2,071 feetSkiable Acres: 1,704Average annual snowfall: 300 inchesTrail count: 52 (15% advanced/expert, 62% intermediate, 23% beginner)Lift count: 7­­ (1 triple, 5 doubles, 1 carpet)Why I interviewed himPerception is a funny thing. In my Michigan-anchored teenage ski days any bump rolling more than one chairlift uphill seemed impossibly complex and interesting. Caberfae (200 acres), Crystal (103), Shanty Creek (80), and Nub's Nob (248 acres today, much smaller at the time) hit as vast and interesting worlds. That set my bar low. It's stayed there. Living now within two and a half hours of a dozen thousand-plus-footers feels extraordinary. In less than an instant I can be there, lost in it. Teleportation by minivan.Go west and they think different. By the millions skiers pound up I-70 through an Eisenhower Tunnel framed by Loveland, to ski over the pass. Breck, Keystone, Copper, A-Basin, Vail, Beaver Creek – all amazing. But Loveland covers 1,800 acres standing on 2,210 vertical feet – how many Colorado tourists have never touched the place? How many locals?It seems skiers often confuse size with infrastructure. Loveland has one high-speed chairlift. Beaver Creek has 13. But the ski area's footprint is only 282 acres larger than Loveland's. Are fast lift rides worth an extra 50 miles of interstate evacuation drills? It seems that, for many people, they are.We could repeat that template all over the West. But Washington is the focus today. And Mt. Spokane. At 1,704 acres, it's larger than White Pass (1,402 acres), Stevens Pass (1,125), or Mt. Baker (1,000), and just a touch smaller than Summit at Snoqualmie (1,996). But outside of Spokane (metro population, approximately 600,000), who skis it? Pretty much no one.Why is that? Maybe it's the lift fleet, anchored by five centerpole Riblet doubles built between 1956(!) and 1977. Maybe it's the ski area's absence from the larger megapasses. Maybe it's proximity to 2,900-acre Schweitzer and its four high-speed lifts. Probably it's a little bit of each those things.Which is fine. People can ski wherever they want. But what is this place, lodged in the wilderness just an hour north of Washington's second-largest city? And why hadn't I heard of it until I made it my job to hear about everyplace? And how is Lift 1 spinning into its 67th winter? There just wasn't a lot of information out there about Mt. Spokane. And part of The Storm's mission is to seek these places out and figure out what the hell is going on. And so here you go.What we talked aboutFully staffed and ready to roll in 2023; night skiing; what happened when Mt. Spokane shifted from a five-day operating week to a seven-day one; a winding career path that involved sheep shearing, Ski Patrol at Bear Valley, running a winery, and ultimately taking over Mt. Spokane; the family ski routine; entering the ski industry in the maw of Covid; life is like Lombard Street; Spokane's long-term year-round business potential; who owns and runs Mt. Spokane; why and how the ski area switched from a private ownership model to a not-for-profit model; looking to other nonprofit ski areas for inspiration; a plan to replace Spokane's ancient lift fleet and why they will likely stick with fixed-grip chairlifts; the Skytrac-Riblet hybrid solution; sourcing parts for a 67-year-old chairlift; how much of Lift 1 is still original parts; which lift the mountain will replace first, what it will replace it with, and when; the virtues of Skytrac lifts; parking; the Day-1-on-the-job problem that changed how Jim runs the mountain; why Northwood lift was down for part of January; what it took to bring the Northwood expansion online and how it changed the mountain; whether future expansions are possible; Nordic opportunities; working with Washington State Parks, upon whose land the ski area sits, and how that compares to the U.S. Forest Service; whether Mt. Spokane could ever introduce snowmaking; how eastern Washington snow differs from what falls on the west side of the state; glading is harder than you think; where we could see more glades on the mountain; the evolution of Spokane's beginner terrain; why Mt. Spokane tore out its tubing lanes; expanding parking; which buildings could be updated or replaced and when; whether we could ever see lodging at the mountain; why the mountain sets its top lift ticket price at $75; why Mt. Spokane joined Freedom Pass; exploring the mountain's reciprocal pass partnerships and whether that network will continue to grow; and the possibility of joining the Indy Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIn August, Troy Hawks, the marketing mastermind at Sunlight and the administrator of the Freedom Pass, emailed to tell me that Mt. Spokane was joining the Freedom Pass. I asked him to connect me with the ski area's marketing team for some context on why they joined (which I included in this story). Then I asked if Jim would like to join me on the podcast. And he did.That's the straight answer. But Mt. Spokane fits this very interesting profile that matches that of many ski areas across the country: a nonprofit community hill with dated infrastructure and proximity to larger resorts that's been pushed to the brink not of insolvency but doors-bursting capacity despite successive waves of macro-challenges, including Covid and EpKon Mania. Weren't these places supposed to be toast? As a proxy for the health of independents nationwide, Mt. Spokane seemed like as good a place as any to check in.There's another interesting problem here: what are you going to do with a Riblet double built in 1956? The thing is gorgeous, tapering low and elegant up the hillside, a machine with stories to tell. But machines don't last forever, and new ones cost more than some whole ski areas. Mt. Spokane also has no snowmaking and dated lodges and too little parking. Will it modernize? If so, how? Does it need to? What is that blend of funk and shine that will ensure a mountain's future without costing its soul?In this way, too, Mt. Spokane echoes the story of contemporary independent American skiing: how, and how much, to update the bump? Jim, many will be happy to learn, has no ambitions of transforming Mt. Spokane into Schweitzer Jr. But he does have a vision and a plan, a way to make the mountain a little less 1950s and a little more 2020s. And he lays it all out in a matter-of-fact way that anyone who loves skiing will appreciate.Questions I wish I'd askedI'm so confused by Mt. Spokane's trailmap. Older versions show the Hidden Treasure area flanking the main face:While new versions portray Hidden Treasure as a distinct peak. Again:Meanwhile, Google Maps doesn't really line up with what I'm seeing above:While I love the aesthetic of Mt. Spokane's trailmap, it seems wildly out of scale and oddly cut off at the bottom of Hidden Treasure. The meanings of the various arrows and the flow of the mountain aren't entirely clear to me either.Really, this is more a problem of experience and immersion than anything I can learn through a knowledge transfer. A smart professor made this point in journalism school: go there. I really should be skiing these places before I do these interviews, and for a long time, I wouldn't record a podcast about a ski area I hadn't visited. But I realized, a year and a half in, that that would be impractical if I wanted to keep banging these things out, particularly as I reached farther into the western hinterlands. Sometimes I have to do the best I can with whatever's out there, and what's out there can be confusing as hell. So I guess I just need to go ski it to figure it out.What I got wrong* I intimated that Gunstock was a nonprofit ski area, but that is not the case. The mountain contributes revenue to its owner, Belknap County, each season.* I stated that Mt. Spokane didn't have any beginner surface lifts. In fact, it has a carpet lift.* Jim and I discussed whether Vista Cruiser was the longest contiguously operating chairlift in the United States. It's not – Hemlock has been serving Boyne Mountain, Michigan, since 1948. It's a double that was converted from a single that originally served Sun Valley as America's first chairlift in the 1930s. Still, Vista Cruiser may be the most intact 1950s vintage lift in America. I really don't know, and these things can be very hard to verify what with all the forgotten upgrades over the years, but it really doesn't matter: a 67-year-old chairlift is a hell of an impressive thing in any context.* While discussing reciprocal agreements, I said, rather hilariously, that Mt. Ashland was “right there in Oregon.” The ski area is, in fact, an 11-hour drive from Mt. Spokane. I was vaguely aware of how dumb this was as I said it, but you must remember that I grew up in the Midwest, meaning an 11-hour drive is like going out to the mailbox.Why you should ski Mt. SpokaneLet's start here:How many 2,000-vertical-foot mountains post those kind of rack rates? A few, but fewer each year. And if you happen to have a season pass to any other Freedom Pass ski area, you can cash in one of your Mt. Spokane lift tickets as you're floating through.As for the skiing itself, I can only speculate. It looks like typical PNW wide-open: wide runs, big treed meadows, bowls, glades all over. Three hundred inches per winter to open it all up. I mean there's really not much else that's necessary on my have-a-good-time checklist.Podcast Notes* Jim mentioned that Schweitzer was working on adding parking. More details on their plan to plug 1,400 more spaces into the mountain here.* I was shocked when Jim said that Mt. Spokane's $75 lift tickets ($59 midweek) were the second-most expensive in the region after Schweitzer's, which run $110 for a full-day adult pass. But he's correct: 49 Degrees North runs $72 on weekends and holidays and $49 midweek. Silver Mountain is $71 on weekends (but $65 midweek). And Lookout Pass is $66 on weekends and $55 midweek. I guess the memo about $250 lift tickets hasn't made its way up I-90 just yet.* The best way to support Mt. Spokane, which is a nonprofit ski area, is to go buy a lift ticket. But you can also donate here.* Here's a bit more Mt. Spokane history.* And some stoke Brah:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 4/100 in 2023, and number 390 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

With two world class resorts boasting nearly 10,000 lift-served skiable acres, all nestled around an historic old mining town, Utah's ski town of Park City truly is unlike anything in North America. Deer Valley Resort and Park City Mountain will open this season with new captains at the helm. Deer Valley's Todd Bennett and Park City's Deirdra Walsh represent a new generation of resort leaders who bring fresh enthusiasm to their respective mountains, and a keen sense of the uniqueness that has made the Park City community America's Ski Town. They sat down with Last Chair at the Nelson Cottage at High West Distillery, in the heart of Park City's Old Town.As a community, Park City dates back to the late 19th century when silver mining made it a boom town. Throughout the early to mid 20th century, miners used skis to get around, often crossing the ridgeline into Big Cottonwood Canyon and back. The present-day Park City Mountain came alive in 1963 with the opening of a full resort, complete with a gondola. Known previously as Snow Park and Frog Hollow, Deer Valley sprang to life in 1981.Park City's historic Main Street, nestled between the two resorts, still boasts a 19th century mining town feel with hundreds of restaurants and shops, all within minutes to the two resorts. Deer Valley's new leader Todd Bennett grew up in Saranac Lake, N.Y. outside of Lake Placid, learning to ski at tiny Mount Pisgah. He worked a ski job in Colorado for three seasons before heading to an 18-year career with Walt Disney in southern California, looking for any opportunity he could to take ski trips with his family and friends. When the opportunity came up to move to Utah, he took advantage, settling into his new mountain home last summer.Walsh is a native of St. Louis who came to Park City 18 years ago, learned to snowboard and rose up to a senior leadership role at Park City Mountain overseeing on-mountain dining. She left to run a California resort for a few years but returned home last spring. She brings pride in her company and a great depth of experience on the mountain.Bennett and Walsh talk about the uniqueness of their resorts, and also that of the community. There are really no other similar models of two separate but adjoining resorts based around a central community core.Here's a sample of Last Chair's episode 4 of season 4 with Park City's Deirdra Walsh and Deer Valley's Todd Bennett.Todd, what was your pathway into skiing as a young boy?We had a town run hill called Mount Pisgah – one run to the left of a tee bar and one run to the right of a tee bar and 500 vertical feet. That's where I learned to ski, I think at age four. I've always loved skiing. It was just one of those things that honestly was probably a little bit cooler than I was as a kid, and I just loved being around it.Deirdra, your story is a bit different, right?Yes. I grew up in the Midwest – I'm from Saint Louis. Our family vacation time was spent camping and always outside so I grew up with this love of the outdoors. In the summers I think my mom would literally send us out the door, lock it behind us, and we couldn't come home until she rang a bell. Deirdra, what was your first introduction to skiing?My husband had grown up skiing Stevens Pass, and he said, ‘let's move to Park City together.' So I had almost no skiing experience until I came out here. He was a snowboarder, so I thought I'd be a cool girlfriend and learn to snowboard as well. My very first lesson was actually right at Park City Mountain in my mid-20s. I fell in love with the sport itself a little bit later in life. And it's been amazing to be a part of the community here and now have my kids grow up with skiing and riding as part of their every day.Todd, what motivated you to get back into the ski industry? .It was just kind of fortuitous. I saw the opening for Deer Valley come up and I immediately reached out to a number of folks that I knew in the industry. Park City had always been on our list, and I've just always been a passionate skier. So it was something that I wanted. And when that opportunity came up, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to come work at Deer Valley.Deirdra, how important is the community's historic mining heritage?When I think about Park City and that history, the word that always comes to mind is just how authentic this community is around the history that we have, the storytelling, the feeling that when you're on Main Street that these buildings and these neighborhoods and you look up the hill and you see all of these homes, you can't miss the history of this community. And it's really something that I think makes Park City so unique and so special. Todd, how does Deer Valley Resort see its role in the community?Community is the right term and it's something that we've talked a lot about with my senior leadership team. We're all here. We're all local. We live in the greater Park City area. And I think not only the history of mining, but the history and the connection with the town and the community is very important to us. And I think that's the responsibility that we have. We are a big employer in Park City. We have a responsibility to be integrated with the community, to listen to the community, to understand the texture because it has changed. It started as a mining community. It has changed more towards travel and tourism. And even now it's continuing to evolve. So I think it's really important for myself and the team to be very in tune. And the best way to do that is to be local and to be engaged as members of the community ourselves.The community of Park City is unique, with both Vail Resorts and Alterra ski areas. What are the distinguishing characteristics of your respective parent companies?Deirdra: Being part of Vail Resorts for me has been an exceptional personal experience. It's a company that is really focused on employees first. You know, we talk about, you know, the employees don't work for Vail Resorts – they ARE Vail Resorts. And so I think having that point of view has really guided not just me, but I think all of the resort leaders to think about that in decision making, being able to make investments like $175 Million and the employee experience is pretty exceptional. What is really impressive when I think about our company is our point of view on accessibility. We have 41 resorts that make up all of the network. And by way of that, we are able to be in communities that are outside of urban areas like St Louis where I grew up, outside of Chicago, outside of Detroit, that really are creating lifelong skiers in some areas that perhaps they didn't have that accessibility and then now have accessibility into the greater network. Todd: I'm 90 days into working for Alterra and Deer Valley. But what I've noticed already is that Alterra puts a lot of emphasis on the local community and giving the site leaders, such as myself, the flexibility to change and adapt what is needed in our community. So in particular for Deer Valley, number one is very similar to Park City Mountain and Vail Resorts. It's the employee experience. We have to be great employers. We have to create a great place for people to work. Number two is the community and the engagement with the community and how we continue to be great partners and very transparent in the way that we go after that. The third priority for us at Deer Valley, in particular for me, is understanding the history and context. We talked a little bit about that from the mining history, but also the history of Deer Valley and its role within the community for the last 40 plus years. And then the last piece is how do we evolve our service thoughtfully. There's going to be evolution. There's going to be changes to how we deliver service. We just need to make sure that fits with the Deer Valley brand.Deidra, you've lived here for close to 20 years, guests and locals have a lot of options here, don't they?Wow, aren't we lucky that so many of us that live in this community on any given day have that kind of choice and options to go out and have an outstanding skiing and riding experience? For Park City Mountain, we have Town Lift and and then we have two other base portals. So the way to be able to access the mountain is incredible. To be able to ski up on Park City Mountain, take a run down, have an experience on Main Street and then hop back on Town Lift. I mean, it's unlike any other place. I just feel personally so full of gratitude that this is a community that I get to live in, that our employees get to work in and that our visitors get to come.Todd, since 1981 Deer Valley has built a really special brand here in Park City. What's behind that?What Deer Valley is known for, and what fits with what I felt here as a resident of Park City, is that level of service. That's what (Deer Valley founders) Polly and Edgar Stern really started with and had that vision for. That is something that seamlessly blends with Park City. The locals that I've met have been incredibly open and welcoming to myself and my family. So that's been really, really wonderful. And I think that just fits seamlessly into what Deer Valley is known for, which is welcoming and providing great service.Finally, what is it about skiing and snowboarding that really fuels your passion?Todd: I've always loved skiing. It's just, you know, the sense of freedom, the sense of the speed that you can get and kind of gravity pulling you downhill is unlike anything that I know of. It's the one consistent hobby activity that I've had my entire life. I've done a lot of different things, but skiing's that one consistent piece. And so when I get this season on top of Stein's and get to make those first turns down … I'm really looking forward to that.Deirdra: It is really hard in this world to turn things off. And when I think about those moments that we get to have on the mountain, even when you're with a group or on your own, I think of the solace that it can bring me and the pure joy in those moments. I've probably laughed harder than I ever have with friends on just the chairlift alone, looking at my kids, being goofballs out there and also getting a little nervous as they point and go. But, you know, just to turn off your phone and all the other parts of our lives that seem like they're always turned on, I feel like I get to turn off when I'm on the mountain.Favorite RunsTodd Bennett: Stein's Way (off Sultan Express in Mayflower area)Deidra Walsh: Silver Queen (on the Crescent ridgeline above Park City base)By the NumbersStretching along a 12-mile ridgeline with an historic vintage mining Main Street tucked in the middle, Deer Valley Resort and Park City Mountain offer a unique resort experience unmatched in North America.Skiable acres: 9,326Lifts: 64Runs: 433Climate and Sustainability: Community Working TogetherIf you're an outdoor enthusiast, climate and sustainability are likely foremost on your mind. The same is true of the Park City community, including Park City Mountain and Deer Valley Resort. The city itself has set ambitious climate goals to have the community net-zero carbon and zero waste by 2030, with a target to have city operations 100% renewable electricity this year. Park City Mountain shares the net-zero goals by 2030 – no waste to landfills and zero net emissions. A solar farm project will provide 100% renewable energy by 2023. Deer Valley Resort is also moving towards a 100% renewable electricity goal by 2030 and presently is using 37% solar. It has also just concluded a full greenhouse gas inventory and is looking at 10% reductions in the next year. The Park City Chamber of Commerce has also taken a proactive approach, developing a Sustainable Tourism Plan to look at how the community as a whole can continue to welcome guests but in a sustainable way.High WestOne of the most popular spots on Main Street, the historic setting of High West distillery is yet another unique offering in the community. During the podcast recording at Nelson Cottage, we sampled two of High West's unique whiskeys with whiskey ambassador Adrianne King.BourbonHigh West's Bourbon is one of its sweeter whiskeys featuring 85% corn mash and 15% malted barley, which softens and sweetens the finish. It features hints of baking spices of cinnamon, clove and nutmeg and pairs well with citrus in cocktails to brighten it up. It's a perfect choice for whiskey sours like a Whiskey Collins.Double RyeThis is the one that put High West on the map in the 2008 rye revival and is becoming a staple for classic cocktails and cocktail bars as they come back onto the market. It features 95% rye and has been deemed the spiciest whiskey in the world by Whiskey Advocate. It features an interesting eucalyptus mint finish and is ideal for classic cocktails like Manhattans with its high rye content balancing well with citrus or bitters.

With two world class resorts boasting nearly 10,000 lift-served skiable acres, all nestled around an historic old mining town, Utah's ski town of Park City truly is unlike anything in North America. Deer Valley Resort and Park City Mountain will open this season with new captains at the helm. Deer Valley's Todd Bennett and Park City's Deirdra Walsh represent a new generation of resort leaders who bring fresh enthusiasm to their respective mountains, and a keen sense of the uniqueness that has made the Park City community America's Ski Town. They sat down with Last Chair at the Nelson Cottage at High West Distillery, in the heart of Park City's Old Town.As a community, Park City dates back to the late 19th century when silver mining made it a boom town. Throughout the early to mid 20th century, miners used skis to get around, often crossing the ridgeline into Big Cottonwood Canyon and back. The present-day Park City Mountain came alive in 1963 with the opening of a full resort, complete with a gondola. Known previously as Snow Park and Frog Hollow, Deer Valley sprang to life in 1981.Park City's historic Main Street, nestled between the two resorts, still boasts a 19th century mining town feel with hundreds of restaurants and shops, all within minutes to the two resorts. Deer Valley's new leader Todd Bennett grew up in Saranac Lake, N.Y. outside of Lake Placid, learning to ski at tiny Mount Pisgah. He worked a ski job in Colorado for three seasons before heading to an 18-year career with Walt Disney in southern California, looking for any opportunity he could to take ski trips with his family and friends. When the opportunity came up to move to Utah, he took advantage, settling into his new mountain home last summer.Walsh is a native of St. Louis who came to Park City 18 years ago, learned to snowboard and rose up to a senior leadership role at Park City Mountain overseeing on-mountain dining. She left to run a California resort for a few years but returned home last spring. She brings pride in her company and a great depth of experience on the mountain.Bennett and Walsh talk about the uniqueness of their resorts, and also that of the community. There are really no other similar models of two separate but adjoining resorts based around a central community core.Here's a sample of Last Chair's episode 4 of season 4 with Park City's Deirdra Walsh and Deer Valley's Todd Bennett.Todd, what was your pathway into skiing as a young boy?We had a town run hill called Mount Pisgah – one run to the left of a tee bar and one run to the right of a tee bar and 500 vertical feet. That's where I learned to ski, I think at age four. I've always loved skiing. It was just one of those things that honestly was probably a little bit cooler than I was as a kid, and I just loved being around it.Deirdra, your story is a bit different, right?Yes. I grew up in the Midwest – I'm from Saint Louis. Our family vacation time was spent camping and always outside so I grew up with this love of the outdoors. In the summers I think my mom would literally send us out the door, lock it behind us, and we couldn't come home until she rang a bell. Deirdra, what was your first introduction to skiing?My husband had grown up skiing Stevens Pass, and he said, ‘let's move to Park City together.' So I had almost no skiing experience until I came out here. He was a snowboarder, so I thought I'd be a cool girlfriend and learn to snowboard as well. My very first lesson was actually right at Park City Mountain in my mid-20s. I fell in love with the sport itself a little bit later in life. And it's been amazing to be a part of the community here and now have my kids grow up with skiing and riding as part of their every day.Todd, what motivated you to get back into the ski industry? .It was just kind of fortuitous. I saw the opening for Deer Valley come up and I immediately reached out to a number of folks that I knew in the industry. Park City had always been on our list, and I've just always been a passionate skier. So it was something that I wanted. And when that opportunity came up, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to come work at Deer Valley.Deirdra, how important is the community's historic mining heritage?When I think about Park City and that history, the word that always comes to mind is just how authentic this community is around the history that we have, the storytelling, the feeling that when you're on Main Street that these buildings and these neighborhoods and you look up the hill and you see all of these homes, you can't miss the history of this community. And it's really something that I think makes Park City so unique and so special. Todd, how does Deer Valley Resort see its role in the community?Community is the right term and it's something that we've talked a lot about with my senior leadership team. We're all here. We're all local. We live in the greater Park City area. And I think not only the history of mining, but the history and the connection with the town and the community is very important to us. And I think that's the responsibility that we have. We are a big employer in Park City. We have a responsibility to be integrated with the community, to listen to the community, to understand the texture because it has changed. It started as a mining community. It has changed more towards travel and tourism. And even now it's continuing to evolve. So I think it's really important for myself and the team to be very in tune. And the best way to do that is to be local and to be engaged as members of the community ourselves.The community of Park City is unique, with both Vail Resorts and Alterra ski areas. What are the distinguishing characteristics of your respective parent companies?Deirdra: Being part of Vail Resorts for me has been an exceptional personal experience. It's a company that is really focused on employees first. You know, we talk about, you know, the employees don't work for Vail Resorts – they ARE Vail Resorts. And so I think having that point of view has really guided not just me, but I think all of the resort leaders to think about that in decision making, being able to make investments like $175 Million and the employee experience is pretty exceptional. What is really impressive when I think about our company is our point of view on accessibility. We have 41 resorts that make up all of the network. And by way of that, we are able to be in communities that are outside of urban areas like St Louis where I grew up, outside of Chicago, outside of Detroit, that really are creating lifelong skiers in some areas that perhaps they didn't have that accessibility and then now have accessibility into the greater network. Todd: I'm 90 days into working for Alterra and Deer Valley. But what I've noticed already is that Alterra puts a lot of emphasis on the local community and giving the site leaders, such as myself, the flexibility to change and adapt what is needed in our community. So in particular for Deer Valley, number one is very similar to Park City Mountain and Vail Resorts. It's the employee experience. We have to be great employers. We have to create a great place for people to work. Number two is the community and the engagement with the community and how we continue to be great partners and very transparent in the way that we go after that. The third priority for us at Deer Valley, in particular for me, is understanding the history and context. We talked a little bit about that from the mining history, but also the history of Deer Valley and its role within the community for the last 40 plus years. And then the last piece is how do we evolve our service thoughtfully. There's going to be evolution. There's going to be changes to how we deliver service. We just need to make sure that fits with the Deer Valley brand.Deidra, you've lived here for close to 20 years, guests and locals have a lot of options here, don't they?Wow, aren't we lucky that so many of us that live in this community on any given day have that kind of choice and options to go out and have an outstanding skiing and riding experience? For Park City Mountain, we have Town Lift and and then we have two other base portals. So the way to be able to access the mountain is incredible. To be able to ski up on Park City Mountain, take a run down, have an experience on Main Street and then hop back on Town Lift. I mean, it's unlike any other place. I just feel personally so full of gratitude that this is a community that I get to live in, that our employees get to work in and that our visitors get to come.Todd, since 1981 Deer Valley has built a really special brand here in Park City. What's behind that?What Deer Valley is known for, and what fits with what I felt here as a resident of Park City, is that level of service. That's what (Deer Valley founders) Polly and Edgar Stern really started with and had that vision for. That is something that seamlessly blends with Park City. The locals that I've met have been incredibly open and welcoming to myself and my family. So that's been really, really wonderful. And I think that just fits seamlessly into what Deer Valley is known for, which is welcoming and providing great service.Finally, what is it about skiing and snowboarding that really fuels your passion?Todd: I've always loved skiing. It's just, you know, the sense of freedom, the sense of the speed that you can get and kind of gravity pulling you downhill is unlike anything that I know of. It's the one consistent hobby activity that I've had my entire life. I've done a lot of different things, but skiing's that one consistent piece. And so when I get this season on top of Stein's and get to make those first turns down … I'm really looking forward to that.Deirdra: It is really hard in this world to turn things off. And when I think about those moments that we get to have on the mountain, even when you're with a group or on your own, I think of the solace that it can bring me and the pure joy in those moments. I've probably laughed harder than I ever have with friends on just the chairlift alone, looking at my kids, being goofballs out there and also getting a little nervous as they point and go. But, you know, just to turn off your phone and all the other parts of our lives that seem like they're always turned on, I feel like I get to turn off when I'm on the mountain.Favorite RunsTodd Bennett: Stein's Way (off Sultan Express in Mayflower area)Deidra Walsh: Silver Queen (on the Crescent ridgeline above Park City base)By the NumbersStretching along a 12-mile ridgeline with an historic vintage mining Main Street tucked in the middle, Deer Valley Resort and Park City Mountain offer a unique resort experience unmatched in North America.Skiable acres: 9,326Lifts: 64Runs: 433Climate and Sustainability: Community Working TogetherIf you're an outdoor enthusiast, climate and sustainability are likely foremost on your mind. The same is true of the Park City community, including Park City Mountain and Deer Valley Resort. The city itself has set ambitious climate goals to have the community net-zero carbon and zero waste by 2030, with a target to have city operations 100% renewable electricity this year. Park City Mountain shares the net-zero goals by 2030 – no waste to landfills and zero net emissions. A solar farm project will provide 100% renewable energy by 2023. Deer Valley Resort is also moving towards a 100% renewable electricity goal by 2030 and presently is using 37% solar. It has also just concluded a full greenhouse gas inventory and is looking at 10% reductions in the next year. The Park City Chamber of Commerce has also taken a proactive approach, developing a Sustainable Tourism Plan to look at how the community as a whole can continue to welcome guests but in a sustainable way.High WestOne of the most popular spots on Main Street, the historic setting of High West distillery is yet another unique offering in the community. During the podcast recording at Nelson Cottage, we sampled two of High West's unique whiskeys with whiskey ambassador Adrianne King.BourbonHigh West's Bourbon is one of its sweeter whiskeys featuring 85% corn mash and 15% malted barley, which softens and sweetens the finish. It features hints of baking spices of cinnamon, clove and nutmeg and pairs well with citrus in cocktails to brighten it up. It's a perfect choice for whiskey sours like a Whiskey Collins.Double RyeThis is the one that put High West on the map in the 2008 rye revival and is becoming a staple for classic cocktails and cocktail bars as they come back onto the market. It features 95% rye and has been deemed the spiciest whiskey in the world by Whiskey Advocate. It features an interesting eucalyptus mint finish and is ideal for classic cocktails like Manhattans with its high rye content balancing well with citrus or bitters.

B-b-b-b-b-bonus episode! Featuring Oily Leidtke! Haunted holes in Death Valley! Haunted Donut Holes in Dickinson, ND! Haunted trains on Stevens Pass! Haunted 3 foot deep Platte River! And a couple o' broads that won't shut up! #howthewestwasfucked #htwwf #americanhistory #oldwest #wildwest #deathvalley #dickinson #northdakota #stevenspass #lalorna #platteriverdeathship #oily

The F lot at Stevens Pass ski area on Highway 2 in the Cascade Mountains is a mystery to me. We are a family of active skiers and snowboards who love to RV. The idea of ski-on-ski-out from our travel trailer is something that we want to try next season. Lot F is the only RV lot at Stevens Pass and it's tricky to navigate getting into the lot and the process for securing an overnight pass is a bit elusive to me as well. In this episode we chat with Meg on Instagram at norm_betty_adventures who have been accessing this family friendly RV lot just about every weekend during the ski season in their vintage Airstream. Meg shares with us about the scene in Lot F and what's involved in both getting into the lot and how to get a reservation. 

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers receive thousands of extra words of content each month, plus all podcasts three days before free subscribers.WhoKarl Kapuscinski, President and CEO of Mountain High and Dodge Ridge, CaliforniaRecorded onJune 6, 2022About Mountain HighClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Invision Capital and Karl KapuscinskiLocated in: Wrightwood, CaliforniaClosest neighboring ski areas: Mt. Waterman (45 minutes), Mt. Baldy (1 hour, 15 minutes – they’re only 8.4 miles apart as the crow flies, but 57.4 miles apart via road!), Snow Valley (1 hour, 25 minutes), Big Bear/Snow Summit (1 hour 40 minutes)Base elevation | summit elevation | vertical drop:West Resort: 7,000 feet | 8,000 feet | 1,000 feetEast Resort: 6,600 feet | 8,200 feet | 1,600 feetNorth Resort: 7,200 feet | 7,800 feet | 600 feetSkiable Acres: 290Average annual snowfall: 117 inchesNight skiing: North onlyTrail count: 60 (35% advanced, 40% intermediate, 25% beginner)West Resort: 34 (1 expert, 16 advanced, 12 intermediate, 5 beginner)East Resort: 16 trails (1 expert, 4 advanced, 7 intermediate, 4 beginner)North Resort: 10 trails (6 intermediate, 4 beginner)Lift count: 14 (2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 3 triples, 4 doubles, 3 carpets - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Mountain High’s lift fleet)West Resort: 1 high-speed quad, 3 triples, 2 doubles, 2 carpetsEast Resort: 1 high-speed quad, 1 quad, 2 doubles, 1 carpetNorth Resort: 1 quadAbout Dodge RidgeClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Invision Capital and Karl KapuscinskiLocated in: Pinecrest, CaliforniaClosest neighboring ski areas: Bear Valley (2 hours, 6 minutes), June Mountain (2 hours, 24 minutes), Mammoth Mountain (2 hours, 37 minutes), Badger Pass (2 hours, 45 minutes), Kirkwood (2 hours 58 minutes)Base elevation: 6,600 feetSummit elevation: 8,200 feetVertical drop: 1,600 feetSkiable Acres: 862Average annual snowfall: 300 to 500 inchesNight skiing: NoTrail count: 67 (40% advanced, 40% intermediate, 20% beginner)Lift count: 12 (1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 5 doubles [2 of these doubles - lifts 1 and 2 below, are making way for one triple chair for the 2022-23 ski season], 1 T-bar, 1 ropetow, 2 conveyors - view Lift Blog’s of inventory Dodge Ridge’s lift fleet)Why I interviewed himIn the Midwest of my youth, the calculus was simple: north, cold; south, warm. The only weather quirk was lake-effect snow, tumbling off Michigan and Superior in vast snowbelts west and north, and across that mysterious realm known as the UP. Altitude wasn’t a factor because there was no altitude. Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas get rounded up by the chortling masses reaching for a flatland target to ridicule, but they overlook Michigan by ignorance, or, if they’re Michiganders, denial and self-preservation. Midland County, where I grew up, is the flattest place I have ever seen, a forever plain that disguises itself in treed horizons.  It was California that alerted me to the notion that altitude could override latitude. It could snow in the south. You just had to get to the sky. The mountains went there. Humans have so overrun modern SoCal that it is easy to forget what an amazing natural monster it is: foreversummer – or at least foreverspring – on the coast. From the beach with bare feet in the sand you can see the mountains*, snow-capped and forbidding, impossible and amazing, thrusting Tolkien-ish over pulsing Los Angeles. Beyond that, deserts vast and inhospitable, stretching hundreds of miles toward the rest of America. Cross that wasteland to understand why California so often feels like a nation of its own – geologically, it may as well be.But what we care about here are those mountains. There is no reason that LA, America’s second-largest city, must have skiing. But it does. Big Bear and Snow Summit, Baldy and Waterman, Snow Valley and Mountain High. From the ocean, the land lurches skyward with astonishing speed. Mt. Waterman, 40 straightline miles from the coast, sits at 7,000 feet. Mt. Baldy, base elevation 6,500, is 52 miles. Snow Valley, 6,800 feet, 67 miles. Snow Summit, 6,965 feet, 74 miles. Big Bear, 73 miles, 7,104 feet. And Mountain High, seated between 6,600 and 7,200 feet, depending upon which parking lot you pull into on any given day, standing 52-ish miles from the ocean.And it snows. Not what-the-hell amounts. This isn’t Tahoe. But enough that, 98 years ago, someone said “well by gum we ought to be snowskiing on these here hills” (in my head, everyone in the past either talks like Yosemite Sam or Winston Churchill), and set up a snowskiing operation at Mountain High. The ski areas of Southern California are not, like the Poconos or the mountains of the Southeast, the products of technology, of machines providing snow where nature provided hills and cold. Mountain High is the fourth-oldest ski area in the country, opened in 1924. Snow Valley opened in 1937. Waterman in ‘42. Big Bear in ‘46. Baldy and Snow Summit in ‘52. From a technology point of view, 1924 may as well have been a different planet. Electricity was this newfangled thing. Forget about snowmaking, or even chairlifts. I’m almost positive dudes must have been up there in top hats and bowties. And indeed here’s a photo of a fellow rocking a kerchief while smoking his pipe:I’ve been processing this for decades, and it still amazes me: there is skiing in Southern California. Of the many geological and geographic wonders packed into our sprawling continent, the mountains-looming-over-the-seaside-city phenomenon remains one of the most stunning in its asymmetric, improbable glory.And here, in the clouds, dwells Mountain High. Once, this complex was three competing ski areas, fighting it out for families scaling the mountains in rear-wheel drive Buicks and skiing in peacoats. Everything is different now. Those three ski areas – Blue Ridge (West), Holiday Hill (East), and Table Mountain ne Sunlight (North) – are still three separate ski areas, but they operate as one. The cars are better, the gear is better. Vapers and backpack speakers rule the day (Though were I to spy a chap swiveling downslope with poles tucked underarm while puffing on a pipe, I daresay I would invite the old swell to a game of backgammon and a bottle of my finest mead [and there’s the Churchill]). Somewhere along the way, Mountain High installed chairlifts, and then, snowmaking. But despite all this change, a century on, there is still skiing in Southern California. And what a marvelous fact that is.*“on a clear day,” one must always addWhat we talked aboutThe 2021-22 ski season at Mountain High and Dodge Ridge; a record broken at Dodge Ridge; growing up at Ascutney, Vermont; ascending the ranks to the top of Mountain High; Ascutney’s disadvantages compared to the rest of Vermont; how three once-separate ski areas united to form the modern Mountain High; the novel big-business prospects of “snow play” zones at the base of high-altitude urban-adjacent ski areas; why snow play is “drought-resistant”; Mountain High’s snowmaking source, limitations, technology and potential; the incredible efficiency of modern snowmaking; undeveloped land within Mountain High’s permit area and whether we could see expansion anytime soon; the possibility of connecting Mountain High East and West, and whether that would be done through lifts or skiing; the mountain-to-mountain connection we’re most likely to see; humoring me on the could-we-connect-North-to-East-and-West-with-a-gondola question; the most likely next lift upgrade at Mountain High and what it would take to make it happen; whether we could ever see Mountain High North expand lifts back down into the bowl where trails ran at the old Sunrise ski area; the cultural importance of night skiing and why it’s unlikely to ever expand beyond its current footprint; why Kapuscinski purchased Dodge Ridge last year; how Dodge Ridge is “very culturally different” from Mountain High; the amazing percentage of Dodge Ridge skiers that also have an Epic or Ikon pass; a long-term vision for Dodge Ridge; replacing chair 1 and 2 with a single lift this summer, and how the new alignment will enhance the experience for beginners; how much money the ski area is saving by putting in a new lift rather than a used one; possible alignments for high-speed lifts at Dodge Ridge; what a high-speed lift will run you these days; thoughts on Lift 8; the big expansion opportunities at Dodge Ridge and what sort of terrain skiers would find there; the differences between running a ski area that relies heavily on snowmaking and one that doesn’t; Dodge Ridge’s nascent snowmaking system; whether the ski area could ever get night skiing; reciprocity between Dodge Ridge and Mountain High season passes; the Saturday problem; the number of season passes each mountain sells; an estimate of Ikon Pass sales in Southern California; forming the Powder Alliance; and whether the ski areas are considering joining the Indy Pass.   Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewKapuscinski has been the king of Mountain High for decades, taking the CEO job in the mid-90s and eventually buying out his partners to take full control of the resort. He gradually grew the place, and in 2004 purchased nearby Sunrise, now Mountain High North, in what was essentially – as he tells me in the interview – an estate sale.That may have been practice for what came last summer, when Kapuscinski purchased big and snowy Dodge Ridge from Frank and Sally Helm, who had run the joint for 45 years.“I’d had my eye on Dodge Ridge for quite some time,” Kapuscinski tells me in the interview. “It was an area that I knew probably wouldn’t draw a ton of interest from the bigger ski companies. There’s not a lot of those areas that are well-positioned, where they still have a fair amount of upside, but aren’t going to get gobbled up by the bigger ski companies.”Dodge Ridge is one of a series of larger-than-you’d-think ski areas – Bear Valley and China Peak are the others – that hangs off the west side of the Sierras, in an awkward limbo that’s invisible to Epic- and Ikon-wielding skiers racing off to Mammoth and Tahoe. It’s a bit of a time machine, a fixed-grip redoubt that lacks material amounts of snowmaking and is seated, in a very un-California way, far from a large city or interstate. But it has terrain, room to expand, and 300-plus inches of snow per season. That’s plenty to work with.With a full season of operations behind him, I figured it was a good time to check in with Kapuscinski to see where Dodge Ridge was sitting and where he planned to take it, and how the ski area may work with Mountain High – six hours away – to form a little in-state ski network. He has plenty of ideas, particularly when it comes to blowing out the lift fleet. Dodge Ridge skiers tired of the 10-minute ride up Lift 7 are going to like where Kapuscinski’s head is at with an upgrade. Things are already starting to happen: this summer, Chairs 1 and 2 are making way for a used-but-rebuilt replacement, and the resort has, for the first time, the whispers of a snowmaking system.With skier visits up across the country and multi-mountain passes opening the state’s resorts to a new generation of skiers, this is an exciting time for California skiing. Kapuscinski is, and will continue for some time to be, an important part of the whole scene.Questions I wish I’d askedGiven that Kapuscinski ran Stevens Pass for many years, I ought to have asked him about Vail’s struggles up in Washington this past season. There was enough, however, to talk about with his two ski areas, and that seemed like the better place to focus. I also neglected to ask which runs, in particular, Kapuscinski had in mind for Dodge Ridge trail improvements when he mentioned that as a priority.What I got wrongThis isn’t really something I got wrong so much as something I didn’t explain properly – when I mentioned Loon’s base-to-base railroad connection, I commented that it “would never get environmental approval” in California. The reason why is that this is an old-fashioned steam train with an exhaust pipe that would embarrass the Onceler:I’m sure it’s grandfathered in in New Hampshire as some sort of tourist novelty, but any base-to-base transit between Mountain High East and West would have to, um, not run on wood. Not that they would propose it, but that explains my remark in the podcast.Why you should ski Mountain High and Dodge RidgeThere was a moment, before I turned against it, when I was in thrall to U.S. America’s car-first notion of civilization-building. Dropping out of the high desert after a cross-country roadtrip my buddy Ron and I found Los Angeles and its spectacular network of freeways. For days we explored, Midwest teenagers awestruck and eager, zippering through staggered herds of Hondas and BMWs in a beat-up GMC pickup with a topper and a brand-new transmission we’d acquired after a mid-night breakdown in Victorville*. What was this magical realm, sandwiched between sparkling ocean and spectacular mountains, with its Beach Brah vibe and its bristling subtext of hustle and ambition? City-strong, nature-adjacent, nearly rainless with moderate coastal temps, it struck me as a sort of American Utopia, everything great about the nation organized into a self-contained realm.It was the skiing, as mentioned above, that most fascinated me. Access to winter without the doldrums of winter, the ice and the wind, the endless months in jackets and boots, the extra 20 minutes in the morning to warm and de-ice the car and clear it of snow. While my infatuation with Southern California freeway culture would not last the week – shattered in a four-hour dead stop southbound on the 5 while the authorities tended to an overturned and fire-blackened vehicle – my belief in the awesomeness of its top-of-the-world skiing never abated. Most of America’s warm-weather cities – Miami, Houston, Dallas – are considerable journeys from easy turns. Not Los Angeles. There are a half dozen choices, right there. Vertical drops up to 2,000 feet. Glades aplenty and skiing into May when the snow comes. Parks, nights, whatever you want. I’m not saying it’s Mammoth. But I’m saying that it’s right goddamn there, and that’s pretty incredible.I never did move to Los Angeles, or anywhere in California. But if I had, I imagine I’d treat that halo of resilient little SoCal ski areas the same way I treat Mountain Creek now – as my local to notch turns between my runs farther north. The season passes are not expensive – Snow Valley’s is just $329 and grants you the option of a discounted Indy Pass add-on. Baldy and Mountain High run $499. Big Bear and Snow Summit are, of course, on the Ikon Pass, and I suppose that’s become the default for so many Southern California residents as a result. But Mountain High remains compelling – North is a beginner’s paradise, completely free of Radbrahs. West is a parks and night-skiing haven. East is the more traditional trails-and-glades option. I guess many people in Southern California simply choose none-of-the-above and wait out winter between trips to Tahoe and Salt Lake. Which, OK. But, I don’t know man, if there’s turns to be had, I’m taking them.Dodge Ridge is a whole different thing. How, exactly, does a mountain sandwiched between Tahoe and Mammoth stand out? Well, by not being Tahoe or Mammoth. The terrain gets plenty of snow. The mountain is big enough. It’s a good place to hide out, especially from high-speed lift snobs with the patience of a fruit fly, who act as though a 10-minute lift ride were the equivalent of waterboarding.Kapuscinski seems committed to changing that and upgrading the rusty lift fleet, but the mountain will always be a smaller alternative to California’s ski resort royalty. He told me in the interview that an amazing percentage of Dodge Ridge passholders also have an Epic or Ikon Pass. For them, Dodge Ridge is where they go when they can’t – or don’t want to – go to the chest-beaters. It is, as Kapuscinski says, “a multi-generational mountain.” Meaning, for a lot of people, it’s home.*To this day (this was 1996), my buddy is convinced that it was my insistence to reroute off I-70 and up US 6 in Colorado that strained the transmission to its breaking point later in the journey. He’s probably right, but I really, you know, NEEDED, to drive past Arapahoe Basin.More Mountain HighIn our interview, Kapuscinski mentioned mothballed plans for a gondola to connect the resort to lower-altitude terrain, which would have eliminated the need for “mountain driving.” I couldn’t find any of these old plans – if you have any materials on this, please send them over.I had a lot of fun poking around in the archives for trailmaps to Mountain High’s predecessor resorts. Here are a few:Table Mountain/Sunlight (now Mountain High North)Poma #1 in this 1970 trailmap of Table Mountain runs in the approximate line of the modern-day Sunlight quad at Mountain High North. Lift service is now restricted to the top portion of the mountain, and Poma #3 on this map stretches down into a bowl that is just a wide-open snowfield on the current trailmap. Holiday Hill (now Mountain High East)It’s hard to make out the modern hill in this map from 1976.In this version, it’s easier to recognize the basic footprint of modern-day Mountain High East. I’m not entirely confident on the date here, as skimap.org suggests this is from 1980, and some sources indicate that the resort merged with its neighbor in 1979.Mountain High WestI couldn’t find any trailmaps of Blue Ridge, as West was originally known. But this 1978 map of the ski area is pretty cool. You can see the outline of modern Mountain High West here: Chairlift #2 here runs along the approximate line of modern-day Lift 6, Exhibition. The resort long ago abandoned the Wild West-themed trailnames, but, for context, “Calamity Jane” is “Calamity” at the modern ski area.This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on June 10. Free subscribers got it on June 13. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, consider an upgrade.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 63/100 in 2022, and number 309 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Season 01 : Pacific Northwest Bonus : White Death : Wellington, WA There's a reason that people travel up highway 2, to the top of the cascade mountains, to Stevens Pass, Washington State. That reason is snow. A perfect place for skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing and sledding.People flock to the area to have fun and play in the winter wonderland. Sometimes though, the snow can freeze you to the bone…Check us out on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/c/SomewhereSinisterFollow us on social media:https://twitter.com/SomewhereSinhttps://www.instagram.com/somewheresinister/You can support us by donating a few bucks here:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/somewheresin

March 1st marks the deadliest avalanche in U.S. history. Learn more about this tragic event and what you need to do before heading out in the backcountry to avoid and be better prepared for avalanches.

This week we talk about the tragic history of The Iron Goat Trail. This former railroad through Stevens Pass in the Central Cascades of Washington, was the site of the deadliest avalanche in American history. Much like the sinking of the Titanic two years later, this is the story of when transportation progression and natural disasters collide. It's no wonder hikers claim to feel, hear, and even see strange things on their visits to the trail. We also learn a very important Tarot lesson in this episode. It's a reminder that we are definitely learning and figuring things out as we go!Serial Sistaas Podcast Book referenced - White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche by Gary Krist. YouTube video of present day wreckage debris.  Helpful info about hiking the trail. If you're enjoying our podcast, please consider leaving a rating & review on Apple Podcasts. It helps get us seen by more creepy people just like you!  Find us on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Patreon,  & more!  If you have any true crime, paranormal, or witchy stories you'd like to share with us & possibly have them read (out loud) on an episode, email us at pnwhauntsandhomicides@gmail.com or use this link.  We're Birdie Ambassadors! Birdie is the modern personal safety alarm made for women, by women.  When threatened, activate Birdie's LOUD siren and flashing light to create a diversion. Use our Ambassador Link and coupon code to receive 10% off your purchase.Coupon Code: PNWHAUNTSANDHOMICIDESIntro/Outro Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/ak/mystic-forestsLicense code: I74RAVIRTFQ4CRXECreepy Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/richard-bodgers/scar-soundsLicense code: 8HVDNYHQ4OSUGZRRCover art by Chris & Cassie Pastebin: for sources. Support the show

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Spot and Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.Support The Storm by shopping at our partners: Patagonia | Helly Hansen | Rossignol | Salomon | Utah Skis | Berg’s Ski and Snowboard Shop | Peter Glenn | Kemper Snowboards | Gravity Coalition | Darn Tough | Skier's Peak | Hagan Ski Mountaineering | Moosejaw | Skis.com |The House | Telos Snowboards | Christy Sports | Evo | Hotels Combined | Black Diamond | Eastern Mountain SportsWhoRob Katz, Vail Resorts Executive Chairperson of the BoardRecorded onJanuary 24, 2022Why I interviewed himAs I wrote last month:Rob Katz changed skiing. Under his leadership, Vail demystified the season pass, transforming it from a rarified token for locals to an accessible and affordable product for casual skiers. An industry reliant for decades on bubble-prone real estate development had the grand realization that the skiing itself was its main product, and that the simple maneuver of bundling resorts onto a single pass, cutting prices, and moving the pass sales period to the offseason could stabilize a temperamental business reliant on weather.The Epic Pass spawned competitors. Vail’s consolidation of large resorts drove the consolidation of other large resorts. Today, 145 of the 462 active U.S. ski areas are on the Epic, Ikon, Indy, or Power passes. Just four companies own 67 of these mountains. Vail owns 33 (it will soon own 36 if regulators approve its sale of Seven Springs, Laurel, and Hidden Valley in Pennsylvania). Alterra – which did not exist in 2006 – owns 13. Powdr Corp owns 10, Boyne Resorts, nine; and Mountain Capital Partners, seven. But the combined might of three of those four conglomerates is on the Ikon Pass, matched against Vail and the Epic Pass.“Vail is the powerhouse of the industry,” said Alterra CEO Rusty Gregory in an interview with The Storm Skiing Journal. “There's no question about that. And Rob is the guy who led them to that success.”The ski industry today resembles the ski industry of 2006 as much as shopping or entertainment in 2021 resembles its ancestors from that time. But unlike big-box shopping, disrupted by upstart Amazon, or carefully programmed linear television, undone by Netflix, skiing was disrupted from within, by an established player with a visionary CEO. As Katz transitions to executive chairperson of the board and hands the keys to the CEO suite off to Vail veteran Kirsten Lynch, he has solidified his place as the most transformational figure in the history of lift-served skiing.“Rob changed a company, changed a business practice, added a product, he changed an entire business model, and an industry along with it,” said Shaun Kelly, managing director and senior research analyst at Bank of America who specializes in gaming, lodging, and leisure equity research. “I cover hotels, I cover casinos, and the businesses themselves are remarkably similar to what they were 10 or 15 years ago. You think about taking a stock from $30 to $300. In the stock market, you don't get multiples of your money unless you get both significant growth of your core business, but also a change in perception of how people value the cashflow or the business itself. And Vail got both.”No one has set the narrative around lift-served skiing over the past two decades more than Rob Katz, and hearing that story first-hand was an opportunity I was very happy to have.What we talked aboutWhere Katz grew up skiing; crushing Hunter in jeans; how Katz began working with Vail in the early ‘90s and what the company looked like at the time; when Katz realized Vail could become Vail Resorts; the genesis of the Epic Pass; selling the idea of the Epic Pass both to the company’s board of directors and to the individual resorts themselves; how the world reacted to the Epic Pass’ launch; thoughts on the shift of the season pass from a rarified locals product to an everyman’s product; Vail’s move into California; how Kirkwood and Heavenly became part of the same portfolio and why that makes sense; why every Vail acquisition becomes unlimited on the Epic Pass; the story behind the Park City acquisition; why Vail needs Whistler and Whistler needs Vail; why and how Vail entered Australia; Vail’s Midwestern bumps and how they fed the empire; the importance of small ski areas; why Vail barnstormed the East; how the company will fix up its less-evolved resorts; is owning eight of the 22 public ski areas in Pennsylvania too much?; thoughts on $200-plus lift tickets; Vail’s Turn in Your Ticket program; what’s gone right for Vail in the 2021-22 ski season; the ongoing threat of Covid; how Vail will ensure that the meltdown at Stevens Pass does not repeat in future seasons; thoughts on Vail’s curtailed Midwestern operating hours this season; Vail’s crowd-management efforts; an update on Vail’s racial and gender-equity efforts; Jerry of the Day; and Vail’s enormous investments in employee housing and the challenges around that.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIn November, Katz stepped into Vail’s executive chairperson of the board role, leaving the CEO seat he had occupied for 15 years. Raise your hand if, in January 2006, you thought we’d one day have a ski pass that bundled Vail, Park City, Heavenly, and Whistler with Mount Brighton, Michigan and Hunter Mountain. Vail’s rise to the top of skiing has been unpredictable, surprising, rapid, and amazing to witness. For frequent skiers, the sport has never been more affordable, their choices more varied.But the rise of Vail and the Epic Pass have not been seamless. Again, as I wrote last month:Stability, affordability, modernization: all of this benefitted skiers, especially frequent skiers. But Vail’s ascent to the top of the skiing food chain has catalyzed or coincided with profound changes to the lift-served skiing ecosystem and the mountain towns that surround them, especially in the West. Worker housing, long problematic, has reached crisis levels. Colorado’s Interstate 70, Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon (where Vail does not own a resort), and other mountain-transportation corridors have become synonymous with apocalyptic traffic. Resort consolidation has drawn charges of homogenization, mountain crowding, and day-ticket prices that make big-mountain skiing unaffordable for many Americans.This season, Vail has suffered from Covid-related staffing shortages and other issues that have prevented the company from fully opening Stevens Pass, Wildcat, and Attitash. Several of Vail’s smaller ski areas have slashed operating hours from previous seasons. Warm temperatures throughout much of the country through the first half of December didn’t help.This seemed like a good time to reflect on Katz’s legacy while sorting through the messy present and how Vail plans to move ahead.Questions I wish I’d askedThere was just no way to cover everything. As Katz said before we started the interview, we could have spent an hour on any single question. I would have loved to have gotten more into Vail’s enormous investment in chairlifts, the impacts of the company’s vaccine mandate and the federal government’s worker-visa limits on staffing, mountain-town traffic, Katz’s enormous personal donations to charity, and the odd discrepancy between flat skier-visit numbers and what feels like ever-more crowded resorts. Next time.More VailHere’s a pretty good timeline of Vail Resorts’ acquisitions (does not include Seven Springs)Previous Vail Resorts episodes of The Storm Skiing Podcast: East Region COO Tim Baker and Mount Snow GM Tracy BartelsThoughts on Vail’s enormous coming lift upgradesA look at some of Vail’s struggles this season Subscribe at www.stormskiing.com

It's been a rip roaring start to snow season, but half of the ski area at Stevens Pass is still closed. Other resorts in the area are also having a bumpy start to the season, in part because of the demand for outdoor activities. We explain the international business game that's changing skiing in Washington.Guest: Gregory Scruggs, Seattle Times outdoors reporterRead Gregory's reporting on ski season:https://www.seattletimes.com/life/outdoors/the-2021-22-ski-season-in-full-swing-but-seattle-area-resorts-are-struggling-to-cope/ And Rachel Riley's deep dive into Stevens Pass for the Everett Herald:https://www.heraldnet.com/news/at-stevens-pass-epic-lines-not-so-epic-times-amid-staff-shortage/

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.WhoFrank DeBerry, President and CEO of Crystal Mountain, WashingtonRecorded onOctober 18, 2021Why I interviewed himBecause Crystal is one of the under-appreciated giants of North American skiing. It has more inbounds skiable terrain than Jackson Hole and gets more snow than any ski area in Colorado. It’s not overlooked nationally because it’s hidden. It’s owned by Alterra, is the Pacific Northwest star on the Ikon Pass, and is seated in the shadow of Mt. Rainier, just two hours from downtown Seattle. But Crystal lacks the substantial bed base that would promote it from ski area to ski resort, that would make someone from New York or LA line it up beside the Wasatch or Tahoe or the I-70 corridor as a vacation option. So it’s mostly a local. A damn big one, with lights-out skiing and a voracious skier base. Maybe too voracious, judging from the recent pow-day traffic jams dozens of miles long. This is a big mountain with big plans, and I wanted to talk to the conductor of all this madness to find out exactly where it was headed.What we talked aboutWorking at Mountain Creek when Intrawest bought the place and replaced the entire lift system in one summer; “it’s almost impossible to run Mountain Creek”; why Intrawest sold the mountain and others, including Whistler; West Virginia skiing and why you need to hit Snowshoe; Crystal’s “extraordinary” terrain and enormous snowfall; the culture shock of moving from the snow-starved East to the snow-choked West; why Mountain Creek and Crystal are “not that dissimilar”; avalanche mitigation; the “rabid” Pacific Northwest ski culture; why Crystal went from perennial hidden gem to one battling chronic overcrowding; whether the ski area could ever build up a larger bed base; the enormous challenge of Crystal’s endless two-lane, un-expandable access road; why Crystal was initially unlimited on the Ikon Base Pass and why that proved to be unsustainable; what happened to passholder numbers when Alterra moved unlimited Crystal access to the full Ikon Pass; why the mountain had to stop selling day tickets in early 2020; why you may want to ski holidays at Crystal; why Crystal is moving to paid parking and how that will fund a mass transit system from Enumclaw; the amazing number of parking spaces Crystal loses to snowbanks each season; operating buses amid Covid; what might replace the Rainier Express; the difference between out-of-base lift capacity and overall lift capacity; a bold proposal to move the current gondola and add another; potential expansion up Bullion Basin; why Crystal abandoned that terrain several decades ago; whether the second base area or the Kelly’s Gap high-speed quad proposed on the 2004 master plan could still happen; why we may see groomed terrain in Northway; whether Crystal would ever upgrade capacity on the Northway or Chair 6 doubles; why we’re unlikely to see a chair up Silver King; which terrain could be included in a night-skiing expansion and what it would take to make it happen; and the tradition of the long season at Crystal and why that’s in no danger of ending.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview“Crystal Mountain Resort is the sleeping giant of the Northwest.” – Peak Ski Guide & Travel Planner, 1994“Outside of Seattle, Crystal Mountain remains largely unknown. Too bad, because Crystal is 2,300 acres and 3,100 vertical feet of romping grounds.” – Skiing, October 1995“The region gets little press, is ridden almost exclusively by locals, and received biblical precipitation. … One of my guides claims it takes a few days to tear up Crystal after a big dump.” – Skiing, October 1999Welp, things have changed. The 1990s version of Crystal was, according to Lift Blog, a time machine owned by a ski cooperative. Boyne bought the joint, fixed it up, and, after a brief stint as an indie, Crystal ended up in Alterra’s quiver. So: a modern ski area, on the Ikon Pass, in the shadow of an increasingly affluent metro Seattle population that has exploded from around 2.5 million to nearly 4 million in the past 25 years, 100 percent of whom access the ski area via an endless two-laner.It’s quite a mess. This offseason, Crystal made two huge moves to address the chronic overcrowding that’s now as predictable as the mountain’s monster snowstorms: significantly reduce Ikon Base Pass access and implement a paid parking program. These short-term moves are the first steps in an evolving master plan that should address parking shortages, increase out-of-base lift capacity, and improve the overall ski experience. Crystal has huge plans, especially around its lift fleet, and I wanted to give frustrated skiers a window into how their current ski-day woes may eventually subside.Questions I wish I’d askedIn August, I rode the Crystal gondola to the summit with my family. Base area signs warned of limited visibility, but we had driven all the way out there already and I like riding lifts anyway and so up we went. Wildfire smoke, everywhere erasing the horizon. Rainier, normally looming epochally over the ski area’s summit, was invisible. With Sierra-at-Tahoe facing a limited season after extensive wildfire damage and Heavenly and Kirkwood facing down fire threats, the ski industry is reckoning with climate change as an all-seasons threat. I would have loved to have gotten DeBerry’s take on what this means, both for Crystal and for the industry at large.Why you should ski CrystalI mean, well, just look at the place:When ski writers talk about a “skier’s mountain,” this is what they mean. Vast dominions of raging terrain dumping thousands of feet off the summit. Very little grooming. Buckets of snow. This is trailblazing skiing – pick your own route, any route, do your best not to die. And why not? They don’t have 5,000 tourists at the base area to keep happy. Let the other mountains string traverses across the fall line to zigzag green circle boulevards from the summit. Crystal is a mega-mountain that still feels primarily like a ski area for skiers. It’s a must-hit.Just go, you know, on a weekday.Additional reading/videosLift Blog’s inventory of Crystal Mountain liftsArchival Crystal trailmapsDeBerry refers to “John” frequently throughout our interview. He’s referencing John Kircher, former owner of Crystal Mountain and brother of Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher. Here’s a really good overview of why he sold the mountain to Alterra shortly after Vail bought Stevens.More on the great powder-day fiasco of 2020 that forced huge changes in how Crystal manages skiers and traffic.Gregory Scruggs wrote an outstanding compare-and-contrast of the trajectories of Crystal under Alterra and Stevens Pass under Vail:The two biggest rival corporations in ski resort management staked their claims in Washington state in 2018 by purchasing two of the Central Cascades’ most beloved ski areas.Vail Resorts, based in Broomfield, Colorado, bought Stevens Pass, the lovably crusty ski area on one of the continent’s snowiest mountain passes reachable by road; meanwhile, Denver-based Alterra Mountain Company snapped up Crystal Mountain, a resort founded by Seattle ski bums at the edge of Mount Rainier National Park.…Numerous interviews with season pass holders from both resorts show that Crystal Mountain provided customers with a premier experience amid tough pandemic conditions — though this comes at a premier price. Meanwhile, Stevens Pass slashed the price of its Epic Pass last month in an attempt to make skiing more affordable after a season in which its operational struggles frustrated many longtime pass holders. Get on the email list at www.stormskiing.com

Good Morning it's Tuesday July 27th and this is Slices of Wenatchee. We're excited to bring you a closer look at one of our top stories and other announcements every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.    Today - In an effort to inform the community where it stands on controversial topics, the Wenatchee School District recently posted about two of the more controversial topics out there…. sexual health education and Critical Race Theory.   Now our feature story…    In an effort to inform the community where it stands on controversial topics, the Wenatchee School District recently posted about two of the more controversial topics out there…. sexual health education and Critical Race Theory.   District spokesperson Diana Haglund said the district office and school board members have been receiving a lot of calls and emails on those two topics from community members and parents. They've been asking questions about how the subjects relate to Wenatchee schools.    Most of the people contacting the district were concerned and looking for more information. Some were emotional.   Haglund also said that the district felt it was important to make information publicly available to help dispel any inaccuracies.    She also explained that the statements are related to current state legislation.    It was important to them to tie the information to the passage of legislation, so parents in the community can know what those bills look like and what was included in them. It'll also help connect families and the public with information about what is happening with comprehensive sexual health education.   In fact, the Wenatchee School Board received a presentation on the sexual health legislation in January 2020, shortly after it was approved by state voters.    Haglund said Wenatchee School District curriculum was aligned even before the passage of the bill and again, available on the website.   Still, parents do have the option to opt their student out at any time during the curriculum.   They also have the right to review the curriculum at any time.   In terms of addressing Critical Race Theory, Haglund said the district office has been receiving a lot of questions from parents.    Parents are concerned it is happening in schools specifically related to recent legislation, House Senate Bill 5044. House Senate Bill 5044 requires Cultural Competency, Diversity Equity and Inclusion training for school staff.   The new law requires school districts to use one of the professional learning days to train school district staff in either cultural competency, diversity, equity or inclusion.   But Haglund said Critical Race Theory is not part of the new law, nor is any other specific curriculum mentioned in the law.   She did explain that there is some concern that CRT is part of that and being taught in our schools. That's why they wanted to come out with a very clear position that they are not teaching CRT.    The district is not required or mandated by the state to do so.    This is something they want to be really clear with the public on.    We encourage you to read our full story and join the conversation by visiting NABUR at wenatcheeworld.com/nabur.   -   Before we continue, a special thanks to our friends and sponsors at Confluence Health. The team at Confluence Health is grateful for the trust the community puts in them every single day. They are diligently working to improve the health and quality of life for our friends and neighbors. They are Grateful | They are Confluence Health.  Learn more by visiting them at ConfluenceHealth.com -   Here's what else you need to know today.   Another year of Fiestas Mexicanas has gone the way of the pandemic.   The two-day, free event — which features music, food and vendors in a celebration of Latin American Independence Day each September — won't be held in 2021. It was also canceled in 2020.   Martha Zaldivar, who has organized Fiestas Mexicanas for 14 years, said many of the event's sponsors were not able to contribute this year because of the economic impact of COVID-19.   The event is also facing long-term obstacles in the form of space.    Zaldivar said Fiestas Mexicanas averages 20,000 people each year — a big crowd for the limited space at the event's usual venue - Lincoln Park.   The city of Wenatchee is working on a number of improvements at Lincoln Park, but Zaldivar said the changes won't benefit the event.   For example, the park's new stage won't be large enough. And parking will also still be an issue.   Wenatchee Parks Director David Erickson said no additional parking is in the works since the existing lot has enough space for the majority of the park's regular uses.   So, Fiestas Mexicanas is looking for a new venue but they still haven't found the right place. One concern is that at least 30% of the event's attendees are individuals who walk to the event from areas surrounding Lincoln Park. That means switching locations could have an impact on attendance numbers.   Despite these issues, Fiestas Mexicanas hopes to return stronger than ever in 2022. They are also planning a second, smaller fiesta in May.   Their priority? To give the community a free band and a good quality event.   Finally,   Fishers, a mid-sized member of the weasel family, are making a comeback in the Pacific Northwest and Chelan County.   The species was eliminated from Washington state in the mid-1900s. How? Due to trapping - for their fur.    But Fish and Wildlife, the National Park Service, Conservation Northwest, and Calgary Zoo released 89 fishers in the North Cascades between 2018 to 2020 to help restore the species.   Since then, state wildlife biologist Jeff Lewis says fishers have started having babies in the wild and have gotten as far as between Stevens Pass and Lake Wenatchee.   In March 2019, a resident of Plain caught an image of a fisher on a game camera. At the time, the picture was a unique find as Lake Wenatchee is so far between two of the recovery zones.   It now seems that fishers are doing quite well in upper Chelan County. The animals are found predominantly on the west side, where there are dense, Douglas Fir forested canyons.   The state agency is working to return fishers to the landscape for several reasons...    For one, they were a part of the natural landscape before human settlement caused them to be overhunted.   That means they have a role to play in the ecosystem.   Fishers are one of the only real predators of porcupines for example. They are also predated on by bobcats and mountain lions.   The state agency is now working on a camera trap study to track fishers in the wild and see how broadly they're distributed on the landscape. This will help them decide if they need to relocate some of the animals or release more on the landscape.   Eventually, state biologists may do a camera trap study near the Lake Wenatchee area.   For now, the fisher population isn't sustainable yet around Lake Wenatchee, but it might be someday.   Stay up to date by visiting us at Wenatcheeworld.com     Did you know that the Wenatchee Confluence State Park is a great place to birdwatch? Officially created in 1990, more than 30 breeding species will make their homes there and 224 total species including falcons and bald eagles have been spotted. With more than 97 acres designated as natural and wetland environment, you're bound to see something incredible.     Thanks for listening. We'd also like to thank our sponsor again, Equilus Group, Inc, a Registered Investment Advisory Firm in the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.   The Wenatchee World has been engaging, informing and inspiring North Central Washington Communities since 1905. We encourage you to subscribe today to keep your heart and mind connected to what matters most in North Central Washington. Thank you for starting your morning with us and don't forget to tune in again on Thursday!   Support the show: https://www.wenatcheeworld.com/site/forms/subscription_services/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Heritage sheep breeds, ink as the new souvenir sock skein, and Marsha's realization that she needs to get out of her basement are all on the agenda this week. Plus, a reminder that we have just over a month left of our Summer Spin In. Show notes with full transcript, photos, and links can be found in the podcast section of our shop website: TwoEwesFiberAdventures.com. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Subscribe on Android or Subscribe on Google Podcasts Marsha's Projects Spinning the brown and green merino.  Atlas (Ravelry link) by Jared Flood using Navia Tradition. The pattern is also available at his website. I have completed the body to the armholes and almost completed the first sleeve. I've washed and blocked it to  see how it looks and to be able to measure the body. Kelly's Projects I'm continuing the Oxford spinning. I am still keeping my options open for a 3-ply where I'm more careful about the twist. I'd like the yarn to be more loosely plied than my 3-ply sample. I have almost three full bobbins of singles and plenty of fiber left. I carded about 400 grams. Here is the project page for this handspun. Information about Oxford fleece: Livestock Conservancy status is “watch.” Fewer than 2,500 annual registrations in the United States and an estimated global population less than 10,000.“ originated as the result of crossing Cotswolds and Hampshires. imported into America in 1846. one of the largest breeds of sheep and is only surpassed in body weight by the Lincoln. Not only does it lack uniformity in body type and size, but there is also considerable lack of uniformity in color markings and in the weight and quality of the fleece The new breed that we know as Oxford today is a bit smaller, only 200-250 pounds, a result of that push in the 1930s for a more compact animal followed by the resurgence of the older type. staple length, generally around 1-2”. remains rare in the United States, having been supplanted by the Suffolk. This situation is difficult to explain, as research has shown time and again that the Oxford excels as the sire of market lambs and the breed's overall profitability may be second to none. I've made good progress on the Dark Green Forest cardigan (Ravelry link) by Christina Körber-Reith. She also has the pattern at her website, Strickhauzeit. I'm using handspun 3-ply (fingering to sport weight) from a CVM (Romeldale) fleece that I overdyed. I've gotten down to the pockets. The sweater has a ribbed front band and honeycomb cable down the sleeve and on the pockets. It has saddle shoulder construction and a square “sailor” collar that also has ribbing.  Information about CVM sheep: status is “threatened” with fewer than 1,000 annual registrations in the United States and an estimated global population of less than 5,000. American fine wool breed, and the California Variegated Mutant, or CVM, is its multi-colored derivative. Romney-Rambouillet crosses were bred for several years and became known as Romeldales. colored lambs appeared in the Romeldale breed. Glen Eidman became interested in these sheep and linebred them for several generations Sheep breed resources: Livestock Conservancy, Oklahoma State Breeds Directory. Other Discussion  Marsha talks about mistakenly donating some of her favorite children's books by Bill Peet.  Ella Elephant, Jennifer and Josephine Great documentary on Netflix by the actress Geena Davis about equality in the media. Here is a link to the YouTube trailer of This Changes Everything. Pens--SF Pen Show August 27-29. Held about 35 miles south of SF in Redwood City,  Kelly and Robert will be there Saturday, August 28. Summer Spin In - Ends September 6th Just over a month to go! Prizes from Three Green Sisters Full Show Transcript Kelly 0:03 Hi, this is Marsha and this is Kelly. Marsha 0:05 We are the Two Ewes of Two Ewes Fiber Adventures. Thanks for stopping by. Kelly 0:10 You'll hear about knitting, spinning, dyeing, crocheting, and just about anything else we can think of as a way to play with string. Marsha 0:17 We blog and post show notes at to use fiber adventures.com. Kelly 0:22 And we invite you to join our Two Ewes Fiber Adventures group on Ravelry. I'm 1hundredprojects, Marsha 0:29 and I am betterinmotion. Kelly 0:31 We are both on Instagram and Ravelry. And we look forward to meeting you there. Both 0:36 Enjoy the episode. Marsha 0:43 Good morning, Kelly. Kelly 0:44 Good morning, Marsha. How are you? Marsha 0:46 I'm doing well. Kelly 0:47 Good. I want to ask you a question. Okay, so Marsha, what knitwear Are you wearing today? Marsha 0:55 Not a stitch? Kelly 0:57 Not a stitch of knitwear. Kelly 0:58 No. Kelly 0:59 Well, now, that actually makes sense. Because what season are we in here in the Northern Hemisphere? Marsha 1:07 High summer? Kelly 1:08 Yes. Marsha 1:10 And... but not where you are I take it, based on this question. Kelly 1:13 And I'm not complaining. I'm just providing you information.But I am currently wearing ...although probably some of it will come off. Marsha 1:23 Wait a minute, let me get a pen. I have to write this down. Kelly 1:25 So I'm currently wearing from head to toe... I'm currently wearing my Rikke hat. I'm wearing the Habitat sweater that I crocheted. And I'm wearing handknit socks. Marsha 1:40 Kelly Kelly, you need to book a flight ASAP to Seattle. Kelly 1:43 I heard that, that there's, you know, all this heat going on all around the country. And I feel bad for everyone who is you know, going through all the heat and the fires and, and, and then there's, you know, flooding. I hope that all of our listeners in Germany are okay, so I don't want to complain about my lot in life. But let me just provide you with some information. Anybody who's suffering from heat should come to Monterey County, because in the last month... I looked up the history in the last month, we've had two days above 70 degrees. Marsha 2:22 Oh, my goodness. Kelly 2:23 And guess how high we got in those two days above 70 degrees? Marsha 2:25 71? Kelly 2:29 Yes. And 72. Oh, my God, it was a heatwave. Yes. So yeah, we do have some higher temperatures coming. Next week, we get one... But by the time it gets here, the the prediction of these high temperatures almost always goes down by about four degrees, four or five degrees. So we have 80 predicted for Tuesday of next week. So we'll see if that happens. You'll have to check back. Good thing I have knitwear that's all I have to say. Marsha 3:06 It was interesting thinking about these changes in the weather because it's happening around the world and and some terrible, terrible things are happening. But that heatwave we had here in Seattle, where it was you know, 110? There's been many effects of it. I mean, people died. That's terrible. But I was listening to our local NPR station. And they were saying that over 50 people have become ill by eating shellfish. Because it got so hot. There's a bacteria that forms in shellfish in hot weather. People have been getting sick because the temperature is so high. They also lost a lot of oysters and other shellfish because they literally cooked in their shells because it was so hot. Kelly 3:59 Oh my gosh. Marsha 4:01 So it's really... There... that heat way we had is going to have a real impact on food production here in the Pacific Northwest, just those few days now. Kelly 4:12 Yeah, Marsha 4:14 It's really interesting the impact that Kelly 4:16 well, not just the shellfish. I know when we have had high temperatures here, they typically will come in, like in September, sometimes even as late as October. But when we get those high temperatures in September, we've had apples on the trees, and they're like applesauce. I mean, if you don't have the apples off the tree by that time, then after those couple days of you know, high 90s or mid 90s. Those apples are terrible. So I can imagine the impact that has had. Marsha 4:53 Well I wonder if this cool weather you're having is going to have an impact impact on production because you live in an agricultural country community, right. And they're kind of cool weather crops. Kelly 5:03 Yeah. Marsha 5:04 But this is awfully cool for them. Kelly 5:07 So we grow a lot of strawberries here. Lettuce is not having any problem. There are... there are more and more berry fields-- regular berries. And I don't know, I don't know if the lack of heat has has affected them at all. We have an apricot tree and a plum tree and the apricot are just now starting to get ripe, which I think is really late for apricots. I don't know because this tree hasn't produced very well in the past. So I don't know what its typical timing is like, but I seem to remember apricots being a more early summer fruit when I was a kid. We had an apricot tree when I was growing up. It's probably not super abnormal, honestly, for us to have this kind of weather here in Salinas. I mean, it's not-- I don't think it's normal, normal, but I don't think it's super abnormal. If I went back and looked at the history, I mean. I remember when I first moved here, I didn't take off a sweatshirt all summer long. It was-- I was freezing to death all the time. And that's kind of how I feel this year. And maybe I just like to complain! Well, and the house would be warmer if I closed the windows, but I have to have open windows in the summer. [laughing] And that's dumb because it's not warm outside. But that's just the way it is in summer you open the windows and sleep with the windows open. So anyway, yeah. Marsha 6:42 Okay, this leads me to something Kelly. Because we are...are we complaining? Kelly 6:49 No, Marsha 6:50 a little? Kelly 6:50 I'm not gonna... we're not... Marsha 6:54 just a tad. Anyway. So I I have something just I have something to say. So the last episode, I was walking Enzo and listening to the episode. And about halfway through the beginning before we got to any fiber stuff. I texted you. And my text was, Oh my gosh! Shut up about your basement! Marsha 7:24 And I was... I don't remember know what your response was. But anyway, I went back and it was like 10 minutes, Kelly, that I talked about my basement. As I was walking along my thought was first like, Oh my goodness, shut up about that basement! Nobody cares. And my second thought was, You need to get out of that basement. Kelly 7:44 Marsha, get a life! [laughing] Marsha 7:47 And so I'm here to announce. This is the last time I'm going to talk about my basement. It's not healthy. And I got out of my basement and I went last Tuesday or this... Tuesday of this week. This is Friday that we're recording this. Tuesday, I went up to Index, Washington and for people who are out of state, that's a small former mining town up on highway two. It's near-- on the way to Stevens Pass, which is you know, big mountain pass Kelly 8:17 And north on you right? Marsha 8:18 North of me. Yeah. And the reason I went up there is Ben, my son is working up there on and off during the summer. He met up... Well, I should back up and to say Index was originally a mining town. That's how it started. But now it's become a huge destination for climbers. And apparently it's world renowned, this area, for climbing. They have great rock. Like I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just quoting Ben, because I'm not a climber. Kelly 8:49 Yeah, like what makes a great rock as opposed to just a rock? Marsha 8:55 So anyway, he goes up there and climbs. And there's a guy who lives here in Seattle who goes up there all the time and climbs. A guy named Richard. Apparently he bought a house up there, a small cabin. And so Ben has been going up and helping him fix it up, make it sort of... It's it's kind of rough. And so he's been helping him and so he goes up there for about five days at a time and then comes back. So I thought a nice outing would be to go see Ben in Index and do a hike. So I went up on Tuesday, I finally found Ben. That was kind of, well, I will, well... Do you want to hear the story about how I found Ben? Because he said to me, Index is really small. I have no idea what the population is. A tiny, tiny town and there's like two streets when you come into town. You can go left or you can go right and so he says, when you come into town you go left and you just go down to the--you know, keep going down the road and you'll see the house. I go into town. I go left. I can't find the house. I'm driving all the way almost to the end of the road, I'm now getting into Forest Service land. I'm going-- I go back. That can't be right, I go check again. So I go up and down this road about three times trying to find him and I finally gave up and thought, I'm just going to go walk the dog around the town and check it out. And then I'm going to go do my hike. And I was just getting ready to leave when I get a text from him because there's very poor, so there's no real cell service there. It's very hit or miss, I get a text like, I'm glad you're coming. You'll see the house. It has a whole bunch of free stuff out on the road. So I'm like, Okay, well, I'll go down this highway, you'll go left down this highway, which I did. And I finally see some free stuff by the side of the road. But it looks like it's been there for a long time, because there's like weeds kind of growing through it. And I don't see his car at that house. But I see there's like a driveway and kind of a long like alley kind of thing. And so I decided to go down that maybe the house is down that road. And I go down this little driveway and I see a guy working on a house or a garage or something and I just get out and I said, Are you Richard? And he said No, I'm not. And I said, Oh, I said. Well, do you have a minute to hear my story? And he's kind. He said, Yeah, I have a minute to hear your story. And so I said, Well, my son is up here working for a guy named Richard from Seattle who bought a house and I give a little story because there's a little story about how he got the house and who used to live in the house and how they got that person out of the house. And he says, Oh, I know that house. Because it's a tiny town anyway. You're probably ahead of me in the story. It's that when you come into town you turn right. Not Left. [laughing] Kelly 11:51 Right. Oh my god. Marsha 11:53 The details, right? Kelly 11:54 Yes. Marsha 11:55 So I go. Oh, I know. Yeah. So anyway, I and I, because I said to him, Well, it's a small enough town. I figured somebody would know the story. And he said yeah, I know the story. That was really funny. Anyway, I went back the correct direction, found Ben, immediately saw the house. We chatted for a little bit and then I went on my hike. So I did do a hike. So that was really nice to see. So this is the point of my story it's-- what's the phrase? Oh, the devils in the details? Kelly 12:27 Yes. Marsha 12:27 That's the phrase? Yeah, yeah. Kelly 12:30 Yeah. Well, I'm glad you got out of the basement, Marsha. Yeah. So it sounds like you had a nice a nice little outing. Marsha 12:37 Yeah, it was really nice. And it's beautiful up there. Really, really beautiful. And, yeah, so that's the last time that wore is going to cross my lips in this podcast Kelly 12:49 Ok, right! Good to know. Marsha 12:54 Let's see if I can do it now. Kelly 12:57 Oh, funny. Anyway, all right. Well, okay, since you aren't going to talk about the thing that will not be named. What about your projects? Marsha 13:09 Well, I...not a lot, well, not a huge amount to report. I've been spinning. So I have ... I'm almost done with a second bobbin of the brown for that brown and green that I'm making. Okay, and so I have one more bobbin that I need to spin and then I can ply that together. So I work on that in the afternoons. You know, sit out on my deck, and spin for a little bit. And so I'm making progress on it, but it's not, I'm not working on it exclusively. And then I do have progress to report though, on the Atlas pullover that I'm making for my brother and I have knit the body. Keep in mind though, I have not done the ribbing yet, because I did a provisional cast on. But I've knit up to the armholes and then set that aside. I did wash it though, and block it. Because as you know what we talked about the last episode, it looked like a holiday wreath, a big sausage tube kind of. So I did wash and block it and I can... now it's laying flat, so it'll be much easier to measure. And then I did a provisional cast on for the first sleeve. And I'm almost done with the first sleeve I have about 10... Let me look at my pattern. I have about six more rows. And then I will set the sleeve aside and start the second sleeve. So it's going pretty quickly. I think because it's on size seven needles. I find it's not really...maybe it's because I am normally working on three to five somewhere around... or socks or on ones. Yeah, I find it's a little more challenging to knit with. It's like, I've heard this before. Sometimes with larger needles and thicker yarn, like this is a worsted weight. You're a little harder on my hands and there's something about this yarn too. It's a little hard to knit with in the sense that it doesn't really slide along the needles very well. And it's interesting. Kelly 15:29 You have you have metal needles? Marsha 15:32 Yeah, right. Kelly 15:33 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Marsha 15:35 And it's much better. I'm doing okay, Kelly, I'm drawing a complete blank. What's the technique called where you have the long circular needle? Magic loop! Oh, my God. Okay, now I remember that. Magic loop. [laughing] I'm doing that and that's pretty easy. The body was I was kind of struggling with it. I finally put it on long a longer cable and it seemed easier, you know, having a longer cable for some reason. They seem like they slide it slid better along the needles. I don't know why that would be. Kelly 16:06 Well, maybe because they're just not so tight. I don't know. Marsha 16:09 Yeah, maybe. I don't know. It was interesting, too. This is, I don't think I mentioned this in the other episodes that the, I've mentioned, the name of the yarn is this Navia or Neyvia? tradition. But it's from the Faroe Islands. Oh, and I, which I had forgotten. And when I looked at the label, later on, I realized that and when I washed it, it kind of bloomed. It's still a woolly wool. You know, you definitely would want to wear this over like a flannel shirt or something. But it's, it feels a little softer having been washed. A lot of dye came out of this yarn, too. This is a bright green and a lot the water it just--the water was almost the color of the yarn. It really lost a lot of dye Kelly 16:58 Did it fade? Marsha 17:02 It didn't fade. It had excess dye. Which might affect the feel of the yarn.It had excess dye in there. So it feels it feels different. It's it's never gonna, I mean it's softer. It's never gonna be a soft yarn at all. Kelly 17:20 right Marsha 17:20 I mean, you're always gonna have to wear a shirt, you know, under this, but, and it kind of bloomed. It's very hairy, kind of. It's really it's really nice yarn. And I think it's gonna be super durable, too. Kelly 17:34 You'll have to put a picture in your project page, as I'm looking at your project page right now and you just have the wreath. I guess you'll need to take some more pictures now that it's been blocked and flattened. So you can actually see it's a sweater. Marsha 17:49 Yeah, I'll do that. And I'll put the sleeve in there too. I did think I was talking to Mark and we were talking about the sweater and I said this sweater is going to be the kind of sweater that you wear to the beach. You wear it when you work in the garden. I mean this is gonna be a working sweater. Just like, remember the sweater that you made for gardening at 90? Kelly 18:09 Yeah, Marsha 18:11 Yes. And I said to him, You cannot-- you not cannot save this sweater for something nice. Not, you know, I don't just mean to abuse it because you never abuse anything but it's not going to be a fine sweater that you save. You go out and you chop wood in this sweater. Actually it would be too hot chopping wood. You go sit outside Kelly 18:34 during Snowmageddon in this sweater. [laughing] Marsha 18:36 Yep. Anyway, no this--it's like it's a working sweater is what it is. Kelly 18:45 Yeah, nice. That'll be really nice. Anyway, looking forward to see to seeing it. Marsha 18:51 So that's all I really have to report. I've not picked up my socks and not picked up my simple shawl at all. So nothing to report on those. Kelly 18:57 All right. I had thought the last time we recorded that I would get the blanket finished. The Faye's Flower blanket, that Persian Tile Blanket, by the next episode because I wanted to be able to talk about it but I did not. I've been screaming along on my other project. So the sweater. The blanket is just still sitting with not very much left to do in terms of sewing it together but then quite a bit of edging to do but none of that happened so I probably shouldn't even be talking about it. But what I have done, worked a lot on, is the the sweater that I'm making out of handspun it's... The pattern for that sweater is called Dark Green Forest. And it's by Christina Korber-Rieth or Reith, I think is the way it's pronounced and it has that square... What did you call it? Sailor collar? Marsha 20:04 Mm hmm. Kelly 20:05 Which I think is the right way to describe it. Saddle shoulders with the cable. Anyway, I am all the way down to the pockets. In fact, I'm right now I'm working on it. I'm on the third of the honeycomb cables that goes down the pocket. So I think I have maybe... 2-4-6? I maybe have about six or eight more rows to go before the pockets are finished. Marsha 20:37 Wow! Kelly 20:37 I know! Yeah. I'm excited about how fast it's going. And so then once I finished the pocket... Its top down. So once I once I finished the pocket, or you know, the body down to the bottom of the pockets. I think there's a there's no ribbing at the bottom. I should have looked. Let me just check here. Yeah, there's the regular, you know, the the ribbing on the front band. Oh, yeah, there is a ribbing at the bottom of this sweater. So the pocket cables, open up into a ribbing. So that's all that will be left. Once I finished the pocket. All that will be left is the ribbing on this on this sweater. And then of course finishing the sleeves. Marsha 21:32 So I guess I'm not understanding. Are the pockets are knit separately and attached to the sewn on front of.. the front side of the sweater or is that pocket the front side and there's a piece in the back? Kelly 21:45 Yeah, I'll have to go in the back and make the back part of the pocket. Oh, you open up a slit. Marsha 21:54 And okay, I do have to say I have never made-- I've never made pockets before. Kelly 21:56 I haven't either. Well, no, that's not true. I made pockets in the orcas run sweater. That's the only sweater that I put pockets in. But I did make pockets there. I do have to talk about something odd in this pattern. Not, not bad. Just it cracks me up. I don't understand it. You do the colla, gotten done with the collar and the yoke, the yoke of the sweater, you're into the body. So you divide it for the sleeves, separated the body and the sleeves. And then you get into the step that's called "finish the body." Step six. So you do like three and a half inches under the... after the underarm after you split. And then it says, "set this aside and prepare the pocket edgings." And I thought well, that's weird, because the pockets aren't until you get to the bottom of the sweater. So I was confused about why you would do that. I read it like, I don't think I have to set this aside now and do the pocket edgings. So when I got to the place where I needed to put in the pockets, I went to do the pocket edgings the pocket edgings are literally four rows of ribbing that you then attach. You like split for the pocket. And then on the-- you put some of the stitches-- at the top, you put some of the stitches at the top of the pocket hole on waste yarn, and then the bottom of the pocket hole you attach this ribbing so that it kind of the ribbing kind of pokes up above where the hole of the pocket will be. Marsha 23:32 Mm hmm. Kelly 23:32 Why would you set aside your sweater at the armholes, do four rows of ribbing twice, then set them aside? If you're me, something that small could actually get lost doing it so much..so early. Like, I don't understand it! Marsha 23:53 because you don't need it for I mean, how many more inches? Kelly 23:55 For another like 12 inches? Or ten inches at the least. Marsha 24:00 I have a... I have a theory, okay. Maybe it's like, you know, when you're doing socks, you know, you do the ribbing and you do like top down, you do the ribbing. You do the ankles, you know the length of thing and then just as you're getting bored and sick of that you start doing the heel flap, maybe and then we and then when you get tired of all that detail of heel flap, turning the heel, the gusset Oh, you get to back go back to that mindless stuff. Kelly 24:27 Maybe it's to give you a break. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. My original thought was that it was to prevent you from you know, have you do it early so that you wouldn't just skip the pockets because you were afraid do you have enough yarn. But they're only four rows. I mean, this would not even get you... four little rows. This wouldn't even get you... this much yarn wouldn't even get you one round. Right? It wouldn't even get you all the way around the sweater. Marsha 24:56 Yeah, maybe it's a joke. Yeah. It's maybe the pattern designer thinks, You know what, I'm going to mess with you! Kelly 25:03 Yeah. She's messing with my mind. Because literally, that when you get to the body, you work three and a quarter inches like this. And this is for all sizes, you work three and a quarter inches after the armhole. You know, after separating. That's step 6A and finish the body. And step 6B is prepare pocket edgings. And then you go to Step 6C and that's when you do your shaping and knit for rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows before you get to the pockets. It's a mystery. But, but I did them when I needed them put them on. They look great. Because I always like everything I knit, right?[laughing] It all looks great. So I'm really happy with this. I'm really happy with the progress. It's going really fast. Seems like it's going really fast. So yeah, I'm loving this handspun sweater it's going to be another one of those sweaters, I think, that gets a lot of that gets a lot of wear. Marsha 26:08 Mm hmm. Kelly 26:09 The only other thing I've been working on....Oh, let me just say a little bit about this. I will put some information in the show notes about the two different sheep breeds that I'm working with. Since it is the Summer Spin In. I put some information... But this is CVM. And that stands for California Variegated Mutant, which is the multicolored version of the Romeldale. Remember the judge Mark Eidman. I think his first name was Mark, Marsha 26:41 Who just passed away? Kelly 26:43 The one who passed away. It was his father who discovered some colored lambs that were appearing in his Romeldale flock, and instead of culling them they actually bred them for the color. And so that's where the California Variegated Mutant comes from. And I have a CVM fleece in the garage, it's a darker than this one, it's more of a, it's more of a dark gray. This one was more of a beige that I overdyed. But I really like it. It's not, you know, they call it a fine wool. I wouldn't say it's like, a super fine, at least not this one. It's not a super fine wool. It's a little it's a little more fine than like a Corriedale. It's gonna be a nice sweater, and I like CVM to spin. And then the other thing that I have been spinning is Oxford. And I have a little bit of information about the Oxford sheep also. They were imported into the US in the 1840s. And it says that it's one of the largest breeds of sheep, only surpassed by the Lincoln. Although this fleece was quite small. I think it was quite small. It's probably about five or six pounds. And that's I mean, if I when I bought a Lincoln fleece, they've been bigger than that. So skirted heavily, or maybe a smaller or younger Oxford sheep. I don't... it didn't say lamb, but it was in the market class, I'm pretty sure. Anyway. The staple length is one to two inches, which is true. That's what I'm finding in this, this fleece that I have. So it's one of the livestock Conservancy breeds as well as the CVM is also a livestock Conservancy breed. So... but I've been spinning that I'm, I'm on my third bobbin. I decided to spin all my singles first and then ply them, which I hardly ever do. But I still was kind of undecided. Remember, I talked last time about how the three ply seemed too tight. I mean, that's kind of silly, because I can just ply it more loosely. That's not a characteristic of three ply, so much as it is a characteristic of my spinning. So I'm still, I'm still debating whether I'll make a two ply or a three ply with this. But if I do a three ply, I want to experiment and, you know, ply it loosely. I don't want to ply this really, really tight. I want it to be kind of a fluffy, fluffy yarn. So I have enough bobbins, I think, that I can just spin the... well maybe not the rest of this, but I can at least spin four bobbins and then I can either ply three of them together or I can ply them two and two so I think that's what I'm planning to do is spin four bobbins and then decide whether I'm going to make a two ply or or three ply. So yeah, I'm I'm making good progress on that spinning, it's a little bit boring because it's a white. It's a white fleece. I think I'll dye the yarn when I'm done. Well, that's it for my projects, Marsha. I know that you aren't going to talk about a certain part of your house, but you were doing some cleaning out. And I have a question about that. So you posted on Instagram that you were taking two big garbage bags full of yarn to destash at the Goodwill. And I just thought it would be interesting to hear, like, how did you decide what you were going to get rid of? Marsha 30:42 Well, it actually was pretty easy. I'll tell you what I got rid of. It was spirit yarn that I got from the Goodwill. Kelly 30:50 Okay, Marsha 30:50 Those days when I would go to the Goodwill. I have used some of it. Like, for example, I remember I was getting all kinds of worsted weight yarns for that Afghan that I made that I used my dad's old sweater then took apart and combined it with other yarn. Kelly 31:09 Yeah. Marsha 31:10 So a lot of that worsted weight Goodwill yarn went into that. Kelly 31:14 Yeah, it wasn't that wasn't that blanket, like five pounds or something? I remember you weighed it. You went to the pet store or the vet. Yeah. [laughing] Marsha 31:19 Yeah. Yes. I went to the vet to use their scale. Because my scale wouldn't hold it. It wasn't big-- you know, the scale, my bathroom scale wasn't big enough to hold it. But I and then I still kept a lot of that worsted weight yarn that I got at the Goodwill because my plan was to make an afghan for my brother. And I'm still determined to do it. If I don't do it in the next couple of years, then I'm going to have to just get rid of that yarn. Kelly 31:47 Oh, okay. Marsha 31:48 And then a lot of it came from the destash room. So if Gayle and Charlene and Barb and Tracy are listening to this... Do you remember the first year we went to the knockers retreat? And I could not believe! I could not believe people were giving away yarn for free, I could not believe it. And I was like going in there and like, feeling guilty that I was taking it and they're all laughing at us because we-- I was sneaking in there Every time I left the room. Kelly 32:15 Every time you couldn't see Marsha it was like, Oh, where's Marsha? I bet she's in the destash room. Marsha 32:24 Well, here's my takeaway. There's a reason why all that yarn was at the Goodwill. And there's a reason why it was all in the destash room. But I was just, you know, I was so excited. And I had all these possibilities of things I was gonna make and how could anybody possibly get rid of it? It's so wonderful. And I have used a lot of it. I have to say I did use a lot of that yarn. Kelly 32:48 Yeah. Marsha 32:50 And there's some things I did. But I thought, you know, I've not used it in how many years? And I have so much yarn that I purchased at Stitches, and yarn crawls, and two trips to Scotland and a trip to Iceland. And I'd rather be knitting with that yarn, that I've invested money and it's beautiful yarn. Kelly 33:12 Yeah. Marsha 33:12 And so I thought it was pretty easy decision to make... to decide. But I did think it was funny people's reactions to the Instagram post about what I was getting rid of. Because one person's comment was, "Is it wrong that I'm trying to read the labels?" So funny. [laughing] And somebody also wanted to know what Goodwill I was dropping it off at, you know. And then it was interesting, on--because I have it set up when I post something on Instagram it posts to Facebook. And there was one woman that commented that-- I can't remember how she worried but basically, oh, that I've reached that age where? Because I think my comment in my post was-- and I was joking. I truly was joking when I said this-- I won't live long enough to knit all that yarn. She really thought.. like her response was, Oh, you've reached that age where... and that, you know, I'm preparing for my death by clearing out my house so that my heirs won't have to deal with it. And it's like, okay, I never--that is not what I was thinking at all.[laughing] That is not at all what I was thinking I don't consider myself to be that age. I just tried to lighten my load and I somebody else should have it. Kelly 34:35 Yeah, who who is this person? A friend? A friend would not consider you to be old! [laughing] Marsha 34:44 Anyway, so it was... that was amusing to me that comment because that's not how I see it. You know, I was really... I guess you have to be careful. what I think is funny is not what other people think! Kelly 34:56 Right? Marsha 34:57 Or some people think when I say things I think are funny, they take it literally like I'm preparing for my death. Kelly 35:04 Right, right. Well, thinking about the the feeling of being so excited about all the yarn at the destash room at the NoCKRs retreat and how there's a reason some things are in destash. I remember when I was doing the Master Gardener class and they started having, cutting, you know, cutting giveaways and seed giveaways, and they started encouraging us to bring things that we were...you know, bring cuttings and so they'll put stuff out in the patio, and oh my gosh, it was like, you had to be careful not to get elbowed in the ribs or, or knocked aside, when all these gardeners would just, like, practically make a run for the patio. And, I mean, honestly, it looked like a bunch of yard waste. [laughing] Marsha 36:02 Yeah, Kelly 36:02 You know, I mean, that's literally what it was, was people's yard waste. And, and, and I just... I was right in there, you know, getting excited and throwing elbows to get my thing that I needed. And then I found out about this cutting day that they had in Monterey and I went to that and I got some of that, you know, some of the stuff that people were giving away and when you plant it, you realize why they're giving it away. Like not not that they're getting rid of it out of their yard. Marsha 36:36 Mm hmm. Kelly 36:37 But the reason that they can give you all these cuttings is that it's super invasive and spreading all over, they have to dig it up every year to get rid of some of it. Like Alstroemeria was one of them that, you know, there was just always always somebody bringing Alstroemeria And anyway, I don't have to go into all the... Marsha 37:02 I have it in my alley. That alstromeria in the alley and is it just takes over you know, yeah, it takes over. Yeah. Kelly 37:09 Which is good in some settings, but, it's just kind of funny that it's the same, you know. Yeah, free plants. Destashing plants causes the same sort of frenzy. Marsha 37:23 The other thing I was gonna say about the NoCKRs retreat, and that was the first time I experienced that people are just giving this yarn away and my... But many of the attendees didn't even go in the room. Right? Or they went in the room to put their stuff there and they never went in, or they just go in there casually look. And, and I really, but now I understand. They were able to do because they have so much at home, but they could exercise restraint, probably because they had so much. Kelly 37:52 And maybe had done the same kind of clearing-- done the same thing. Marsha 37:56 Yeah. So I'm sure at the time, people were like, Oh, yes, she will learn. Kelly 38:02 Right, right Marsha 38:03 Give her a few years. And she will learn! Kelly 38:05 Yeah, everybody's at a little bit different, different stage in that in that process. Marsha 38:11 Yeah. But I will say though, I did order plastic boxes. Well, I should say I had all my yarn in, you know, these plastic like drawers. I got them at the Goodwill. And when my stash... and I had one and then a my stash got a little bigger and then I found another one, it got bigger. So they're all from the Goodwill. Anyway, I just pulled all the yarn out. And the stuff that I decided I was going to keep I just temporarily put it in paper bags labeled it and then I ordered plastic bins and those arrived actually just yesterday. And so last night I started putting my yarn in there and then I'm gonna be... because some of the...I will say some of the wool, one batch, like a sweater quantities worth of yarn, actually, I discovered had some moth damage. So I I just threw that in the garbage. And I didn't even give that away. I just threw it in the garbage. And then I... so I have cedar and lavender which I'm going to put in those bins to protect it somewhat. It'll be much easier to see what I have, too, because some of the bins were clear. Some of them that I had before, and some were not clear. It was in bags, it was just all kind of random. So now it's going to be much more organized and I can actually can see what I have, visually being able to see everything every time I go down into that place in the house because I can't say the word. Both 39:39 [laughing] Marsha 39:45 Oh no, I'll call it the cellar. There we go! When I go down to the cellar. I think then it it'll be reinforcement. No you don't need to buy anymore. I really don't need to buy any. So like I'm going to show up at NoCKRs... Kelly 39:58 We'll check back! Marsha 39:59 Yes, I'm going to show up at at Stitches when it happens again. And when Black Sheep happens again, I'm going to show up, but I am really going to try not to buy anything because I seriously have enough yarn. And it's a crime to just buy something and put it in your stash and not use it, I need to use it. It's not a crime, that's too harsh, right? Kelly 40:20 It's just, it would be nice to use it. if it's a crime. everyone listening to this is a criminal. [laughing] Marsha 40:29 That's true. That's too harsh. It's not a crime, but it'd be nice to knit with it, you know? So anyway, Kelly 40:36 And if you truly aren't going to knit with it ever, and you know, you're not going to ever get to it, then yes, it is. It's time to get rid of it. It's the whole, you know, I mean, that's what all those seed packets and cuttings represented. And that's what yarn in the destash room represents. It's like, hope and possibility. You know, I can... I mean, I still have that have that feeling about some yarn that's been sitting in my stash forever. And like, really? Is there still a possibility or a hope that I'm gonna use it? Um, yeah, maybe? Marsha 41:16 Yeah, I think that's hope. And I think also a lot of it, I was just inspired by it. Oh, just, you know, oh, this is... I have these ideas about what I was going to do with it. And it'll go to somebody else's idea. So, right. Well, and what about you? I see we have a note here about fiber books. Kelly 41:37 Yeah, I still...So there's the inside studio, it's been painted, there's a bookcase there now. Actually, yarn shelving that, you know, that was was put in. It's still not painted, but I've got my stuff on it. But the boxes of stuff that came out of there, I still haven't put away. They're still sitting in the living room. And I was looking at them the other day thinking, Okay, I've got to do something with this. And, you know, there's not enough room on the shelf, the shelf unit, to put the books and the yarn. So now I have to make decisions about about books and, and some of them are not knitting books. And those are going to be hard, hard decisions to make. But I have a whole box...probably box and a half maybe--of fiber books. And so I just have to figure out what I'm going to do with them and whether I'm going to destash them. What am I going to keep. Marsha 42:39 Do you look at them? Kelly 42:43 Some of them. Yes. Like, I know for sure I have the book. It's old. It's called Socks, Socks, Socks. And it's just a whole bunch of different sock patterns. I have. And I've made, I've made quite a few pairs of socks out of it. And then I used it a lot before I really was experienced knitting socks to know like, how many stitches should I cast on given the given the, you know, the height of the sock or the type of yarn, you know, I go and look at the cast ons for the different socks to know how many stitches I should cast on before I just kind of got to the point where I just know what to cast on. But I think I'll keep that one because because I've used it so much. And so there's not just there's not just useful information in there and patterns that I might use again, or patterns that I might use. But there's memories about my early knitting days connected to that book. So like that book, I'll keep but I bought, I bought two really nice hardback books by Nicky Epstein of edgings. So one is called like knitting on the edge. And the other one is called something else. So there's, there's two different types of edging, I can't remember now. There's, like edgings that are part of the garment and edgings that you add to the garment. It's kind of like a stitch dictionary, but of edgings. And they're beautiful books. I've never looked at either one of them past, you know, just like flipping through when I first bought it and then flipping through when I put it in the box to put it away. And will I ever really use that to create an edging on something? And probably not, you know, but then I think oh, but there's so many really cool things I could do. And then I keep them so... And they're really pretty books. Marsha 44:35 And they're so small and you have a big house. Kelly 44:37 Oh, they're not small. These books are not small. They're a lot more like coffee table Marsha 44:40 They're big and you have a big house. Kelly 44:43 They're more I mean, they really are like the coffee table. They're an odd size. Actually they don't fit on the bookshelf there. They're like legal size length. sideways. Like they're oh they're wider than they are tall. So they're an odd shape. They don't fit on the bookcase. So they'll probably end up going, but but you know, there's a lot of things kind of in between that spectrum of I'll definitely keep this and, and these books are pretty, but I will never use them. Marsha 45:17 Yeah. Kelly 45:18 And so I have to make some decisions there about what I'm going to do with them. So I kind of don't want to even open the boxes. Because I know I mean, I know that the number of books that I can actually keep on that shelf is, is small. And they've been in boxes for like, two years. Three years, maybe. Yeah, I haven't missed them. Yeah, right. So yeah. And then I have the other books. I have a box of dog books. Dog Training books, dog picture books, dog breed books from, you know, the, when we had labs and water spaniel, and, and there's just too much emotional connection to all that stuff that I know I don't really want to think about it, but I don't need it. I clearly don't need those books. They've been in a box for a really long time. There's been only a very few that I've dug into the box to get. Marsha 46:24 Yeah. Well, I mean, I in terms of books, I have cookbooks, you know, my cookbooks. and then combined with my mother's cookbooks, and I some were duplicates. So I got rid of duplicates, obviously. But... Kelly 46:39 And those are possibilities and hopes of what you could cook. Marsha 46:42 Exactly. And and I you know...But there's I don't know, like I...the truth is, honestly, there's just certain cookbooks, I make stuff out of all the time I go back to. The rest, I don't really look at that much. And then a lot of times I get inspiration. It's like, Oh, I have these ingredients. What can I make out of it? And I just do a little Google search. Right? And so I'm actually using the internet a lot more. Kelly 47:10 Yeah, Marsha 47:10 but I....ugh... someday. I'm not ready. Kelly 47:14 Right, right. Marsha 47:14 I'll go through them and get rid of things. Kelly 47:16 Yeah. But you have a...you have a bookcase for them. Right? They're all sitting on the shelves. Marsha 47:22 Yeah, they're all in the library. Kelly 47:25 I knew when I got rid of those shelves, that I was gonna have to get rid of a lot of books. And I did. But it's gonna take me several rounds of destashing to get rid of the number of books that I need to get rid of. Because they're just... there's... Yeah, there's some emotion attached to them. So... Marsha 47:45 Well. All in good time. Kelly 47:47 Yeah, yeah, that's true. That is true. The the closet behind me got cleaned out. I don't know if I was talking about that I wanted to do that. But the closet behind me here in the... where I record, the dressing room in the other bedroom? We got that cleaned out and I got it put back together, there's a lot of room in there now. I could put the boxes of books in there and not think about them for another three or four years. [laughing] And at which time that I might be ready to get rid of them. We'll see. Marsha 48:20 So I just... I just... as we're talking about this, I'm just thinking about emotional attachment to books. And I I've gotten rid of pretty much all of Ben's books that he had when he was a little kid you read to him and he had a lot of books because I worked in a bookstore, right? So I would just buy stuff, which I realize now in hindsight, I should have just gotten them from the library. But there were some books that I hung on to because I loved reading them to him so much. And all this whole series of books by the author Bill Peet. Do you know him? Kelly 48:53 That doesn't ring a bell, no. Marsha 48:56 Last name is P-e-e-t. And he was the author illustrator of these books. And I love the the art, the illustrations, I love them. And then the stories were great. Like there was-- Ella was one of them. And Ella was an elephant from the circus. And she she lives in... she was very pampered. And she got a little bit too big for her head and decided to to leave. Run away from the circus. So she runs away from the circus. And she gets captured by a farmer who realizes that this is really great to have this elephant you can work on the farm, to work on the farm. And it's a story basically, you know, sort of be grateful for what you have, because it's not necessarily greener on the other side. So there's that story. There's another one that we loved to read called is Jennifer and Josephine. And now I can't remember which one was which. I think Jennifer was a cat. And she lived in this old car. Kelly 49:57 Oh, I see the illustrations. I went to his website. And I'm looking at the illustrations, so cool. Marsha 50:02 Yeah, anyway, Jennifer and Josephine and I think Jennifer, as I say, was the cat. And Josephine was the car. And it's like an old Model T. The cat, this is her home, and some salesman comes and buys the car, and they throw some new tires on it. And Josephine is shocked that she's now being driven. She's been sitting for years in this junkyard, and the cat's distressed and driving crazy and the salesman is just a horrible person. He treats Josephine the car terrible, he doesn't realize the cat's in the car. And he crashes the the car, and it goes into the river. And so the cat goes and sees a farm, goes to the farm and gets... draws attention...A little girl, the farmer's daughter goes out and finds the car, tells the dad. The dad comes and gets the car and pulls the car out of the river. Saves the car, saves the cat. They're excited to have this cat now. And he's excited to have this car because he couldn't afford a car. So he he now fixes the car up and Josephine the car is super happy because she's never driven over 15 miles an hour. I don't know. They're such charming stories. He was so charming. Anyway, I'm going off on this, telling about these stories, about the this author Bill Peet but I used to read those to Ben all the time. And there was another one Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. Kelly 51:42 Oh, yeah. Marsha 51:42 I don't remember the author. But Lyle is a crocodile that lives in New York City in a bathtub in some family's apartment. And he's very erudite and and is a good conversationalist. And that people invite him to tea parties and cocktail parties and stuff. This crocodile. And we would read those all the time. And so when I moved, I had saved those books to come to the house. And there's bags of books to go to the Goodwill and of course, you're ahead of me. Mark took them all to the Goodwill. All the Bill Peet books are gone and Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile are gone. And I was devastated. I'm still kind of devastated by it. Now the reality is, am I ever going to read those books again? Probably not. Kelly 52:27 And some child is getting to read them. Marsha 52:30 Yes, exactly. Kelly 52:31 Which is what books should have. A book that's not being read is sad. Marsha 52:36 Yeah. Right. Kelly 52:37 I mean, I don't know if books actually feel sadness. But... Marsha 52:41 You know, anyway, they were just...Maybe what I should do is just go out and buy a copy of Ella and Jennifer and Josephine, because those were kind of my two favorite from that. Those books anyway, of that from that author, anyway, Kelly 52:55 Well, I'll put the pages in the show notes. Okay, because I was just looking at the pictures while you were talking. And they are. They are really cute. Very cute. Marsha 53:10 And since we're talking about it, since I was not planning on making a book recommendation, but I here's that that was a recommendation. I've been watching Netflix and working on Mark's sweater. And I watched a documentary the other day, which I just wanted to mention that because I thought it was really interesting. And it's called, people have probably heard of this. But if you haven't, it's called This Changes Everything. And it's a documentary made by the actress Gina Davis. It says here in 2004, Davis launched the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which works collaboratively with the entertainment industry to dramatically increase the presence of female characters and media. So this documentary talks about her, why she started this institute. And then different actresses' experiences female directors' experiences trying to make it in the film industry. And how most media are... a lot of the entertainment that we watch in the United States and around the world is coming out of Hollywood and how women are portrayed on film. And how... so it's it's an excellent documentary, and I highly recommend it. It's really good. I will say the one thing that sort of...At the end of the film...One of the things they talk about is how difficult it is for women directors to get jobs, directing films. And they actually have lists of when studios are going to make a film. They have lists of directors that they pass around that you know who's made it. This is who you want to consider first, this is who you would consider second. If none of those are are available, way down the bottom of the list are these, are the people you might want to consider. And one of the women--who is way, the only woman on the list--who was way down at the bottom was Kathryn Bigelow, who won an Academy Award for The Hurt Locker. So she's an Academy Award winning director, but she's at the bottom of the list, right? Because men are getting the these jobs. Anyway, this does not take away from how good the documentary is. But at the end, I'm reading the credits. And you know who directed the documentary? Kelly 55:24 A man? Marsha 55:25 Some guy named Tom! And I'm like, I'm sorry, what? Kelly 55:34 Oh, yeah. Marsha 55:36 Now, that doesn't take away from it really, because it was an excellent, excellent series or documentary. I recommend it because it really sort of opened your eyes to how women are portrayed in film and in television shows. And how many women who when they do get a chance, how much money they're making for the industry. Kelly 55:54 Yeah. Marsha 55:56 Interesting. You know, but they still selected the man. Not to take away from the man either right? He did a great job, but it's just humorous to me. But anyway, I'll put a link in there. Kelly 56:09 That'd be good. Marsha 56:10 What else we got going on here? Are you going anywhere at all? Or? Kelly 56:13 Well, in August, I am going to be at the San Francisco International Pen Show. Marsha 56:21 Yeah, who knew? Kelly 56:22 I know. Well, you know, they have a conference for everything. Marsha 56:28 Right. Mm hmm. Kelly 56:30 I'm sure that the pen people would be surprised that there's something called Stitches. Marsha 56:35 Yes. Right. Kelly 56:36 So I'm going to go check it out and see, see what that... see what that world is like. And I'll be there on the Saturday. It's in Redwood City, which is actually south of San Francisco. That's actually really nice. It's it'll be an even an easier drive to get there. But yeah, we're planning to-- planning to go and take a look at the the pens and if any of our listeners are going, also planning to go to the Pen Show I'd love to love to see you will have to let me know. Marsha 57:13 Say Kelly, pens don't take up very much space in your house! Kelly 57:17 Yeah. But you know, what's funny, is, you know, the the sock yarn skein that you buy the souvenir sockyarn? Apparently, in the pen world, the equivalent of that is ink. I saw an ink cupboard on Instagram yesterday. Like, oh my gosh, that is definitely more ink than you could use in a lifetime. I mean, because every time you you put your put ink in your pen, I don't know, three to five milliliters, I think. And these, you know, jars of ink are like 20 milliliters, 30 milliliters, some of them are like 70 milliliters. Marsha 58:06 Wow. Kelly 58:07 So definitely more ink than you could use. It's definitely an ink collection. As opposed to a stash of ink for use, I think. But yeah, you know, because you can buy a bottle of ink depending on the ink you can buy a bottle of ink for you know 10 bucks. Whereas a pen Marsha 58:26 Cheaper than... cheaper than yarn! Kelly 58:29 And, and then you know, some of the pens are some of the pens are quite inexpensive. Some Chinese fountain pens are quite inexpensive, they're you know, their pens, you definitely... you can get for under $20. But a lot of pens are more expensive than that. And so yeah, if you don't have... if you can't satisfy your collection urge by buying a pen, you can get a souvenir. You can get a souvenir bottle of ink wherever you go. So anyway, that's on my that's on my agenda for August. And I'm really looking forward. Really looking forward to it. Marsha 59:12 Yeah, it'll be fun. Kelly 59:15 It'll be interesting to see another, you know, another world. So another hobby world. Marsha 59:22 Mm hmm. Kelly 59:23 But my box of pens, my one cigar box that I converted into a pen box is full. And so I'm calling my collection complete. Marsha 59:34 But I happen to know that you have more than one cigar box. [laughing] Kelly 59:36 I do. Yes. And actually. Well and that Mark. Mark did yeah, I have three of them. So but only one of them has been outfitted to hold the pen so far. Yeah, but we did go to dinner with a work friend the other night and he gave me, he gave me a Chinese fountain pen that he had, like, Oh, this is really nice. And he's like, yeah, I think it was about five bucks. And I can't believe you bought this pen for only $5. He's like, why don't you take it? So, so in full confession, I do have one pen that doesn't fit in the box. So I could start a second box, but I will not do that anytime soon. So, but I might find something that I like at the pen show. We'll see. Yeah, yeah, I'll definitely bring home a souvenir bottle of ink Marsha 1:00:39 Well, I guess the last thing that we need to talk about Kelly is the summer spin in. Just to remind people it's going on. And it... we just have about a month to go before it ends. Labor Day, which is September sixth. We'll have some prizes from Three Green Sisters. And we'll have more details. But... Kelly 1:00:59 Yeah, and I have also some fiber from Sincere Sheep. That will be... I never took a picture of it and put it up on the thread. But I also bought some fiber from sincere sheep. That'll be our prize too. Marsha 1:01:11 Okay. All right. Yeah. So keep spinning. Yes. All right. Well have fun at the pen show! Well, I'll talk to you before that. Kelly 1:01:17 Yeah, it's not till the end of August. We'll record again. Marsha 1:01:19 Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, then I will let you go so you can get out there and start spinning. Kelly 1:01:24 All right. Marsha 1:01:26 All righty. Kelly 1:01:26 Bye bye. Thank you so much for listening. To subscribe to the podcast visit Two Ewes Fiber Adventures dot com. Marsha 1:01:34 Join us on our adventures on Ravelry and Instagram. I am betterinmotion and Kelly is 1hundredprojects. Both 1:01:41 Until next time, we're the two ewes doing our part for world fleece. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

In this episode I talk with telemark ski legend Buck Cobb about his recent health scare, how lucky he is to still be alive, and how he is feeling now. We also talk about his home mountain Stevens Pass, learning to telemark ski in Sun Valley, and the importance of spreading positivity though skiing. Buck shares his favorite ski brand, his interesting choice of ski gloves and even talks about how he learned to tele ski switch among other things.

178: Hilaree Nelson: Professional Ski Mountaineer for North Face, National Geographic Live Speaker, and TNF Athlete Team Captain who has had over 40 expeditions and has been voted National Geographic person of the decade discusses how she evolved from someone who enjoyed mountaineering to making it the focal point of her professional life.    Hilaree Nelson   Hilaree Nelson talks about her hometown of Seattle and how it informed her appreciation of being outdoors. “Ironically, it took me leaving Seattle to find my way as a mountaineer and really discover what that was, and a sky mountaineer at that. I skied from a super young age at Stevens Pass in Washington. I skied at Crystal and I skied a few times at Baker. There are amazing mountain ranges surrounding Seattle, and a lot of people I know who discovered mountains have moved to Seattle for that reason.” On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Hilaree Nelson, Professional Ski Mountaineer for North Face, National Geographic Live Speaker, and TNF Athlete Team Captain about how she fell in love with climbing mountains. “I ended up leaving to go to Colorado to go to university. I think it was there that I first started going uphill with my skis instead of just downhill and really fell in love with it. But, I would say my real connection to wanting to do this for the rest of my life was after living in Cheminée in France, and experiencing the Alps and the history that they have.    What You Will Learn: How has Hilaree Nelson transformed mountaineering from a passionate hobby into a successful career? “When I first started down this path I didn’t think it would actually be a career. I was working three different jobs. I was also a Hally Ski Guide. I was doing everything I could to make ends meet and really just following a passion, a love, something that I found myself to be really good at.” Where has Hilaree’s motivation for mountain climbing come from? “I wanted to see how far that could take me I guess, where I go, and sort of learning my physical and mental boundaries within the sport of ski mountaineering. As I progressed I had a lot of doors open for me, partly because I was a female in a fairly male-dminated world, the world of mountaineering in general.” How long did it take Hilaree Nelson to start going pro? “It probably wasn’t until I was 5, 6, 7, years into this path, I had a sponsorship from North Face that I started focusing solely on being a pro athlete in that regard and letting go of some of the other jobs and starting to make some money enough to support what I wanted to do, what I love to do.”  What have been the elements of mountaineering that have excited Hilaree Nelson? “I found myself really drawn to really remote places. I have a really mathematical brain. So, places that really required a lot of logistical planning, places that despite the logistical planning things often were a mystery. Things would totally go awry and it was all about thinking on your feet. It was all about adjusting, adversity, all things that really go back to that initial experiential passion of knowing my boundaries, blasting through them. How can I do better? How can I be more? How can I do more? Ironically, a lot of those things weren’t even on the mountain. They were traveling to get to the mountain or traveling to get back.” How has she developed her strong, unflappable mindset? “I grew up in a very family-orientated way, a very protected sheltered home. I was the youngest. I had the big brother that looked out for me all of the time. I had the same group of friends that I played basketball with. That was a huge part of my life as a kid was playing basketball. I played basketball with the same group of girls from the age of 8 to 18. So, for me to step away from that and go out on my own to a state that I had never been to and didn’t know anyone there, and I immediately found friends that got me into rock climbing and ski touring. I think that the question mark that I always had about myself growing up was, I can do all of these things with all of this help and all of this familiarity. But, I want to see who I am when I am by myself and I am forging my own path.”     Enjoy the Great Outdoors    “No matter where you live, if you can just take 10 minutes in a day and find a park or find a way to walk around the block and be outside. It has always been my go-to place to scream at the top of my lungs or to let out whatever type of frustrations I have in life. Again, I am really fortunate to live here. But, gosh, I hope everyone can just find that space wherever you live to just manage the things that we are going through and just life in general.”   Common Mistakes    During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Hilaree Nelson mentions the most typical mistake that she notices amateur climbers making. “Part of these lines of people when you are trying to summit Everest with these groups is that you are in a line. The most common mistake that inexperienced climbers make is they take that jumar and they ram it right into the knots at the top of a line. If you do that, you can’t get the jumar off of the line. So, then everyone is just standing there waiting. Us being pro climbers, we would just take our jumar off and just climb without a rope.”   Links to Additional Resources: Mark Pattison: markpattisonnfl.com Emilia’s Everest - The Lhotse Challenge: https://www.markpattisonnfl.com/philanthropy/ Hilaree Nelson’s website: HilareeNelson.com

An express passenger train leaving Spokane and bound for Seattle ended up stranded on Stevens Pass when freak weather conditions caused a series of avalanches in late February, 1910. Then, after spending nearly a week parked by the small town of Wellington, a large slab avalanche swept the train 150 feet off the track, killing 96 people - the most deadly avalanche in American history.

Drew and Claire are in perpetual pain from moving all weekend but Fitz cheers us up with an unexpected Dad Joke about Christopher Columbus! In the What Are You Kidding Me stories, a wedding video goes viral when the Bride and the Groom’s Mom get into a shouting match, a man who lost his “unit” due to a blood disease is growing a new one that’s currently grafted on his arm, an app called Swimply lets people rent other’s people pools, several new apps turn your cell phone into a vibrator, and Antoine Dotson the “Hide your Kids, Hide your Wife” guy is now a real estate agent dba “Hide” Homes. In the Good Stuff, 18-year-old Gia Fuda of Maple Valley was found alive over the weekend after being lost for 8 days lost near Stevens Pass; she survived on berries and stream water. Watch out for Dad Jokes! In the Fitz Files, James Corden is being considered as a replacement for Ellen, we remember Wilfred Brimley who passed away at 85, and Luke Combs got married. Dan + Shay call in to the show to talk about their new hit “I Should Probably Go to Bed” which Fitz tells them they stole from him. What movie or TV show have you watched close to a 100 times? For Fitz it’s “This is 40”, Claire says “Airplane!” Ryder says the “The Office”, Maya in Kirkland says “Mama Mia” and Katie in Bothell performs some of the “Scrubs” musical episode for us. Today’s Troop Salute is Cameron McKay US Navy. Drew really is The Man as he tells us the tale of cutting down huge trees on his property. We discuss the President’s threat to kick Tik Tok out of the Country unless they sell it to Microsoft. Monday Motivation has some motivating quotes to get your week started off right.

Calm the Chaos/ Episode 11 Anastasia Allison, Conversation about her career journey and the founder of the Kula Cloth About  Anastasia Allison is a former park ranger and police officer turned full-time entrepreneur after a nearly fatal incident while driving home from a snowshoeing trip at Stevens Pass, Wa.  That single incident was a catalyst for her own journey of self-discovery. A lifelong musician, Anastasia is also the violinist for the duo called The Musical Mountaineers. She is also the founder of a gear company called Kula Cloth, which makes the very first antimicrobial pee cloth for all the places you “go”.   What  You’ll Learn How Anastasia went from being a railroad police officer to the founder of the Kula Cloth What did she learn about herself during her journey How did she work thru her limiting beliefs about herself Did Anastasia work with a coach during her journey of self-discovery? How does Anastasia calm the chaos in her life What’s next on the horizon for Anastasia and her company! Resources The Kula Cloth Website  Enjoy the show? Don’t miss an episode, follow the podcast on ITunes and Spotify. Please rate, review and subscribe to the podcast!  

Today we meet Single Girl Samantha from SeaTac. Samantha is a paralegal who enjoys the outdoors. She wants a guy who makes her laugh but at 5’9” also really wants a guy who is taller than her. We introduce her to City Boy Cameron from Tacoma and Country Boy Kevin from Arlington. City Boy Cameron is a Yoga Instructor who is very psyched for this weekend’s outdoor yoga at Pt Defiance. He thinks Samantha will really enjoy that and thinks some nice time in the woods will get her Chakras right open. Country Boy Kevin is a Personal Trainer who claims to be “cut like steel”. Kevin suggests some outdoor snow fun because he has a couple of snowmobiles and wants to go up to some nice private property his buddy has near Stevens Pass. It does not go unnoticed that both guys spend a lot of words to describe themselves as “cut, ripped, and yoked” and that both want to take her to remote outdoor locations. But at least they are both over 6 feet tall.

Nathan Barnes is on to talk about Alpine Lakes Wilderness guidebook he co-authored with his brother. Covering all the trails within Alpine Lakes Wilderness, which stretches trailheads from I-90 to Stevens Pass and across Blewit Pass.One of the different aspects these two authors bring, is the history of hikes and the locations they traverse or pass.I love the story author Nathan Barnes tells about Forest Service employee, Hal Sylvester, and his passion for areas like the Lady Lakes Loop.We also bring up their other book Hiking Through History Washington.Purchase the book- https://www.mountaineers.org/books/books/alpine-lakes-wilderness-the-complete-hiking-guideWebsite- http://hikingwithmybrother.comFacebook- https://www.facebook.com/hikingwithmybrotherUpcoming Events with the authors· The Mountaineers Everett Branch Open House | June 5, 7pm at Snohomish County PUD Building (2320 California St, Everett, WA 98206)· Author Talk | June 11, 7pm at Browsers Bookshop (107 Capitol Way N, OLYMPIA, WA 98501)· Book Release Party | June 13, 6pm at Pro Ski and Mountain Service (108 W North Bend Way, North Bend, WA 98045)· Author Talk | June 14, 7pm at Village Books (1200 11th Street Bellingham, WA 98225)· Hiking Seminar + Alpine Lakes Wilderness | June 18, 6:30pm at The Mountaineers Tacoma Program Center (2302 N 30th St, Tacoma, WA 98403)Six Moons DesignTents and morehttps://www.sixmoondesigns.comWaymark Gear CompanyHeavy duty ultralight backpackshttps://www.waymarkgearco.comOn Instagram Cascade Hiker PodcastCheck out Whiskey Fever: https://www.reverbnation.com/whiskeyfever The song used in the intro is 'Tall Grass' from their album Gonna Wake Up This Whole Town.

Recorded live at Chinook pass 5/25/19 -Thanks to New Belgium Brewing and Volic Audio, Venture Snowboards, Stevens Pass, Signal, Kincos, 686, and all the Passholes. New Belgium is sponsoring a party so Join us Thursday, May 30 @ Woodskys in Fremont 5-8pm and on for a End of the Season Pizza & Beer Wax and Tune party. If your in the Stevens Pass Snowboarders group come check it out. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/passholespodcast/support

This interview starts out with interviewing some of the kids who did a multi-day backpacking trip from Stevens Pass to North Fork Sauk River Trail. It was fun trying to get the kids to chat and their stories are relatable to anyone who backpacked as a kid!Their parents come on and talk about the program, how and why they created it. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Darrington, it is a small town nestled between towering mountains and somewhat cutoff from far stretching neighboring towns.They really wanted a program to get kids into the outdoors without too many restrictions. Creating their own has been a great choice for them.Follow them- https://www.facebook.com/darringtonoutdoors/Contact them- darringtonoutdoors@gmail.comSix Moons DesignTents and morehttps://www.sixmoondesigns.comWaymark Gear CompanyHeavy duty ultralight backpackshttps://www.waymarkgearco.com

She is the first woman to climb two 8,000m peaks in 24 hours (Everest and Lhotse). She’s also skied from the Himalayan summit of Cho Oyu in Tibet and climbed and skied several high peaks in Bolivia and Argentina. Elsewhere, Hilaree has cut turns on remote volcanoes in the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Lebanon, as well as many first descents in the tight couloirs of Baffin Island.Born and raised in the Northwest, Hilaree began skiing at age 3 at Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Eventually she moved to the Chamonix Valley of France where she learned most of what she needed to know in order to take her skiing skills to the next level- ski mountaineering.In addition to her work for The North Face, Hilaree is a mother to two young boys, and although they have changed her life dramatically, her passion for the mountains has not abated. She lives in Telluride, Colorado and finds her sanity in the beautiful San Juan Mountains.

Hilaree Nelson (formerly O'Neill) is one of the world's premier ski mountaineers. She is most recently known for the first descent of the 29,940 foot Lhotse couloir, one of the most coveted and sought after high altitude ski lines in the world. Nelson's CV is absolutely staggering. She is the first woman to climb two 8,000m peaks in 24 hours (Everest and Lhotse). She’s also skied from the Himalayan summit of Cho Oyu in Tibet and climbed and skied several high peaks in Bolivia and Argentina. Elsewhere, Hilaree has cut turns on remote volcanoes in the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Lebanon, as well as many first descents in the tight couloirs of Baffin Island. Nelson is also known for her story of redemption on Papsura, the Peak of Evil and a high-profile North Face expedition that went sideways on Hkakabo Razi in Myanmar. She was named "Adventurer of the Year" by National Geographic in 2018. Born and raised in the Northwest, Hilaree began skiing at age 3 at Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Eventually she moved to the Chamonix Valley of France where she learned most of what she needed to know in order to take her skiing skills to the next level- ski mountaineering. In addition to her work for The North Face, Hilaree is a mother to two young boys, and although they have changed her life dramatically, her passion for the mountains has not abated. She lives in Telluride, Colorado and finds her sanity in the beautiful San Juan Mountains. ​I​nspired by ​Hilaree? Read further​ here: TNF Athlete Profile: https://www.thenorthface.com/about-us/athletes/hilaree-nelson.html Instagram: @hilareenelson Website: https://hilareenelson.com/ Outside Magazine Feature: https://www.outsideonline.com/2293036/mentor-hilaree-nelson Check out the Cowboys Fiddle (the_cowboys_fiddle) on Instagram to enjoy more of their music. This duo of 13-year-old Elia Schreiber and Declan Mac are responsible for the music of Season 2 of Afterglow.

Hilaree Nelson is a North Face athlete and Ski-Mountaineer. Combining a passion for exploration, mountains and skiing, Hilaree has traveled to some of the most exotic mountain ranges on earth. Outside Magazine named her one of the most adventurous women in the world of sports. She is the first woman to climb two 8,000m peaks in 24 hours (Everest and Lhotse). She’s also skied from the Himalayan summit of Cho Oyu in Tibet and climbed and skied several high peaks in Bolivia and Argentina. Elsewhere, Hilaree has cut turns on remote volcanoes in the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Lebanon, as well as many first descents in the tight couloirs of Baffin Island. Born and raised in the Northwest, Hilaree began skiing at age 3 at Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Eventually, she moved to the Chamonix Valley of France where she learned most of what she needed to know in order to take her skiing skills to the next level- ski mountaineering. We have a fascinating conversation telling her story and how she created a life of extreme adventure. We talk about why Hilaree thrives and seeks taking risks and chances in her life, why you’re not truly living until you get out of your comfort zone, why you should pursue things you can fail at because that is where you learn and grow, and so much more!   More Career Accomplishments: 1996: European Women’s Extreme Skiing Champion.   2002: First ski descent of all five of the “Holy Peaks” of the Mongolian Altai. 1st American ascent/1st ski descent of Papsura Peak, India Double summit of Denali, June 2017 Messner couloir ski descent, climb of Cassin Ridge First female ski of Makalu La Couloir on Makalu, Nepal Named by Outside magazine as “One of the Most Adventurous Women in the World of Sports.” Featured as the expedition leader in the Telluride Mountainfilm festival award-winning 2015 documentary Down to Nothing. Named by Men’s Journal as one of “The 25 Most Adventurous Women of the Past 25 Years” National Geographic Adventurer of the Year 2018 And much more… Do yourself a favor a google “Hilaree Nelson.” Read articles and watch some videos featuring her, it will not disappoint. You can find Hilaree at: Website: https://hilareenelson.com/ Instagram: hilareenelson Facebook: Hilaree Nelson  

"I never learned anything from listening to myself talk...you are more powerful than you think you are, you just have to do the work and it will all work out" Emily was incredibly inspiring to talk to. What I gathered from our brief conversation is that Emily doesn't over think things. She wanted to become a doctor, so at age 39 she went to medical school. She has to get people up mountains, so she figures out how. She wants to help others, so she does it.   Bio: Emily started her climbing career by jubilantly summiting Glacier Peak when she was 13. She spent her teen years climbing in the North Cascades of Washington, and in Oregon and British Columbia. After college, she instructed for Outward Bound in Joshua Tree and Central Oregon, then began guiding on Mt. Rainier in 1989. Over the years she's also enjoyed guiding in the North Cascades, Alaska, Mexico, and the Himalayas. Adventure races, whitewater competitions, and personal travels have taken her to the rivers and mountains of every continent except Antarctica (it's on the list, but she'd rather go to the Space Station first!) Beyond her alpine life, she's lived/studied/worked in the Dominican Republic, Taiwan, Thailand, France, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Indonesia, DR Congo, Nepal, and Bhutan. Her training includes EMT-B-IV, Leave No Trace Trainer, AIARE Level 3 Avalanche Certification, and MD (FACEP). When she's away from mountain guiding, she works as a whitewater guide/instructor (Orion Expeditions), professional ski patroller at Stevens Pass, WA, and ER doc with an interest in high altitude medicine. She’s Emergency Department Director at Cascade Medical Center in Leavenworth, WA, works for the US Army as an ER doc and Mountain Medicine (DIMM) course instructor, and is a clinical instructor for the University of Washington School of Medicine.  In all of her spare time, she enjoys backcountry skiing, writing, trail running, mountain biking, and the occasional refuge of silent meditation.   Women's adventure magazine Article