Podcasts about Telluride

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 12, 2025 64:54

This podcast and article are free, but a lot of The Storm lives behind a paywall. I wish I could make everything available to everyone, but an article like this one is the result of 30-plus hours of work. Please consider supporting independent ski journalism with an upgrade to a paid Storm subscription. You can also sign up for the free tier below.WhoRob Katz, Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Vail ResortsRecorded onAugust 8, 2025About Vail ResortsVail Resorts owns and operates 42 ski areas in North America, Australia, and Europe. In order of acquisition:The company's Epic Pass delivers skiers unlimited access to all of these ski areas, plus access to a couple dozen partner resorts:Why I interviewed himHow long do you suppose Vail Resorts has been the largest ski area operator by number of resorts? From how the Brobots prattle on about the place, you'd think since around the same time the Mayflower bumped into Plymouth Rock. But the answer is 2018, when Vail surged to 18 ski areas – one more than number two Peak Resorts. Vail wasn't even a top-five operator until 2007, when the company's five resorts landed it in fifth place behind Powdr's eight and 11 each for Peak, Boyne, and Intrawest. Check out the year-by-year resort operator rankings since 2000:Kind of amazing, right? For decades, Vail, like Aspen, was the owner of some great Colorado ski areas and nothing more. There was no reason to assume it would ever be anything else. Any ski company that tried to get too big collapsed or surrendered. Intrawest inflated like a balloon then blew up like a pinata, ejecting trophies like Mammoth, Copper, and Whistler before straggling into the Alterra refugee camp with a half dozen survivors. American Skiing Company (ASC) united eight resorts in 1996 and was 11 by the next year and was dead by 2007. Even mighty Aspen, perhaps the brand most closely associated with skiing in American popular culture, had abandoned a nearly-two-decade experiment in owning ski areas outside of Pitkin County when it sold Blackcomb and Fortress Mountains in 1986 and Breckenridge the following year.But here we are, with Vail Resorts, improbably but indisputably the largest operator in skiing. How did Vail do this when so many other operators had a decades-long head start? And failed to achieve sustainability with so many of the same puzzle pieces? Intrawest had Whistler. ASC owned Heavenly. Booth Creek, a nine-resort upstart launched in 1996 by former Vail owner George Gillett, had Northstar. The obvious answer is the 2008 advent of the Epic Pass, which transformed the big-mountain season pass from an expensive single-mountain product that almost no one actually needed to a cheapo multi-mountain passport that almost anyone could afford. It wasn't a new idea, necessarily, but the bargain-skiing concept had never been attached to a mountain so regal as Vail, with its sprawling terrain and amazing high-speed lift fleet and Colorado mystique. A multimountain pass had never come with so little fine print – it really was unlimited, at all these great mountains, all the time - but so many asterisks: better buy now, because pretty soon skiing Christmas week is going to cost more than your car. And Vail was the first operator to understand, at scale, that almost everyone who skis at Vail or Beaver Creek or Breckenridge skied somewhere else first, and that the best way to recruit these travelers to your mountain rather than Deer Valley or Steamboat or Telluride was to make the competition inconvenient by bundling the speedbump down the street with the Alpine fantasy across the country.Vail Resorts, of course, didn't do anything. Rob Katz did these things. And yes, there was a great and capable team around him. But it's hard to ignore the fact that all of these amazing things started happening shortly after Katz's 2006 CEO appointment and stopped happening around the time of his 2021 exit. Vail's stock price: from $33.04 on Feb. 28, 2006 to $354.76 to Nov. 1, 2021. Epic Pass sales: from zero to 2.1 million. Owned resort portfolio: from five in three states to 37 in 15 states and three countries. Epic Pass portfolio: from zero ski areas to 61. The company's North American skier visits: from 6.3 million for the 2005-06 ski season to 14.9 million in 2020-21. Those same VR metrics after three-and-a-half years under his successor, Kirsten Lynch: a halving of the stock price to $151.50 on May 27, 2025, her last day in charge; a small jump to 2.3 million Epic Passes sold for 2024-25 (but that marked the product's first-ever unit decline, from 2.4 million the previous winter); a small increase to 42 owned resorts in 15 states and four countries; a small increase to 65 ski areas accessible on the Epic Pass; and a rise to 16.9 million North American skier visits (actually a three percent slump from the previous winter and the company's second consecutive year of declines, as overall U.S. skier visits increased 1.6 percent after a poor 2023-24).I don't want to dismiss the good things Lynch did ($20-an-hour minimum wage; massively impactful lift upgrades, especially in New England; a best-in-class day pass product; a better Pet Rectangle app), or ignore the fact that Vail's 2006-to-2019 trajectory would have been impossible to replicate in a world that now includes the Ikon Pass counterweight, or understate the tense community-resort relationships that boiled under Katz's do-things-and-apologize-later-maybe leadership style. But Vail Resorts became an impossible-to-ignore globe-spanning goliath not because it collected great ski areas, but because a visionary leader saw a way to transform a stale, weather-dependent business into a growing, weather-agnostic(-ish) one.You may think that “visionary” is overstating it, that merely “transformational” would do. But I don't think I appreciated, until the rise of social media, how deeply cynical America had become, or the seemingly outsized proportion of people so eager to explain why new ideas were impossible. Layer, on top of this, the general dysfunction inherent to corporate environments, which can, without constant schedule-pruning, devolve into pseudo-summits of endless meetings, in which over-educated and well-meaning A+ students stamped out of elite university assembly lines spend all day trotting between conference rooms taking notes they'll never look at and trying their best to sound brilliant but never really accomplishing anything other than juggling hundreds of daily Slack and email messages. Perhaps I am the cynical one here, but my experience in such environments is that actually getting anything of substance done with a team of corporate eggheads is nearly impossible. To be able to accomplish real, industry-wide, impactful change in modern America, and to do so with a corporate bureaucracy as your vehicle, takes a visionary.Why now was a good time for this interviewAnd the visionary is back. True, he never really left, remaining at the head of Vail's board of directors for the duration of Lynch's tenure. But the board of directors doesn't have to explain a crappy earnings report on the investor conference call, or get yelled at on CNBC, or sit in the bullseye of every Saturday morning liftline post on Facebook.So we'll see, now that VR is once again and indisputably Katz's company, whether Vail's 2006-to-2021 rise from fringe player to industry kingpin was an isolated case of right-place-at-the-right-time first-mover big-ideas luck or the masterwork of a business musician blending notes of passion, aspiration, consumer pocketbook logic, the mystique of irreplaceable assets, and defiance of conventional industry wisdom to compose a song that no one can stop singing. Will Katz be Steve Jobs returning to Apple and re-igniting a global brand? Or MJ in a Wizards jersey, his double threepeat with the Bulls untarnished but his legacy otherwise un-enhanced at best and slightly diminished at worst?I don't know. I lean toward Jobs, remaining aware that the ski industry will never achieve the scale of the Pet Rectangle industry. But Vail Resorts owns 42 ski areas out of like 6,000 on the planet, and only about one percent of them is associated with the Epic Pass. Even if Vail grew all of these metrics tenfold, it would still own just a fraction of the global ski business. Investors call this “addressable market,” meaning the size of your potential customer base if you can make them aware of your existence and convince them to use your services, and Vail's addressable market is far larger than the neighborhood it now occupies.Whether Vail can get there by deploying its current operating model is irrelevant. Remember when Amazon was an online bookstore and Netflix a DVD-by-mail outfit? I barely do either, because visionary leaders (Jeff Bezos, Reed Hastings) shaped these companies into completely different things, tapping a rapidly evolving technological infrastructure capable of delivering consumers things they don't know they need until they realize they can't live without them. Like never going into a store again or watching an entire season of TV in one night. Like the multimountain ski pass.Being visionary is not the same thing as being omniscient. Amazon's Fire smartphone landed like a bag of sand in a gastank. Netflix nearly imploded after prematurely splitting its DVD and digital businesses in 2011. Vail's decision to simultaneously chop 2021-22 Epic Pass prices by 20 percent and kill its 2020-21 digital reservation system landed alongside labor shortages, inflation, and global supply chain woes, resulting in a season of inconsistent operations that may have turned a generation off to the company. Vail bullied Powdr into selling Park City and Arapahoe Basin into leaving the Epic Pass and Colorado's state ski trade association into having to survive without four (then five) of its biggest brands. The company alienated locals everywhere, from Stowe (traffic) to Sunapee (same) to Ohio (truncated seasons) to Indiana (same) to Park City (everything) to Whistler (same) to Stevens Pass (just so many people man). The company owns 99 percent of the credit for the lift-tickets-brought-to-you-by-Tiffany pricing structure that drives the popular perception that skiing is a sport accessible only to people who rent out Yankee Stadium for their dog's birthday party.We could go on, but the point is this: Vail has messed up in the past and will mess up again in the future. You don't build companies like skyscrapers, straight up from ground to sky. You build them, appropriately for Vail, like mountains, with an earthquake here and an eruption there and erosion sometimes and long stable periods when the trees grow and the goats jump around on the rocks and nothing much happens except for once in a while a puma shows up and eats Uncle Toby. Vail built its Everest by clever and novel and often ruthless means, but in doing so made a Balkanized industry coherent, mainstreamed the ski season pass, reshaped the consumer ski experience around adventure and variety, united the sprawling Park City resorts, acknowledged the Midwest as a lynchpin ski region, and forced competitors out of their isolationist stupor and onto the magnificent-but-probably-nonexistent-if-not-for-the-existential-need-to-compete-with Vail Ikon, Indy, and Mountain Collective passes.So let's not confuse the means for the end, or assume that Katz, now 58 and self-assured, will act with the same brash stop-me-if-you-can bravado that defined his first tenure. I mean, he could. But consumers have made it clear that they have alternatives, communities have made it clear that they have ways to stop projects out of spite, Alterra has made it clear that empire building is achieved just as well through ink as through swords, and large independents such as Jackson Hole have made it clear that the passes that were supposed to be their doom instead guaranteed indefinite independence via dependable additional income streams. No one's afraid of Vail anymore.That doesn't mean the company can't grow, can't surprise us, can't reconfigure the global ski jigsaw puzzle in ways no one has thought of. Vail has brand damage to repair, but it's repairable. We're not talking about McDonald's here, where the task is trying to convince people that inedible food is delicious. We're talking about Vail Mountain and Whistler and Heavenly and Stowe – amazing places that no one needs convincing are amazing. What skiers do need to be convinced of is that Vail Resorts is these ski areas' best possible steward, and that each mountain can be part of something much larger without losing its essence.You may be surprised to hear Katz acknowledge as much in our conversation. You will probably be surprised by a lot of things he says, and the way he projects confidence and optimism without having to fully articulate a vision that he's probably still envisioning. It's this instinctual lean toward the unexpected-but-impactful that powered Vail's initial rise and will likely reboot the company. Perhaps sooner than we expect.What we talked aboutThe CEO job feels “both very familiar and very new at the same time”; Vail Resorts 2025 versus Vail Resorts 2006; Ikon competition means “we have to get better”; the Epic Friends program that replaces Buddy Tickets: 50 percent off plus skiers can apply that cost to next year's Epic Pass; simplifying the confusing; “we're going to have to get a little more creative and a little more aggressive” when it comes to lift ticket pricing; why Vail will “probably always have a window ticket”; could we see lower lift ticket prices?; a response to lower-than-expected lift ticket sales in 2024-25; “I think we need to elevate the resort brands themselves”; thoughts on skier-visit drops; why Katz returned as CEO; evolving as a leader; a morale check for a company “that was used to winning” but had suffered setbacks; getting back to growth; competing for partners and “how do we drive thoughtful growth”; is Vail an underdog now?; Vail's big advantage; reflecting on the 20 percent 2021 Epic Pass price cut and whether that was the right decision; is the Epic Pass too expensive or too cheap?; reacting to the first ever decline in Epic Pass unit sales numbers; why so many mountains are unlimited on Epic Local; “who are you going to kick out of skiing” if you tighten access?; protecting the skier experience; how do you make skiers say “wow?”; defending Vail's ongoing resort leadership shuffle; and why the volume of Vail's lift upgrades slowed after 2022's Epic Lift Upgrade.What I got wrong* I said that the Epic Pass now offered access to “64 or 65” ski areas, but I neglected to include the six new ski areas that Vail partnered with in Austria for the 2025-26 ski season. The correct number of current Epic Pass partners is 71 (see chart above). * I said that Vail Resorts' skier visits declined by 1.5 percent from the 2023-24 to 2024-25 winters, and that national skier visits grew by three percent over that same timeframe. The numbers are actually reversed: Vail's skier visits slumped by approximately three percent last season, while national visits increased by 1.7 percent, per the National Ski Areas Association.* I said that the $1,429 Ikon Pass cost “40% more” than the $799 Epic Local – but I was mathing on the fly and I mathed dumb. The actual increase from Epic Local to Ikon is roughly 79 percent.* I claimed that Park City Mountain Resort was charging $328 for a holiday week lift ticket when it was “30 percent-ish open” and “the surrounding resorts were 70-ish percent open.” Unfortunately, I was way off on the dollar amount and the timeframe, as I was thinking of this X post I made on Wednesday, Jan. 8, when day-of tickets were selling for $288:* I said I didn't know what “Alterra” means. Alterra Mountain Company defines it as “a fusion of the words altitude and terrain/terra, paying homage to the mountains and communities that form the backbone of the company.”* I said that Vail's Epic Lift Upgrade was “22 or 23 lifts.” I was wrong, but the number is slippery for a few reasons. First, while I was referring specifically to Vail's 2021 announcement that 19 new lifts were inbound in 2022, the company now uses “Epic Lift Upgrade” as an umbrella term for all years' new lift installs. Second, that 2022 lift total shot up to 21, then down to 19 when Park City locals threw a fit and blocked two of them (both ultimately went to Whistler), then 18 after Keystone bulldozed an illegal access road in the high Alpine (the new lift and expansion opened the following year).Questions I wish I'd askedThere is no way to do this interview in a way that makes everyone happy. Vail is too big, and I can't talk about everything. Angry Mountain Bro wants me to focus on community, Climate Bro on the environment, Finance Bro on acquisitions and numbers, Subaru Bro on liftlines and parking lots. Too many people who already have their minds made up about how things are will come here seeking validation of their viewpoint and leave disappointed. I will say this: just because I didn't ask about something doesn't mean I wouldn't have liked to. Acquisitions and Europe, especially. But some preliminary conversations with Vail folks indicated that Katz had nothing new to say on either of these topics, so I let it go for another day.Podcast NotesOn various metrics Here's a by-the-numbers history of the Epic Pass:Here's Epic's year-by-year partner history:On the percent of U.S. skier visits that Vail accounts forWe don't know the exact percentage of U.S. skier visits belong to Vail Resorts, since the company's North American numbers include Whistler, which historically accounts for approximately 2 million annual skier visits. But let's call Vail's share of America's skier visits 25 percent-ish:On ski season pass participation in AmericaThe rise of Epic and Ikon has correlated directly with a decrease in lift ticket visits and an increase in season pass visits. Per Kotke's End-of-Season Demographic Report for 2023-24:On capital investmentSimilarly, capital investment has mostly risen over the past decade, with a backpedal for Covid. Kotke:The NSAA's preliminary numbers suggest that the 2024-25 season numbers will be $624.4 million, a decline from the previous two seasons, but still well above historic norms.On the mystery of the missing skier visitsI jokingly ask Katz for resort-by-resort skier visits in passing. Here's what I meant by that - up until the 2010-11 ski season, Vail, like all operators on U.S. Forest Service land, reported annual skier visits per ski area:And then they stopped, winning a legal argument that annual skier visits are proprietary and therefore protected from public records disclosure. Or something like that. Anyway most other large ski area operators followed this example, which mostly just serves to make my job more difficult.On that ski trip where Timberline punched out Vail in a one-on-five fightI don't want to be the Anecdote King, but in 2023 I toured 10 Mid-Atlantic ski areas the first week of January, which corresponded with a horrendous warm-up. The trip included stops at five Vail Resorts: Liberty, Whitetail, Seven Springs, Laurel, and Hidden Valley, all of which were underwhelming. Fine, I thought, the weather sucks. But then I stopped at Timberline, West Virginia:After three days of melt-out tiptoe, I was not prepared for what I found at gut-renovated Timberline. And what I found was 1,000 vertical feet of the best version of warm-weather skiing I've ever seen. Other than the trail footprint, this is a brand-new ski area. When the Perfect Family – who run Perfect North, Indiana like some sort of military operation – bought the joint in 2020, they tore out the lifts, put in a brand-new six-pack and carpet-loaded quad, installed all-new snowmaking, and gut-renovated the lodge. It is remarkable. Stunning. Not a hole in the snowpack. Coming down the mountain from Davis, you can see Timberline across the valley beside state-run Canaan Valley ski area – the former striped in white, the latter mostly barren.I skied four fast laps off the summit before the sixer shut at 4:30. Then a dozen runs off the quad. The skier level is comically terrible, beginners sprawled all over the unload, all over the green trails. But the energy is level 100 amped, and everyone I talked to raved about the transformation under the new owners. I hope the Perfect family buys 50 more ski areas – their template works.I wrote up the full trip here.On the megapass timelineI'll work on a better pass timeline at some point, but the basics are this:* 2008: Epic Pass debuts - unlimited access to all Vail Resorts* 2012: Mountain Collective debuts - 2 days each at partner resorts* 2015: M.A.X. Pass debuts - 5 days each at partner resorts, unlimited option for home resort* 2018: Ikon Pass debuts, replaces M.A.X. - 5, 7, or unlimited days at partner resorts* 2019: Indy Pass debuts - 2 days each at partner resortsOn Epic Day vs. Ikon Session I've long harped on the inadequacy of the Ikon Session Pass versus the Epic Day Pass:On Epic versus Ikon pricingEpic Passes mostly sell at a big discount to Ikon:On Vail's most recent investor conference callThis podcast conversation delivers Katz's first public statements since he hosted Vail Resorts' investor conference call on June 5. I covered that call extensively at the time:On Epic versus Ikon access tweaksAlterra tweaks Ikon Pass access for at least one or two mountains nearly every year – more than two dozen since 2020, by my count. Vail rarely makes any changes. I broke down the difference between the two in the article linked directly above this one. I ask Katz about this in the pod, and he gives us a very emphatic answer.On the Park City strikeNo reason to rehash the whole mess in Park City earlier this year. Here's a recap from The New York Times. The Storm's best contribution to the whole story was this interview with United Mountain Workers President Max Magill:On Vail's leadership shuffleI'll write more about this at some point, but if you scroll to the right on Vail's roster, you'll see the yellow highlights whenever Vail has switched a president/general manager-level employee over the past several years. It's kind of a lot. A sample from the resorts the company has owned since 2016:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing all year long. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

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NYFF63 is STACKED, Brendan Fraser's Doing It Again & In Lynette We Trust - ORC 8/12/25

Mike, Mike, and Oscar

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 12, 2025 73:08

We discuss the new AMPAS President before reacting to the full NYFF63 lineup, the TIFF additions and tributes, and some Telluride deductions. Plus we review Cloud, Sorry Baby & Together while also discussing new trailers for Rental Family, One Battle After Another, etc. ACADEMY NEWS: Lynette Howell Taylor is our new President - 1:29 Will the Oscars remain on ABC after Disney makes moves? - 3:52 FILM FESTIVAL NEWS: The NYFF Closes with Bradley Cooper's latest + a Jim Jarmusch Centerpiece - 8:50 NYFF63 Main Slate is loaded + That Jay Kelly Trailer - 11:26 NY Spotlights The Boss, DDL & double Linklater + Blue Moon Trailer - 17:15 TIFF Tributes are discussed + that Rental Family trailer is working well, maybe too well - 29:30 TIFF Lineup Additions + that Left-Handed Girl Trailer - 34:05 Deducing Likely Telluride Lineup - 41:02 MORE TRAILER BREAKDOWNS: One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio & Tom Cruise jokes - 43:24 Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington & Jeffrey Wright - 48:45 Ella McCay is one Mike's dream and another Mike's nightmare - 52:15 Train Dreams, starring Joel Edgerton is another huge schism betwixt us - 54:49 The Choral, starring Ralph Fiennes would win every Oscar in 1994 - 57:53 Shelby Oaks from Chris Stuckman could be just our speed - 1:0015 NON-SPOILER REVIEWS: Cloud & Folktales at IFC Center + AlsoMike's Burger Day in NYC - 1:02:29 M1 reviews Sorry, Baby, The General's Daughter + Quickies on Together & Oh, Hi! - 1:08:01 OUTRO: We try to avoid jinxing Mike1's health and fail. But if he survives, you can enjoy more Oscar Race Checkpoints in the future. As always, we appreciate all your support. Please follow us on social media, like & subscribe, rate & review - all that good stuff… and you can find a tree of all our links here. https://linktr.ee/mikemikeandoscar

124. Protocol for Energy Fragment Retrieval and Healing

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Play Episode Listen Later Aug 11, 2025 6:22

In this episode, we delve into the concept of energy fragments, how they affect our lives, and the importance of retrieving and healing these fragments. We explore the dynamics of fragmentation, particularly in the context of trauma, and how the victim-victimizer cycle perpetuates disconnection. This is a segment from Aleya's coaching sessions. To join her live online coaching sessions click on the link below...https://www.aleyadao.com/catalog/products/Live-Coaching-Sessions/721/Get a free month of the Cups of Consciousness meditations at https://www.7cupsofconsciousness.com/Key Topics Covered:1.) The nature of energy fragments and their role in our lives.2.) How fragmentation occurs, especially in response to trauma.3.) The victim-victimizer cycle and its connection to fragmented energy.4.) A process for retrieving and healing energy fragments.5.) The significance of recalibrating fragments to align with our current vibration.

Drive Chicago - (08/09/25) - Review of the 2025 Ford F-150 Lightning

DriveChicago

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2025 38:14

Join Ray Stevens, DriveChicago.com General Manager Mark Bilek and Chicago Auto Show Senior Marketing Director Jim OBrill as they review the 2025 Ford F-150 Lightning, get the scoop on Kia’s new EV4 and Telluride from James Bell, and take a quick spin in the Land Rover Defender with Tom Appel from Consumer Guide Automotive.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Ep658 - Jeffrey Doe, Director ‘Wick Is Pain'

Creative Principles

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2025 26:35

Jeffrey Doe is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker whose work has premiered at Sundance, Cannes, and Telluride. Starting his career as an editor of MTV Award-winning music videos, Jeff then transitioned to documentary, cutting WE SOLD OUR SOULS FOR ROCK 'N ROLL for famed “rock-u-mentary” director Penelope Spheeris and the Grammy Award-winning RUNNIN' DOWN A DREAM for director Peter Bogdanovich, about the life and career of the late Tom Petty. Most recently, he directed WICK IS PAIN, the never-before-seen footage and story behind the John Wick phenomenon, from independent film to billion-dollar franchise. In this interview, we talk about the two types of documentaries: archival vs. verite, the importance of conflict and drama in documentaries, his latest work WICK IS PAIN, his approach to note-taking and organizing footage, and much more. Want more? Steal my first book, INK BY THE BARREL - SECRETS FROM PROLIFIC WRITERS, right now for free. Simply head over to www.brockswinson.com to get your free digital download and audiobook. If you find value in the book, please share it with a friend as we're giving away 100,000 copies this year. It's based on over 400 interviews here at Creative Principles. Enjoy! If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60 seconds, and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom of your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!

475: The State of Cinema, 'Weapons', Nolan Fever, Telluride & More with Guest Sean Fennessey, The Big Picture

Pop Culture Confidential

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2025 58:40

Christina welcomes back one of the sharpest voices in film — Sean Fennessey of The Big Picture — for a wide ranging conversation on the year in movies so far and what's next. From Weapons and the horror/genre boom to box office shocks, Nolan fever, political storytelling, their Telluride predictions — and plenty more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Telluride Local News August 6, 2025

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Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2025 2:12

Stoner Mesa fire jumps to hundreds of acres in size, former sheriff's deputy Jesus Damian Nieblas flees felony charges, international tourism declines across Colorado, and Telluride schools ban cell phone use during the school day.

#025 The Sacred Pause with Colin Hudon

Drops of Gold

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 5, 2025 63:38

Ever felt like who you are… is changing? Like the roles you've worn no longer fit the soul you've become?Colin Hudon, tea monk, healer, and co-founder of Living Tea, pours his wisdom with grace as he joins host Jeff Scult for a conversation steeped in stillness, soul, and the sacred unraveling of identity. Together, they sip through themes of surrender, service, and the soft power of letting go.You'll journey through:

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123. How to Recognize the 3 Types of Selfishness: Enlightened, Codependent, and Victim

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Play Episode Listen Later Aug 4, 2025 6:16

In this episode, we explore the concept of selfishness and break it down into three distinct categories: the Victim Selfish, the Codependent Selfish, and the Enlightened Selfish. We dive deep into the characteristics of each type and how they impact personal growth and relationships. Understanding these different types of selfishness can help you recognize patterns in yourself and others, leading to healthier interactions and a more empowered sense of self.This is a segment from Aleya's coaching sessions. To join her live online coaching sessions click on the link below...https://www.aleyadao.com/catalog/products/Live-Coaching-Sessions/721/Get a free month of the Cups of Consciousness meditations at https://www.7cupsofconsciousness.com/Key Topics Discussed:1.) Victim Selfish: Relying on others to meet all your needs without taking responsibility.2.) Codependent Selfish: Meeting the needs of others in hopes that your needs will be met in return.3.) Enlightened Selfish: Taking full responsibility for your own needs and creating space for others to do the same.

Where Are the Most Stunning Ski Slopes on Earth?

Peter von Panda

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 3, 2025 4:07

Dreaming of hitting the slopes or just love the thrill of winter sports? In this episode, Peter Von Panda dives into National Geographic's "100 Slopes of a Lifetime"—a breathtaking guide to the world's most incredible ski and snowboard destinations. From iconic resorts like Vail and Telluride to surprising slopes in Hawaii and Arizona, this book takes you on a journey without the airfare or altitude sickness. Whether you're an avid skier or an armchair adventurer, discover the beauty, stories, and magic of these winter wonderlands. Grab your hot cocoa and tune in! Get it here... https://geni.us/iYxBG4k ---------- LET'S TALK ABOUT LIVING BETTER: ▶ Podcast: https://geni.us/FtGAT4 ▶ My Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/shop/petervonp... ---------- IF YOU'D LIKE TO SHOW SOME LOVE: ▶ Buy My Book: https://geni.us/qwbZAE ▶ Become A Channel Member: https://geni.us/AA3Jk ▶ Patreon: / petervonpanda ▶ Merch: https://petervonpanda.storenvy.com/ ▶ Free Panda Group: https://panda-research-institute.mn.co FOLLOW MY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS: ▶ Instagram: / petervonpanda ▶ Facebook: / petervonpanda

Podcast #210: Mt. Hood Meadows President and General Manager Greg Pack

Kaveh J.'s Screening Room

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 2, 2025 78:27

The Storm does not cover athletes or gear or hot tubs or whisky bars or helicopters or bros jumping off things. I'm focused on the lift-served skiing world that 99 percent of skiers actually inhabit, and I'm covering it year-round. To support this mission of independent ski journalism, please subscribe to the free or paid versions of the email newsletter.WhoGreg Pack, President and General Manager of Mt. Hood Meadows, OregonRecorded onApril 28, 2025About Mt. Hood MeadowsClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Drake Family (and other minority shareholders)Located in: Mt. Hood, OregonYear founded: 1968Pass affiliations:* Indy Pass – 2 days, select blackouts* Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring U.S. ski areas: Summit (:17), Mt. Hood Skibowl (:19), Cooper Spur (:23), Timberline (:26)Base elevation: 4,528 feetSummit elevation: 7,305 feet at top of Cascade Express; 9,000 feet at top of hike-to permit area; 11,249 feet at summit of Mount HoodVertical drop: 2,777 feet lift-served; 4,472 hike-to inbounds; 6,721 feet from Mount Hood summitSkiable acres: 2,150Average annual snowfall: 430 inchesTrail count: 87 (15% beginner, 40% intermediate, 15% advanced, 30% expert)Lift count: 11 (1 six-pack, 5 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 3 doubles, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog's inventory of Mount Hood Meadows' lift fleet)About Cooper SpurClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Drake FamilyLocated in: Mt. Hood, OregonYear founded: 1927Pass affiliations: Indy Pass, Indy+ Pass – 2 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring U.S. ski areas: Mt. Hood Meadows (:22), Summit (:29), Mt. Hood Skibowl (:30), Timberline (:37)Base elevation: 3,969 feetSummit elevation: 4,400 feetVertical drop: 431 feetSkiable acres: 50Average annual snowfall: 250 inchesTrail count: 9 (1 most difficult, 7 more difficult, 1 easier)Lift count: 2 (1 double, 1 ropetow – view Lift Blog's inventory of Cooper Spur's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himVolcanoes are weird. Oh look, an exploding mountain. Because that seems reasonable. Volcanoes sound like something imagined, like dragons or teleportation or dinosaurs*. “So let me get this straight,” I imagine some puzzled Appalachian miner, circa 1852, responding to the fellow across the fire as he tells of his adventures in the Oregon Territory, “you expect me to believe that out thataways they got themselves mountains that just blow their roofs off whenever they feel like it, and shoot off fire and rocks and gas for 50 mile or more, and no one never knows when it's a'comin'? You must think I'm dumber'n that there tree stump.”Turns out volcanoes are real. How humanity survived past day one I have no idea. But here we are, skiing on volcanoes instead of tossing our virgins from the rim as a way of asking the nice mountain to please not explode (seriously how did anyone make it out of the past alive?).And one of the volcanoes we can ski on is Mount Hood. This actually seems more unbelievable to me than the concept of a vengeful nuclear mountain. PNW Nature Bros shield every blade of grass like they're guarding Fort Knox. When, in 2014, federal scientists proposed installing four monitoring stations on Hood, which the U.S. Geological Survey ranks as the sixth-highest threat to erupt out of America's 161 active volcanoes, these morons stalled the process for six years. “I think it is so important to have places like that where we can just step back, out of respect and humility, and appreciate nature for what it is,” a Wilderness Watch official told The New York Times. Personally I think it's so important to install basic monitoring infrastructure so that thousands of people are not incinerated in a predictable volcanic eruption. While “Japan, Iceland and Chile smother their high-threat volcanoes in scientific instruments,” The Times wrote, American Granola Bros say things like, “This is more proof that the Forest Service has abandoned any pretense of administering wilderness as per the letter or spirit of the Wilderness Act.” And Hood and the nation's other volcanoes cackle madly. “These idiots are dumber than the human-sacrifice people,” they say just before belching up an ash cloud that could take down a 747. When officials finally installed these instrument clusters on Hood in 2020, they occupied three boxes that look to be approximately the size of a convenience-store ice freezer, which feels like an acceptable trade-off to mass death and airplanes falling out of the sky.I know that as an outdoor writer I'm supposed to be all pissed off if anyone anywhere suggests any use of even a centimeter of undeveloped land other than giving it back to the deer in a treaty printed on recycled Styrofoam and signed with human blood to symbolize the life we've looted from nature by commandeering 108 square feet to potentially protect millions of lives from volcanic eruption, but this sort of trivial protectionism and willful denial that humans ought to have rights too is the kind of brainless uncompromising overreach that I fear will one day lead to a massive over-correction at the other extreme, in which a federal government exhausted with never being able to do anything strips away or massively dilutes land protections that allow anyone to do anything they can afford. And that's when we get Monster Pete's Arctic Dune Buggies setting up a casino/coal mine/rhinoceros-hunting ranch on the Eliot Glacier and it's like thanks Bros I hope that was worth it to stall the placement of gardenshed-sized public safety infrastructure for six years.Anyway, given the trouble U.S. officials have with installing necessary things on Mount Hood, it's incredible how many unnecessary ones our ancestors were able to build. But in 1927 the good old boys hacked their way into the wilderness and said, “by gum what a spot for snoskiing” and built a bunch of ski areas. And today 31 lifts serve four Mt. Hood ski areas covering a combined 4,845 acres:Which I'm just like, do these Wilderness Watch people not know about this? Perhaps if this and similar groups truly cared about the environmental integrity of Mount Hood they would invest their time, energy, and attention into a long-term regional infrastructure plan that identified parcels for concentrated mixed-use development and non-personal-car-based transit options to mitigate the impact of thousands of skiers traveling up the mountain daily from Portland, rather than in delaying the installation of basic monitoring equipment that notifies humanity of a civilization-shattering volcanic eruption before it happens. But then again I am probably not considering how this would impact the integrity of squirrel poop decomposition below 6,000 feet and the concomitant impacts on pinestand soil erosion which of course would basically end life as we know it on planet Earth.OK this went sideways let me try to salvage it.*Whoops I know dinosaurs were real; I meant to write “the moon landing.” How embarrassing.What we talked aboutA strong 2024-25; recruiting employees in mountains with little nearby housing; why Meadows doesn't compete with Timberline for summer skiing; bye-bye Blue double, Meadows' last standing opening-year chairlift; what it takes to keep an old Riblet operating; the reliability of old versus new chairlifts; Blue's slow-motion demolition and which relics might remain long term; the logic of getting a free anytime buddy lift ticket with your season pass; thoughts on ski area software providers that take a percentage of all sales; why Meadows and Cooper Spur have no pass reciprocity; the ongoing Cooper Spur land exchange; the value of Cooper Spur and Summit on a volcano with three large ski areas; why Meadows hasn't backed away from reciprocal agreements; why Meadows chose Indy over Epic, Ikon, or Mountain Collective; becoming a ski kid when you're not from a ski family; landing at Mountain Creek, New Jersey after a Colorado ski career; how Moonlight Basin started as an independent ski area and eventually became part of Big Sky; the tension underlying Telluride; how the Drake Family, who has managed the ski area since inception, makes decisions; a board that reinvests 100 percent of earnings back into the mountain; why we need large independents in a consolidating world; being independent is “our badge of honor”; whether ownership wants to remain independent long term; potential next lift upgrades; a potential all-new lift line and small expansion; thoughts on a better Heather lift; wild Hood weather and the upper limits of lift service; considering surface lifts on the upper mountain; the challenges of running Cascade Express; the future of the Daisy and Easy Rider doubles; more potential future expansion; and whether we could ever see a ski connection with Timberline Lodge.Why now was a good time for this interviewIt's kind of dumb that 210 episodes into this podcast I've only recorded one Oregon ep: Timberline Lodge President Jeff Kohnstamm, more than three years ago. While Oregon only has 11 active ski areas, and the state ranks 11th-ish in skier visits, it's an important ski state. PNW skiers treat skiing like the Northeast treats baseball or the Midwest treats football or D.C. treats politics: rabid beyond reason. That explains the eight Idaho pods and half dozen each in Washington and B.C. These episodes hit like a hash stand at a Dead show. So why so few Oregon eps?Eh, no reason in particular. There isn't a ski area in North America that I don't want to feature on the podcast, but I can't just order them online like a pizza. Relationships, more than anything, drive the podcast, and The Storm's schedule is primarily opportunity driven. I invite folks on as I meet them or when they do something cool. And sometimes we can connect right away and sometimes it takes months or even years, even if they want to do it. Sometimes we're waiting on contracts or approvals so we can discuss some big project in depth. It can take time to build trust, or to convince a non-podcast person that they have a great story to tell.So we finally get to Meadows. Not to be It-Must-Be-Nice Bro about benefits that arise from clear deliberate life choices, but It must be nice to live in the PNW, where every city sits within 90 minutes of a ripping, open-until-Memorial-Day skyscraper that gets carpet bombed with 400 annual inches but receives between one and four out-of-state visitors per winter. Yeah the ski areas are busy anyway because they don't have enough of them, but busy with Subaru-driving Granola Bros is different than busy with Subaru-driving Granola Bros + Texas Bro whose cowboy boots aren't clicking in right + Florida Bro who bought a Trans Am for his boa constrictor + Midwest Bro rocking Olin 210s he found in Gramp's garage + Hella Rad Cali Bro + New Yorker Bro asking what time they groom Corbet's + Aussie Bro touring the Rockies on a seven-week long weekend + Euro Bro rocking 65 cm underfoot on a two-foot powder day. I have no issue with tourists mind you because I am one but there is something amazing about a ski area that is gigantic and snowy and covered in modern infrastructure while simultaneously being unknown outside of its area code.Yes this is hyperbole. But while everyone in Portland knows that Meadows has the best parking lot views in America and a statistical profile that matches up with Beaver Creek and as many detachable chairlifts as Snowbasin or Snowbird and more snow than Steamboat or Jackson or Palisades or Pow Mow, most of the rest of the world doesn't, and I think they should.Why you should ski Mt. Hood Meadows and Cooper SpurIt's interesting that the 4,845 combined skiable acres of Hood's four ski areas are just a touch larger than the 4,323 acres at Mt. Bachelor, which as far as I know has operated as a single interconnected facility since its 1958 founding. Both are volcanoes whose ski areas operate on U.S. Forest Service land a commutable distance from demographically similar markets, providing a case study in distributed versus centralized management.Bachelor in many ways delivers a better experience. Bachelor's snow is almost always drier and better, an outlier in the kingdom of Cascade Concrete. Skiers can move contiguously across its full acreage, an impossible mission on Balkanized Hood. The mountain runs an efficient, mostly modern 15 lifts to Hood's wild 31, which includes a dozen detachables but also a half dozen vintage Riblet doubles with no safety bars. Bachelor's lifts scale the summit, rather than stopping thousands of feet short as they do on Hood. While neither are Colorado-grade destination ski areas, metro Portland is stuffed with 25 times more people than Bend, and Hood ski areas have an everbusy feel that skiers can often outrun at Bachelor. Bachelor is closer to its mothership – just 26 minutes from Bend to Portland's hour-to-two-hour commutes up to the ski areas. And Bachelor, accessible on all versions of the Ikon Pass and not hamstrung by the confusing counter-branding of multiple ski areas with similar names occupying the same mountain, presents a more clearcut target for the mainstream skier.But Mount Hood's quirky scatterplot ski centers reward skiers in other ways. Four distinct ski areas means four distinct ski cultures, each with its own pace, purpose, customs, traditions, and orientation to the outside world. Timberline Lodge is a funky mix of summertime Bro parks, Government Camp greens, St. Bernards, and its upscale landmark namesake hotel. Cooper Spur is tucked-away, low-key, low-vert family resort skiing. Meadows sprawls, big and steep, with Hood's most interesting terrain. And low-altitude, closest-to-the-city Skibowl is night-lit slowpoke with a vintage all-Riblet lift fleet. Your Epic and Ikon passes are no good here, though Indy gets you Meadows and Cooper Spur. Walk-up lift tickets (still the only way to buy them at Skibowl), are more tier-varied and affordable than those at Bachelor, which can exceed $200 on peak days (though Bachelor heavily discounts access to its beginner lifts, with free access to select novice areas). Bachelor's $1,299 season pass is 30 percent more expensive than Meadows'.This dynamic, of course, showcases single-entity efficiency and market capture versus the messy choice of competition. Yes Free Market Bro you are right sometimes. Hood's ski areas have more inherent motivators to fight on price, forge allegiances like the Timberline-Skibowl joint season pass, invest in risks like night and summer skiing, and run wonky low-tide lift ticket deals. Empowering this flexibility: all four Hood ski areas remain locally owned – Meadows and T-Line by their founding families. Bachelor, of course, is a fiefdom of Park City, Utah-based Powdr, which owns a half-dozen other ski areas across the West.I don't think that Hood is better than Bachelor or that Bachelor is better than Hood. They're different, and you should ski both. But however you dissect the niceties of these not-really-competing-but-close-enough-that-a-comarison-makes-sense ski centers, the on-the-ground reality adds up to this: Hood locals, in general, are a far more contented gang than Bachelor Bros. I don't have any way to quantify this, and Bachelor has its partisans. But I talk to skiers all over the country, all the time. Skiers will complain about anything, and online guttings of even the most beloved mountains exist. But talk to enough people and strong enough patterns emerge to understand that, in general, locals are happy with Mammoth and Alpine Meadows and Sierra-at-Tahoe and A-Basin and Copper and Bridger Bowl and Nub's Nob and Perfect North and Elk and Plattekill and Berkshire East and Smuggs and Loon and Saddleback and, mostly, the Hood ski areas. And locals are generally less happy with Camelback and Seven Springs and Park City and Sunrise and Shasta and Stratton and, lately, former locals' faves Sugarbush and Wildcat. And, as far as I can tell, Bachelor.Potential explanations for Hood happiness versus Bachelor blues abound, all of them partial, none completely satisfactory, all asterisked with the vagaries of skiing and skiers and weather and luck. But my sense is this: Meadows, Timberline, and Skibowl locals are generally content not because they have better skiing than everyplace else or because their ski areas are some grand bargain or because they're not crowded or because they have the best lift systems or terrain parks or grooming or snow conditions, but because Hood, in its haphazard and confounding-to-outsiders borders and layout, has forced its varied operators to hyper-adapt to niche needs in the local market while liberating them from the all-things-to-everyone imperative thrust on isolated operations like Bachelor. They have to decide what they're good at and be good at that all the time, because they have no other option. Hood operators can't be Vail-owned Paoli Peaks, turning in 25-day ski seasons and saying well it's Indiana what do you expect? They have to be independent Perfect North, striving always for triple-digit operating days and saying it's Indiana and we're doing this anyway because if we don't you'll stop coming and we'll all be broke.In this way Hood is a snapshot of old skiing, pre-consolidation, pre-national pass, pre-social media platforms that flung open global windows onto local mountains. Other than Timberline summer parks no one is asking these places to be anything other than very good local ski areas serving rabid local skiers. And they're doing a damn good job.Podcast NotesOn Meadows and Timberline Lodge opening and closing datesOne of the most baffling set of basic facts to get straight in American skiing is the number of ski areas on Mount Hood and the distinction between them. Part of the reason for this is the volcano's famous summer skiing, which takes place not at either of the eponymous ski areas – Mt. Hood Meadows or Mt. Hood Skibowl – but at the awkwardly named Timberline Lodge, which sounds more like a hipster cocktail lounge with a 19th-century fur-trapper aesthetic than the name of a ski resort (which is why no one actually calls it “Timberline Lodge”; I do so only to avoid confusion with the ski area in West Virginia, because people are constantly getting Appalachian ski areas mixed up with those in the Cascades). I couldn't find a comprehensive list of historic closing dates for Meadows and Timberline, but the basic distinction is this: Meadows tends to wrap winter sometime between late April and late May. Timberline goes into August and beyond when it can. Why doesn't Meadows push its season when it is right next door and probably could? We discuss in the pod.On Riblet clipsFun fact about defunct-as-a-company-even-though-a-couple-hundred-of-their-machines-are-still-spinning Riblet chairlifts: rather than clamping on like a vice grip, the end of each chair is woven into the rope via something called an “insert clip.” I wrote about this in my Wildcat pod last year:On Alpental Chair 2A small but vocal segment of Broseph McBros with nothing better to do always reflexively oppose the demolition of legacy fixed-grip lifts to make way for modern machines. Pack does a great job laying out why it's harder to maintain older chairlifts than many skiers may think. I wrote about this here:On Blue's breakover towers and unload rampWe also dropped photos of this into the video version of the pod:On the Cooper Spur land exchangeHere's a somewhat-dated and very biased-against-the-ski-area infographic summarizing the proposed land swap between Meadows and the U.S. Forest Service, from the Cooper Spur Wild & Free Coalition, an organization that “first came together in 2002 to fight Mt. Hood Meadows' plans to develop a sprawling destination resort on the slopes of Mt. Hood near Cooper Spur”:While I find the sanctimonious language in this timeline off-putting, I'm more sympathetic to Enviro Bro here than I was with the eruption-detection controversy discussed up top. Opposing small-footprint, high-impact catastrophe-monitoring equipment on an active volcano to save five bushes but potentially endanger millions of human lives is foolish. But checking sprawling wilderness development by identifying smaller parcels adjacent to already-disturbed lands as alternative sites for denser, hopefully walkable, hopefully mixed-use projects is exactly the sort of thing that every mountain community ought to prioritize.On the combination of Summit and Timberline LodgeThe small Summit Pass ski area in Government Camp operated as an independent entity from its 1927 founding until Timberline Lodge purchased the ski area in 2018. In 2021, the owners connected the two – at least in one direction. Skiers can move 4,540 vertical feet from the top of Timberline's Palmer chair to the base of Summit. While Palmer tends to open late in the season and Summit tends to close early, and while skiers will have to ride shuttles back up to the Timberline lifts until the resort builds a much anticipated gondola connecting the full height, this is technically America's largest lift-served vertical drop.On Meadows' reciprocalsMeadows only has three season pass reciprocal partners, but they're all aspirational spots that passholders would actually travel for: Baker, Schweitzer, and Whitefish. I ask Pack why he continues to offer these exchanges even as larger ski areas such as Brundage and Tamarack move away from them. One bit of context I neglected to include, however, is that neighboring Timberline Lodge and Mount Hood Skibowl not only offer a joint pass, but are longtime members of Powder Alliance, which is an incredible regional reciprocal pass that's free for passholders at any of these mountains:On Ski Broadmoor, ColoradoColorado Springs is less convenient to skiing than the name implies – skiers are driving a couple of hours, minimum, to access Monarch or the Summit County ski areas. So I was surprised, when I looked up Pack's original home mountain of Ski Broadmoor, to see that it sat on the city's outskirts:This was never a big ski area, with 600 vertical feet served by an “America The Beautiful Lift” that sounds as though it was named by Donald Trump:The “famous” Broadmoor Hotel built and operated the ski area, according to Colorado Ski History. They sold the hotel in 1986 to the city, which promptly sold it to Vail Associates (now Vail Resorts), in 1988. Vail closed the ski area in 1991 – the only mountain they ever surrendered on. I'll update all my charts and such to reflect this soon.On pre-high-speed KeystoneIt's kind of amazing that Keystone, which now spins seven high-speed chairlifts, didn't install its first detachable until 1990, nearly a decade after neighboring Breckenridge installed the world's first, in 1981. As with many resorts that have aggressively modernized, this means that Keystone once ran more chairlifts than it does today. When Pack started his ski career at the mountain in 1989, Keystone ran 10 frontside aerial lifts (8 doubles, 1 triple, 1 gondola) compared to just six today (2 doubles, 2 sixers, a high-speed quad, and a higher-capacity gondy).On Mountain CreekI've talked about the bananas-ness of Mountain Creek many times. I love this unhinged New Jersey bump in the same way I loved my crazy late uncle who would get wasted at the Bay City fireworks and yell at people driving Toyotas to “Buy American!” (This was the ‘80s in Michigan, dudes. I don't know what to tell you. The auto industry was falling apart and everybody was tripping, especially dudes who worked in – or, in my uncle's case, adjacent to (steel) – the auto industry.)On IntrawestOne of the reasons I did this insane timeline project was so that I would no longer have to sink 30 minutes into Google every time someone said the word “Intrawest.” The timeline was a pain in the ass, but worth it, because now whenever I think “wait exactly what did Intrawest own and when?” I can just say “oh yeah I already did that here you go”:On Moonlight Basin and merging with Big SkyIt's kind of weird how many now-united ski areas started out as separate operations: Beaver Creek and Arrowhead (merged 1997), Canyons and Park City (2014), Whistler and Blackcomb (1997), Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley (connected via gondola in 2022), Carinthia and Mount Snow (1986), Sugarbush and Mount Ellen (connected via chairlift in 1995). Sometimes – Beaver Creek, Mount Snow – the terrain and culture mergers are seamless. Other times – Alpine and the Palisades side of what is now Palisades Tahoe – the connection feels like opening a store that sells four-wheelers and 74-piece high-end dinnerware sets. Like, these things don't go together, Man. But when Big Sky absorbed Moonlight Basin and Spanish Peaks in 2013, everyone immediately forgot that it was ever any different. This suggests that Big Sky's 2032 Yellowstone Club acquisition will be seamless.**Kidding, Brah. Maybe.On Lehman BrothersNearly two decades later, it's still astonishing how quickly Lehman Brothers, in business for 158 years, collapsed in 2008.On the “mutiny” at TellurideEvery now and then, a reader will ask the very reasonable question about why I never pay any attention to Telluride, one of America's great ski resorts, and one that Pack once led. Mostly it's because management is unstable, making long-term skier experience stories of the sort I mostly focus on hard to tell. And management is mostly unstable because the resort's owner is, by all accounts, willful and boorish and sort of unhinged. Blevins, in The Colorado Sun's “Outsider” newsletter earlier this week:A few months ago, locals in Telluride and Mountain Village began publicly blasting the resort's owner, a rare revolt by a community that has grown weary of the erratic Chuck Horning.For years, residents around the resort had quietly lamented the antics and decisions of the temperamental Horning, the 81-year-old California real estate investor who acquired Telluride Ski & Golf Resort in 2004. It's the only resort Horning has ever owned and over the last 21 years, he has fired several veteran ski area executives — including, earlier this year, his son, Chad.Now, unnamed locals have launched a website, publicly detailing the resort owner's messy management of the Telluride ski area and other businesses across the country.“For years, Chuck Horning has caused harm to us all, both individually and collectively,” reads the opening paragraph of ChuckChuck.ski — which originated when a Telluride councilman in March said that it was “time to chuck Chuck.” “The community deserves something better. For years, we've whispered about the stories, the incidents, the poor decisions we've witnessed. Those stories should no longer be kept secret from everyone that relies on our ski resort for our wellbeing.”The chuckchuck.ski site drags skeletons out of Horning's closet. There are a lot of skeletons in there. The website details a long history of lawsuits across the country accusing Horning and the Newport Federal Financial investment firm he founded in 1970 of fraud.It's a pretty amazing site.On Bogus BasinI was surprised that ostensibly for-profit Meadows regularly re-invests 100 percent of profits into the ski area. Such a model is more typical for explicitly nonprofit outfits such as Bogus Basin, Idaho. Longtime GM Brad Wilson outlined how that ski area functions a few years back: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

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'Fantastic Four,' Summer Scaries, and a Fall Film Festival Preview

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 31, 2025 51:48

It's a busy week in the Screening Room! Co-hosts Cortlyn Kelly and Kaveh Jalinous first preview the fall film festival slate, discussing some of the most-anticipated films to hit Telluride, TIFF, Venice, NYFF, and more. The two then discuss 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps,' before pivoting into a conversation on summer horror films. Hosts: Kaveh Jalinous, Cortlyn Kelly.

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Episode 236: More Chimp Crazy, Dorito Dust, & “Hot Priest” Influencers Wanted

Madigan's Pubcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2025 83:16

INTRO (00:23): Kathleen opens the show drinking a Swarm Golden Ale from Exile Brewing Company. She shares her sentiments over the passing of Ozzy Osbourne, reminiscing how excited she was to see his Blizzard of Oz tour in St. Louis when she was a teenager. TOUR NEWS: See Kathleen live on her “Day Drinking Tour.” COURT NEWS (20:51): Kathleen shares news announcing that Stevie Nicks is re-releasing the Buckingham Nicks album, and Snoop Dogg released a new album. TASTING MENU (3:47): Kathleen samples Town House Everything Pita Chips, and Doritos Twisted Queso chips. UPDATES (25:54): Kathleen shares updates on “Chimp Crazy's” Tonia Haddix recent arrest, the last Sear's store in the US is closing, and Prince Harry offers his diary to the Royal family. HOLY SHIT THEY FOUND IT (40:05): Kathleen reveals that a 50,000 year old extinct lion was found in Siberian permafrost, and a 3-year-old boy discovers a $4M 16th century gold pendant in the UK. FRONT PAGE PUB NEWS (48:30): Kathleen shares articles on Pope Leo extending his summer vacation, the Vatican is soliciting hot priest influencers to connect with young Catholics, Augusta's Hooters location is permanently closed, full-time cheetah monitors are being hired in Mozambique, wealthy Telluride residents fight over 14 parking spots, Canada has been named the most loved country in the world, hordes of tarantulas are coming to the Southwest, and Pope Leo extends his vacation. TOURONS (43:02): Kathleen reports on a man in the Philippines attempting to take a selfie in an alligator pond, and a car carrying 5 people runs off the road and into a hot Yellowstone geyser. SAINT OF THE WEEK (1:16:25): Kathleen reads about St. Ignatius of Loyola. WHAT ARE WE WATCHING (14:35): Kathleen recommends watching documentary “God Bless Ozzy Osbourne” on Prime Video, and “Being Evel,” the Evel Knievel documentary on Amazon Prime Video. FEEL GOOD STORY (1:15:15): Kathleen reads highlights of Colorado's construction of the “world's largest” wildlife overpass on I-25 between Denver and Colorado Springs.

Telluride Local News July 29, 2025

four seasons local news telluride

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 29, 2025 2:21

Four Seasons developer under contract to purchase Rimrock hotel in Naturita, firefighters tackle small fires on Dallas Divide and Gray Head, San Miguel County Commissioners are considering a ballot measure that would allow them to reallocate lodging tax revenue, and diagonal parking makes international headlines.

122. A Powerful Process for Letting Go

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2025 7:45

Welcome to this transformative session designed to guide you through a powerful energetic process to open and repair the channels for letting go and receiving. If you've been feeling stuck or find it challenging to release what no longer serves you, this practice will help you restore flow and balance in your energy field. By focusing on cleaning, repairing, and recalibrating your etheric channels, you'll cultivate a greater capacity to release and receive with ease.This is a segment from Aleya's coaching sessions. To join her live online coaching sessions click on the link below...https://www.aleyadao.com/catalog/products/Live-Coaching-Sessions/721/Get a free month of the Cups of Consciousness meditations at https://www.7cupsofconsciousness.com/Summary of Topics:- The importance of clearing energetic channels for letting go.- Step-by-step guidance on cleaning, repairing, and recalibrating channels in the etheric form.- How healthy channels for letting go enhance your ability to receive.- Insights on balancing energy flow for protection and connection.- Practical tools for applying this process to both letting go and receiving.

‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps' Is Here. Plus: Our Fall Film Festival Preview.

The Big Picture

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2025 81:16

Sean and Amanda react to a long list of fall film festival lineup announcements; highlight their main takeaways from Venice, Toronto, and Telluride; and create their way-too-early top 25 Best Picture contenders list (2:16). Then, they unpack the newest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps,' starring Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby, which they found incredibly disappointing (23:23). They dive deep into spoilers, explain why they found a majority of the stars to be deeply miscast, and talk through what they think the MCU will look like going forward (40:23). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jack Sanders THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY THE STARBUCKS COFFEE COMPANY. ORDER NOW | STARBUCKS.COM/MENU Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AwardsWatch Podcast Ep. 299 - Breaking Down the Venice and Toronto Film Festival Lineups

AwardsWatch Oscar and Emmy Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2025 74:21

On episode 299 of the AwardsWatch Podcast, it's an all editors show as Editor-In-Chief Erik Anderson, Executive Editor Ryan McQuade and Associate Editor Sophia Ciminello look at the wealth of fall festival lineup announcements that came in this week from Venice and Toronto. In the pod, the trio start with Venice, which will be the kickoff of no less than three Netflix titles: Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly and the return of Kathryn Bigelow with A House of Dynamite. With a few other Netflix titles rolling around, we talk about the impact of these three titles starting off here and where else we'll see them this season. Yorgos Lanthimos' newest collab with Emma Stone, Bugonia, will also bow at Venice, leaving Focus Features' other top title Hamnet, rip for Telluride. Mona Fastvold, fresh off The Brutalist last year (with her partner Brady Corbet), has The Testament of Ann Lee with Amanda Seyfried, something has all of us buzzing. Then there's The Smashing Machine from Benny Safdie and starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. We also dig into the Out of Competition titles, specifically Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt, which has some internet folks thinking it means something more than it does. Onto TIFF, always the most helpful as specific designations are listed for each film, we talk about Rental Family starring Brendan Fraser, Sydney Sweeney in Christy and where the big Cannes winners from NEON and MUBI, like Sentimental Value, It Was Just an Accident, The Secret Agent, Sirāt and Sound of Falling landed. You can listen to The AwardsWatch Podcast wherever you stream podcasts, from iTunes, iHeartRadio, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music, YouTube and more. This podcast runs 1h14m. We'll be back next week with an Oscar retrospective of the 63rd Academy Awards, covering the films of 1990. Till then, let's get into it.

Telluride Local News July 24, 2025

colorado insurance local news telluride western slope

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2025 2:24

Insurance premiums to increase by as much as 38% on the Western Slope, three new wolf packs are identified in Colorado, Telluride Town Council considers a ballot proposal for an excise tax on ski lift tickets, and there's a new weed maintenance strategy on the Valley Floor: goats.

Telluride Local News July 17, 2025

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2025 2:32

Regional fires burn more than 30,000 acres, former deputy from San Miguel County Sheriff's Office is the subject of a CBI investigation, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser is co-leading a lawsuit against the Trump Administration for withholding federal funding for education, and KOTO is celebrating a big birthday.

Off the Record 7-15-25 Mexican Consul

mexican el c telluride off the record consul

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2025 60:39

El Cónsul visitará Telluride a finales de mes para proporcionar pasaportes y otros servicios esenciales a la comunidad mexicana. Si usted o alguien que usted conoce podría beneficiarse de esta visita, ¡asegúrese de sintonizarnos!

Surviving Breast Cancer and Finding Your Second Act With Actress and Director Embeth Davidtz

SHE MD

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2025 51:05

In this powerful episode of SHE MD, hosts Mary Alice Haney and Dr. Thais Aliabadi welcome actress and filmmaker Embeth Davidtz. She shares her experience with breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, highlighting the importance of comprehensive screening and self-advocacy in women's health. The conversation explores women's health, career reinvention, and the power of pursuing passion projects later in life. Interestingly, Embeth Davidtz is also the director of "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight", a film adaptation of Alexandra Fuller's New York Times bestselling memoir, which is releasing this July 2025. Access more information about the podcast and additional expert health tips by visiting SHE MD Podcast and Ovii. Sponsors: Opill: Opill is birth control in your control, and you can use code SHEMD for twenty five percent off your first month of Opill at Opill.comCymbiotika: Go to Cymbiotikia.com/SHEMD for 20% off your order + free shipping today.Nutrafol: Nutrafol is offering our listeners ten dollars off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you go to Nutrafol.com and enter promo code SHEMD.Vionic: Use code SHEMD at checkout for 15% off your entire order at www.vionicshoes.com when you log into your account. 1 time use only.Live Conscious: Head to LiveConscious.com and use code SHEMD for 15% off your first purchase. Embeth Davidtz's Key Takeaways:Consider Other Screening Methods: Women with a family history of breast cancer should consider additional screening methods like MRIs, even with normal mammogram results.Develop A Personalized Management Plan For Menopausal Symptoms: Breast cancer survivors like Embeth Davidtz can experience significant menopausal symptoms, requiring careful management and lifestyle adjustments.Engage in Creative Projects: Pursuing creative projects or volunteer work can provide a sense of purpose and improve mental health, especially for women in midlife transitions.Refine Your Leadership Approach: Effective leadership in male-dominated fields often requires women to balance assertiveness with diplomacy.Find Your Purpose, No Matter How Small: Whether it's making a movie or volunteering, doing something meaningful can lift you out of dark times.In This Episode: (00:00) Introduction(05:34) Breast cancer diagnosis and treatment experience(11:17) Importance of breast imaging and advocacy(20:30) How Embeth Davidtz dealt with menopause after breast cancer(22:30) Managing symptoms without hormone replacement(30:00) Embarking on a new creative journey(36:46) Learning to communicate and lead effectively(45:00) Finding purpose and making a differenceRESOURCES:Embeth Davidtz - Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/embethdavidtz/GUEST BIOGRAPHY:Embeth Davidtz is an American-South African director, writer, producer, and actress with an illustrious career spanning decades in film and television. Recently, Davidtz made her directorial and screenwriting debut with DON'T LET'S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT, based on Alexandra Fuller's bestselling memoir of the same name. The film follows Bobo, a young girl growing up on a Rhodesian farm against the backdrop of the Bush War the 1980s. Davidtz draws from her South African upbringing to authentically portray the harsh realities of being raised amid familial strife and apartheid. Following premieres at the Telluride, Toronto and Zurich film festivals last fall, the film received rave reviews. Variety praised Davidtz's debut “a masterclass in storytelling” and The Hollywood Reporter called the film “near perfection.” Shortly after, Sony Pictures Classics acquired the film, which will have its initial release in LA and NY on July 11, 2025.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Interview With "Apocalypse In The Tropics" Filmmaker Petra Costa & Co-Producer/Writer Alessandra Orofino

Next Best Picture Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2025 25:29

"Apocalypse In The Tropics" is a 2024 documentary film directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Petra Costa, serving as a spiritual sequel to her 2020 Oscar-nominated documentary, "The Edge of Democracy." Her latest film examines the influence of evangelical Christianity on far-right politics in Brazil. The film premiered out of competition at the 81st Venice International Film Festival to positive reviews and later screened at the 2024 Telluride and New York Film Festivals. Costa, along with producer Alessandra Orofino were both kind enough to speak with us about their work and experience making the film, which you can listen to below. Please be sure to check out the film, which is now available to stream on Netflix. Thank you, and enjoy! Check out more on NextBestPicture.com Please subscribe on... Apple Podcasts - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/negs-best-film-podcast/id1087678387?mt=2 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7IMIzpYehTqeUa1d9EC4jT YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWA7KiotcWmHiYYy6wJqwOw And be sure to help support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month at https://www.patreon.com/NextBestPicture and listen to this podcast ad-free Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

netflix christianity brazil democracy apocalypse academy awards filmmakers costa tropics telluride co producer producer writer new york film festival venice international film festival petra costa nextbestpicture

121. Special Tall Cup: Fertile Field of Support

Next Best Picture Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2025 59:19

Join Aleya for this powerful TALL Cup session as we prepare for one of the biggest energetic shifts we've seen in decades. With Mercury retrograde beginning July 17th and Lion's Gate on August 8th, the grids are destabilizing - creating incredible opportunities for transformation when approached consciously.What You'll ExperienceGrid Restructuring: Learn how to work with destabilized energetic grids to create more supportive life structuresFuture Self Guidance: Connect with your future self as an ascended master to receive empowering informationSpiritual Family Support: Strengthen your connection with guides and advisors in higher dimensionsNature Spirit Reconnection: Restore vital connections with elemental energies and your spiritual circleMass Consciousness Protection: Create energetic boundaries during collective processing periodsKey Energetic ProtocolsReceiving guidance from future selves to restructure personal grids and blueprintsSupporting spiritual family in other dimensions to amplify their light and connectionReferencing supportive dimensions for gentle processing away from mass consciousness chaosReconnecting with nature spirit circles for grounding and guidancePreparation practices for the July 17th portal opening

Episode 450 - 2025 Fall Film Festival Predictions, "She Rides Shotgun" & "Went Up The Hill" Trailers

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 13, 2025 130:07

For Episode 450, Lauren LaMagna, Josh Parham, Giovanni Lago, Tom O'Brien, and I are here to predict where each of the major upcoming Oscar contenders will premiere and screen at each of the fall film festivals (Venice, Telluride, TIFF & NYFF). For the release of "Eddington," this week's poll asks, "Which Is Your Favorite Film Set Against The Backdrop Of The COVID-19 Pandemic?" And for last week's poll, for the release of James Gunn's "Superman," we reveal your top 10 results for "Which is Your Favorite DC Comics Film?" We also share our reactions to the trailers for "She Rides Shotgun," "Went Up The Hill," answer your fan-submitted questions, and more! Please be sure to vote on the 2009 NBP Film Community Award Nominations if you have not done so already. Voting will be open until July 26th. Thank you all for listening, supporting, and subscribing. We look forward to seeing you all again next week! Check out more on NextBestPicture.com Please subscribe on... Apple Podcasts - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/negs-best-film-podcast/id1087678387?mt=2 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7IMIzpYehTqeUa1d9EC4jT YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWA7KiotcWmHiYYy6wJqwOw And be sure to help support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month at https://www.patreon.com/NextBestPicture and listen to this podcast ad-free Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Germain Grangier | Hardrock 100 Pre-Race Interview

The Pyllars Podcast with Dylan Bowman

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 10, 2025 22:56

This interview is part of Freetrail's coverage of the 2025 Hardrock 100. Our shows and athlete interviews are hosted by Dylan Bowman who sits down to talk with some of the favorites who are racing this year. In this interview, Dylan talks to professional runner, Germain Grangier (On). Germain lives and trains in France, but has been spending the past 2 months in Colorado with his partner Katie, adjusting to altitude and training on the course. Fun fact: Dylan is pacing Germo from Ouray to Telluride so look out for some fun post-race footage of that segment they share together. Make sure to tune into all of Freetrail's coverage leading into the 2025 Hardrock 100. Wednesday July 9th: 2025 Hardrock race preview with Hilary Yang and Billy Yang Wednesday July 9th and Thursday July 10th: Interviews with top athletes racing this weekend: Ludovic Pommeret, Stephanie Case, Zach Miller, Katie Schide, Germain Grangier, Hilary Yang and Mathieu Blanchard. Friday July 11th: We'll provide photo and video coverage of the race for the Freetrail social channels. Make sure to follow along here and @runfreetrail on Instagram. Saturday July 12th: We'll be hosting a Happy Hour and live podcast at 5pm at the Wyman Hotel in Silverton. If you're local, please stop by and enjoy good vibes and fun with the Freetrail crew! Make sure to play Freetrail's own fantasy trail running at https://fantasy.freetrail.com/events and pick 5-deep for Hardrock for a chance to win sweet prizes including Freetrail swag and shoes from The North Face! Our Hardrock 100 coverage is brought to you by The North Face trail. We're grateful for their support! Make sure to check out the latest and greatest shoe innovation from The North Face. The VECTIV Enduris 4 is designed to play with distance. Combining the ultralight DREAM foam midsole with VECTIV 3.0's high performance TPU plate, the Enduris 4 provides increased cushioning and trail-optimized propulsion - Made to propel you even further. Zach will be putting the product to the ultimate test this weekend during the Hardrock 100, providing its ability to withstand the toughest trail conditions. You can learn more and check out the shoe for yourself here: Men's The North Face trail running shoes here: https://www.thenorthface.com/en-us/c/mens/mens-footwear/mens-trail-run-213281 Women's The North Face trail running shoes here: https://www.thenorthface.com/en-us/c/womens/womens-footwear/womens-trail-run-213489 Freetrail Links: Website | https://freetrail.com/ Freetrail Pro | https://freetrail.com/pro/ Patreon | / dylanbowman Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/runfreetrai... YouTube | / @freetrail Freetrail Experts | https://freetrail.com/experts/ Dylan Links: Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/dylanbo/?hl=en Twitter | https://twitter.com/dylanbo?lang=en LinkedIn | / dylan-bowman-06174380

women interview france men colorado fun happy hour hard rock north face telluride silverton pre race zach miller tpu ouray dylan bowman katie schide freetrail ludovic pommeret

Off the Record 7-8-25: Ah Haa HAHA

arts record summertime telluride off the record

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 9, 2025 60:05

Summertime at the Ah Haa School for the Arts means something very exciting is on the horizon: the HAHA! The annual fundraiser invites talented artists to put on a unique and immersive multimedia experience right here in Telluride. This week on "Off the Record", hear from some of the artists featured at this year's event.

120. How to Navigate Energetic Downloads

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 7, 2025 7:20

In this episode, we explore the concept of energetic downloads and how they affect our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. As the planet undergoes a significant evolutionary shift, high-vibrational frequencies of light and energy are streaming onto the Earth. These shifts can be overwhelming but also present profound opportunities for growth and transformation. Learn steps to navigate these energies consciously and integrate them effectively.This is a segment from Aleya's coaching sessions. To join her live online coaching sessions click on the link below...https://www.aleyadao.com/catalog/products/Live-Coaching-Sessions/721/Get a free month of the Cups of Consciousness meditations at https://www.7cupsofconsciousness.com/Summary of Topics:1.) What Are Energetic Downloads?- High-frequency information entering our energetic fields.- Signs of downloads: physical symptoms (headaches, fatigue, anxiety, ear ringing) and emotional reactions (fear, overwhelm).2.) Why Awareness Matters- Recognizing energetic shifts as they occur.- Understanding the connection between these downloads and personal growth.3.) Step-by-Step Guide to Integration- Practical techniques to process and integrate energetic downloads.

119. In-Depth Explanation and Protocol How to Integrate Galactic Energy

adventure mountain films francesco telluride ephemeral chris ward film producing

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2025 8:42

In this episode, we explore the profound interplay between the Soul Rider, the human body, and the energetic integration required during significant shifts or changes. The discussion highlights the yearning for "home" energy as both the soul and body recalibrate after energetic releases or upgrades. Learn about Galactic nutrients, their role in healing and integration, and an energetic protocol to restore and nourish your being on multidimensional levels.This is a segment from Aleya's coaching sessions. To join her live online coaching sessions click on the link below...https://www.aleyadao.com/catalog/products/Live-Coaching-Sessions/721/Get a free month of the Cups of Consciousness meditations at https://www.7cupsofconsciousness.com/Key Topics Discussed:1.) The Connection Between Soul Rider and Body2.) Galactic Nutrients: What They Are and Why They Matter3.) Energetic Protocol for Receiving Galactic Nutrients

#419: Francesco Valentinuzzi 2 -- "Ephemeral" Telluride Mountain Film, Producing Adventure Films

Like a Bigfoot

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 26, 2025 46:16

#419: Francesco Valentinuzzi 2 -- "Ephemeral" Telluride Mountain Film, Producing Adventure Films by Chris Ward

Podcast #208: Bluebird Backcountry Co-Founder Erik Lambert

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 18, 2025 79:13

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. Whether you sign up for the free or paid tier, I appreciate your support for independent ski journalism.WhoErik Lambert, Co-Founder of Bluebird Backcountry, Colorado and founder of Bonfire CollectiveRecorded onApril 8, 2025About Bluebird BackcountryLocated in: Just east of the junction of US 40 and Colorado 14, 20-ish miles southwest of Steamboat Springs, ColoradoYears active: 2020 to 2023Closest neighboring U.S. ski areas: Steamboat (:39), Howelsen Hill (:45), Base elevation: 8,600 feetSummit elevation: 9,845 feetVertical drop: 1,245 feetSkiable acres: 4,200-plus acres (3,000 acres guided; 1,200-plus acres avalanche-managed and ski-patrolled)Average annual snowfall: 196 inchesLift fleet: None!Why I interviewed himFirst question: why is the ski newsletter that constantly reminds readers that it's concerned always and only with lift-served skiing devoting an entire podcast episode to a closed ski area that had no lifts at all? Didn't I write this when Indy Pass added Bluebird back in 2022?:Wait a minute, what the f**k exactly is going on here? I have to walk to the f*****g top? Like a person from the past? Before they invented this thing like a hundred years ago called a chairlift? No? You actually ski up? Like some kind of weird humanoid platypus Howard the Duck thing? Bro I so did not sign up for this s**t. I am way too lazy and broken.Yup, that was me. But if you've been here long enough, you know that making fun of things that are hard is my way of making fun of myself for being Basic Ski Bro. Really I respected the hell out of Bluebird, its founders, and its skiers, and earnestly believed for a moment that the ski area could offer a new model for ski area development in a nation that had mostly stopped building them:Bluebird has a lot of the trappings of a lift-served ski area, with 28 marked runs and 11 marked skin tracks, making it a really solid place to dial your uphill kit and technique before throwing yourself out into the wilderness.I haven't really talked about this yet, but I think Bluebird may be the blueprint for re-igniting ski-area development in the vast American wilderness. The big Colorado resorts – other than Crested Butte and Telluride – have been at capacity for years. They keep building more and bigger lifts, but skiing needs a relief valve. One exists in the smaller ski areas that populate Colorado and are posting record business results, but in a growing state in a finally-growing sport, Bluebird shows us another way to do skiing.More specifically, I wrote in a post the following year:Bluebird fused the controlled environment and relative safety of a ski area with the grit and exhilaration of the uphill ski experience. The operating model, stripped of expensive chairlifts and resource-intensive snowmaking and grooming equipment, appeared to suit the current moment of reflexive opposition to mechanized development in the wilderness. For a moment, this patrolled, avalanche-controlled, low-infrastructure startup appeared to be a model for future ski area development in the United States. …If Bluebird could establish a beachhead in Colorado, home to a dozen of America's most-developed ski resorts and nearly one in every four of the nation's skier visits, then it could act as proof-of-concept for a new sort of American ski area. One that provided a novel experience in relative safety, sure, but, more important, one that could actually proceed as a concept in a nation allergic to new ski area development: no chairlifts, no snowmaking, no grooming, no permanent buildings.Dozens of American ski markets appeared to have the right ingredients for such a business: ample snow, empty wilderness, and too many skiers jamming too few ski areas that grow incrementally in size but never in number. If indoor ski areas are poised to become the nation's next-generation incubators, then liftless wilderness centers could create capacity on the opposite end of the skill spectrum, redoubts for experts burned out on liftlines but less enthusiastic about the dangers of touring the unmanaged backcountry. Bluebird could also act as a transition area for confident skiers who wanted to enter the wilderness but needed to hone their uphill and avalanche-analysis skills first. …Bluebird was affordable and approachable. Day tickets started at $39. A season pass cost $289. The ski area rented uphill gear and set skin tracks. The vibe was concert-tailgate-meets-#VanLife-minimalism-and-chill, with free bacon famously served at the mid-mountain yurt.That second bit of analysis, unfortunately, was latched to an article announcing Bluebird's permanent closure in 2023. Co-founder Jeff Woodward told me at the time that Bluebird's relative remoteness – past most of mainline Colorado skiing – and a drying-up of investors drove the shutdown decision.Why now was a good time for this interviewBluebird's 2023 closure shocked the ski community. Over already? A ski area offering affordable, uncrowded, safe uphill skiing seemed too wedded to skiing's post-Covid outdoors-hurray moment to crumble so quickly. Weren't Backcountry Bros multiplying as the suburban Abercrombie and Applebee's masses discovered the outside and flooded lift-served ski areas? I offered a possible explanation for Bluebird's untimely shutdown:There is another, less optimistic reading here. Bluebird may have failed because it's remote and small for its neighborhood. Or we are witnessing perception bump up against reality. The popular narrative is that we are in the midst of a backcountry resurgence, quantified by soaring gear sales and perpetually parked-out trailheads. Hundreds of skiers regularly skin up many western ski areas before the lifts open. But the number of skiers willing to haul themselves up a mountain under their own power is miniscule compared to those who prefer the ease and convenience of a chairlift, which, thanks to the megapass, is more affordable than at any point in modern ski history.Ski media glorifies uphilling. Social media amplifies it. But maybe the average skier just isn't that interested. You can, after all, make your own ice cream or soda or bread, often at considerable initial expense and multiples of the effort and time that it would take to simply purchase these items. A small number of people will engage in these activities out of curiosity or because they possess a craftsman's zeal for assembly. But most will not. And that's the challenge for whoever takes the next run at building a liftless ski area.Still, I couldn't stop thinking about my podcast conversation the year prior with Lonie Glieberman, founder of the improbable and remote Mount Bohemia. When he opened the experts-only, no-snowmaking, no-grooming freefall zone in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in 2000, the ski industry collectively scoffed. It will never work, they promised, and for years it didn't. Boho lost money for a long time. But Glieberman persisted and, through a $99-season-pass strategy and an aggressively curated fist-bump image, Boho now sits at the aspirational pinnacle of Midwest skiing, a pilgrimage spot that is so successful it no longer sells Saturday day-time lift tickets.Could Bluebird have ascended to similar cult destination given more time? I don't know. We might never know.But shortly after Bluebird's shuttering, Erik Lambert, who co-founded Bluebird with Woodward, reached out to me. He's since helped with The Storm's digital-marketing efforts and knows the product well. With two years to process the rapid and permanent unraveling of an enterprise that had for a time consumed his life and passion, he felt ready to tell his version of the Bluebird story. And he asked if we could use The Storm to do it.What we talked aboutHow an East Coast kid developed a backcountry obsession; White Grass, West Virginia; the very long starter-kit list for backcountry skiing; Bluebird as backcountry primer; Jackson Hole as backcountry firestarter; why a nation as expansive and wild as the United States has little suitable land for ready ski area development; a 100-page form to secure a four-day Forest Service permit; early Bluebird pilots at Mosquito Pass and Winter Park; a surprising number of beginners, not just to backcountry, but to skiing; why the founders envisioned a network of Bluebirds; why Bluebird moved locations after season one; creating social scaffolding out of what is “inherently an anti-social experience”; free bacon!; 20 inches to begin operating; “we didn't know if people would actually pay to go backcountry skiing in this kind of environment”; “backcountry skiing was wild and out there, and very few people were doing it”; who Bluebird thought would show up and who actually did – “we were absolutely flummoxed by what transpired”; the good and bad of Bluebird's location; why none of the obvious abandoned Colorado ski areas worked for Bluebird; “we did everything the right way … and the right way is expensive”; “it felt like it was working”; why financing finally ran out; comparisons to Bohemia; “what we really needed was that second location”; moving on from failure – “it's been really hard to talk about for a long time”; Bluebird's legacy – “we were able to get thousands of people their best winter day”; “I think about it every day in one way or another”; the alternate universe of our own pasts; “somebody's going to make something like this work because it can and should exist”; and why I don't think this story is necessarily over just yet.What I got wrong* We mentioned a forthcoming trip to Colorado – that trip is now in the past, and I included GoPro footage of Lambert skiing with me in Loveland on a soft May day.* I heard “New Hampshire” and assigned Lambert's first backcountry outing to Mount Washington and Tuckerman Ravine, but the trek took place in Gulf of Slides.Podcast NotesOn White GrassThe Existing facility that most resembles Bluebird Backcountry is White Grass, West Virginia, ostensibly a cross-country ski area that sits on a 1,200-foot vertical drop and attracts plenty of skinners. I hosted founder Chip Chase on the pod last year:On Forest Service permit boundariesThe developed portion of a ski area is often smaller than what's designated as the “permit area” on their Forest Service masterplan. Copper Mountain's 2024 masterplan, for example, shows large parcels included in the permit that currently sit outside of lift service:On Bluebird's shifting locationsBluebird's first season was set on Whiteley Peak:The following winter, Bluebird shifted operations to Bear Mountain, which is depicted in the trailmap at the top of this article. Lambert breaks down the reasons for this move in our conversation.On breaking my leg in-boundsYeah I know, the regulars have heard me tell this story more times than a bear s***s under the bridge water, but for anyone new here, one of the reasons I am Skis Inbounds Bro is that I did my best Civil War re-enactment at Black Mountain of Maine three years ago. It's kind of a miracle that not only did patrol not have to stuff a rag in my mouth while they sawed my leg off, but that I've skied 156 days since the accident. This is a testament both to being alive in the future and skiing within 300 yards of a Patrol hut equipped with evac sleds and radios to make sure a fentanyl drip is waiting in the base area recovery room. Here's the story: On abandoned Colorado ski areasBerthoud Pass feels like the lost Colorado ski area most likely to have have endured and found a niche had it lasted into our indie-is-cool, alt-megapass world of 2025. Dropping off US 40 11 miles south of Winter Park, the ski area delivered around 1,000 feet of vert and a pair of modern fixed-grip chairlifts. The bump ran from 1937 to 2001 - Colorado Ski History houses the full story.Geneva Basin suffered from a more remote location than Berthoud, and struggled through several owners from its 1963 opening to failed early ‘90s attempts at revitalization (the ski area last operated in 1984, according to Colorado Ski History). The mountain ran a couple of double chairs and surface lifts on 1,250 vertical feet:I also mentioned Hidden Valley, more commonly known as Ski Estes Park. This was another long-runner, hanging around from 1955 to 1991. Estes rocked an impressive 2,000-foot vertical drop, but spun just one chairlift and a bunch of surface lifts, likely making it impossible to compete as the Colorado megas modernized in the 1980s (Colorado Ski History doesn't go too deeply into the mountain's shutdown).On U.S. Forest Service permitsAn oft-cited stat is that roughly half of U.S. ski areas operate on Forest Service land. This number isn't quite right: 116 of America's 501 active ski areas are under Forest Service permits. While this is fewer than a quarter of active ski areas, those 116 collectively house 63 percentage of American ski terrain.I broke this down extensively a couple months back:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing (and sometimes adjacent things such as Bluebird) all year long. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

117. Embrace Graceful Aging Through Energetic Fields a Protocol

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 16, 2025 9:52

In this episode, we explore unique approaches to supporting graceful aging through two primary techniques: aligning with our microbial health and utilizing healing chambers in other dimensions. These processes focus on working with our body's energetic fields to maintain vitality, health, and harmony over time. Join me as we delve into how balancing the light quotient in our body's microbes and experiencing healing chambers can aid in reducing the effects of aging.This is a segment from Aleya's coaching sessions. To join her live online coaching sessions click on the link below...https://www.aleyadao.com/catalog/products/Live-Coaching-Sessions/721/Get a free month of the Cups of Consciousness meditations at https://www.7cupsofconsciousness.com/This video covers:1.) The concept of graceful aging and how to align our physical body with supportive energetic practices.2.) The role of microbes in the aging process and how to balance their light quotient.3.) The use of healing chambers in other dimensions as a method of restoration, vitality, and energy renewal.

Noticias 6-9-25

noticias telluride el ayuntamiento

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2025 13:58

-El Ayuntamiento decide fijar las normas de asistencia de los concejales -El nuevo restaurante Latin Creations -El Consulado Mexicano viene a Telluride

More Fringe, Tony Awards, Telluride and Colorado Headliners

OnStage Colorado podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2025 86:29

In this episode of the OnStage Colorado Podcast, hosts Alex Miller and Toni Tresca began by discussing our Colorado theatre experiences since the last episode. Alex reviewed & Juliet at the Denver Center, describing it as surprisingly enjoyable despite disliking the pop music soundtrack. He also attended the 24 Hour Plays fundraiser at Curious Theatre, featuring six playwrights creating original works in 24 hours, with notable performances from Denver theater veterans.Toni covered several productions including Forbidden Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song (which we discussed in detail on a bonus episode), the interactive art installation Oracle at Union Hall, Comedy Works' New Faces competition (25th year, 168 local comics competing), Little Miss Sunshine at Aurora Fox (which he found problematic as an adaptation), and The Tempest at Colorado Shakespeare Festival, which he praised for its visual magic and strong performances.Denver Fringe Festival RecapTime: 24:30 - 33:30We both attended the sixth annual Denver Fringe Festival, which kicked off with a showcase at Cleo Parker Robinson Theater hosted by Juice the Clown. Alex saw three shows including a cabaret performance and Plant the Musical (a confusing two-person show where both actors played the same character). Toni saw eight shows and published seven reviews, with Ben Franklin Sex Party at Rise Comedy being his favorite — an immersive comedy involving the audience in founding a new country called “Birdlandia” that ended with a group orgy scene and syphilis outbreak.Tony Awards DiscussionTime: 33:30 - 42:45We discussed the relevance of the Tony Awards for Colorado theatergoers, noting that while the shows are only in New York initially, Tony wins can help shows tour nationally. Major winners included Maybe Happy Ending (Best Musical) and Purpose (Best Play). Toni watched clips of the ceremony, praising host Cynthia Erivo's opening and noting that the Hamilton reunion performance was the evening's highlight, though it overshadowed other nominees.Colorado Theater NewsTime: 42:45 - 49:45Theater Funding Crisis: As reported by the Denver Gazette's John Moore, two northern Colorado theatres - Bas Bleu (33 years old) and OpenStage (50 years old) – are both facing financial shortfalls due to reduced public arts funding, needing emergency fundraising of $40,000 and $15,000 respectively. This contrasts with Denver metro theaters that benefit from the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD).Other News:Colorado Renaissance Fair opens June 14th for its 48th season, though elephants may be banned due to legal challengesDenver native Annaleigh Ashford returns for DCPA's Saturday Night Alive gala on June 14thBreaking news: We announced the 19th Annual Henry Award nominees, with the ceremony scheduled for July 28th at Lone Tree Arts Center. Notably, this is the first year without gendered performance categories.Interview: Sasha Cucciniello, Telluride TheaterTime: 49:45 - 1:15:15We interviewed Artistic Director Sasha Cucciniello about her journey from avant-garde theater in New York (Performance Space 122) to founding Telluride Theater 18 years ago with just $68. The theater has grown to three full-time employees including new Operations Manager Kevin Douglas and Executive Director Ryan Heidenreich.Key Topics We Covered:Unique Programming: Combines traditional theater with burlesque performances through their troupe “House of Shimmie Shake,” which sells out annuallyOriginal Works: Cucciniello has written over 20 plays, mostly devised collaboratively with ensemble castsRecent Success: Ski Bum the Musical by local ski bum Li

RE 538: How to Let Go Part II

Recovery Elevator ðŸŒ´

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 9, 2025 47:15

Today we have Kimmy. She is 34 years old from Montrose, Colorado and took her last drink on April 3rd, 2017. This episode brought to you by Better Help – 10% off of your first month Café RE – THE social app for sober people Here are some upcoming events at RE: Bozeman Retreat from August 6th-20th, 2025 Peru in October (registration closed) Dry January 2026 Ukelele Course in February 2026 Costa Rica in February 2026 AF Songwriting Course in March 2026 [04:12] Thoughts from Paul: A few weeks ago, Paul did an intro titled “How to Let Go” and then told us that had no idea how to let go. Since that episode, he has started looking at this from another angle. Paul shares that there was a time in his life that he would drink over things that he was unable to let go of. He says that progress has not been in letting things go, but it has been in his reactions to events and happenings in life. When drinking everything was a knee jerk reaction with no space between the stimulus and the response. Recovery has taught him how to pause, to wait, to gather his thoughts before responding to an event or trigger. One strategy with this is to not add a good or bad label to whatever happens in life. What seems like an unfortunate life event now may later turn out to be a great thing. Our reactions to life in general are the key to letting go. If we lean into the space between stimulus and response, and remain neutral to all of life's unfolding, there will be less that needs to be let go of. [08:59] Paul introduces Kimmy: Kimmy grew up Big Fork, Montana and grew up riding horses and competing in barrel racing and rodeos. She says overall she had a good childhood. Kimmy says that she had her first drink when she was 17 and feels that drinking was a problem for her right from the start. Several events that happened in her teens drove Kimmy to use alcohol to cope with her feelings around them. She would take shots of her mom's liquor and then drive 30 minutes to school already drunk. After leaving college, a friend of Kimmy's said she was moving to Telluride for ski season. Kimmy went with her and while the friend left after the season was over, Kimmy stayed because she enjoyed it there. After having multiple rock bottom moments, Kimmy tried different techniques to quit drinking or moderate. They all backfired, she says. Eventually she turned to her faith in a moment of surrender. She didn't quit drinking instantly, but over time grew to see that alcohol was no longer doing anything for her. Kimmy took her last drink at the end of the ski season in 2017. It was one beer, and she isn't even sure she finished it. She was able to quit and after nine months told her father, who also drinks, and he was so proud of her she just wanted to keep going. Kimmy says working has been a big part of her recovery as she currently has four jobs. She stays close to her faith and although she doesn't attend church, she reads her bible frequently. Kimmy has goals now and shares that she didn't really have any after getting derailed by some events in her teenage years and turning to alcohol. It has taken time, but Kimmy is getting back to riding and competing and sees this current year of sobriety as a year of redemption as she looks forward to improving in these endeavors. Recovery Elevator It all starts from the inside out. I love you guys. RE on Instagram Recovery Elevator YouTube Sobriety Tracker iTunes

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Podcast #207: Sun Valley COO & GM Pete Sonntag

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 8, 2025 66:01

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.WhoPete Sonntag, Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of Sun Valley, IdahoRecorded onApril 9, 2025About Sun ValleyClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The R. Earl Holding family, which also owns Snowbasin, UtahPass affiliations:* Ikon Pass – 7 days, no blackouts; no access on Ikon Base or Session passes; days shared between Bald and Dollar mountains* Mountain Collective – 2 days, no blackouts; days shared between Bald and Dollar mountainsReciprocal pass partners: Challenger Platinum and Challenger season passes include unlimited access to Snowbasin, UtahLocated in: Ketchum, IdahoClosest neighboring ski areas: Rotarun (:47), Soldier Mountain (1:10)Base elevation | summit elevation | vertical drop:Bald Mountain: 5,750 feet | 9,150 feet | 3,400 feetDollar Mountain: 6,010 feet | 6,638 feet | 628 feetSkiable Acres: 2,533 acres (Bald Mountain) | 296 acres (Dollar Mountain)Average annual snowfall: 200 inchesTrail count: 122 (100 on Bald Mountain; 22 on Dollar) – 2% double-black, 20% black, 42% intermediate, 36% beginnerLift fleet:Bald Mountain: 12 lifts (8-passenger gondola, 2 six-packs, 6 high-speed quads, 2 triples, 1 carpet - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Bald Mountain's lift fleet)Dollar Mountain: 5 lifts (2 high-speed quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 1 carpet - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Dollar Mountain's lift fleet)Why I interviewed him (again)Didn't we just do this? Sun Valley, the Big Groom, the Monster at the End of The Road (or at least way off the interstate)? Didn't you make All The Points? Pretty and remote and excellent. Why are we back here already when there are so many mountains left to slot onto the podcast? Fair questions, easy answer: because American lift-served skiing is in the midst of a financial and structural renaissance driven by the advent of the multimountain ski pass. A network of megamountains that 15 years ago had been growing creaky and cranky under aging lift networks has, in the past five years, flung new machines up the mountain with the slaphappy glee of a minor league hockey mascot wielding a T-shirt cannon. And this investment, while widespread, has been disproportionately concentrated on a handful of resorts aiming to headline the next generation of self-important holiday Instagram posts: Deer Valley, Big Sky, Steamboat, Snowbasin, and Sun Valley (among others). It's going to be worth checking in on these places every few years as they rapidly evolve into different versions of themselves.And Sun Valley is changing fast. When I hosted Sonntag on the podcast in 2022, Sun Valley had just left Epic for Ikon/Mountain Collective and announced its massive Broadway-Flying Squirrel installation, a combined 14,982 linear feet of high-speed machinery that included a replacement of North America's tallest chairlift. A new Seattle Ridge sixer followed, and the World Cup spectacle followed that. Meanwhile, Sun Valley had settled into its new pass coalitions and teased more megalifts and improvements to the village. Last December, the resort's longtime owner, Carol Holding, passed away at age 95. Whatever the ramifications of all that will be, the trajectory and fate of Sun Valley over the next decade is going to set (as much or more than it traces), the arc of the remaining large independents in our consolidating ski world.What we talked aboutThe passing and legacy of longtime owner Carol Holding and her late husband Earl – “she was involved with the business right up until the very end”; how the Holdings modernized the Sun Valley ski areas; long-term prospects for Sun Valley and Snowbasin independence following Mrs. Holding's passing; bringing World Cup Downhill races back to Sun Valley; what it took to prep Bald Mountain for the events; the risks of hosting a World Cup; finish line vibes; the potential for a World Cup return and when and how that could happen; the impact of the Challenger and Flying Squirrel lift upgrades; potential upgrades for the Frenchman's, River Run, Lookout Express, and Christmas lifts; yes Sun Valley has glades; the impact of the Seattle Ridge chairlift upgrade; why actual lift capacity for Sun Valley's legacy high-speed quads doesn't match spec; explaining Sun Valley's infrastructure upgrade surge; why Mayday and Lookout will likely remain fixed-grip machines; the charm of Dollar Mountain; considering Dollar lift upgrades; what happened to the Silver Dollar carpet; why Sun Valley is likely sticking with Ikon and Mountain Collective long-term after trying both those coalitions and Epic; whether Sun Valley could join Ikon Base now that Alterra ditched Ikon Base Plus; RFID coming at last; whether we could still see a gondola connection between Sun Valley Village and Dollar and Bald mountains; and why Sun Valley isn't focused on slopeside development at Bald Mountain.Why now was a good time for this interviewSince I more or less covered interview timing above, let me instead pull out a bit about Sun Valley's megapass participation that ended up being timely by accident. We recorded this conversation in April, well before Vail Resorts named Rob Katz its CEO for a second time, likely resetting what had become a lopsided (in Alterra's favor) Epic-versus-Ikon battle. Here's what Sonntag had to say on the pod in 2022, when Sun Valley had just wrapped its three-year Epic Pass run and was preparing for its first season on Ikon:… our three-year run with Epic was really, really good. And it brought guests to Sun Valley who have never been here before. I mean, I think we really proved out the value of these multi-resort passes and these partner passes. People aspire to go other places, and when their pass allows them to do that, that sometimes is the impetus. That's all they need to make that decision to do it. So as successful as that was, we looked at Ikon and thought, well, here's an opportunity to introduce ourselves to a whole new group of guests. And why would we not take advantage of that? We're hoping to convert, obviously, a few of these folks to be Sun Valley regulars. And so now we have the opportunity to do that again with Ikon.When I asked Sonntag during that conversation whether he would consider returning to Epic at some point, he said that “I'm focused on doing a great job of being a great partner with Ikon right now,” and that, “I'm not ready to go there yet.”With three winters of Ikon and Mountain Collective membership stacked, Sonntag spoke definitively this time (emphasis mine):We are very very happy with how everything has gone. We feel like we have great partners with both Ikon, which is, you know, partnering with a company, but they're partners in every sense of the word in terms of how they approach the partnership, and we feel like we have a voice. We have access to data. We can really do right by our customers and our business at the same time.Should we read that as an Epic diss on Broomfield? Perhaps, though saying you like pizza doesn't also mean you don't like tacos. But Sonntag was unambiguous when I asked whether Sun Valley was #TeamIkon long-term: “I would see us staying the course,” he said.For those inclined to further read into this, Sonntag arrived at Sun Valley after a long career at Vail Resorts, which included several years as president/COO-equivalent of Heavenly and Whistler. And while Sun Valley is part of a larger company that also includes Snowbasin, meaning Sonntag is not the sole decision-maker, it is interesting that an executive who spent so much of his career with a first-hand look inside the Epic Pass would now lead a mountain that stands firmly with the opposition.What I got wrongI mischaracterized the comments Sonntag had made on Epic and Ikon when we spoke in 2022, making it sound as though he had suggested that Sun Valley would try both passes and then decide between them. But it was me who asked him whether he would decide between the two after an Ikon trial, and he had declined to answer the question, saying, as noted above, that he wasn't “ready to go there yet.”Why you should ski Sun ValleyIf I was smarter I'd make some sort of heatmap showing where skier visits are clustered across America. Unfortunately I'm dumb, and even more unfortunately, ski areas began treating skier visit numbers with the secrecy of nuclear launch codes about a decade ago, so an accurate map would be difficult to draw up even if I knew how.However, I can offer a limited historical view into the crowding advantages that Sun Valley offers in comparison to its easier-to-access peer resorts. Check out Sun Valley's average annual skier visits from 2005 to 2011, compared to similarly sized Breckenridge and Keystone, and smaller Beaver Creek:Here's how those four ski areas compare in size and average skier visits per acre:Of course, 2011 was a long time ago and multi-mountain passes have dramatically reworked visitation patterns. Breck, Keystone, and Beaver Creek, all owned by Vail during the above timeframe, joined Epic Pass in 2008, while Sun Valley would stand on its own until landing on Mountain Collective in 2015, then Epic in 2019, then back to MC and Ikon in 2022. Airline service to Sun Valley has improved greatly in the past 15 years, which could also have ramped up the resort's skier visits.Still, anecdote and experience suggest that these general visitation ratios remain similar to the present day. Beaver Creek remains a bit of a hidey-hole by Colorado standards, but Breck and Keystone, planted right off America's busiest ski corridor in America's busiest ski state, are among the most obvious GPS inputs for the Epic Pass masses. No one has to try that hard to get to Summit County. To get to Sun Valley, you still have to work (and spend), a bit more.So that's the pitch, I guess, in addition to all the established Sun Valley bullet points: excellent grooming and outrageous views and an efficient and fast lift network. By staying off the Ikon Base Pass, not to mention Interstates 70 and 80, Sun Valley has managed to achieve oxymoron status: the big, modern U.S. ski resort that feels mostly empty most of the time. It's this and Taos and Telluride and a few others tossed into the far corners of the Rockies, places that at once feel of the moment and stand slightly outside of time.Podcast NotesOn Sun Valley/Pete 1.0Sonntag first joined me on the pod back in 2022:On Carol HoldingLongtime Sun Valley owner Carol Holding passed away on Dec. 23, 2024. Boise Dev recalled a bit of the family legacy around Sun Valley:“One day, I spotted Earl and Carol dining on the patio and asked him again,” Webb told Bossick. “And Carol turned to him and said, ‘Earl, you've been saying you're going to do that for years. If you don't build a new lodge, I'm going to divorce you.' That's what she said!”The lodge opened in 2004, dubbed Carol's Dollar Mountain Lodge.In a 2000 interview with the Salt Lake Tribune, Carol made it clear that she was as much a part of the business as Earl, whose name caught most of the headlines.“I either became part of his business or lived alone,” she said.The pair often bought distressed or undervalued assets and invested to upgrade them. She told the Tribune that paying attention to the dollars in those early years made a big difference.“I still have the first dollar bill that anyone gave me as a tip,” she said.Once they bought Sun Valley, Robert and Carol wasted no time.Wally Huffman, the resort's GM, got a call to the area above the Ram Restaurant. Someone was stuffing mattresses out the window, and they were landing with a thud on the kitchen loading dock below. Huffman called Janss – the person who had owned the resort – and asked what to do.“I think you should do whatever Mr. Holding tells you to do.”Robert and Carol had purchased the property, and upgrades were well underway. They didn't know how to ski. But they did know hospitality.“Why would anyone who didn't know how to ski buy a ski resort? That wasn't why we bought it—to come here to ski,” Carol said. “We bought it to run as a business.”Earl Holding's 2013 New York Times obituary included background on the couple's purchase of Sun Valley:A year later, Carol Holding, who was her husband's frequent business partner, showed him a newspaper article about the potential sale of Sun Valley. He bought the resort, which had fallen into disrepair since its glory years as a getaway for Ernest Hemingway and others, after he and his wife spent a day there skiing. They had never skied before.Davy Ratchford, President of sister resort Snowbasin, told a great story about Carol Holding on the podcast back in 2023 [31:20]:Mrs. Holding is an amazing woman and is sharp. She knows everything that's going on at the resorts. She used to work here, right? She'd flip burgers and she'd sell things from the retail store. I mean she's an original, right? Like she is absolutely amazing and she knows everything about it. And I was hired and I remember being in our lodge and I had all the employees there and she was introducing me, and it was an amazing experience. I remember I was kneeling down next to her chair and I said, “You know, Mrs. Holding, thank you for the opportunity.” And she grabs both your hands and she holds them in tight to her, and that's how she talks to you. It's this amazing moment. And I said, “I just want to make sure I'm doing exactly what you want me to do for you and Earl's legacy of Snowbasin.” I know how much they love it, right? Since 1984. And I said, “Can I just ask your advice?” And this is exactly what she said to me, word for word, she said, “Be nice and hire nice people.” And every employee orientation since then, I've said that: “Our job is to be nice and to hire nice people.”Listen to the rest here:On Sun Valley's evolutionWhen the Holdings showed up in 1977, Sun Valley, like most contemporary ski areas, was a massive tangle of double and triple chairs:The resort upgraded rapidly, installing seven high-speed quads between 1988 and 1994: Unfortunately, the ski area chose Yan, whose bungling founder's shortcuts transformed the machines into deathtraps, as its detachable partner. The ski area heavily retrofit all seven machines in partnership with Doppelmayr in 1995. Sun Valley has so far replaced three of the seven Yans: the Seattle Ridge sixer replaced the detach quad of the same name last year and the Broadway sixer and Flying Squirrel quad replaced the Broadway and Greyhawk quads in 2023, on a new alignment:Sonntag outlines which of the remaining four Yan-Doppelmayr hybrids will be next on the pod.I've summarized the Yan drama several times, most recently in the article accompanying my podcast conversation with Mammoth COO Eric Clark earlier this year:On World Cup resultsWhile we talk in general about the motivation behind hosting the World Cup, what it took to prep the mountain, and the energy of the event itself, we don't get a lot into the specifics of the events themselves. Here are all the official stats. Videos here.On gladesYes, Sun Valley has glades (video by #GoProBro, which is me):On Ikon Pass' evolutionI feel as though I publish this chart every other article, but here it is. If you're reading this in the future, click through for the most current:On the Sun Valley Village masterplanWe discuss an old Sun Valley masterplan that included a gondola connection from the village to Dollar and then Bald mountains:The new village plan, which is a separate document, rather than an update of the image above, doesn't mention it:Why? We discuss.The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. Please support independent ski journalism, or we'll all be reading about bros backflipping over moving trains for the rest of our lives. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

116. Awakening Your Divine Cosmic Loop | Aligning Energetic Channels for Greater Flow and Abundance

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 2, 2025 7:19

In this epsiode, we explore the concept of the Divine Cosmic Loop and how aligning your inner energetic channels can transform how you experience energy flow, abundance, and personal alignment. Learn how releasing suppression and compression within your Divine Cosmic Loop can strengthen the flow of light and improve both your inner and outer experiences. This video guides you through steps to enhance your awareness, release blockages, and achieve a more consistent, stable flow of light in your energy field.This is a segment from Aleya's coaching sessions. To join her live online coaching sessions click on the link below...https://www.aleyadao.com/catalog/products/Live-Coaching-Sessions/721/Get a free month of the Cups of Consciousness meditations at https://www.7cupsofconsciousness.com/Overview:1.) Understanding the Divine Cosmic Loop and its impact on energy flow.2.) How suppressed or compressed light affects physical health, finances, and emotional well-being.3.) Techniques for strengthening, balancing, and aligning your energetic channels to support a coherent flow of light.4.) Embracing self-connection and releasing codependent energy patterns.

Regional Roundup: Queer proms across the region provide safe spaces for teens

KZMU News

Play Episode Listen Later May 27, 2025 29:00

In this week's Regional Roundup, we speak to Durango's new mayor, who has made history as the first Indigenous person to hold the position. We also hear about Aspen's queer prom that offers a safe and celebratory space for LGBTQ youth. Next is a story about a choir that uses choral music to spark important community conversations. Then, we tag along on a field trip with some elementary students as they explore the Valley Floor near Telluride. And finally, we hear from the author of "Her Place on the Map: 18 Women and the Colorado Wonders Named for Them."

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115. How to Align with Your True Energy: Releasing External Vibrations for Authentic Self-Connection

Play Episode Listen Later May 26, 2025 8:54

In this episode, we explore a powerful energetic protocol to help you release any external vibrational fabrics—energies or influences—that don't align with your authentic self. Through this process, we tap into the strength of our unique energy and establish a deeper sense of self-authenticity. Learn how to create stronger personal boundaries, foster self-love, and manifest from a place of alignment.This is a segment from Aleya's coaching sessions. To join her live online coaching sessions click on the link below...https://www.aleyadao.com/catalog/products/Live-Coaching-Sessions/721/Get a free month of the Cups of Consciousness meditations at https://www.7cupsofconsciousness.com/The discussion covers:- Understanding vibrational "fabric" and its impact on your energetic field.- Releasing any energies, fabrics, or influences that aren't authentically yours.- How clearing external fabrics can enhance well-being, help you sustain personal energy, and support self-healing.- The role of self-love in accepting and utilizing your own vibrational fabric.- Practical tips to strengthen personal alignment and boundaries.

Off the Record 5-20-25 MountainFilm

Play Episode Listen Later May 21, 2025 61:30

En el programa de hoy tenemos a Alfredo Alcantara una persona que se enfoca en cinematografía y va a tener su pelicula en Telluride para MountainFilm

telluride off the record

114. How to Guide Your Body's Energy for Healing and Empowerment: Embracing Light and Emotional Evolution

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2025 7:23

In this episode, we explore the profound shifts happening as our planet receives an influx of coherent, harmonic light. With this shift, everyone's awareness and sensitivity are increasing, creating powerful effects on our emotions and physical health. This discussion delves into how the body processes emotional energy, the importance of the emotional field, and the transformative power of allowing emotions to flow in a natural, healthy way. Discover how to empower your body, alleviate physical ailments, and embrace this energetic evolution.This is a segment from Aleya's coaching sessions. To join her live online coaching sessions click on the link below...https://www.aleyadao.com/catalog/products/Live-Coaching-Sessions/721/Get a free month of the Cups of Consciousness meditations at https://www.7cupsofconsciousness.com/Summary of Key Topics:1.) The Planetary Shift: How new streams of harmonic light impact our bodies and minds.2.) The Role of Emotions in Body and Soul Evolution.3.) Cultural Misconceptions Around Emotions and Their Impact on Health.4.) Transforming Physical Ailments by Releasing Emotions into the Emotional Field.5.) Practical Steps for Encouraging Emotional Flow and Vibrational Alignment.

Off the Record 5-13-25: Mountainfilm

record memorial day telluride off the record

Play Episode Listen Later May 14, 2025 65:51

This Memorial Day Weekend, Telluride will be abuzz with indomitable spirit. Mountainfilm is just around the corner, and this year's festival is sure to bring stoke, joy, and celebration. In a tease of things to come, this week on "Off the Record", we chat with Mountainfilm staff, and filmmakers contributing to this year's festival.

#99 - Ryan Becker

The Steep Stuff Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 13, 2025 99:05 Transcription Available

Send us a textWhat does it take to reach the elite level of trail running when your body keeps threatening to derail your dreams? Ryan Becker knows this challenge intimately. After fully tearing his Achilles tendon during a college cross-country championship race—and still finishing to earn All-American honors—he's spent years battling chronic tendon issues while quietly becoming one of the most consistent performers on the American trail running circuit.From his unorthodox beginnings as a tennis player who discovered running relatively late, to his current status as a mountain running stalwart based in Telluride, Colorado, Becker shares the twists and turns of his remarkable journey. His candid discussion about nearly undergoing double Achilles surgery before finding an alternative path to recovery offers hope to anyone dealing with persistent injuries. "Health is really a lot more important than hitting a number of run miles in the week," he explains, detailing how cross-training on the bike and skis has allowed him to maintain world-class fitness despite sometimes running zero miles per week.Perhaps most fascinating is Becker's thoughtful perspective on the sponsorship world, where he's remained largely on the outside looking in despite impressive results like winning the Kodiak 50K and numerous podium finishes at prestigious events. His reflections on what brands truly value—and whether consistency might sometimes be less marketable than dramatic breakthroughs—provide valuable insight for athletes navigating today's complex landscape. As he looks ahead to potentially tackling the Leadville 100 and continuing to compete at the highest level, Becker's story reminds us that sometimes the most impressive athletic achievements aren't just the victories, but the relentless pursuit of excellence despite significant obstacles.Whether you're dealing with injuries, questioning your path in endurance sports, or simply appreciate stories of quiet determination, this conversation will leave you with new perspectives on what it means to succeed on your own terms in the mountains. Join us for this deep dive with one of trail running's most respected and resilient competitors.Follow Ryan on IG - @r_beckzFollow James on IG - @jameslaurielloFollow the Steep Stuff Podcast on IG - @steepstuff_podThis episode was brought to you by Ultimate Direction - use code steepstuffpod for 25% off your next order on Ultimatedirection.com

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Noticias 5-12-25