Podcasts about timber ridge

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.WhoTyler Fairbank, General Manager of Jiminy Peak, Massachusetts and CEO of Fairbank GroupRecorded onFebruary 10, 2025 and March 7, 2025About Fairbank GroupFrom their website:The Fairbank Group is driven to build things to last – not only our businesses but the relationships and partnerships that stand behind them. Since 2008, we have been expanding our eclectic portfolio of businesses. This portfolio includes three resorts—Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort, Cranmore Mountain Resort, and Bromley Mountain Ski Resort—and real estate development at all three resorts, in addition to a renewable energy development company, EOS Ventures, and a technology company, Snowgun Technology.About Jiminy PeakClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Fairbank Group, which also owns Cranmore and operates Bromley (see breakdowns below)Located in: Hancock, MassachusettsYear founded: 1948Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: 2 days, with blackouts* Uphill New EnglandClosest neighboring ski areas: Bousquet (:27), Catamount (:49), Butternut (:51), Otis Ridge (:54), Berkshire East (:58), Willard (1:02)Base elevation: 1,230 feetSummit elevation: 2,380 feetVertical drop: 1,150 feetSkiable acres: 167.4Average annual snowfall: 100 inchesTrail count: 42Lift count: 9 (1 six-pack, 2 fixed-grip quads, 3 triples, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Jiminy Peak's lift fleet)About CranmoreClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Fairbank GroupLocated in: North Conway, New HampshireYear founded: 1937Pass affiliations: * Ikon Pass: 2 days, with blackouts* Uphill New EnglandClosest neighboring ski areas: Attitash (:16), Black Mountain (:18), King Pine (:28), Wildcat (:28), Pleasant Mountain (:33), Bretton Woods (:42)Base elevation: 800 feetSummit elevation: 2,000 feetVertical drop: 1,200 feetSkiable Acres: 170 Average annual snowfall: 80 inchesTrail count: 56 (15 most difficult, 25 intermediate, 16 easier)Lift count: 7 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Cranmore's lift fleet)About BromleyClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The estate of Joseph O'DonnellOperated by: The Fairbank GroupPass affiliations: Uphill New EnglandLocated in: Peru, VermontClosest neighboring ski areas: Magic Mountain (14 minutes), Stratton (19 minutes)Base elevation: 1,950 feetSummit elevation: 3,284 feetVertical drop: 1,334 feetSkiable Acres: 300Average annual snowfall: 145 inchesTrail count: 47 (31% black, 37% intermediate, 32% beginner)Lift count: 9 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 4 doubles, 1 T-bar, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Bromley's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himI don't particularly enjoy riding six-passenger chairlifts. Too many people, up to five of whom are not me. Lacking a competent queue-management squad, chairs rise in loads of twos and threes above swarming lift mazes. If you're skiing the West, lowering the bar is practically an act of war. It's all so tedious. Given the option – Hunter, Winter Park, Camelback – I'll hop the parallel two-seater just to avoid the drama.I don't like six-packs, but I sure am impressed by them. Sixers are the chairlift equivalent of a two-story Escalade, or a house with its own private Taco Bell, or a 14-lane expressway. Like damn there's some cash floating around this joint.Sixers are common these days: America is home to 107 of them. But that wasn't always so. Thirty-two of these lifts came online in just the past three years. Boyne Mountain, Michigan built the first American six-pack in 1992, and for three years, it was the only such lift in the nation (and don't think they didn't spend every second reminding us of it). The next sixer rose at Stratton, in 1995, but 18 of the next 19 were built in the West. In 2000, Jiminy Peak demolished a Riblet double and dropped the Berkshire Express in its place.For 26 years, Jiminy Peak has owned the only sixer in the State of Massachusetts (Wachusett will build the second this summer). Even as they multiply, the six-pack remains a potent small-mountain status symbol: Vail owns 31 or them, Alterra 30. Only 10 independents spin one. Sixers are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, difficult to manage. To build such a machine is to declare: we are different, we can handle this, this belongs here and so does your money.Sixty years ago, Jiminy Peak was a rump among a hundred poking out of the Berkshires. It would have been impossible to tell, in 1965, which among these many would succeed. Plenty of good ski areas failed since. Jiminy is among the last mountains standing, a survival-of-the-fittest tale punctuated, at the turn of the century, by the erecting of a super lift that was impossible to look away from. That neighboring Brodie, taller and equal-ish in size to Jiminy, shuttered permanently two years later, after a 62-year run as a New England staple, was probably not a coincidence (yes, I'm aware that the Fairbanks themselves bought and closed Brodie). Jiminy had planted its 2,800-skier-per-hour flag on the block, and everyone noticed and no one could compete.The Berkshire Express is not the only reason Jiminy Peak thrives in a 21st century New England ski scene defined by big companies, big passes, and big crowds. But it's the best single emblem of a keep-moving philosophy that, over many decades, transformed a rust-bucket ski area into a glimmering ski resort. That meant snowmaking before snowmaking was cool, building places to stay on the mountain in a region of day-drivers, propping a wind turbine on the ridge to offset dependence on the energy grid.Non-ski media are determined to describe America's lift-served skiing evolution in terms of climate change, pointing to the shrinking number of ski areas since the era when any farmer with a backyard haystack and a spare tractor engine could run skiers uphill for a nickel. But this is a lazy narrative (America offers a lot more skiing now than it did 30 years ago). Most American ski areas – perhaps none – have failed explicitly because of climate change. At least not yet. Most failed because running a ski area is hard and most people are bad at it. Jiminy, once surrounded by competitors, now stands alone. Why? That's what the world needs to understand.What we talked aboutThe impact of Cranmore's new Fairbank Lodge; analyzing Jiminy's village-building past to consider Cranmore's future; Bromley post-Joe O'Donnell (RIP); Joe's legacy – “just an incredible person, great guy”; taking the long view; growing up at Jiminy Peak in the wild 1970s; Brian Fairbank's legacy building Jiminy Peak – with him, “anything is possible”; how Tyler ended up leading the company when he at one time had “no intention of coming back into the ski business”; growing Fairbank Group around Jiminy; surviving and recovering from a stroke – “I had this thing growing in me my entire life that I didn't realize”; carrying on the family legacy; why Jiminy and Cranmore joined the Ikon Pass as two-day partners, and whether either mountain could join as full partners; why Bromley didn't join Ikon; the importance of New York City to Jiminy Peak and Boston to Cranmore; why the ski areas won't be direct-to-lift with Ikon right away; are the Fairbank resorts for sale?; would Fairbank buy more?; the competitive advantage of on-mountain lodging; potential Jiminy lift upgrades; why the Berkshire Express sixer doesn't need an upgrade of the sort that Cranmore and Bromley's high-speed quads received; why Jiminy runs a fixed-grip triple parallel to its high-speed six; where the mountain's next high-speed lift could run; and Jiminy Peak expansion potential.What I got wrong* I said that I didn't know which year Jiminy Peak installed their wind turbine – it was 2007. Berkshire East built its machine in 2010 and activated it in 2011.* When we recorded the Ikon addendum, Cranmore and Jiminy Peak had not yet offered any sort of Ikon Pass discount to their passholders, but Tyler promised details were coming. Passholders can now find offers for a discounted ($229) three-day Ikon Session pass on either ski area's website.Why now was a good time for this interviewFor all the Fairbanks' vision in growing Jiminy from tumbleweed into redwood, sprinting ahead on snowmaking and chairlifts and energy, the company has been slow to acknowledge the largest shift in the consumer-to-resort pipeline this century: the shift to multi-mountain passes. Even their own three mountains share just one day each for sister resort passholders.That's not the same thing as saying they've been wrong to sit and wait. But it's interesting. Why has this company that's been so far ahead for so long been so reluctant to take part in what looks to be a permanent re-ordering of the industry? And why have they continued to succeed in spite of this no-thanks posture?Or so my thinking went when Tyler and I scheduled this podcast a couple of months ago. Then Jiminy, along with sister resort Cranmore, joined the Ikon Pass. Yes, just as a two-day partner in what Alterra is labeling a “bonus” tier, and only on the full Ikon Pass, and with blackout dates. But let's be clear about this: Jiminy Peak and Cranmore joined the Ikon Pass.Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), for me and my Pangea-paced editing process, we'd recorded the bulk of this conversation several weeks before the Ikon announcement. So we recorded a post-Ikon addendum, which explains the mid-podcast wardrobe change.It will be fascinating to observe, over the next decade, how the remaining holdouts manage themselves in the Epkon-atronic world that is not going away. Will big indies such as Jackson Hole and Alta eventually eject the pass masses as a sort of high-class differentiator? Will large regional standouts like Whitefish and Bretton Woods and Baker and Wolf Creek continue to stand alone in a churning sea of joiners? Or will some economic cataclysm force a re-ordering of the companies piloting these warships, splintering them into woodchips and resetting us back to some version of 1995, where just about every ski area was its own ski area doing battle against every other ski area?I have guesses, but no answers, and no power to do anything, really, other than to watch and ask questions of the Jiminy Peaks of the world as they decide where they fit, and how, and when, into this bizarre and rapidly changing lift-served skiing world that we're all gliding through.Why you should ski Jiminy PeakThere are several versions of each ski area. The trailmap version, cartoonish and exaggerated, designed to be evocative as well as practical, a guide to reality that must bend it to help us understand it. There's the Google Maps version, which straightens out the trailmap but ditches the order and context – it is often difficult to tell, from satellite view, which end of the hill is the top or the bottom, where the lifts run, whether you can walk to the lifts from the parking lot or need to shuttlebus it. There is the oral version, the one you hear from fellow chairlift riders at other resorts, describing their home mountain or an epic day or a secret trail, a vibe or a custom, the thing that makes the place a thing.But the only version of a ski area that matters, in the end, is the lived one. And no amount of research or speculation or YouTube-Insta vibing can equal that. Each mountain is what each mountain is. Determining why they are that way and how that came to be is about 80 percent of why I started this newsletter. And the best mountains, I've found, after skiing hundreds of them, are the ones that surprise you.On paper, Jiminy Peak does not look that interesting: a broad ridge, flat across, a bunch of parallel lifts and runs, a lot of too-wide-and-straight-down. But this is not how it skis. Break left off the sixer and it's go-forever, line after line dropping steeply off a ridge. Down there, somewhere, the Widow White's lift, a doorway to a mini ski area all its own, shooting off, like Supreme at Alta, into a twisting little realm with the long flat runout. Go right off the six-pack and skiers find something else, a ski area from a different time, a trunk trail wrapping gently above a maze of twisting, tangled snow-streets, dozens of potential routes unfolding, gentle but interesting, long enough to inspire a sense of quest and journey.This is not the mountain for everyone. I wish Jiminy had more glades, that they would spin more lifts more often as an alternative to Six-Pack City. But we have Berkshire East for cowboy skiing. Jiminy, an Albany backyarder that considers itself worthy of a $1,051 adult season pass, is aiming for something more buffed and burnished than a typical high-volume city bump. Jiminy doesn't want to be Mountain Creek, NYC's hedonistic free-for-all, or Wachusett, Boston's high-volume, low-cost burner. It's aiming for a little more resort, a little more country club, a little more it-costs-what-it-costs sorry-not-sorry attitude (with a side of swarming kids).Podcast NotesOn other Fairbank Group podcastsOn Joe O'DonnellA 2005 Harvard Business School profile of O'Donnell, who passed away on Jan. 7, 2024 at age 79, gives a nice overview of his character and career:When Joe O'Donnell talks, people listen. Last spring, one magazine ranked him the most powerful person in Boston-head of a privately held, billion-dollar company he built practically from scratch; friend and advisor to politicians of both parties, from Boston's Democratic Mayor Tom Menino to the Bay State's Republican Governor Mitt Romney (MBA '74); member of Harvard's Board of Overseers; and benefactor to many good causes. Not bad for a "cop's kid" who grew up nearby in the blue-collar city of Everett.Read the rest…On Joe O'Donnell “probably owning more ski areas than anyone alive”I wasn't aware of the extent of Joe O'Donnell's deep legacy of ski area ownership, but New England Ski History documents his stints as at least part owner of Magic Mountain VT, Timber Ridge (now defunct, next-door to and still skiable from Magic), Jiminy, Mt. Tom (defunct), and Brodie (also lost). He also served Sugar Mountain, North Carolina as a vendor for years.On stroke survivalKnow how to BE FAST by spending five second staring at this:More, from the CDC.On Jiminy joining the Ikon PassI covered this extensively here: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

It was an issue many thought had been settled, but the debate over open-pit mining in Alberta's Eastern Slopes has been reignited. In 2020, public outcry forced the province to put a moratorium on nearly all new coal exploration and development in the Eastern Slopes. However, Alberta's energy minister, Brian Jean, lifted the moratorium last month to help reduce regulatory confusion around coal mining. Rancher Kelly Hall, owner of the Timber Ridge conservation site west of Nanton, worries about the potential contamination of the water supply if mining proceeds. "We're extremely concerned because of the health risks that are involved," says Hall. "Selenium and other heavy metals like arsenic could be present in our water system."

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 5. It dropped for free subscribers on April 12. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoBruce Schmidt, Vice President and General Manager at Okemo Mountain Resort, VermontRecorded onFeb. 27, 2024 (apologies for the delay)About OkemoClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Ludlow, VermontYear founded: 1956Pass affiliations:* Epic Pass: unlimited access* Epic Local Pass: unlimited access* Epic Northeast Value Pass: unlimited access with holiday blackouts* Epic Northeast Midweek Pass: unlimited weekday access with holiday blackouts* Epic Day Pass: access on “all resorts” and “32 resorts” tiersClosest neighboring ski areas: Killington (:22), Magic (:26), Bromley (:31), Pico (:32), Ascutney (:33), Bellows Falls (:37), Stratton (:41), Saskadena Six (:44), Ski Quechee (:48), Storrs Hill (:52), Whaleback (:56), Mount Snow (1:04), Hermitage Club (1:10)Base elevation: 1,144 feetSummit elevation: 3,344 feetVertical drop: 2,200 feetSkiable Acres: 632Average annual snowfall: 120 inches per On The Snow; Vail claims 200.Trail count: 121 (30% advanced, 37% intermediate, 33% beginner) + 6 terrain parksLift count: 20 (2 six-packs, 4 high-speed quads, 5 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples, 1 platter, 6 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Okemo's lift fleet)View historic Okemo trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himWhether by plan or by happenstance, Vail ended up with a nearly perfect mix of Vermont ski areas. Stowe is the beater, with the big snows and the nasty trails and the amazing skiers and the Uphill Bros and the glades and the Front Four. Mount Snow is the sixth borough of New York City (but so is Florida and so is Stratton), big and loud and busy and bursting and messy, with a whole mountain carved out for a terrain park and big-drinking, good-timing crowds, as many skiers at the après, it can seem, as on the mountain. And Okemo is something that's kind of in-between and kind of totally different, at once tame and lively, a placid family redoubt that still bursts with that frantic Northeast energy.It's a hard place to define, and statistics won't do it. Line up Vermont's ski areas on a table, and Okemo looks bigger and better than Sugarbush or Stowe or Jay Peak. It isn't, of course, as anyone in the region will tell you. The place doesn't require the guts that its northern neighbors demand. It's big but not bossy. More of a stroll than a run, a good-timer cruising the Friday night streets in a drop-top low-rider, in no hurry at all to do anything other than this. It's like skiing Vermont without having to tangle with Vermont, like boating on a lake with no waves.Because of this unusual profile, New England skiers either adore Okemo or won't go anywhere near it. It is a singular place in a dense ski state that is the heart of a dense ski region. Okemo isn't particularly convenient to get to, isn't particularly snowy by Vermont standards, and isn't particularly interesting from a terrain point of view. And yet, it is, historically, the second-busiest ski area in the Northeast (after Killington). There is something there that works. Or at least, that has worked historically, as the place budded and flourished in the Mueller family's 36-year reign.But it's Vail's mountain now, an Epic Pass anchor that's shuffling and adding lifts for the crowds that that membership brings. While the season pass price has dropped, skier expectations have ramped up at Okemo, as they have everywhere in the social-media epoch. The grace that passholders granted the growing family-owned mountain has evaporated. Everyone's pulling the pins on their hand grenades and flinging them toward Broomfield every time a Saturday liftline materializes. It's not really fair, but it's how the world is right now. The least I can do is get their side of it.What we talked aboutSummer storm damage to Ludlow and Okemo; the resort helping the town; Vermont's select boards; New England resilience; Vail's My Epic Promise fund and how it helped employees post-storm; reminiscing on old-school Okemo and its Poma forest; the Muellers arrive; the impact of Jackson-Gore; how and why Okemo grew from inconsequential local bump to major New England ski hill; how Okemo expanded within the confines of Vermont's Act 250; Vail buys the mountain, along with Sunapee and Crested Butte; the Muellers' legacy; a Sunapee interlude; Vail adjusting to New England operations; mythbusters: snowmaking edition; the Great Chairlift Switcheroo of 2021; why Okemo didn't place bubbles on the Quantum 6; why Okemo's lift fleet is entirely made up of Poma machines; where Okemo could add a lift to the existing trail network; expansion potential; does Okemo groom too much?; glade expansion?; that baller snowmaking system; what happened when Okemo's season pass price dropped by more than $1,000; is Epic Pass access too loose at Okemo?; how to crowd-dodge; the Epic Northeast Midweek Pass; limiting lift ticket sales; and skyrocketing lift ticket prices.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewBruce Schmidt first collected a paycheck from Okemo in the late 1970s. That was a different mountain, a different ski industry, a different world. Pomas and double chairs and primitive snowmaking and mountain-man gear and no internet. It was grittier and colder, in the sense that snowpants and ski coats and heated gloves and socks were not so ubiquitous and affordable and high-quality as they are today. Skiing, particularly in New England, required a hardiness, a tolerance for cold and subtle pain that modernity has slowly shuffled out of the skier profile.Different as it was, that age of 210s and rear-wheel drive rigs was not that long ago, and Schmidt has experienced it as one continuous story. That sort of institutional and epochal tenure is rare, especially at one ski area, especially at one that has evolved as much as Okemo. Imagine if you showed up at surface-lift Hickory and watched it transform, over four decades, into sprawling Gore. That's essentially what Schmidt lived – and helped drive – at Okemo.That hardly ever happens. Small ski areas tend to stay small. Expansion is hard and expensive and, in Vermont especially, bureaucratically challenging. And yet little Okemo, wriggling in Killington's shadow, lodged between the state's southern and northern snow pockets, up past Mount Snow and Stratton but not so far from might-as-well-keep-driving Sugarbush and Mad River Glen, became, somehow, the fourth-largest ski area in America's fourth-largest ski state by skier visits (after Colorado, California, and Utah, typically).The Mueller family, which owned the ski area from 1982 until they sold it to Vail Resorts in 2018, were, of course, the visionaries and financiers behind that growth, the likes of which we will probably never witness in New England again. But as Vail's roots grow deeper and they make these mountains their own, that legacy will fade, if not necessarily dim. It was important, then, to download that part of Schmidt's brain to the internet, to make sure that story survived the big groom of time.What I got wrongI said in the intro that Bruce started at Okemo in 1987. He actually started in the late ‘70s and worked there on and off for several years, as he explains in the conversation.I said that Okemo's lift fleet was “100 percent Poma.” This is not exactly right, as some of the lifts are officially branded Leitner-Poma. I'm also not certain of the make of Okemo's carpets.I noted in the intro that Okemo was Vail's second-largest eastern mountain. It is actually their largest by skiable acreage (though Stowe feels larger to me, given the expansive unmarked but very skiable glades stuffed between nearly every trail). Here's a snapshot of Vail's entire portfolio for reference:Why you should ski OkemoThe first time I skied Okemo was 2007. I rode a 3:45 a.m. ski bus north from Manhattan. I remember thinking three things: 1) wow, this place is big; 2) wow, there are a lot of kids here; and 3) do they seriously groom every goddamn trail every single night?This was at the height of my off-piste mania. I'm not a great carver, especially after the cord gets chopped up and scratchy sublayers emerge. I prefer to maneuver, at a moderate pace, over terrain, meaning bumps or glades (which are basically bumps in the trees, at least on a typical Vermont day). It's more fun and interesting than blasting down wide-open, beaten-up groomers filled with New Yorkers.But wide-open, beaten-up groomers filled with New Yorkers is what Okemo is. At the time, I had no understanding of freeze-thaw cycles, of subtle snowfall differentials between nearby ski areas, of the demographic profile that drove such tight slope management (read: mediocre big-city skiers with no interest in anything other than getting to the bottom still breathing). All I knew was that for me, at the time, this wasn't what I was looking for.But what you want as a skier evolves over time. I still like terrain, and Okemo still doesn't have as much as I'd like. If that's what you need, take your Epic Pass to Stowe – they have plenty. But what I also like is skiing with my kids, skiing with my wife, morning cord laps off fast lifts, long meandering scenic routes to rest up between bumpers, exploring mountains border to border, getting a little lost among multiple base areas, big views, moderate pitches, and less-aggressive skiers (ride the K1 gondy or Superstar chair at Killington and then take the Sunburst Six at Okemo; the toning down of energy and attitude is palpable).Okemo not only has all that – it is all that. If that makes sense. This is one of the best family ski areas in the country. It feels like – it is – a supersized version of the busy ski areas in Massachusetts or Connecticut, a giant Wachusett or Catamount or Mohawk Mountain: unintimidating, wide-open, freewheeling, and quirky in its own overgroomed, overbusy way.If you hit it right, Okemo will give you bumps and glades and even, on a weekday, wide-open trails all to yourself. But that's not the typical Okemo experience, and it's not the point of the place. This is New England's friendly giant, a meandering mass of humanity, grinning and gripping and slightly frazzled, a disjointed but united-by-snow collective that, together, define Okemo as much as the mountain itself.Okemo on a stormy day in November 2021. Video by Stuart Winchester.Podcast NotesOn last summer's flooding in Okemo and LudlowI mean yowza:I hate to keep harping on New Englander's work ethic, but…I reset the same “dang New England you're badass” narrative that I brought up with Sunday River GM Brian Heon on the podcast a few weeks ago. I'm not from New England and I've never even lived there, and I'm from a region with the same sort of get-after-it problem-solver mentality and work ethic. But I'm still amazed at how every time New England gets smashed over the head with a frying pan, they just look annoyed for five minutes, put on a Band-Aid, and keep moving.On the fate of Plymouth, Bromley, Ascutney, and Plymouth/RoundtopSchmidt and I discuss several Vermont ski areas whose circa-1980s size rivaled that of Okemo's at the time. Here, for context, was Okemo before the Muellers arrived in 1982:It's hard to tell from the trailmap, but only four of the 10 or so lifts shown above were chairlifts. Today, Okemo has grown into Vermont's fourth-largest ski area by skiable acres (though I have reason to doubt the accuracy of the ski resort's self-reported tallies; Stowe, Sugarbush, and Jay all ski at least as big as Okemo, but officially report fewer skiable acres).Anyway, in the early ‘80s, Magic, Bromley, Ascutney, and Plymouth/Roundtop were approximate peers to Okemo. Bromley ran mostly chairlifts, and has evolved the most of this group, but it is far smaller than Okemo today. The mountain has always been well-managed, so it wasn't entirely fair to stick it in with this group, but the context is important here: Bromley today is roughly the same size that it was 40 years ago:Ascutney sold a 1,400-plus-foot vertical drop and a thick trail network in this 1982 trailmap. But the place went bust and sold its high-speed quad in 2012 (it's now the main lift at Vail-owned Crotched). Today, Ascutney consists of a lower-mountain ropetow and T-bar that rises just 450 vertical feet (you can still skin or hike the upper mountain trails).Magic, in the early ‘80s, was basically the same size it is today:A merger with now-private and liftless (but still skiable from Magic), Timber Ridge briefly supersized the place before it went out of business for a large part of the ‘90s:When Magic recovered from its long shutdown, it reverted to its historic footprint (with extensive glade skiing that either didn't exist or went unmarked in the ‘80s):And then there was Round Top, a 1,300-foot sometime private ski area also known as Bear Creek and Plymouth Notch. The area has sat idle since 2018, though the chairlifts are, last I checked, intact, and it can be yours for $6.5 million.Seriously you can buy it:On Okemo's expansion progressionThe Muellers' improbable transformation of Okemo into a New England Major happened in big chunks. First, they opened the Solitude area for the 1987-88 ski season:In 1994, South Face, far looker's left, opened a new pod of steeper runs toward the summit:The small Morningstar pod, located in the lower-right-hand corner of the trailmap, opened in 1995, mostly to serve a real estate development:The most dramatic change came in 2003, when Okemo opened the sprawling Jackson Gore complex:On Vermont Act 250It's nearly impossible to discuss Vermont skiing without referencing the infamous Act 250, which is, according to the official state website:…Vermont's land use and development law, enacted in 1970 at a time when Vermont was undergoing significant development pressure. The law provides a public, quasi-judicial process for reviewing and managing the environmental, social and fiscal consequences of major subdivisions and developments in Vermont. It assures that larger developments complement Vermont's unique landscape, economy and community needs. One of the strengths of Act 250 is the access it provides to neighbors and other interested parties to participate in the development review process. Applicants often work with neighbors, municipalities, state agencies and other interested groups to address concerns raised by a proposed development, resolving issues and mitigating impacts before a permit application is filed.As onerous as navigating Act 250 can seem, there is significantly more slopeside development in Vermont than in any other Northeastern state, and its large resorts are certainly more developed than anything in build-nothing New York.On the CNL lease structureSchmidt refers to “the CNL lease structure.” Here's what he was talking about: a company called CNL Lifestyle Properties once had a slick sideline in purchasing ski areas and leasing them back to the former owners. New England Ski History explains the historical context:As the banking crisis unfolded, many ski areas across the country transferred their debt into Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). On December 5, 2008, Triple Peaks transferred its privately held Mt. Sunapee assets to CNL Lifestyle Properties, Inc.. Triple Peaks then entered into a long agreement with CNL to maintain operational control.The site put together a timeline of the various resorts CNL once owned, including, from 2008 to '17, Okemo:On the proximity of Okemo to Mount Sunapee Though Okemo and Sunapee sit in different states, they're only an hour apart:I snapped this pic of Okemo from the Sunapee summit a couple years ago (super zoomed in):On Mount Sunapee's ownershipThe State of New Hampshire owns two ski areas: Cannon Mountain and Mount Sunapee. In 1998, after decades of debate on the subject, the state leased the latter to the Muellers. When Vail acquired Triple Peaks (Okemo, Sunapee, and Crested Butte), in 2019, they either inherited or renegotiated the lease. For whatever reason, the state continues to manage Cannon as part of Franconia Notch State Park. A portion of the lease revenue that Vail pays the state each year is earmarked for capital improvements at Cannon.On glades at Stratton and KillingtonOkemo's trail footprint is light on glades compared to many of the large Vermont ski areas. I point to Killington and Stratton, in particular, in the podcast, mostly due to their proximity to Okemo (every Vermont ski area from Sugarbush on north has a vast glade network). Though it's just 20 minutes away, Killington rakes in around double Okemo's snowfall in an average winter, and the ski area maintains glades all over the mountain:Stratton, 40 minutes south, also averages more snow than Okemo and is a sneaky good glade mountain. It's easy to spend all day in the trees there when the snow's deep (and it's deep more often than you might think):On Okemo's historic pass pricesWe can have mountain-to-mountain debates over the impact Vail Resorts has on the resorts it purchases, but one thing that's inarguable: season pass prices typically plummet when the company acquires ski areas. Check out New England Ski History's itemization of Okemo pass prices over the years – that huge drop in 2018-19 represents the ownership shift and that year's cost of an Epic Local Pass (lift ticket and pass prices listed below are the maximum for that season):But, yeah, those day-ticket prices. Yikes.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing all year long. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 25/100 in 2024, and number 525 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Recorded at EThOs Small Business Incubator and Co-working Spaces in Marion, Illinois. https://members.ethosmarion.org/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST Our guest: https://timberridgeoutpost.com/

On this episode Barry highlights two more nonprofits that have applied for Chain of Checks grants.  He interviews Juli Ferrell with Timber Ridge School and Jenny Callis of the Highland Food Pantry. There's also a sweet, true Christmas story to share as well as welcoming the Winter Solstice and Festivus (for the rest of us).     

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 3. It dropped for free subscribers on April 6. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoDavid Dziuban, Owner and General Manager of Whitecap Mountains, WisconsinRecorded onMarch 13, 2023About Whitecap MountainsClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: David DziubanLocated in: Upson, WisconsinYear founded: 1964Pass affiliations: Indy Pass Allied PartnerReciprocal partners: Whitecap lists the following partners on its season pass page - it is not clear what the benefit is for each mountain: Grand Targhee, Wild Mountain, Mount Bohemia, Sunlight, Camp 10, Lee Canyon, Arizona Snowbowl, Lee Canyon, Mont du Lac.Closest neighboring ski areas: Mt. Zion (28 minutes), Big Powderhorn (34 minutes), Snowriver (40 minutes), Mt. Ashwabay (1 hour, 15 minutes), Porcupine Mountains (1 hour, 21 minutes)Base elevation: 1,295 feetSummit elevation: 1,750 feetVertical drop: 455 feetSkiable Acres: 400 acresAverage annual snowfall: 200 inchesTrail count: 42 (4 expert, 12 advanced, 12 intermediate, 14 beginner)Lift count: 6 (4 doubles, 1 triple, 1 carpet) – the North Pole-South Pole double functions as two separate chairs, even though it is one long continuous lift. Skiers are not allowed to ride on the middle section, which passes over a long valley. The carpet was not yet functional for the 2022-23 ski season. Whitecap has an additional triple chair that is currently dormant, but which Dziuban intends to resurrect.Here is Whitecap's current trailmap:However, I far prefer this older version, which is my favorite trailmap of all time:Why I interviewed himOur ski areas exist where they do for a reason. That rare mix of hills, reliable precipitation, wintertime cold, a near-enough population, a road to get there. Slopes steep enough but not too steep. Water nearby. Someone with enough cash to run chairlifts up the incline and enough brains to put the whole operation together into a viable business.There are fewer geographic bullseyes of this sort than you may suppose. Look carefully at the map of U.S. ski areas – they are mostly clustered around a few-dozen rarified climate zones. Lake-effect bands or mountain spines or high-altitude nests resting at a desert's edge. Several dozen have been force-born around large cold-weather cities, of course, bulldozed into existence where cold and water abound but hills are lacking.We all know the epicenters upon which Epic and Ikon have anchored their empires: the Wasatch, Tahoe, the I-70 corridor, the Vermont Spine. But smaller, less celebrated-by-the-masses clusters dot the continent. The Interstate 90 corridor from 49 Degrees North and Mt. Spokane through Schweitzer, Silver Mountain, and Lookout Pass. Mt. Hood, one mountain that is home to four ski areas. Northern New Mexico, where half a dozen ski areas surround the fabled Taos.One of the most reliable of these micro-snowzones is Big Snow Country, a hilly wilderness straddling the border of northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. There, seated west-to-east, are four – once five – ski areas: Whitecap Mountains, Mt. Zion, Big Powderhorn, and Snowriver, which is a union of the once-separate Indianhead and Blackjack ski areas (now known as Jackson Creek Summit and Black River Basin). Seated fewer than a dozen miles above them, brooding and enormous, is Lake Superior, one of the most reliable lake-effect snowmachines on the planet:So much of Midwest skiing is funky and improvisational, a tinkerer's paradise, where the same spirit that animated 20th century factories willed one of the world's great ski cultures into existence. There are not many hills around Milwaukee or Minneapolis or Detroit, but there are plenty of ski areas. The people of the Midwest do as they please. But the ski areas of Big Snow Country are different. There is so much skiing here because the terrain and the climate seemed sculpted exactly for it.As a result, the skiing is genuinely sublime. The great tension here is the opposite problem that most of the region's mobbed ski areas face: great skiing, too few skiers. Big Snow Country is far from pretty much everything. Four hours from Minneapolis, five from Milwaukee, six-and-a-half from Chicago. Residents of those cities can reach Park City or Keystone faster than their Midwest neighbors.So what to do? For decades, these four (or five), ski areas have struggled to pin themselves to skiers' to-do lists. Mt. Zion, the smallest of the bunch, is a protectorate of Gogebic Community College, which hosts one of the nation's only programs on ski area management. Indianhead and Blackjack cycled through generations of owners and were finally combined and then sold, last year, to Charles Skinner, owner of the sprawling Granite Peak and Lutsen ski areas in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Skinner, who transformed Granite from a faltering backwater into one of the Midwest's top ski areas, is already slinging a high-speed sixer up the hillside at Snowriver and will surely connect the two ski areas within a few years. That leaves Big Powderhorn and Whitecap with a problem.How to respond? Powderhorn has at least enjoyed stable management and a loyal customer base. Whitecap, however, has struggled. Decades of deferred maintenance pushed skiers away. A 2019 lodge fire erased a crucial piece of infrastructure that has yet to be replaced. The advent, in the region, of the Epic, Ikon, and Indy Passes – not to mention a modernized Granite Peak, two hours closer to pretty much everything, and an unhinged and dirt-cheap Mount Bohemia, not so far to the north – has only clouded Whitecap's market position.David Dziuban arrived at the ski area in 2016, and slowly took control over the next few years. It was a period of personal tragedy for him. As soon as he took full ownership, the fire hit. It would have been enough to make anyone surrender. But Dziuban has found in Whitecap both salvation and mission. This place, so naturally blessed, has the bones to be one of the Midwest's great ski areas. But it needs a push, a pull, a shove into our current moment. Dziuban is the guy to provide all three.What we talked aboutA snowy Wisconsin winter; Whitecap's unique trail footprint; the great Midwest ski factory; a single sentence in a Wilmot liftline that changed Dziuban's life; a wild scheme to score a first job as a snowmaker at Plumtree, Illinois; turning down a job at Killington to work at scrappy Magic Mountain; Magic in the ‘80s; making Magic's Timberside connection; Mt. Tom, Massachusetts; homemade snowmaking; Elk Mountain, the hidden gem of Pennsylvania; a rigged splice gone wrong; Whitecap, lost in the wilderness; first impressions of a run-down and lightly used Whitecap; the long and convoluted process of taking ownership of the resort; balancing personal trauma and loss with the mission of revitalizing the ski area; taming the local homeowners' entitlement; fire levels the lodge; why Whitecap opened the next day and why it was so vital that it did; plans for a new lodge; Whitecap's huge development potential; why the ski area hasn't set up the new conveyor lift it purchased last year; snowmaking; assessing Whitecap's unique lift fleet; where we could see a new lift at Whitecap; thoughts on the long chair (North Pole/South Pole); getting the CTEC lift running again; “I want to remain affordable to everybody”; why Whitecap launched a $295 (now $325) season pass and how that product has been selling; the surprise response from a one-day season passholder reciprocal deal with Mount Bohemia; thoughts on the Indy Pass and the Allied program; and that Whitecap aura.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewNot to repeat myself, but allow me to repeat myself. A skier living in the Upper Midwest currently enjoys the following options for full-season skiing:* Purchase a $676 Epic Local Pass, which delivers turns all season at Wilmot or Afton Alps, plus basically unlimited options for runs west to Colorado, Utah, Tahoe, and Whistler.* Purchase an $829 Ikon Pass and forgo Midwest skiing altogether, hopping frequent flights to Denver and Salt Lake City from major hub airport Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP).* Purchase a $329 Indy Pass for two days each at major ski areas across the region, including some of the best and most-developed in Minnesota and Wisconsin: Granite Peak, Lutsen, Spirit Mountain, and, perhaps most significantly for Whitecap, its neighbors Big Powderhorn and Snowriver (both of which are in Michigan).* Purchase a local season pass at any of dozens of ski areas that sit within 30 minutes of downtown Minneapolis, Madison, or Milwaukee.* Scratch the gnar itch with a $109 ($99 if you can forego Saturdays), season pass to Mount Bohemia, the ungroomed natural-snow mecca hanging off the top of the UP. The pass includes reciprocal days at ski areas throughout the Midwest and the West.So, what does Whitecap do? First, control what you can: fix the beat-up lift fleet, improvise a lodge, bring stability to its operations. Dziuban has checked off that list. Second, modernize: rebuild the lodge, build out snowmaking (the current system consists of fewer than half a dozen guns), re-activate the mothballed triple chair. All of this is in progress. But there's something else: how does a ski area set itself apart in a region dense with ski areas but not with skiers? What is the story it's going to tell? Dziuban has a good one, and it's one every skier in the region ought to hear.What I got wrongI noted that Whitecap had “360-degree exposure,” when it in fact has slopes primarily facing just three directions: west, north, and south.Why you should ski Whitecap MountainsIn February, I flew into Minneapolis for a five-day Upper Midwest ski tour, making me perhaps the only person this century to travel from New York to Minnesota on purpose to ski. At least that was my conclusion from multiple chairlift conversations with befuddled locals. I swung through 11 ski areas: Welch Village, Afton Alps, Granite Peak, Nordic Mountain, Snowriver, Big Powderhorn, Mt. Zion, Whitecap, Spirit Mountain, Trollhaugen, and Buck Hill. Each was unique and memorable, in the way that every ski area is. But one resonated with me more than the others: Whitecap.I have visited hundreds of ski areas, all over the world. There is nothing quite like Whitecap. It's an enchanting place. Sprawling and gorgeous. Narrow paths wound through woods, leading into and around broad meadows, glades everywhere, all of it knitted together in a Zelda-like sprawl primed for exploration. While the vertical drop is small, the place is multilayered and complex. It is one of the few ski areas where I have ever felt legitimately lost. I took 27 runs and still didn't see half the place.Also: there was no one else there. Granted, it was a Wednesday. But coverage was excellent: 100 percent open. I skied that day with Jacob, Whitecap's grooming ace, a Telluride refugee who had carpeted a shocking breadth of acreage overnight before meeting me to ski. He kept telling his friends from Colorado that they had to move here, he told me. The pace was slower, and he could afford to live. He'd given up finding anything affordable near Telluride, and had instead commuted in from a desert campervan colony hours away. He'd had enough, come back east, back home, with his campervan and his dog. He didn't see any reason to return to Colorado. Yes, the skiing there is amazing, but the skiing is good here, too, and the stresses of daily life had evaporated. He now lived in the hotel. His commute to the snowcat was a few dozen steps. This was a life that was pleasant, and sustainable. As Western mountain-town life became untenable, places like Big Snow Country, with reliable snow and lower costs for everything, would become more attractive to those who wanted to make skiing central to their lives, he said. I'm not saying you should move to Whitecap. But you should visit. Everyone should ski the Midwest at least once. Just to understand what it is, this machine that churns out so many of the nation's most passionate skiers. And when you do go, make sure Whitecap is on your tour.Podcast NotesOn Plumtree, IllinoisDziuban's ski career began at Plumtree, a 210-vertical-foot landfill bump in Illinois. Here's the 1978 trailmap:On the podcast, I said that I wasn't sure if the place was still operating. Its website states that the ski area is “closed for renovations,” and I believe that has been its status for at least as long as I've tracked season passes nationally (three seasons). I'm trying to confirm that. Even if it does re-open, it looks as though the place is just a residents' amenity for whatever gated community it sits in. Here's a bit more on the joint, per skibum.net:Former public area, Plumtree is now a private club for Lake Carroll property owners, guests, etc. Aging equipment, wide open bowls, decent place. Look up “typical skiing in the Midwest” and you'll find Plumtree Ski Area. Wish there were more Plumtrees open to the general public.On Magic MountainDziuban spent several years at Magic Mountain, Vermont. He was there from the mid-80s to the early ‘90s, a period that included the interlink with the lost Timber Ridge ski area on the backside of Glebe Mountain. Here's what they looked like connected:These days, skiers are still allowed to traverse from Magic over to “Timberside,” which is privately owned, and ski down. They have to find their own way back to Magic, however, as the Timber Ridge lifts are long gone.On the Wine HutFollow the trails skier's left of the Midway double chair, and you'll sweep past the Wine Hut on your way to the loading station. It's one of the Midwest's cooler après joints, though I'll admit that I did not sample the goods on the February Wednesday I stopped in.On the North Pole/South Pole doubleWhitecap is home to one of the most amazing lifts in America - an up-and-over Hall double that serves as two separate lifts - the North Pole double and the South Pole double. Skiers are not allowed to ride across the middle section, which soars more than 125 feet over the meadow between the two top stations - with no restraint bar. I snagged this video standing beneath the midsection:And here's a still pic from the valley floor - note the tower hoisted onto the steel lift:Here's a view looking from the North Pole side across the valley to the South Pole:Going up South Pole:On Whitecap's dormant triple chairA seemingly abandoned lift terminal sits on Whitecap's summit, the head of a skeleton that follows a liftline down the mountain. This lift, said Dziuban, is actually not dead yet. He's already fabricated some parts necessary to restore the 1991 CTEC triple to a functional state, as he explains in the podcast.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 31/100 in 2023, and number 417 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Todd & Craig pre-record this episode leading up to Mother's Day. Fun show filled with special guest calls, complaints, Strains, music and much much more. Timber Ridge Resort is hosting this episode located in beautiful Traverse City Michigan. www.timberridgeresort.net 1-231-942-4880

The Timber Ridge School for adolescent boys received a $5,000 Chain of Checks grant for recreational equipment.  Barry's guests are Derek Unger, CEO, James Rankin, Director of Residential Services and Juli Ferrell, Director of Development.

Hello, my friends! Tonight, we venture to Timber Ridge Cemetery in Rogers, Oklahoma. A spectral boy and his bicycle are said to make their appearance here, along with ghostly orbs. We reach the end of "The Messenger," by Robert W. Chambers. It is truly a thrilling conclusion! Please share our experiences with family and friends, and feel free to contact me on Twitter (@from_graveyard) or via email (from_a_graveyard@yahoo.com). Goodnight, my friends. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/from-a-graveyard/support

Timber Ridge Escapes v. Quality Structures of Arkansas

Oral argument argued before the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on or about 06/16/2021

Steve Berthel is another one of my favorite mid western Telemark skiers that I've met over the years. He grew up primarily in Minnesota where he learned how to ski on the local hills near his house and participated on the local ski team. He also spent many of his winters taking family vacations to Summit County, Colorado where he was able to experience the Rockies. It was during that time that he saw his first Telemark skiers at Monarch Mountain. Then In 1974 he moved to Michigan. He was working at a local ski shop as a tech, skiing Timber Ridge, and was likely the first telemark skier in his area during that time. He was even told several times at different resorts that this type of skiing was not allowed at their hill for safety reasons and he would have to demonstrate his competency prior to being able to ride the Lifts. In the late 1980s he started home brewing beer. He did that for a few years and during that time was introduced to Life Tools, a shop in Green Bay Wisconsin that had started a Telemark festival for the Midwest. They asked him to provide beer for the festival Which continued to be a staple for many years after. He became a professional beer brewer in 1996 and even owned his own brewery The Livery in Benton Harbor, Michigan in the mid-2000s. He currently lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He loves playing pedal steel guitar along with Telemark skiing and every other outdoor activity. 

This is the fourth syndication deal from The VareCo featured on the Denver Real Estate Investing Podcast. In this episode, The VareCo's Terrance Doyle and Ben Davis discuss their latest multi-family acquisition in the Twin Lakes neighborhood of Denver. The property’s poor condition and 50% vacancy rate made this property a candidate for The Value Add Real Estate Company’s portfolio, but a lack of available comps and the location being in a lesser-known neighborhood presented a few speed bumps that had to be navigated along the way. Check out this episode to see how the deal was penciled out by working backward.

http://www.timberidgecustom.com/Don't miss this stuff:Men having feelings. Ete talks to Paul about his ability to make people feel important and cared for. Besides the fact that it's nice to hear a couple of guys willing to get a little vulnerable, there's also an important business application here, which they discuss. Paul likes people and cares about relationships. That genuine regard for other people slides naturally into his business relationships, and informs the way he runs his company.The positive vibes. Paul says that he believes that “Positive energy breeds positive energy.” It's a really great idea and a nice phrase, but the way Paul talks during this interviews makes you believe it's more than that for him. He describes his life so far–his upbringing, his family, his team, his clients, people in general, difficult situations that have come up–with what sounds like genuine love and gratitude. Not to get too sappy, but that's a special thing, and it's something we really enjoyed about this episode.The idea of removing fences. We loved Paul's take on the builder/homeowner relationship. He says he learned early on that “construction and confrontation tend to go hand in hand.” So he worked really hard to change that in his own business. Paul describes the typical construction situation: the owner on one side of the fence with the builder on the other side. When one side wins, the other side loses. That tug of war is at the root of the confrontation mindset. Paul's company seeks to develop a team relationship with “no fence between” themselves and their clients. Their goal from the outset is to find out what the homeowner wants to do and then help them accomplish that within their agreed budget. Coming from it at this angle shows that they want to be a team. The clarity and shared goal helps to prevent the tug of war. We were really impressed by this approach.From 25 employees to one guy with a toolbelt: hello 2008. Paul tells the story of how Timber Ridge weathered the Great Recession. They almost didn't. In the very moment he decided to call it quits, an unexpected call came. Paul looks back on this time with, what else, gratitude.  A builder at heart. This is how Paul describes himself and it's the reason he is still legitimately excited about his work. He speaks of homebuilding in a really unique way: as an act of artistic creation. While most people think of building a house in terms of it's practical, science-y aspects–as an exercise in engineering–Paul focuses on the dynamic nature of the process, of composing a home through a million aesthetic choices. Very cool.The best window washer in the sixth grade. Paul illustrates the essentiality of learning to work hard with some truly entertaining stories from his youth. As one of 9 kids, Paul recalls a few times when he had to run a full-service gas station by himself as a sixth grader. Throughout his childhood he also fixed cars, logged, built wood burning stoves, and did construction with his family to help pay the bills. Today this sounds absolutely crazy, but he appreciates what he learned: how to “work hard and not just drudge through it but feel the gratification of a hard day's work.” It's a great lesson, and you'll want to share these stories with your kids, if for no other reason than to get them to stop complaining about having to pick up their dirty socks.Paul describing how he learned to “slalom ski behind a station wagon on a canal in Idaho.” Got a slalom ski for your birthday? Don't have a boat? Well there you go. Work hard. Play hard.

The Storm Skiing Podcast #4 | Download this episode on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, and Pocket Casts | Read the full overview at skiing.substack.com.Who: Geoff Hatheway, Founder and President, Ski Magic LLCWhy I interviewed him: Because Magic might be the best story in skiing. Born in the sixties, purchased and expanded by Bromley in the 80s, abandoned for six winters in the 90s, the mountain has improbably risen from the dead to become the go-to glades-and-steeps bomber among the local hardcore. Operate on stats alone, and this one is easy to overlook in a crowded southern Vermont echoing with the twin marketing bullhorns of Alterra (Stratton) and Vail (Okemo and Mt. Snow). It’s a bit shorter and a bit smaller than those neighbors, and it lacks an inauthentic authentic base village. But the mountain is so good, and people who run it are doing so many things right, that it doesn’t matter even a little bit. They offer what may be the best menu of pass options (scroll down after the click) in the country. They limit the number of daily lift tickets sold. They are finally replacing the unreliable Black Chair. They’re amping up snowmaking capacity. While it has been apparent for about 30 years what needed to be done to transform the place, all of these efforts have accelerated since Geoff took over in 2016. I wanted to talk to him about this ongoing renaissance.What we talked about: How the mountain battles the big boys by evoking the spirit of skiing’s low-speed past; how glade-thinning and other volunteer days contribute to Magic’s sense of community; the logic behind the daily ticket limit and why it will remain in place even after the new Black Chair comes online; the story of how Magic bought the Black Chair from Stratton and how that’s the old Snow Bowl lift because Stratton needed like a 90th high-speed lift or whatever (they actually did); if you like lift lines that’s cool they have them elsewhere but Magic won’t have them here once the new lift opens sorry; but Magic will never – and I mean NEVER – have a high-speed lift and some people won’t like that but hey that’s just not Magic’s demo and we’re cool with that; the Red Chair will continue to run this season; Black Chair is likely to operate mostly on weekends and holidays; why the humble Green Chair was so important in opening the mountain to those who don’t zipper-line bumps; why Magic is more like northern Vermont radsters Mad River Glen or Stowe than its overbuffed neighbors; snowmaking coverage should pass 50 percent this year with the expanded snowmaking pond; the two trails that will receive snowmaking starting this year; long-term the goal is to operate from Thanksgiving to the first week of April; Geoff is tired of hearing you say that you only ski Magic on a powder day; why one of Geoff’s first projects when he took over was repositioning the bar in the Black Line Tavern; how they renovated the upper part of the bar for $90,000 instead of $9 million and why doing things like that is the reason Magic should continue to exist for the foreseeable future; the mountain rental program; Magic loves uphill skiers; why the Green Chair was engineered for downloading; season pass sales and skier visits are both soaring – Geoff gives numbers; how the Vail-Alterra Axis of Skivil is driving Magic’s popularity; why Magic joined the Freedom and Indy Passes; hey did you know that there’s another, abandoned-and-now-privately owned ski area on the backside of Glebe Mountain, which Magic sits on? And that that ski area, Timber Ridge, used to be part of Magic back in the 1980s? And that you can in fact ski from the top of Magic to that ski area and shred those trails and all you have to do is figure out how to get yourself back to Magic’s lifts because it’s not like there’s a shuttle or even a cattrack back? I also asked Geoff what he would do if the current owner put Timber Ridge up for sale. Not that he said this but maybe we’ll see this again some day (yes, this is the real 1987 Magic Mountain trailmap):Things that may be slightly outdated because we recorded this a while ago: Geoff says that there are 34 mountains on the Indy Pass, which there were when we had this conversation in early September, but they have since increased that to 44. Geoff also mentions some of the challenges he foresaw in engineering the Black Chair, since it climbs an ungodly steep and rocky incline that you don’t exactly back a cement truck up to like you’re pouring the foundation for a Wal-Mart on top of your favorite former cornfield. He has since sent out several dispatches updating the progress of both the lift installation and the snowmaking pond expansion, the latest of which you can read here. Actually, they flew the upper lift towers yesterday:Question I wish I’d asked: Geoff talks about the Super Mario Brothers-like labyrinthine tangles of antique snowmaking pipes buried in Magic’s declines, and says that the mountain was a leader in blowing snow back in the seventies. I wish I’d asked a bit more about that history and decline before the current boom. I also would have liked to have talked a bit about how the mountain was closed for six freaking winters and most of its lifts and other infrastructure was sold off by then-owner Bromley and how improbable it is that Magic is a functioning mountain today, let alone a thriving one.  Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview: When Ski magazine featured Magic last winter, it signaled a mass acknowledgement of what locals had known for a while: this long beleaguered and overlooked mountain finally had the management team it needed to realize its dormant potential. It’s like those movies about tough and unloved but brimming-with-unrealized-brilliance inner-city kids who just need that one teacher who cares enough to yell back and fix the water leak in the bathroom ceiling and order text books that don’t list the Vietnam War in the current events chapter. Except in this case Magic is the tough but unloved kid and Geoff and his crew are the teacher and the old black chair is that held-together-with-Scotch tape textbook. I think we underappreciate in general how difficult it is to hold something as complex as a ski area together year after year and how vital it is to have the right people in the captain’s chair to keep the whole operation from sinking. As we’ve seen with Saddleback and Jay Peak and the New York Knicks, the wrong people can ruin even the best things, and the right people can make even the most unlikely things take off. Why you should go there: Because in a southern Vermont of buffed-flat redundancy, Magic is the only place that seems to care even a little bit about offering what Geoff calls a balanced ski experience, with some bumps and some groomers and a lot of glades. Here’s my review of the rest of southern Vermont: Okemo – groomed flat; Mt. Snow – groomed flat with a nice park; Stratton – groomed flat with some underrated glades. I don’t know why they all do this let’s-groom-everything-flatter-than-I-95-every-night thing but I know Magic doesn’t and that is as good of a reason to go there as any. Besides, it’s affordable, it’s closer to most places than most other Vermont mountains, the crowds even when it’s busy are manageable, the vibe is cool, and there’s no reason not so support places like this even if you have IkoniK gigapasses like I do.  Fun facts: Did you know that there is also a Magic Mountain, Idaho (and that it also has magic-themed trail names)? Or that Bromley once owned Magic? Or that, in this, the fourth Storm Skiing Podcast, I have now interviewed the owners or general managers of all three major Northeastern mountains that offer full-area daily rental programs (that was a coincidence that I didn’t realize until I was editing this episode, and I’m afraid I neglected to ask Pico GM Mike Solimano about that mountain’s rental program, as we spent 95 percent of the time talking about Killington)?The Storm Skiing Podcast is on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn,and Pocket Casts. The Storm Skiing Journal publishes podcasts and other editorial content throughout the ski season. To receive new posts as soon as they are published, sign up for The Storm Skiing Journal Newsletter at skiing.substack.com. Follow The Storm Skiing Journal on Facebook and Twitter.Check out previous podcasts: Killington GM Mike Solimano | Plattekill owners Danielle and Laszlo Vajtay| New England Lost Ski Areas Project Founder Jeremy Davis Get on the email list at www.stormskiing.com

The idea of running further than 26.2 miles is a daunting thought for many of us. It also may intrigue you, given that ultra running is less about speed and more about endurance and pushing your body and mind in an entirely different way. Getting out on the trails, immersing yourself in nature, also are big draws for ultra runners and ultra runners wannabes. Three ultra runners and one soon-to-be ultra runner join Heather on the show to talk about the allure of going long--really long. These four runners have gotten to know one another even better through their love of ultra running training and racing. Ali Lopez, a frequent guest on the show, returns to talk about her ultra running adventures of late (you also can find her detailed race recaps, as well her story of coming back to running after a serious eye injury, on the blog). Her first ultra was a looped course, which she says is a nice way of entering the world of ultra running. Zach Sayre, 21, has wholeheartedly jumped into the ultra running world in the last year or so—and he's since run six ultras and won two of them. He's done one 50-miler as well as 55Ks and 50Ks.  Britt Gervais has run three ultras, including a recent one with Zack in Canada. Both agreed this race—Ultra Trail Stokely Creek 55K—was among their favorites because of the challenging terrain, beautiful fall color, attention to detail by race organizers, and camaraderie among the runners. "The community that comes with ultra running is the absolute best," Britt said. "At that race you could totally feel it ... it was the best." Britt talks about how she didn't necessarily think she'd do more than one ultra. But that changed after she finished her first one. "I ran it and when I was done, I thought, oh, no, this is it. This is the thing. I am going to keep going with it." Jonny Tornga, a producer of the MRG podcast, is gearing up for his first ultra, the Yankee Springs Winter Challenge on January 4, 2020. Jonny started running and racing a few years ago, getting really into the sport after moving to the Big Apple. "I grew up as a runner in New York City, where it was very competitive. It was all, 'go, go, go' and tons of speed work. 'Get faster, faster, faster and stronger,'" he said. "And coming back here [to Michigan] and getting injured for the first time, which took me out for pretty much the entire summer, really kind of changed my mindset. What am I really doing here? I'm pushing myself too hard. And for an ultra, you cannot do that. It will destroy you. You will fail. So for me, in a lot of ways, it's me trying to become a better runner. To teach myself to slow down, to not worry about these things that don't ultimately matter." These friends also are behind the Iceman Runneth (Unofficial Fun Run) event this Nov. 3. This route, the same as the Iceman Cometh mountain bike race course, is 30 miles. Runners will start in Kalkaska and finish at Timber Ridge on the east side of Traverse City. You can learn more about this run on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/459997464859133/ -- If you enjoy what you’re hearing on the Michigan Runner Girl show, we’d be so grateful if you’d take a few moments to write a review on iTunes. This will help more runners and Michigan lovers like yourself find the podcasts. Thank you!! Also, the quickest way to get the podcasts is to subscribe to the show via iTunes or via Stitcher or your favorite podcast app.  A special thanks to Mike Moran, Mike Youker and Jonny Tornga of Quarter After Productions in Traverse City, Mich. for producing the show.

Enjoy the August 3rd edition of MGL Radio, including details for a call-in contest where you could win a 2-some to Eagle Eye, Hawk Hollow, Timber Ridge, and Woodside. You'll also hear from Top Teachers Jason Guss and Jeff Roth, as well as MGL Alum Jon Bloom!

Welcome to the May 25th edition of Michigan Golf Live Radio, as we continue celebrating our 20th Anniversary season! On this week's show, we broadcast from Eagle Eye Golf Club in East Lansing, flagship course for the group that also includes Hawk Hollow and Timber Ridge (and more)! On this week's show, you'll not only hear from a wide array of guests, you'll also learn the entry details for a contest where you could win a 2-some on all 3 Eagle Eye championship courses...and get the details on your chance to have dinner with Jack Nicklaus at Oakland Hills! Be sure to listen to MGL Radio every Saturday across the state on THIS great family of MGL Radio Affiliates!

Spots still remain for the 3rd Annual MRG Spring Getaway, set for May 4-6 at Timber Ridge Resort in Traverse City, Mich. Heather is joined on the show by co-hosts Pam Carrigan, MRG event coordinator, and Meranda Lambert, who oversees events at Timber Ridge. The trio talk about the upcoming girls' weekend, which includes everything from running and biking and hiking, to dining and shopping downtown, to relaxation and sunrise yoga -- and lots more. They also share details (and their hard-to-contain excitement) about the weekend's featured guest: 2018 Boston Marathon Champion Desiree Linden.  Weekend registration is here: https://mkt.com/michigan-runner-girl More event details are here: http://michiganrunnergirl.com/2018-mrg-spring-getaway/ Latest Retreat News: Desiree Linden, 2018 Boston Marathon champion, is the featured guest at the third annual Michigan Runner Girl Spring Getaway this May 4-6 at Timber Ridge Resort in Traverse City. Following her historic win on April 16 -- she is the first American woman to win the race since 1985 -- we are offering a special Friday evening-only option. Here's your chance to: go for a trail run with Des and enjoy drinks and heavy apps (and fantastic conversation) with Des as well as other like-minded women. We'll also have time to sit around the campfire with Des, who trains in Rochester Hills, Mich. and lives in Charlevoix with her husband Ryan and their dog Boston, and take in a cool slack-line demo by Sam at Backcountry North. Giveaways also will be part of the evening. And if you decide you'd like to stay the night, Timber Ridge has several lodging options -- you can also stay the entire weekend with us (simply sign up for the MRG Spring Getaway here at the online store; this Friday evening described above is all part of the weekend price.) For those who are interested only in the Friday evening option, simply purchase this option here. We're capping the event at 40 women, so please sign up soon if you're interested! We look forward to seeing you!

Amy Sherman and John Gonzalez met up with Mike Moran of Traverse City who was in Grand Rapids to promote his Suds & Snow event on March 5 at Timber Ridge.Mike also talked about his podcasts, which he produces for Short's Brewery and New Holland Brewery.He also does the Drink My Brewcast podcast.More on Suds & Snow:http://sudsandsnowtc.com/More on Drink My Brewcast:http://www.drinkmybrewcast.com/

On February 19, 2015, Turk McCleskey delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Fellow Travelers on the Road to Black Ned's Forge." Edward Tarr, known widely as “Black Ned,” became a blacksmith while enslaved in Pennsylvania. After purchasing his freedom, Tarr and his white wife moved to Timber Ridge, in modern Rockbridge County, Virginia, where his forge on the Great Wagon Road became a well-known landmark. In 1753, Tarr helped found the Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church. When he bought a 270-acre farm on Mill Creek in 1754, Tarr became the first free black land owner west of the Blue Ridge. The son of Tarr's last master attempted to re-enslave him, but with the help of his neighbors, Tarr preserved his independence. Exceptional free persons of color, such as Edward Tarr, can be found in every region and in every period during the history of slavery. As Edward Tarr's story illustrates, these were more than isolated individuals: by the coming of the American Revolution, they constituted a self-aware, cohesive set of lobbyists capable of wielding the rhetoric of political liberty to roll back the encroachments of racist laws. Ironically, however, the Revolution undercut the legal gains made by free persons of color in the 1760s. Turk McCleskey is professor of history at Virginia Military Institute and the author of The Road to Black Ned's Forge: A Story of Race, Sex, and Trade on the Colonial American Frontier. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On February 19 at noon, Turk McCleskey delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Fellow Travelers on the Road to Black Ned’s Forge." Edward Tarr, known widely as “Black Ned,” became a blacksmith while enslaved in Pennsylvania. After purchasing his freedom, Tarr and his white wife moved to Timber Ridge, in modern Rockbridge County, Virginia, where his forge on the Great Wagon Road became a well-known landmark. In 1753, Tarr helped found the Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church. When he bought a 270-acre farm on Mill Creek in 1754, Tarr became the first free black land owner west of the Blue Ridge. The son of Tarr’s last master attempted to re-enslave him, but with the help of his neighbors, Tarr preserved his independence. Exceptional free persons of color, such as Edward Tarr, can be found in every region and in every period during the history of slavery. As Edward Tarr’s story illustrates, these were more than isolated individuals: by the coming of the American Revolution, they constituted a self-aware, cohesive set of lobbyists capable of wielding the rhetoric of political liberty to roll back the encroachments of racist laws. Ironically, however, the Revolution undercut the legal gains made by free persons of color in the 1760s. Turk McCleskey is professor of history at Virginia Military Institute and the author of The Road to Black Ned's Forge: A Story of Race, Sex, and Trade on the Colonial American Frontier.