Podcasts about Wachusett

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication (and my full-time job). To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.WhoJoe Hession, CEO of Snow Partners, which owns Mountain Creek, Big Snow American Dream, SnowCloud, and Terrain Based LearningRecorded onMay 2, 2025About Snow PartnersSnow Partners owns and operates Mountain Creek, New Jersey and Big Snow American Dream, the nation's only indoor ski center. The company also developed SnowCloud resort management software and has rolled out its Terrain Based Learning system at more than 80 ski areas worldwide. They do some other things that I don't really understand (there's a reason that I write about skiing and not particle physics), that you can read about on their website.About Mountain CreekLocated in: Vernon Township, New JerseyClosest neighboring public ski areas: Mount Peter (:24); Big Snow American Dream (:50); Campgaw (:51) Pass affiliations: Snow Triple Play, up to two anytime daysBase elevation: 440 feetSummit elevation: 1,480 feetVertical drop: 1,040 feetSkiable Acres: 167Average annual snowfall: 65 inchesTrail count: 46Lift count: 9 (1 Cabriolet, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Mountain Creek's lift fleet)About Big Snow American DreamLocated in: East Rutherford, New JerseyClosest neighboring public ski areas: Campgaw (:35); Mountain Creek (:50); Mount Peter (:50)Pass affiliations: Snow Triple Play, up to two anytime daysVertical drop: 160 feet Skiable Acres: 4Trail count: 4 (2 green, 1 blue, 1 black)Lift count: 4 (1 quad, 1 poma, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Big Snow American Dream's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himI read this earlier today:The internet is full of smart people writing beautiful prose about how bad everything is, how it all sucks, how it's embarrassing to like anything, how anything that appears good is, in fact, secretly bad. I find this confusing and tragic, like watching Olympic high-jumpers catapult themselves into a pit of tarantulas.That blurb was one of 28 “slightly rude notes on writing” offered in Adam Mastroianni's Experimental History newsletter. And I thought, “Man this dude must follow #SkiTwitter.” Or Instabook. Of Flexpost. Or whatever. Because online ski content, both short- and long-form, is, while occasionally joyous and evocative, disproportionately geared toward the skiing-is-fucked-and-this-is-why worldview. The passes suck. The traffic sucks. The skiers suck. The prices suck. The parking sucks. The Duopoly sucks. Everyone's a Jerry, chewing up my pow line with their GoPro selfie sticks hoisted high and their Ikon Passes dangling from their zippers. Skiing is corporate and soulless and tourist obsessed and doomed anyway because of climate change. Don't tell me you're having a good time doing this very fun thing. People like you are the reason skiing's soul now shops at Wal-Mart. Go back to Texas and drink a big jug of oil, you Jerry!It's all so… f*****g dumb. U.S. skiing just wrapped its second-best season of attendance. The big passes, while imperfect, are mostly a force for good, supercharging on-hill infrastructure investment, spreading skiers across geographies, stabilizing a once-storm-dependent industry, and lowering the per-day price of skiing for the most avid among us to 1940s levels. Snowmaking has proven an effective bulwark against shifting weather patterns. Lift-served skiing is not a dying pastime, financially or spiritually or ecologically. Yes, modern skiing has problems: expensive food (pack a lunch); mountain-town housing shortages (stop NIMBY-ing everything); traffic (yay car culture); peak-day crowds (don't go then); exploding insurance, labor, utilities, and infrastructure costs (I have no answers). But in most respects, this is a healthy, thriving, constantly evolving industry, and a more competitive one than the Duopoly Bros would admit.Snow Partners proves this. Because what the hell is Snow Partners? It's some company sewn together by a dude who used to park cars at Mountain Creek. Ten years ago this wasn't a thing, and now it's this wacky little conglomerate that owns a bespoke resort tech platform and North America's only snowdome and the impossible, ridiculous Mountain Creek. And they're going to build a bunch more snowdomes that stamp new skiers out by the millions and maybe – I don't know but maybe – become the most important company in the history of lift-served skiing in the process.Could such an outfit possibly have materialized were the industry so corrupted as the Brobot Pundit Bros declare it? Vail is big. Alterra is big. But the two companies combined control just 53 of America's 501 active ski areas. Big ski areas, yes. Big shadows. But neither created: Indy Pass, Power Pass, Woodward Parks, Terrain Based Learning, Mountain Collective, RFID, free skiing for kids, California Mountain Resort Company, or $99 season passes. Neither saved Holiday Mountain or Hatley Pointe or Norway Mountain or Timberline West Virigina from the scrapheap, or transformed a failing Black Mountain into a co-op. Neither has proven they can successfully run a ski area in Indiana (sorry Vail #SickBurn #SellPaoliPeaks #Please).Skiing, at this moment, is a glorious mix of ideas and energy. I realize it makes me uncool to think so, but I signed off on those aspirations the moment I drove the minivan off the Chrysler lot (topped it off with a roofbox, too, Pimp). Anyhow, the entire point of this newsletter is to track down the people propelling change in a sport that most likely predates the written word and ask them why they're doing these novel things to make an already cool and awesome thing even more cool and awesome. And no one, right now, is doing more cool and awesome things in skiing than Snow Partners.**That's not exactly true. Mountain Capital Partners, Alterra, Ikon Pass, Deer Valley, Entabeni Systems, Jon Schaefer, the Perfect Clan, Boyne Resorts, Big Sky, Mt. Bohemia, Powdr, Vail Resorts, Midwest Family Ski Resorts, and a whole bunch more entities/individuals/coalitions are also contributing massively to skiing's rapid-fire rewiring in the maw of the robot takeover digital industrial revolution. But, hey, when you're in the midst of transforming an entire snow-based industry from a headquarters in freaking New Jersey, you get a hyperbolic bump in the file card description.What we talked aboutThe Snow Triple Play; potential partners; “there's this massive piece of the market that's like ‘I don't even understand what you're talking about'” with big day ticket prices and low-priced season passes; why Mountain Creek sells its Triple Play all season long and why the Snow Triple Play won't work that way (at least at first); M.A.X. Pass and why Mountain Creek declined to join successor passes; an argument for Vail, Alterra and other large ski companies to participate on the Snow Triple Play; comparing skiing to hotels, airlines, and Disney World; “the next five years are going to be the most interesting and disruptive time in the ski industry because of technology”; “we don't compete with anybody”; Liftopia's potential, errors, failure, and legacy; skiing on Groupon; considering Breckenridge as an independent ski area; what a “premium” ski area on the Snow Triple Play would be; why megapasses are “selling people a product that will never be used the way it's sold to them”; why people in NYC feel like going to Mountain Creek, an hour over the George Washington Bridge, is “going to Alaska”; why Snow Triple Play will “never” add a fourth day; sticker shock for Big Snow newbs who emerge from the Dome wanting more; SnowCloud and the tech and the guest journey from parking lot to lifts; why Mountain Creek stopped mailing season passes; Bluetooth Low Energy “is certainly the future of passes”; “100 percent we're getting more Big Snows” – but let's justify the $175 million investment first; Big Snow has a “terrible” design; “I don't see why every city shouldn't have a Big Snow” and which markets Snow Partners is talking to; why Mountain Creek didn't get the mega-lift Hession teased on this pod three years ago and when we could see one; “I really believe that the Vernon base of Mountain Creek needs an updated chair”; the impact of automated snowmaking at Mountain Creek; and a huge residential project incoming at Mountain Creek.What I got wrong* I said that Hession wasn't involved in Mountain Creek in the M.A.X. Pass era, but he was an Intrawest employee at the time, and was Mountain Creek's GM until 2012.* I hedged on whether Boyne's Explorer multi-day pass started at two or three days. Skiers can purchase the pass in three- to six-day increments.Why now was a good time for this interviewOkay, so I'll admit that when Snow Partners summarized the Snow Triple Play for me, I wasn't like “Holy crap, three days (total) at up to three different ski areas on a single ski pass? Do you think they have room for another head on Mount Rushmore?” This multi-day pass is a straightforward product that builds off a smart idea (the Mountain Creek Triple Play), that has been a smash hit at the Jersey Snow Jungle since at least 2008. But Snow Triple Play doesn't rank alongside Epic, Ikon, Indy, or Mountain Collective as a seasonlong basher. This is another frequency product in a market already flush with them.So why did I dedicate an entire podcast and two articles (so far) to dissecting this product, which Hession makes pretty clear has no ambitions to grow into some Indy/Ikon/Epic competitor? Because it is the first product to tie Big Snow to the wider ski world. And Big Snow only works if it is step one and there is an obvious step two. Right now, that step two is hard, even in a region ripe with ski areas. The logistics are confounding, the one-off cost hard to justify. Lift tickets, gear rentals, getting your ass to the bump and back, food, maybe a lesson. The Snow Triple Play doesn't solve all of these problems, but it does narrow an impossible choice down to a manageable one by presenting skiers with a go-here-next menu. If Snow Partners can build a compelling (or at least logical) Northeast network and then scale it across the country as the company opens more Big Snows in more cities, then this simple pass could evolve into an effective toolkit for building new skiers.OK, so why not just join Indy or Mountain Collective, or forge some sort of newb-to-novice agreement with Epic or Ikon? That would give Snow Partners the stepladder, without the administrative hassle of owning a ski pass. But that brings us to another roadblock in Ski Revolution 2025: no one wants to share partners. So Hession is trying to flip the narrative. Rather than locking Big Snow into one confederacy or the other, he wants the warring armies to lash their fleets along Snow Partners Pier. Big Snow is just the bullet factory, or the gas station, or the cornfield – the thing that all the armies need but can't supply themselves. You want new skiers? We got ‘em. They're ready. They just need a map to your doorstep. And we're happy to draw you one.Podcast NotesOn the Snow Triple PlayThe basics: three total days, max of two used at any one partner ski area, no blackouts at Big Snow or Mountain Creek, possible blackouts at partner resorts, which are TBD.The pass, which won't be on sale until Labor Day, is fully summarized here:And I speculate on potential partners here:On the M.A.X. PassFor its short, barely noted existence, the M.A.X. Pass was kind of an amazing hack, granting skiers five days each at an impressive blend of regional and destination ski areas:Much of this roster migrated over to Ikon, but in taking their pass' name too literally, the Alterra folks left off some really compelling regional ski areas that could have established a hub-and-spoke network out of the gate. Lutsen and Granite Peak owner Charles Skinner told me on the podcast a few years back that Ikon never offered his ski areas membership (they joined Indy in 2020), cutting out two of the Midwest's best mountains. The omissions of Mountain Creek, Wachusett, and the New York trio of Belleayre, Whiteface, and Gore ceded huge swaths of the dense and monied Northeast to competitors who saw value in smaller, high-end operations that are day-trip magnets for city folks who also want that week at Deer Valley (no other pass signed any of these mountains, but Vail and Indy both assembled better networks of day-drivers and destinations).On my 2022 interview with HessionOn LiftopiaLiftopia's website is still live, but I'm not sure how many ski areas participate in this Expedia-for-lift-tickets. Six years ago, I thought Liftopia was the next bargain evolution of lift-served skiing. I even hosted founder Evan Reece on one of my first 10 podcasts. The whole thing fell apart when Covid hit. An overview here:On various other day-pass productsI covered this in my initial article, but here's how the Snow Triple Play stacks up against other three-day multi-resort products:On Mountain Creek not mailing passesI don't know anything about tech, but I know, from a skier's point of view, when something works well and when it doesn't. Snow Cloud's tech is incredible in at least one customer-facing respect: when you show up at a ski area, a rep standing in a conspicuous place is waiting with an iPhone, with which they scan a QR code on your phone, and presto-magico: they hand you your ski pass. No lines or waiting. One sentimental casualty of this on-site efficiency was the mailed ski pass, an autumn token of coming winter to be plucked gingerly from the mailbox. And this is fine and makes sense, in the same way that tearing down chairlifts constructed of brontosaurus bones and mastodon hides makes sense, but I must admit that I miss these annual mailings in the same way that I miss paper event tickets and ski magazines. My favorite ski mailing ever, in fact, was not Ikon's glossy fold-out complete with a 1,000-piece 3D jigsaw puzzle of the Wild Blue Gondola and name-a-snowflake-after-your-dog kit, but this simple pamphlet dropped into the envelope with my 2018-19 Mountain Creek season pass:Just f*****g beautiful, Man. That hung on my office wall for years. On the CabrioletThis is just such a wackadoodle ski lift:Onetime Mountain Creek owner Intrawest built similar lifts at Winter Park and Tremblant, but as transit lifts from the parking lot. This one at Mountain Creek is the only one that I'm aware of that's used as an open-air gondola. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

In July of 2023, former army officer Joseph Bolton had a life-changing experience on Mount Wachusett in Massachusetts. What started as a peaceful sunset hike quickly turned into a terrifying multi-night encounter with a Sasquatch. From strange animalistic odors to eerie stick breaks in the dark, Joseph shares his unsettling experience of being watched — and potentially escorted — by not one, but two Bigfoot creatures. In this emotional and fascinating episode, Joseph talks about how the experience shifted his views from skeptical to respectful curiosity, leaving him with more questions than answers. Listen to his story, and hear about the dangers and mysteries lurking on Mount Wachusett. A must-listen for Bigfoot enthusiasts and skeptics alike.

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

The owner of Wachusett, Jeff Crowley joins live

Curtis says Celtics fans should hope a win this year, before things change // A musical Hill Notes! // Wiggy takes us to the weekend on a snow groomer! //

Bossman Ken is over the moon about Garrett Crochet // Soon to be former Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck joins, talks sale of team // The owner of Wachusett, Jeff Crowley joins live //

Live from Wachusett Mountain for the last Snow Show of the season! // With Ovechkin closing in on the goals record, who is the GOAT of hockey? // Wiggy speculates on where the Celtics new owners will move the arena //

Live from Wachusett Mountain for the last Snow Show of the season! // With Ovechkin closing in on the goals record, who is the GOAT of hockey? // Wiggy speculates on where the Celtics new owners will move the arena // Pete Bouchard in hot water for suggesting astronaut landing was AI // Learning more about new Celtics owner Bill Chisolmn // The News With Courtney: Assault with a deadly water bottle // Bossman Ken is over the moon about Garrett Crochet // Soon to be former Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck joins, talks sale of team // The owner of Wachusett, Jeff Crowley joins live // Curtis says Celtics fans should hope a win this year, before things change // A musical Hill Notes! // Wiggy takes us to the weekend on a snow groomer! //

Points of discussion:1. Rebranding Wachusett Brewing [Case study]-Learn more at: www.craftbeerrebranded.com / http://www.beyondbeerbook.com-Have a topic or question you'd like us to field on the show? Shoot it our way: hello@cododesign.com-Join 8,000+ food and bev industry pros who are subscribed to the Beer Branding Trends Newsletter (and access all past issues) at: www.beerbrandingtrends.com 

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Dec. 31. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 7. To receive future episodes as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoShaun Sutner, snowsports columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Telegram.comRecorded onNovember 25, 2024About Shaun SutnerSutner is a skier, writer, and journalist based in Worcester, Massachusetts. He's written a snowsports column for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from Thanksgiving to April for the past several decades. You can follow Shaun on social media to stay locked into his work:Read his recent columns:* On Wildcat, Attitash, and Vail Resorts* Everyone needs a bootfitter* Indy Pass is still kicking assWhy I interviewed himJournalism sounds easy. Go there, talk to people, write about it. It's not easy. The quest for truth is like the Hobbit's quest for the ring: long, circuitous, filled with monsters who want to eat you. Some truth is easy: Wachusett has four chairlifts. Beyond the objective, complications arise: Wachusett's decision to replace its summit quad with a six-pack in 2025 is… what, exactly? Visionary, shortsighted, foolish, clever, pedestrian? Does it prioritize passholders or marketing or profit over experience? Is it necessary? Is it wise? Is it prudent? Is it an answer to locals' frustrations or a compounding factor in it?The journalist's job is to machete through this jungle and sculpt a version of reality that all parties will recognize and that none of them will be entirely happy with. Because people are complex and so is the world, and assembling the truth is less like snapping together a thousand-piece puzzle and more like the A-Team examining a trashheap and saying “OK boys, let's build a helicopter.”Sutner is good at this, as may be expected of someone who's spent decades on his beat. He understands that anecdote is not absolute. He knows how to pull together broad narratives (“New England's outdated lift fleet” of the 2010s), and to acknowledge when they change (“New England operators aggressively modernize lifts” in the 2020s). He is empathetic to locals and operators alike, without being deferential to either. He knows that the best stories are 90 percent what the writer leaves out, and 10 percent identifying the essential bits to frame the larger whole. And he lives the beat, aggressively, joyously, immersively.We need more Sutners, but we are probably getting fewer. As journalism figures out what it is in the 21st century, it is deciding that it is less about community-based entities employing beat-specific writers and more about feeding mastheads to private equity funds that drag the carcass down to entrails and then feed them to the hounds. Thousands of American communities now have no local news organization, let alone one with the resources to hire writers solely devoted to something as niche as skiing. Filling the information void is Angry Ski Bro, firing off 50 dozen monthly Facebook posts about Vail's abominable greed being distilled in a broken snowgun at Wildcat.I started The Storm as an antidote to this global complaint box. And I believe that the future of journalism includes writers tapping Substack and similar platforms to freelance the truth. But I still believe that the traditional news organization – meaning physical newspapers that have evolved into digital-analogue hybrids – can find a sustainable business model that tells a community's essential stories. Sutner, and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, deserve credit for showing us how to do this.What we talked aboutSki South America; how to ski 60 days while working full time; Worcester's legendary Strand's ski shop; Powdr's sale of Killington and Pico and how the new owners can keep from ruining it; how to make Pico more relevant; is this the start of New England ski area deconsolidation?; Smuggs; Black Mountain, New Hampshire's co-op quest; taking stock of New England consolidation; Vail Resorts' New England GM shuffle; New England's chairlift renaissance; what is New England's new most-hated lift?; why New England needs more surface lifts; a new sixer coming to Wachusett; the legacy of Wachusett's David Crowley; why Wachusett works; and what we lose with consolidation.What we got wrongOn whatever that city is calledI probably still can't pronounce “Worcester.” Just congratulate yourself if you can, and keep moving.On South American skiingI said in our conversation that there were “40 or so ski areas” in South America. I've not taken my magnifying glass to the region as I have with Real America, but I made this quick-hitter chart earlier this year that counted just 26 on the continent, all of them in Chile and Argentina:This map on skiresort.info counts 45 South American ski areas, including a sporadically operating area in Bolivia and one indoor and one artificial-turf area in Brazil. Someday I'll do a cross-check with my list, but that day is not today.On which county Killington lives inNeither of us knew which county Killington is in, but he suggested Windham County. The correct answer is Rutland County.On The Man owning our ski centersWhen discussing state-owned ski areas, Sutner didn't remember that New Hampshire owns Cannon and Vail-operated Sunapee, and I didn't remember to remind him.On Black Mountain, New HampshireWe recorded this prior to Black outlining its plans for a transition to co-op ownership. Mountain leadership has since released more details:On Mad River Glen's snowmaking hard stopI noted that Mad River Glen only makes snow up to “2,000-whatever feet.” The actual number, as proclaimed by some past assemblage of the MRG co-op, is 2,200 feet. Though perhaps raising that by a couple hundred feet would have spared them from spending a fat stack to build a double-chair midstation this year.On Vail's GM shuffleWhen we recorded this conversation, Vail-owned Wildcat, Mount Snow, and Crotched had general manager vacancies. The company has since filled all three (click through on the links above).On Sugarloaf's T-barIn our discussion on surface lifts, Sutner references a T-bar to Sugarloaf's summit. The Bateau T-bar does land quite high on the mountain, but it stops short of the summit and snowfields.On Waterville Valley's T-barsWaterville's T-bar game is way ahead of most New England ski areas. Two of them serve lower-mountain race or race-training trails, and one serves the mountain's top 400 vertical feet, replacing the windhold-prone chairlifts that once ran to the summit. While two of the T-bars run parallel to terrain parks, serving them does not appear to be the lifts' direct purpose, as we debated on the podcast.On Vail's high-speed “T-bars”I mixed up my lift types when describing the high-speed surface lifts that Vail runs at its Midwest mountains. They are ropetows, not T-bars. Here they go at Afton Alps, Minnesota:Afton Alps, Minnesota. Video by Stuart Winchester.On Wachusett upgradesSutner noted that Wachusett's coming summit six-pack would be its first big infrastructure upgrade in 20 years, but the mountain installed the 299-vertical-foot Monadnock Express quad in 2011.On Berkshire East's T-Bar ExpressSutner said that last year was Berkshire East's second season running its T-Bar Express high-speed quad, but the lift first spun for the 2023-24 ski season. The current, 2024-25 season is the lift's second.On Sutner's ski daysWe recorded this a while ago, and Sutner had clocked eight ski days before Thanksgiving. As of Dec. 30, he'd hit 21 days, well along to his 60-day goal.Podcast NotesOn Cerro CatedralI'm somewhat obsessed with this 3,773-vertical-foot, 1,500-acre Argentinian monster:On Shaun's Worcester Living articleSutner wrote up his Argentinian ski adventure for Worcester Living magazine. The story starts on page 20.On Powdr's sale of Killington and PicoIn case you missed it:On New England consolidationNew England's 100-ish ski areas are largely independently owned and operated. These 25 are run by an entity that operates at least two ski areas:On Intrawest and American Skiing CompanyIt's impossible to discuss the history of New England ski area consolidation without acknowledging the now-dead Intrawest and American Skiing Company. On Vail's management shuffleI wrote about this recently:I launched The Storm in October 2019, when Vail owned 34 North American ski areas. To the best of my knowledge, just three of those ski areas' general manager-level leaders remain where they were on that date: Vail Mountain VP/COO Beth Howard, Okemo VP/GM Bruce Schmidt, and Boston Mills-Brandywine GM Jake Campbell. Compare this to Boyne, where nine of 10 mountain leaders either remain in their 2019 roles, or have since ascended to them after working at the resort for decades, often replacing legends retiring after long careers. Alterra and Powdr have demonstrated similar stability. Meanwhile, Vail's seven New England Resorts enter this winter with just two mountains – Okemo and Attitash – under the same general manager that ran them in the spring.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 90/100 in 2024, and number 590 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. 2024 will continue until the 100-article threshold is achieved, regardless of what that pesky calendar says. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Join us on the road at Wachusett Mountain in Princeton as we sit down with their public relations manager, Chris Stimpson. Chris talks about growing up surrounded by the family business of running the mountain and what it's like as the third generation of Crowleys take a more prominent role in operations. Chris also reflects on the legacy of his late uncle, David Crowley, and how they are honoring his memory this season while continuing to raise awareness about PSP. Chris also touches on the number of upgrades and improvements you'll experience now that the mountain is open for the season, how the mountain played a prominent role in a recent Hallmark Christmas film, and mentions a number of upcoming events you don't want to miss.   #podcast #podcaster #podcastshow #podcastlove #businesspodcast #newpodcast #podcastnetwork #podcastcommunity #applepodcasts #spotifypodcast #podernfamily #podbean #newepisode #insidenorthcentralma #insidenorthcentralmassachusettspodcast #mylocalma #visitma #massachusettspodcast #massachusetts #northcentralmassachusetts #wachusettmtn #wachusettmountain #polar #princeton #davidcrowley #skimass #ski #snowboard

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 10. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 17. To receive future episodes 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:WhoJohn Melcher, CEO of Crystal Mountain, MichiganRecorded onOctober 14, 2024About Crystal Mountain, MichiganClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Petritz FamilyLocated in: Thompsonville, MichiganYear founded: 1956Pass affiliations: Indy Pass & Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackoutsReciprocal partners: 1 day each at Caberfae and Mount Bohemia, with blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Caberfae (:37), Hickory Hills (:45), Mt. Holiday (:50), Missaukee Mountain (:52), Homestead (:51)Base elevation: 757 feetSummit elevation: 1,132 feetVertical drop: 375 feetSkiable Acres: 103Average annual snowfall: 132 inchesTrail count: 59 (30% black diamond, 48% blue square, 22% green circle) + 7 glades + 3 terrain parksLift count: 8 (1 high-speed quad, 3 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Crystal Mountain's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himThe biggest knock on Midwest skiing is that the top of the hill is not far enough away from the bottom of the hill, and this is generally true. Two or three or four hundred vertical feet is not a lot of vertical feet. It is enough to hold little pockets of trees or jumps or a racer's pitch that begs for a speed check. But no matter how fun the terrain, too soon the lift maze materializes and it's another slow roll up to more skiing.A little imagination helps here. Six turns in a snowy Michigan glade feel the same as six turns in Blue Sky Basin trees (minus the physiological altitude strain). And the skillset transfers well. I learned to ski bumps on a 200-vertical-foot section of Boyne Mountain and now I can ski bumps anywhere. But losing yourself in a 3,000-vertical-foot Rocky Mountain descent is not the same thing as saying “Man I can almost see it” as you try to will a 300-footer into something grander. We all know this.Not everything about the lift-served skiing experience shrinks down with the same effect, is my point here. With the skiing itself, scale matters. But the descent is only part of the whole thing. The lift maze matters, and the uphill matters, and the parking matters, and the location of the lift ticket pick-up matters, and the availability of 4 p.m. beers matters, and the arrangement base lodge seating matters. And when all of these things are knotted together into a ski day that is more fun than stressful, it is because you are in the presence of one thing that scales down in any context: excellence.The National Ski Areas Association splits ski areas into four size categories, calculated by “vertical transportation feet per hour.” In other words: how many skiers your lifts can push uphill in an ideal hour. This is a useful metric for many reasons, but I'd like to see a more qualitative measurement, one based not just on size, but on consistent quality of experience.I spend most of my winter bouncing across America, swinging into ski areas of all sizes and varieties. Excellence lives in unexpected places. One-hundred-and-sixty-vertical-foot Boyce Park, Pennsylvania blows thick slabs of snow with modern snowguns, grooms it well, and seems to double-staff every post with local teenagers. Elk Mountain, on the other side of Pennsylvania, generally stitches together a better experience than its better-known neighbors just south, in the Poconos. Royal Mountain, a 550-vertical-foot, weekends-only locals' bump in New York's southern Adirondacks, alternates statuesque grooming with zippy glades across its skis-bigger-than-it-is face.These ski areas, by combining great order and reliable conditions with few people, are delightful. But perhaps more impressive are ski areas that deliver consistent excellence while processing enormous numbers of visitors. Here you have places like Pats Peak, New Hampshire; Wachusett, Massachusetts; Holiday Valley, New York; and Mt. Rose, Nevada. These are not major tourist destinations, but they run with the welcoming efficiency of an Aspen or a Deer Valley. A good and ordered ski day, almost no matter what.Crystal Mountain, Michigan is one of these ski areas. Everything about the ski experience is well-considered. Expansion, upgrades, and refinement of existing facilities have been constant for decades. The village blends with the hill. The lifts are where the lifts should be. The trail network is interesting and thoughtfully designed. The parks are great. The grooming is great. The glades are plentiful. The prices are reasonable. And, most important of all, despite being busy at all times, Crystal Mountain is tamed by order. This is excellence, that thing that all ski areas should aspire to, whatever else they lack.What we talked aboutWhat's new for Crystal skiers in 2024; snowmaking; where Crystal draws its snowmaking water; Peek'n Peak, New York; why Crystal is a good business in addition to being a good ski area; four-seasons business; skiing as Mother; what makes a great team (and why Crystal has one); switching into skiing mid-career; making trails versus clearcutting the ski slope; ownership decided via coinflip; Midwest destination skiing's biggest obstacle; will Crystal remain independent?; room to expand; additional glading opportunities; why many of Crystal's trails are named after people; considering the future of Crystal's lift fleet; why Crystal built a high-speed lift that rises just 314 vertical feet; why the ghost of the Cheers lift lives on as part of Crystal's trailmap; where Crystal has considered adding a lift to the existing terrain; that confusing trailmap; a walkable village; changes inbound at the base of Loki; pushing back parking; more carpets for beginners; Crystal's myriad bargain lift ticket options; the Indy Pass; why Crystal dropped Indy Pass blackouts; the Mt. Bohemia-Crystal relationship; Caberfae; Indy's ultimatum to drop Ski Cooper reciprocals or leave the pass; and why Crystal joined Freedom Pass last year and left for this coming winter.  Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe Storm's mission is to serve all of American lift-served skiing. That means telling the stories of ski areas in every part of the country. I do this not because I have to, but because I want to. This newsletter would probably work just fine if it focused always and only on the great ski centers of the American West. That is, after all, the only part of U.S. ski country that outsiders travel to and that locals never leave. The biggest and best skiing is out there, at the top of our country, high and snowy and with a low chance of rain.But I live in the East and I grew up in the Midwest. Both regions are cluttered with ski areas. Hundreds of them, each distinct, each its own little frozen kingdom, each singular in atmosphere and arrangement and orientation toward the world. Most remain family-owned, and retain the improvisational quirk synonymous with such a designation. But more interesting is that these ski areas remain tethered to their past in a way that many of the larger western destination resorts, run by executives cycled in via corporate development programs, never will be again.I want to tell these stories. I'm aware that my national audience has a limited tolerance for profiles of Midwest ski centers they will never ski. But they seem to be okay with about a half-dozen per year, which is about enough to remind the wider ski community that this relatively flat but cold and hardy region is home to one of the world's great ski cultures. The Midwest is where night-skiing rules, where blue-collar families still ski, where hunting clothes double as ski clothes, where everything is a little less serious and a little more fun.There's no particular big development or project that threw the spotlight on Crystal here. I've been trying to arrange this interview for years. Because this is a very good ski area and a very well-run ski area, even if it is not a very large ski area in the grand landscape of American ski areas. It is one of the finest ski areas in the Midwest, and one worthy of our attention.What I got wrong* I said that “I forget if it's seven or nine different tree areas” at Crystal. The number of glades labeled on the trailmap is seven.* I said Crystal had been part of Indy Pass “since the beginning or near the beginning.” The mountain joined the pass in May, 2020, ahead of the 2020-21 ski season, Indy's second.Why you should ski Crystal Mountain, MichiganCrystal's Loki pod rises above the parking lots, 255 vertical feet, eight trails down, steep on the front, gentler toward the back. These days I would ski each of the eight in turn and proceed next door to the Clipper lift. But I was 17 and just learning to ski and to me at the time that meant bombing as fast as possible without falling. For this, Wipeout was the perfect trail, a sweeping crescent through the trees, empty even on that busy day, steep but only for a bit, just enough to ignite a long sweeping tuck back to the chairs. We lapped this run for hours. Speed and adrenaline through the falling snow. The cold didn't bother us and the dozens of alternate runs striped over successive hills didn't tempt us. We'd found what we'd wanted and what we'd wanted is this.I packed that day in the mental suitcase that holds my ski memories and I've carried it around for decades. Skiing bigger mountains hasn't tarnished it. Becoming a better skier hasn't diminished it. Tuck and bomb, all day long. Something so pure and simple in it, a thing that bundles those Loki laps together with Cottonwoods pow days and Colorado bump towers and California trees. Indelible. Part of what I think of when I think about skiing and part of who I am when I consider myself as a skier.I don't know for sure what Crystal Mountain, Michigan can give you. I can't promise transformation of the impressionable teenage sort. I can't promise big terrain or long runs because those don't have them. I'm not going to pitch Crystal as a singular pilgrimage of the sort that draws western Brobots to Bohemia. This is a regional ski area that is most attractive to skiers who live in Michigan or the northern portions of the states to its immediate south. Read: it is a ski area that the vast majority of you will never experience. And the best endorsement I can make of Crystal is that I think that's too bad, because I think you would really like it, even if I can't exactly explain why.Podcast NotesOn Peek'n PeakThe most difficult American ski area name to spell is not “Summit at Snoqualmie” or “Granlibakken” or “Pomerelle” or “Sipapu” or “Skaneateles” or “Bottineau Winter Park” or “Trollhaugen,” all of which I memorized during the early days of The Storm. The most counterintuitive, frustrating, and frankly stupid ski area name in all the land is “Peek'n Peak,” New York, which repeats the same word spelled two different ways for no goddamn reason. And then there's the apostrophe-“n,” lodged in there like a bar of soap crammed between the tomato and lettuce in your hamburger, a thing that cannot possibly justify or explain its existence. Five years into this project, I can't get the ski area's name correct without looking it up.Anyway, it is a nice little ski area, broad and varied and well-lifted, lodged in a consistent little Lake Erie snowbelt. They don't show glades on the trailmap, but most of the trees are skiable when filled in. The bump claims 400 vertical feet; my Slopes app says 347. Either way, this little Indy Pass hill, where Melcher learned to ski, is a nice little stopover:On Crystal's masterplanCrystal's masterplan leaves room for potential future ski development – we discuss where, specifically, in the podcast. The ski area is kind of lost in the sprawl of Crystal's masterplan, so I've added the lift names for context:On Sugar Loaf, MichiganMichigan, like most ski states, has lost more ski areas than it's kept. The most frustrating of these loses was Sugar Loaf, a 500-footer parked in the northwest corner of the Lower Peninsula, outside of Traverse City. Sunday afternoon lift tickets were like $12 and my high school buddies and I would drive up through snowstorms and ski until the lifts closed and drive home. The place went bust around 2000, but the lifts were still standing until some moron ripped them out five years ago with fantasies of rebuilding the place as some sort of boutique “experience.” Then he ran away and now it's just a lonely, empty hill.On Michigan being “littered with lost ski areas”Michigan is home to the second-most active or semi-active ski areas of any state in the country, with 44 (New York checks in around 50). Still, the Midwest Lost Ski Areas project counts more than 200 lost ski areas in the state.On Crystal's backside evolution and confusing trailmapBy building pod after pod off the backside of the mountain, Crystal has nearly doubled in size since I first skied there in the mid-90s. The Ridge appeared around 2000; North Face came online in 2003; and Backyard materialized in 2015. These additions give Crystal a sprawling, adventurous feel on par with The Highlands or Nub's Nob. But the trailmap, while aesthetically pleasant, is one of the worst I've seen, as it's very unclear how the three pods link to one another, and in turn to the front of the mountain:This is a fixable problem, as I outlined in my last podcast, with Vista Map founder Gary Milliken, who untangled similarly confusing trailmaps for Mt. Spokane, Washington and Lookout Pass, Idaho over the past couple of years. Here's Lookout Pass' old and new maps side-by-side:And here's Mt. Spokane:Crystal – if you'd like an introduction to Gary, I'm happy to make that happen.On resort consolidation in the MidwestThe Midwest has not been sheltered from the consolidation wave that's rolled over much of the West and New England over the past few decades. Of the region's 123 active ski areas, 25 are owned by entities that operate two or more ski areas: Vail Resorts owns 10; Wisconsin Resorts, five; Midwest Family Ski Resorts, four; the Schmitz Brothers, three; Boyne, two; and the Perfect Family, which also owns Timberline in West Virginia, one. But 98 of the region's ski areas remain independently owned and operated. While a couple dozen of those are tiny municipal ropetow bumps with inconsistent operations and little or no snowmaking, most of those that run at least one chairlift are family-owned ski areas that, last winter notwithstanding, are doing very well on a formula of reasonable prices + a focus on kids and night-skiing. Here's the present landscape of Midwest skiing:On the consolidation of Crystal's lift fleetCrystal once ran five frontside chairlifts:Today, the mountain has consolidated that to just five, despite a substantively unchanged trail footprint. While Crystal stopped running the Cheers lift around 2016, its shadowy outline still appears along the Cheers To Lou run.Crystal is way out ahead of the rest of the Midwest, which built most of its ski areas in the age of cheap fixed-grip lifts and never bothered to replace them. The king of these dinosaurs may be Afton Alps, Minnesota, with 15 Hall chairlifts (it was, until recently, 17) lined up along the ridge, the newest of them dating to 1979:It's kind of funny that Vail owns this anachronism, which, despite its comic-book layout, is actually a really fun little ski area.On Crystal's many discounted lift ticket optionsWhile Crystal is as high-end as any resort you'll find in Michigan, the ski area still offers numerous loveably kitschy discounts of the sort that every ski area in the country once sold:Browse these and more on their website.On Indy Pass' dispute with Ski CooperLast year, Indy Pass accused Ski Cooper of building a reciprocal resort network that turned the ski area's discount season pass into a de facto national ski pass that competed directly with Indy. Indy then told its partners to ditch Cooper or leave Indy. Crystal was one of those resorts, and found a workaround by joining the Freedom Pass, which maintained the three Cooper days for their passholders without technically violating Indy Pass' mandate. You can read the full story here:On Bohemia and CaberfaeCrystal left Freedom Pass for this winter, but has retained reciprocal deals with Mount Bohemia and Caberfae. I've hosted leaders of both ski areas on the podcast, and they are two of my favorite episodes:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 73/100 in 2024, and number 573 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

Send us some fan mail here!Fresh off the heels of Halloween the boys catchup on what's up, and Nick gets into detail about his "home" mountain, and the home mountain of many a Massachusettsan; Mount Wachusett!  Josh is all jacked-up from a post-Hallow's Eve cold but is ready to punch the clock and do some podcasting, Nick celebrates pinch-cohost-of-the-podcast Ashley's birthday, and we take a deep-dive into the 17 mile trail system of Wa-Wa-Wachusett Mountain State Reservation with its 200 acres of old growth forest on this fairly-local-episode of the PUDs Podcast!  Special Thanks to Our Sponsors: Adventurisitq Clothing - use code "PUDSPOD" for 20% off your first order and free shipping! Roots Coffee Roasters - use code "puds10" for 10% off your order! Episode Links:  Wachusett Mountain State Reservation Mass.gov Website Wachusett Mountain State Reservation Trail Map Wachusett's Green Giants - Old Growth Forest on Wachusett  Nick's Music Moment:  Alligator - The National - 2005  Josh's Jazzy Music Moment:  Be - Common - 2005Follow us on Instagram: @pudspodcastFollow us on Facebook: PUDs PodcastSubscribe to Nick's YouTube Channel: Nick in NatureFollow Nick on Instagram: @nick__in__natureFollow Josh on Instagram: @jrogers.32Email us at: pudspod@outlook.comRecorded and Produced in Black Cat Studios by Nick Sidla© 2024 PUDs Podcast

For a few short hours, the public gets the chance to walk across a Massachusetts landmark. WBZ's Chaiel Schaffel reports from Clinton.

Send us some fan mail here!It's Fall y'all! Nick and Josh sit down and chat with one of the most prolific and creative hikers in the White Mountains: Philip Carcia!Nick has been taking selfies with scary clowns and hiking a local hill on repeat for the Tay's Summit Challenge, Josh is excited to get spooky in the coming months, and we dive into a multitude of hiking-goodness including long trails, the Kancamagus Highway Yo-Yo, the Single-Year-Grid, 39 summits of Mount Wachusett in 24 hours, thinking "outside the box", a fun game of FKM with months in the Whites, and miles(!) more with Phil Carcia, on this inspirational episode of the PUDs Podcast!Special Thanks to Our Sponsors:Adventurisitq Clothing - use code "PUDSPOD" for 20% off your first order!Roots Coffee Roasters - use code "puds10" for 10% off your order!Episode Links:Finding Philip WebsitePhil's InstagramPhil's Facebook PageTaylor James Steeves Foundation WebsiteTay's Summit Challenge Signup PageDonate to Nick's Fundraiser for Tay's Summit ChallengeNick's Music Moment:Achtung Baby - U2 - 1991Josh's Jazzy Music Moment:Let's get to the main topic...Follow us on Instagram: @pudspodcastFollow us on Facebook: PUDs PodcastSubscribe to Nick's YouTube Channel: Nick in NatureFollow Nick on Instagram: @nick__in__natureFollow Josh on Instagram: @jrogers.32Email us at: pudspod@outlook.comRecorded and Produced in Black Cat Studios by Nick Sidla© 2024 PUDs Podcast

Join us for our conversation with Magnus Carlberg, Executive Director of the Wachusett Business Incubator. Listen to Magnus talk about the Incubator and its role in growing the dreams of entrepreneurs. Magnus talks about their process, services they provide, collaboration with other entities, and touches on their upcoming fall programming including an AI symposium. #podcast #podcaster #podcastshow #podcastlove #businesspodcast #newpodcast #podcastnetwork #podcastcommunity #applepodcasts #spotifypodcast #podernfamily #podbean #newepisode #insidenorthcentralma #insidenorthcentralmassachusettspodcast #mylocalma #visitma #massachusettspodcast #massachusetts #entrepreneurship #business #entrepreneur #wachusettbusinessincubator #businessincubator

Today:Andrea Cabral fills in for Margery. We talk with Imari Paris Jeffries of Embrace Boston about the politics of hope, and a need to fundamentally change our political habits – if you want to start eating better, you've got to stop buying potato chips.And, we subject you all to the New England jingles that live rent free in our brains. Who even gets those cars for kids? And what about Wachusett? 

Send the PUDs Podcast a Text Message!It's been a while and Josh and Nick are feeling a little SPUDs-y!!! It's time for a Small PUDs! Josh and Nick chat and have a quick catchup on the events of the past few weeks!Josh sings a song, the Boston Celtics win the 2024 NBA Championship, Nick hikes Wachusett on Father's Day with friends, Josh hits the beach and goes crab-hunting, Nick finally gets up for trail-maintenance along with a sunset on Mount Adams, can I get a SCREEEEEEE, toad hallucinations, Nick finds The Watcher, Josh might have an accent, Nick gets rear-ended, listener mail, and hopefully people still want stickers on this it's-been-a-while-since-we've-done-a-SPUDs-episode of the PUDs Podcast!Episode Links:Listen to Nick on SLASR Podcast Episode 157SLASR PodcastFacebook:PUDs PodcastInstagram: @pudspodcastTwitter:@pudspodcastEmail:pudspod@outlook.comRecorded and Produced in Black Cat Studios by the PUD Boys

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

In this episode of the Baystate Golf Podcast, I talk about  Wachusett Country Club as the first course in the Baystate Spotlight Series. The spotlight includes facts and history. I share my love for the course's old-school charm, subtlety of the land, and overall feel. I also talk about some aspects I don't love. I compare the back nine to the front nine and a former member weighs in via Instagram with some thoughts about what makes Wachusett CC a tough layout for players who like to hit it left to right.LINKS:Subscribe to the Newsletter Baystate Golf on IGSeanMeliaGolf on TwitterBaystateGolf.com

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Dec. 28. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 4. 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:WhoJon Schaefer, Owner and General Manager of Berkshire East, Massachusetts and Catamount, straddling the border of Massachusetts and New YorkRecorded onDecember 6, 2023About the mountainsBerkshire EastClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Schaefer familyLocated in: Charlemont, MassachusettsYear founded: 1960Pass affiliations:* Berkshire Summit Pass: Unlimited Access* Indy Base Pass: 2 days with blackouts (reservations required)* Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackouts (reservations required)Closest neighboring ski areas: Eaglebrook School (:36), Brattleboro (:48), Hermitage Club (:48), Mt. Greylock Ski Club (:52), Mount Snow (:55), Jiminy Peak (:56), Bousquet (:56); Catamount is approximately 90 minutes south of Berkshire EastBase elevation: 660 feetSummit elevation: 1,840 feetVertical drop: 1,180 feetSkiable Acres: 180Average annual snowfall: 110 inchesTrail count: 45Lift count: 7 (1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Berkshire East's lift fleet)View historic Berkshire East trailmaps on skimap.org.CatamountClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Schaefer familyLocated in: Hillsdale, New York and South Egremont, Massachusetts (the resort straddles the state line, and generally seems to use the New York address as its location of record)Year founded: 1939Pass affiliations:* Berkshire Summit Pass: Unlimited Access* Indy Base Pass and Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackouts (reservations required)Closest neighboring ski areas: Butternut (:19), Otis Ridge (:35), Bousquet (:40), Mohawk Mountain (:46), Jiminy Peak (:50), Mount Lakeridge (:55), Mt. Greylock Ski Club (1:02); Berkshire East sits approximately 90 minutes north of CatamountBase elevation: 1,000 feetSummit elevation: 2,000 feetVertical drop: 1,000 feetSkiable Acres: 133 acresAverage annual snowfall: 108 inchesTrail count: 44 (35% green, 42% blue, 23% black/double-black)Lift count: 8 (2 fixed-grip quads, 3 triples, 3 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Catamount's lift fleet)View historic Catamount trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himMight I nominate Massachusetts as America's most underappreciated ski state? It's easy to understand the oversight. Bordered by three major ski states that are home to a combined 107 ski areas (50 in New York, 27 in Vermont, and 30 in New Hampshire), Massachusetts contains just 13 active lift-served mountains. Two (Easton School and Mount Greylock Ski Club) are private. Five of the remainder deliver vertical drops of 400 feet or fewer. The state's entire lift-served skiable area clocks in at around 1,300 acres, which is smaller than Killington and just a touch larger than Solitude.But the code and character of those 11 public ski areas is what I'm interested in here. Winnowed from some 200 bumps that once ran ropetows up the incline, these survivors are super-adapters, the Darwinian capstones to a century-long puzzle: how to consistently offer skiing in a hostile world that hates you.New England is a rumbler, and always has been. Outside of northern Vermont's Green Mountain Spine (Sugarbush, MRG, Bolton, Stowe, Smuggs, Jay), which snags 200-plus inches of almost automatic annual snowfall, the region's six states can, on any given day from November to April, stage double as Santa's Village or serve as props for sad brown Christmas pining. Immersive reading of the New England Ski History website suggests this contemporary reality reflects historical norms: prior to the widespread introduction of snowmaking, ski areas could sometimes offer just a single-digit number of ski days in particularly difficult winters. Even now, even in good winters, the freeze-thaw cycle is relentless. The rain-snow line is a thing during big storms. Several times in recent years, including this one, furious December rainstorms have washed out weeks of early-season snow and snowmaking.And yet, like sharks, hanging on for hundreds of millions of years as mass extinctions rolled most of the rest of life into the fossil record, the surviving Massachusetts ski area operators found a way to keep moving forward. But these are not sharks – the Colorado- and Utah-based operators haven't plundered the hills rolling west of Boston just yet. Every one of these ski areas (with the exception of investment fund-owned Bousquet), is still family-owned and operated. And these families are among the smartest ski area operators in America.In October, tiny Ski Ward, owned for decades by the LaCroix family, was the first North American ski area to spin lifts for the 2023-24 ski season. Wachusett, a thousand-footer run by the Crowley family since 1968, is a model home for volume urban skiing efficiency. The Fairbank family transformed Jiminy Peak from tadpole (in the 1960s) to alligator before expanding their small empire into New England (the family now runs Bromley, Vermont and owns Cranmore, New Hampshire). The Murdock family has run Butternut since its 1963 founding, and likely saved nearby Otis Ridge from extinction by purchasing the ski area in 2016 (the Murdocks also purchased, but later closed, another nearby ski area, Ski Blandford).The Schaefers, of Charlemont by way of Michigan, are as wiley and wired as any of them. Patriarch Roy Schaefer drove in from the Midwest with a station wagon full of kids in 1978. He stapled then-bankrupt Berkshire East together with the refuse of dead and dying ski areas from all over America. Some time in the mid- to late-aughts, Roy's son Jon took over daily operations and rapidly modernized the lifts, snowmaking, and trail network. Roy's other son Jim, a Wall-Streeter, helped the family take full ownership of the ski area. In 2018, they bought Catamount, a left-behind bump with fantastic fall lines but dated lifts and snowmaking.None of this is new or news to anyone who pays attention to Massachusetts skiing. In fact, Jon Schaefer has appeared on my podcasts twice before (and I've been on his). But in the four years since he joined me for episode nine, a lot has changed at Berkshire, at Catamount, in New England, and across skiing. Daily, the narrative grows that consolidation and megapasses are squeezing family operators out of skiing. My daily work suggests that the opposite may be happening, that independent operators, who have outlasted skiing's extinction event of the low-snow decades and perfected their mad alchemy through decades of swinging the pickaxe into the same mountain, have never had a better story to tell. And Jon Schaefer has one of the better ways of telling it.What we talked aboutEarly openings for both ski areas; what it means that Catamount opened before Berkshire East this season; snowmaking metaphors that I can guarantee you haven't heard before; letting go of things you love as you take on more responsibility; the power of ropetows; Berkshire East's new T-Bar Express, the ski area's first high-speed quad; why Schaefer finally came around on detachable lift technology; the unique dynamics of a multi-generational, family-owned mountain; the long-term plan for the three current top-to-bottom chairlifts; the potential Berkshire East expansion; yes Berkshire is getting busier; the strange math of high-speed versus fixed-grip quads; that balance between modernizing and retaining atmosphere; the Indy Pass' impact on Berkshire and the industry as a whole; whether more mountains could join the Berkshire Summit Pass; whether the Schaefers could buy another ski area; whether they considered buying Jay Peak or are considering buying Burke; assessing the overhaul of Catamount's lift fleet; talking through the clear-cutting of Catamount's frontside trails; parking at Catamount; expansion potential for Catamount; and Catamount being “one of the best small ski areas in the country.”Below: first chair on the new T-Bar Express at Berkshire East:Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIf I could somehow itemize and sort the thousands of Storm-related emails and Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook messages that I've read over the past four years, a top-10 request would be some form of this: get Schaefer back on the podcast.There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that Jon is, in my opinion, one of the more unfiltered and original thinkers in skiing. His dad moved the family to Berkshire in 1978. Jon was born in 1980. That means he grew up on the mountain and he lives at the mountain and he holds its past, present, and future in his vision like some shaman of the Berkshires, orchestrating its machinations in a hallucinogenic flow state, crafting, from the ether, a ski area like no other in America.Which leads to the second reason. Because Schaefer is so willful and effective, it can often be difficult for outsiders to see into the eye of the hurricane. You kind of have to let the storm pass. And the past four years have been a bit of a storm, particularly at Catamount, where Covid and supply-chain issues collided with an ambitious but protracted lift-fleet upgrade.But that's all done. Catamount has five functioning chairlifts (all of which, remarkably, were relocated from somewhere else). Berkshire just opened its first high-speed quad, the T-Bar Express. Both mountains are busier than ever, and Berkshire is a perennial Indy Pass top 10 by number of redemptions. And while expansion and a lift shuffle likely loom at Berkshire, both ski areas are, essentially, what the Schaefers want them to be.Which doesn't mean they are ever finished. Schaefer and I touch on this existential reality in the podcast, but we also discuss the other obvious question: now that Catamount's gut-renovation is wrapping up, what's next? Could this ski family, with their popular Berkshire Summit Pass (which is also good at Bousquet), expand with more owned or partner mountains? There are, after all, only so many people in America who know how to capably operate a ski area. You can learn, sure, but most people suck at it, which is (one reason) why there are more lost ski areas than active ones. While I don't root for consolidation necessarily, if ski areas are going to transfer ownership, I'd rather someone proven sign the deed than an unknown. And when it comes to proven, the Schaefers have proven as much as anyone in the country.Questions I wish I'd askedAt some point over the past few years, the Schaefers purchased a Rossland, B.C.-based Cat skiing operation called Big Red Cats. Their terrain covers 20,000 acres on eight peaks. I'm not sure why we didn't get into it.What I got wrongI said that Indy Pass had 130 alpine partners. That was correct on Dec. 6, when we conducted the interview, but the pass has since added Moose Mountain, Alaska and Hudson Bay Mountain, B.C., bringing the total up to 132.Why you should ski Berkshire East and CatamountWhile age, injuries, perspective, volume, skiing with children, and this newsletter have all changed my approach to where and what I ski on any given day, the thing I still love most is the fight. Riding the snowy mountain, in its bruising earthly form, through its trees and drops and undulations, feeling part of something raw and wild. I don't like speed. I like technical and varied terrain that requires deliberate, thoughtful turns. This I find profoundly interesting, like a book that offers, with each page, a captivating new thing.Massachusetts is a great ski state, but it doesn't have a lot of what I just described, that sort of ever-rolling wickedness you'll find clinging to certain mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire. But the state does have one such ski area: Berkshire East. She's ready to fight. Glades and bumps and little cliffs in the woods. Jiminy and Wachusett give you high-speed lifts and operational excellence, but they don't give you (more than nominal) trees. For a skier looking to summon a little Mad River Glen but save themselves a three-hour drive, Berkshire East goes on the storm-chase list.But unlike MRG, Berkshire is a top-to-bottom snowmaking house, and it has to be. While the glades are amazing when you can get them, the operating assumption here is that, more often than not, you can't. And that means the vast majority of skiers – those who prefer groomers to whatever frolics you find in the trees – can head to Berkshire knowing a good day awaits.Catamount, less-snowy and closer to New York City, gives you a more traditional Massachusetts ski experience. More people (it seems), less exploring in the trees (though you can do this a bit). What it has in common with Berkshire is that Catamount is an excellent natural ski mountain. Fall lines, headwalls, winders through the trees. A thousand vert gives you a good run. Head there on a weekday in March, when the whole joint is open, and let them run.Podcast NotesOn Schaefer's previous podcast appearancesSchaefer was the first person to ever agree to join me on The Storm Skiing Podcast, answering my cold email in about four seconds. “Let's do it,” he wrote. It took us a few months to make it happen, but he joined me for episode nine. While he showed up huge, the episode also doubles as a showcase for how much better my own production quality has gotten over the past four years. The intro is sorta… flat:A few months later, Schaefer became the first operator in America to shutter his mountains to help stop the spread of Covid-19. He almost immediately launched an organization called Goggles for Docs, and he joined me on my “Covid-19 & Skiing” miniseries to discuss the initiative:The next year, I joined Jon on his Berkshire Sessions podcast, where we discussed his mountains and Northeast skiing in general:On historic opening and closing dates at Berkshire East and CatamountWe discussed Berkshire and Catamount's historical opening and closing dates. Here's what the past 10 years looked like (the Schaefers took over Catamount starting with the 2018-19 ski season):On Berkshire SnowbasinSchaefer discussed the now-defunct Berkshire Basin ski area in nearby Cummington. The ski area operated from 1949 to 1989, according to New England Ski History, and counted a 550-foot vertical drop (though the map below says 500). Here's a circa 1984 trailmap:Schaefer references efforts to re-open this ski area as a backcountry center, though I couldn't find any reporting on the topic.Stan Brown, whom Schaefer cites for his insight that skiers “are more interested in how they get up the mountain than how they get down” founded Berkshire Snow Basin with his wife, Ruth.On high-speed ropetowsI'll never stop yelling about these things until everyone installs one – these high-speed ropetows can move 4,000 skiers per hour and cost all of $50,000. A more perfect terrain park lift does not exist. This one is at Spirit Mountain, Minnesota (video by me):On when the T-bar came out of Berkshire EastSchaefer refers to the old T-bar that occupied the line where the new high-speed quad now sits. The lift did not extend to the summit, but ran 1,800 feet up from the base, along the run that is still known as Competition (lift F below):On Schaefer's past resistance to high-speed liftsShaun Sutner, a longtime snowsports reporter who has appeared on this podcast three times – most recently in November – summarized Schaefer's onetime resistance to detachable lifts in a 2015 Worcester Telegram & Gazette article:The start of the 2014-15 ski season came with the B-East's first-ever summit quad, a $2 million fixed-grip "medium-speed" lift from Skytrac, a new U.S.-owned lift company. The low-maintenance, elegantly simple conveyance will save millions of dollars over the years. Not only was it less than half the cost of a high-speed detachable quad, but it also eliminates the need for $300,000-$500,000 grip replacements that high-speed lifts need every three or four years.So what changed Schaefer's mind? We discussed in the podcast.On the potential Berkshire East expansionWhile Berkshire East has teased an expansion for several years, details remain scarce (rumors, unfortunately, do not). Schaefer tells us what he's willing to on the podcast, and this image, which the resort presented to a local planning board last year, shows the approximate location of the new terrain pod (around the red dotted line labeled “4”):While this plan suggests the Mountain Top Triple would move to serve the expansion, that may not necessarily be the final plan, Schaefer confirms.On “the gondola side of Stowe” When Schaefer says that the Berkshire expansion will ski like “the gondola side of Stowe,” he's referring to the terrain pod indicated below:Stowe has two gondolas, one of which connects Stowe proper to Spruce Peak, but that's not the terrain he's referring to. The double chair side of Plattekill also skis in the way Schaefer describes, as a series of figure-eights that delightfully frazzles the senses, making the ski area feel far larger than it actually is:On Indy Pass rankingsBerkshire East has finished as a top-10 mountain in number of Indy Pass redemptions every season:On LiftopiaSchaefer references Liftopia, a former online lift ticket broker whose legacy is fading. At one time, I was a huge fan of this Expedia-of-skiing site, where you could score substantial discounts to most major non-Vail ski areas. I hosted founder and CEO Evan Reece way back on podcast number 8:Sadly, the company collapsed with the onset of Covid, as I documented back in 2020:…the industry's most-prominent pure tech entity – Liftopia – has been teetering on existential collapse since failing to pay significant numbers of its partners following the March shutdown. A group of ski area operators tried forcing Liftopia into bankruptcy to recoup their funds. They failed, then appealed, then withdrew that appeal. Outside of the public record, bitter and betrayed ski area operators fumed about the loss of revenues that, as Aspen Snowmass CFO Matt Jones wrote in emails filed in federal court, “were never yours to begin with.” In August, Liftopia CEO Evan Reece announced that he had signed a letter of intent to sell the company.That new owner, Liftopia announced Friday, would be Skitude, a European tech outfit specializing in mobile apps. “The proceeds from the sale will be used to pay creditors,” SAM reported. In an email to an independent ski area operator that was shared with The Storm Skiing Journal Reece wrote that “…all claims will be treated equally,” without specifying whether partners could expect a full or partial repayment. The message also indicated that the new owner may “prioritize ongoing partners,” though it was unclear whether that indicated preference in future business terms or payback of owed funds, or something else altogether.Whatever the outcome, this unsatisfying story is a tale of enormous missed opportunity. No company was better positioned to help lift-served skiing adapt to the social-distancing age than Liftopia. It could have easily expanded and adapted its highly regarded technology to accommodate the almost universal shift to online-only sales for lift tickets, rental reservations, ski lessons, and even appointment times in the lodge. It had 15 years of brand recognition with customers and deep relationships within the ski industry.But ski areas, uncertain about Liftopia's future, have spent an offseason when they could have been building out their presence on a familiar platform scrambling for replacement tech solutions. In addition to the Liftopia-branded site, many ski areas used Liftopia's Cloud Store platform to sell day tickets, season passes, rentals, and more. While it is unclear how many former partners shifted to another point-of-sale system this offseason, several have confirmed to The Storm Skiing Journal that they have done so.I'm not sure how Liftopia would have faired against the modern version of the Indy Pass, but more choice is almost always better for consumers, and I'm still bitter about how this one collapsed.On CaddyshackMovie quotes are generally lost on me, but Schaefer references this one from Caddyshack, so I looked it up and this is what the robots fed me:On the majority of skier visits now being on a season passAccording to the National Ski Areas Association, season pass holders have surpassed day-ticket buyers for total number of skier visits for four consecutive seasons. Without question, this is simply because the industry has gotten very good at incentivizing season pass sales by rolling the most well-known ski areas onto the Epic and Ikon passes. It is unclear whether the NSAA counts the Indy or Mountain Collective passes as season passes, but the number of each of those sold is small in comparison to Epic and Ikon.On the Berkshire Summit PassThe Schaefers have been leaders in establishing compelling regional multimountain ski passes. The Berkshire Summit Pass has, since 2020, delivered access to three solid western Massachusetts ski areas: Berkshire East, Catamount, and partner mountain Bousquet (on the unlimited version only). It is available in unlimited, Sunday through Friday, midweek, and nights-only versions. An Indy Pass add-on makes this a badass cross-New England ski product.On Burke being great and accessible even though it looks as though it's parked at the ass-end of nowhereThe first piece of ski writing I ever published was a New York Ski Blog recap of a Burke ski day in 2019:Last week, winter seemed to be winding down, with above-freezing temps forecast clear up to Canada before St. Patrick's Day. Desperate to extend winter, I had my sights on a storm forecast to dump nearly a foot of new snow across northern Vermont. After considering my options, I locked onto a hill I'd overlooked in 20 years of skiing Vermont: Burke.I'd read the online commentary: steep, funky, heavily gladed, classic New England twisty with high-quality snow well-preserved by cold temps and a lack of crowds. But to get there you have to drive past some big-name ski areas, most with equal or greater vertical drop, skiable acreage and average annual snowfall.Further research uncovered a secret Burke advantage over its better-known neighbors: unlike other mountains that require a post-expressway slog of 30-plus miles on local roads, Burke sits just seven miles off Interstate 91, meaning it was actually the closest northern Vermont option by drive time.As 10 inches of snow piled up Sunday and Monday and areas to the south teeter-tottered along a freeze-thaw cycle that would turn ungroomed trails to granite, Burke looked like my last best shot at mid-winter conditions.Two days after the storm, on the last day of below-freezing temps, I left Brooklyn at 4 am and arrived at 9:15. Read the rest…On Burke's (mostly) hapless ownership historyWe talk quite a bit about Burke Mountain, one of those good New England ski areas with a really terrible business record. Schaefer refers to the unusually huge number of former owners, which, according to New England Ski History, include:* 1964: Burke Mountain Recreation (Doug Kitchel) buys area; eventually went bankrupt* 1987: Paul D. Quinn buys, eventually sells to bank after his bank goes bankrupt* 1990: Hilco, Inc., a bank, takes ownership, then sells to…* 1991: Bernd Schaefers (no relation to Jon), under whom the ski area eventually went bankrupt (for the second time)* 1995: Northern Star Ski Corporation (five owners) buys the ski area, but it eventually goes bankrupt for a third time* 2000: Unidentified auction winner buys Burke and sells it to…* 2000: Burke Mountain Academy, who never wanted to be long-term owner, and sold to…* 2005: Laubert-Adler and the Ginn Corporation, who sold to…* 2012: Aerial Quiros, who engaged in all kinds of shadiness* 2016: Burke becomes the property of U.S. America, as court-appointed receiver takes control of this and Jay Peak. While Jay sold last year, Burke remains for saleOn media reports indicating that there is a bid on BurkeI got excited earlier this year, when the excellent Vermont Digger reported that the sales process for Burke appeared to be underway:Michael Goldberg, the court-appointed receiver in charge of overseeing Burke Mountain ski resort for more than seven years, has an offer to buy the scandal-plagued ski resort in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.News of the bid came from a recent court filing submitted by Goldberg, predicting that a sale of the property would take place “later this year.”The filing does not name the bidder or the amount of the bid, but the document stated that Goldberg wants to continue to seek qualified buyers, and if a matching or higher price is offered, an auction would be held to sell the resort. …“The Receiver has received an initial offer, and expects to file a motion with the Court in the next month recommending an identical sales process to the Jay Peak sale – a ‘stalking horse' bid, followed by an auction and a subsequent motion asking the Court to approve a final sale,” Goldberg stated in his recent court filing regarding Burke.Well, nothing happened, though the bid remains active, as far as I know. So who knows. I hope whoever buys Burke next, this place can finally stabilize and build.On the West Mountain expansion at CatamountSchaefer discusses a potential expansion at Catamount. New England Ski History hosts a summary page for this one as well:A lift and a variety of trails are proposed for the west side of the ski area, crossing over the Lower Sidewinder trail. The lift would climb 650 vertical feet from a new parking lot to the junction of Upper and Lower Sidewinder. 6 trail segments would be cut above and below the lower switchback of the Lower Sidewinder Trail. All of the terrain would be located in New York state.Here's a circa 2014 map, showing the proposed expansion looker's right:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 113/100 in 2023, and number 498 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. 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This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Dec. 11. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 18. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoShaun Sutner, snowsports columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Telegram.comRecorded onNovember 20, 2023About Shaun SutnerShaun is a skier, a writer, and a journalist based in Worcester, Massachusetts. For the past 19 years, he's written a snowsports column from Thanksgiving to April. For the past three years, he's joined me on The Storm Skiing Podcast to discuss that column, but also to talk all things New England skiing (and beyond). You should follow Shaun on social media to stay locked into his work:Why I interviewed himLast month, I clicked open a SNOWBOARDER email newsletter and found this headline slotted under “trending news”:Yikes, I thought. Not again. I clicked through to the story. In full:Tensions simmered as disgruntled Stevens Pass skiers, clutching their "Epic Passes," rallied against Vail Resorts' alleged mismanagement. The discontent echoed through an impassioned petition, articulating a litany of grievances: excessive lift lines, scant open terrain, inadequate staffing, and woeful parking, painting a dismal portrait of a beloved winter haven.Fueled by a sense of betrayal, the signatories lamented a dearth of ski-ready slopes despite ample snowfall, bemoaning Vail Resorts' purported disregard for both patrons and employees. Their frustration soared at the stark contrast to neighboring ski areas, thriving under similar conditions.The petition's fervor escalated, challenging the ethics of selling passes without delivering promised services, highlighting derisory wages juxtaposed against corporate profiteering. The collective call-to-action demanded reparation, invoking consumer protection laws and even prodding the involvement of the Attorney General and the U.S. Forest Service.Yet, amidst their resolve, a poignant melancholy pervaded—the desire to relish the slopes overshadowed by a battle for justice. The signatories yearned for equitable winter joys, dreaming of swift resolutions and an end to the clash with corporate giants, vowing to safeguard the legacy of snow sports for generations to come.As the petition gathered momentum, a snowstorm of change loomed on the horizon, promising either reconciliation or a paradigm shift in the realm of winter recreation.The “impassioned petition” in question is dated Dec. 28, 2021. In the nearly two intervening years, Vail Resorts has fired Stevens Pass' GM, brought in a highly respected local (Tom Fortune) who had spent decades at the ski area to stabilize things (Fortune and I discussed this at length on the podcast), and installed a new, young GM (Ellen Galbraith), with deep roots in the area (I also hosted Galbraith on the podcast). Last ski season (2022-23), was a smooth one at Stevens Pass. And while Skier Mob is never truly happy with anything, the petition in question flared, faded, and went into hibernation approximately 18 months before Snowboarder got around to this story. Yes, there were issues at Stevens Pass. Vail fixed them. The end.The above-cited story is also overwritten, under-contextualized, and borderline slanderous. “Derisory wages?” Vail has since raised its minimum wage to $20 an hour. To stand there and aim a scanny-beepy thing at skiers as they approach the lift queue. Sounds like hell on earth.Perhaps I missed the joke here, and this is some sort of snowy Onion. I do hate to call out other writers. But this is a particularly lazy exhibit of the core problem with modern snowsports writing: most of it is not very good. The non-ski media will humor us with the occasional piece, but these tend to be dumbed down for a general audience. The legacy ski media as a functioning editorial entity no longer exists. There are just a few holdouts, at newspapers across the country, telling the local story of skiing as best they can.And in New England, one of the best doing his best to produce respectable snowsports writing is Shaun Sutner.What we talked aboutNew England resort-hopping; how to set and meet a season ski-days goal; Brobots hate safety bars; the demise and resurgence of Black Mountain, New Hampshire; why Magic Mountain works; what it means that Ski Ward was the first ski area in America to open for the 2023-24 ski season; the Uphill New England pass; why Vail and Alterra still offer free uphill access at all their New England ski areas; how to not be an uphill A-hole; the No Boundaries Pass; which passes New England's remaining big independent ski areas could join; the proposed Stowe-Smuggs gondola connection; when development benefits the environment; could Vail buy Smuggs?; the Little Cottonwood Canyon gondola; finally replacing the Attitash triple; Vail's New England lift-building surge; Boyne goes bonkers in New England; the new Barker lift at Sunday River; the West Mountain expansion at Sugarloaf; the South Peak expansion at Loon; New England's chairlift renaissance; Black Quad at Magic; a Cannon tram upgrade; Berkshire East's first high-speed lift; Wachusett lift upgrades; and Quebec's secret snow pocket.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewSutner and I have this conversation every Thanksgiving week, which is when his column launches. I think I need to start scheduling it earlier, because I haven't been able to turn this around so fast the past two seasons. Here are excerpts and links to his first few columns of the 2023-24 ski season:Nov. 23Snow sports: Ski resort lift upgrades should boost industry in New EnglandThe most despised lift in New England ski country is no more.The ponderously slow, sometimes treacherous summit triple chair at Attitash that has long been a staple of hardcore Massachusetts skiers and snowboarders, is gone."No one ever thought this was ever going to really happen," Brandon Swartz, general manager of the Mount Washington Valley classic ski area in Bartlett, New Hampshire, told me. "I just couldn't be more excited to help build the lift that no one ever thought was going to get built."Whether the old summit lift's swift new replacement, the high-speed detachable Mountaineer quad, will be ready for Christmas week as Colorado-based owner Vail Resorts expects, is yet to be seen as Attitash is still furiously working on it in the eighth month of the project. But it's the most welcome ski-lift replacement in our region in decades, I think, finally providing convenient access to the passel of glorious snaking steep and challenging intermediate runs from the top in half the 16-18-minute ride time of the old 1986 triple. Read more…Nov. 29'It was shocking and beautiful': Trip to Argentina, Antarctica memorable for Lunenburg's RiddleThis wasn't Riddle's first time tackling demanding backcountry terrain in forbidding terrain, nor is this the first time I've written about him, having chronicled his previous trips to Chamonix in the French Alps and Norway. Riddle is the guy who got me into alpine touring – the Alpine-Nordic hybrid that involves hiking up mountains on skis with climbing skins affixed to the bases and then removing the skins and locking down the boot heels for the descent – seven or eight years ago. He's also won the Wachusett Mountain pond skim contest three times, leading to word on the street that he's been banned from taking that coveted title ever again.But this adventure was of a bigger order of magnitude than his previous ventures into big mountains. Read more…Dec. 6New BOA ski boot hopes its unique fit will provide a leg up on competitionNo, it's not named after a boa constrictor, though it does wrap around your foot kind of like a snake.BOA stands for "boot opening adjustment" and it's the trademarked brand name of the company that has made the lace and wire and dial adjust-based closure systems since 2001 and adapted them to snowboard and race bike boots, Nordic gear, ice and in-line skates and other applications,Now BOA has brought the system to Alpine ski boots. Oversized protruding knobs and an intricate wire system go over the forefoot instead of buckles and wrap the instep and can make micro-adjustments in either direction – tighter or looser. Proponents say they just fit better, while skeptics point out they're a bit heavier and their durability still hasn't been proven on a wide scale yet for the Alpine version. Read more…His column lands every Wednesday through spring.What I got wrongAbout Magic Mountain, VermontI said that Magic was out of business for “five years.” The best info I can find (on New England Ski History), suggests that the ski area closed following the 1990-91 season, and didn't re-open until December 1997, which would put the closure at closer to six-and-a-half years.About the Indy PassI referred to Erik Mogensen as the “Indy Pass founder.” He is the pass' current owner, but Doug Fish, who has joined me on the podcast many times, founded the product.About SaddlebackI didn't hear Sutner correctly when he asked if Saddleback was “a B corporation,” which is a business that “is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials.” I thought he'd asked if they were owned by a larger corporation, and my answer reflects that understanding (but does not answer his question), as I go into the history of Arctaris Impact Fund's purchase of Saddleback. The only ski area that has achieved B Corporation certification, as far as I know, is Taos.About words being hardI described Vail and Alterra as “big, corporate conglomerations.” Which, I'm sorry.About there being too many things in this world to keep track ofI forgot the name of Spruce Peak at Stowe when describing the ski area's connection point with Smugglers' Notch. Which is funny because I've written about it extensively over the past several months, skied there many times, and in general try to remember the important components of prominent ski areas.About my personal calendarI said that I skied at Big Sky “last year.” I meant “last season,” as I actually was there in April 2023.On time being fungibleI said that Magic's Black Quad has been sitting in the ski area's parking lot for “about four years.” This is inaccurate for a couple different reasons. First, the lift – Stratton's old Snow Bowl lift – came out in 2018 (so more than five years ago). I don't know when Magic took delivery of the lift. At any rate, installation began several years ago, so it's not accurate to say that the lift has been “sitting in the parking lot.” What I meant was that it's taken Magic a hell of a long time to get this machine live, which no one can dispute.Podcast NotesOn motorcycle helmet lawsWe briefly discuss the almost universal shift to wearing helmets while skiing in the context of motorcycle helmet laws, which are not as ubiquitous as you'd suppose. Only 18 states require all riders to wear helmets at all times. The remainder set an age limit – typically 18 or 21. Three states – Iowa, Illinois, and New Hampshire – have no helmet law at all.On non-profit ski areasErik Mogensen, owner of Entabeni Systems and Indy Pass, is leading the coalition to find a new owner for Black Mountain, New Hampshire. He's said many times that around a quarter of America's ski areas need “another ownership solution.” He expanded on this in SAM a few weeks back:I think about 25 percent of the non-corporate ski areas in North America need another ownership solution. That doesn't necessarily mean that it needs to be nonprofit. There are a lot of liabilities in having a group of volunteers or board of directors try to run a ski area from a nonprofit status. I'm definitely a capitalist, and there can be issues with nonprofits that I don't think we've solved yet in skiing.If we look at the nonprofits that have run very well, Bridger Bowl and Bogus Basin particularly, they focused around running the ski area as a for-profit business with a nonprofit backend, if you will.I've also seen a lot of ski areas struggle with trying to run the nonprofit model. So I don't necessarily believe that a nonprofit model is something that we should copy and paste. But I do believe it's a front runner that needs to be adjusted and adopted. And we do need a solution for the 25 percent. It's very hard to make some of areas commercially viable on their own.On the “unfriendly” lift attendants at Ski WardI recently gave Ski Ward some positive run, highlighting the fact that they were the first ski area to open in America in 2023. It was a cool story and they deserved the attention.However, I have a conflicted history with this place, as Sutner and I joked on the podcast. I had one of my worst ski experiences ever there, mostly because the lift attendants – at least on the day of my visit – were complete a******s. As I wrote after a visit on Feb. 1, 2022:Ski Ward, 25 miles southwest, makes Nashoba Valley look like Aspen. A single triple-chair rising 220 vertical feet. A T-bar beside that. Some beginner surface lifts lower down. Off the top three narrow trails that are steep for approximately six feet before leveling off for the run-out back to the base. It was no mystery why I was the only person over the age of 14 skiing that evening.Normally my posture at such community- and kid-oriented bumps is to trip all over myself to say every possible nice thing about its atmosphere and mission and miraculous existence in the maw of the EpKonasonics. But this place was awful. Like truly unpleasant. My first indication that I had entered a place of ingrained dysfunction was when I lifted the safety bar on the triple chair somewhere between the final tower and the exit ramp and the liftie came bursting out of his shack like he'd just caught me trying to steal his chickens. “The sign is there,” he screamed, pointing frantically at the “raise bar here” sign jutting up below the top station just shy of unload. At first I didn't realize he was talking to me and so I ignored him and this offended him to the point where he – and this actually happened – stopped the chairlift and told me to come back up the ramp so he could show me the sign. I declined the opportunity and skied off and away and for the rest of the evening I waited until I was exactly above his precious sign before raising the safety bar.All night, though, I saw this b******t. Large, aggressive, angry men screaming – screaming – at children for this or that safety-bar violation. The top liftie laid off me once he realized I was a grown man, but it was too late. Ski Ward has a profoundly broken customer-service culture, built on bullying little kids on the pretext of lift safety. Someone needs to fix this. Now.Look, I am not anti-lift bar. I put it down every time, unless I am out West and riding with some version of Studly Bro who is simply too f*****g cool for such nonsense. But that was literally my 403rd chairlift ride of the season and my 2,418th since I began tracking ski stats on my Slopes app in 2018. Never have I been lectured over the timing of my safety-bar raise. So I was surprised. But if Ski Ward really wants to run their chairlifts with the rulebook specificity of a Major League Baseball game, all they have to do is say, “Excuse me, Sir, can you please wait to get to the sign before raising your bar next time?” That would have worked just as well, and would have saved them this flame job. For a place that caters to children, they need to do much, much better.On Uphill New EnglandWe go pretty deep on the purpose and utility of the Uphill New England pass, which allows you to skin up and ski down these 13 ski areas:On the Granite Backcountry AllianceSutner also mentions the Granite Backcountry Alliance, which is a group that promotes backcountry skiing in New Hampshire and Western Maine. Here's the group's self-described mission:New Hampshire and Western Maine are blessed with a rich ski history that includes a deep heritage of backcountry skiing from Mt. Washington's Tuckerman Ravine to the many ski trails developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) of the 1930's (some of which still remain today). The celebration of the sport of skiing is embedded in the culture of the area.While backcountry skiing's resurgence has captivated a new user base, it is also now a measurable, undeniable force in the industry and is the fastest growing segment of the sport. The demand is strong but the terrain in New Hampshire and Western Maine is limited by the tree density, glade supply, and legal access to the forests and mountains.GBA resolves to improve the playing field for backcountry skiers. Creating and developing ski glades, however, is not the only objective of the group. Improving the foundation of the sport is critical to future success, such as creating partnerships and collaboration with public and private landowners, education regarding safety and ecological awareness, and creating a unified culture – one that respects the land and its owners and does not permit unauthorized cutting.We are part of a movement of human-powered activities that is the basis for an emerging outdoor economy. We believe this movement has broad implications on areas like NH's North Country and it can develop with committed folks like yourself .  It's the last frontier!  So join us by stepping up to support the cause; the ability to organize is a powerful tool to steward our own future.On the proposed Stowe-Smuggs gondola connectionI wrote a bit about the proposed gondola connection between Stowe and Smugglers' Notch earlier this year:Seated just a half mile from the top of Smuggs' mainly intermediate Sterling Mountain is the top of Stowe's Spruce Peak. Skiers had been skating between the two resorts for decades. Why not connect the two mountains – both widely considered among the best ski areas in New England – with a fast, modern lift? A sort of Alta-Snowbird – or at least a Solitude-Brighton – of the East? Two owners, one interconnected ski experience.“We have the possibility of creating what we think will be a very unique ski and riding experience by connecting these two resorts,” said Stritzler. “I don't believe in marketing this way, but all you have to do is do trail counts and acreage and elevations, and pretty soon you get to the conclusion that if you can offer Smugglers' guests the opportunity to also take advantage of what Stowe has to offer, and you can offer the two in some kind of combination through a connecting lift, well, now suddenly you're not quite so nervous about all the consolidation taking place, because you've got something to respond with.”Here's the proposed line:Smuggs later withdrew their plans amid a cool reception from state officials. Resort officials are recalibrating their strategy in backrooms, they've told me, re-analyzing the project from an economic-impact point of view. More to come on that.On the Little Cottonwood Canyon gondolaWithout question, the most contentious ski-related development in North America right now is the proposed Little Cottonwood Canyon gondola, which would essentially remove most cars from a cluttered, avalanche-prone road and move the resort base area down below the major snowline. Various protest groups, however, are acting as though this is a proposal to bulldoze the mountains and replace them private mud baths for billionaires. Personally, I think the gondola makes a hell of a lot of sense:But every time I write about it on Twitter, a not-immaterial number of perfectly sane individuals advises me to f**k off and die, so I'd say there's some emotion invested in this one.On the Attitash triple replacementSutner and I go pretty deep on Attitash swapping out its Summit Triple chair for a brand-new high-speed quad. I also discussed this extensively with Attitash GM Brandon Swartz on a recent podcast episode (starting at 6:12):On Ski Inc.We touch briefly on Ski Inc., a fantastic history of the modern ski industry by the late Chris Diamond. If you like this newsletter, Ski Inc. and its sequel, Ski Inc. 2020, are must-reads.On Wachusett's liftsWe discuss Wachusett's proposed upgrade of the Polar Express from a high-speed quad to, perhaps, a six-pack. Here's the trailmap for context:On Wachusett's blocked expansionDespite its immense popularity, Wachusett is probably stuck in its current footprint indefinitely, as Sutner and I discuss. A bit more context from New England Ski History:As the 1993-94 season progressed, Wachusett pushed forward with its expansion plans, requesting to cut two new trails, widen Balance Rock, install a second chairlift to the summit, expand the base lodge, and add 375 parking spots. The plans were met with environmental, archaeological, and water quality concerns. …In August 1995, environmentalists located a stand of 295-year-old oak trees where Wachusett had planned to cut a new expert trail. Though the Crowleys quickly offered to adjust plans to minimize impact, opposition mounted. Plans for the new trail were abandoned a few months later. …In the spring of 1998, Wachusett proposed a scaled back expansion that avoided the old growth forest and instead called for the construction of a snowboard park consisting of two trails and a lift. Around this time, environmentalists announced the discovery of bootleg ski trails on the mountain. The Sierra Club quickly called for the state to terminate Wachusett Mountain Associates' ski area lease, despite not knowing who did the cutting.So, yeah, 99 problems, Man.On two Le Massifs (de Charlevoix and de Sud)So apparently there are two Le Massifs in Quebec, which would have been handy context to have when I wrote about the larger of the two joining the Mountain Collective last year. That Le Massif – Le Massif de Charlevoix – is quite the banger, with 250 inches of average annual snowfall and a 2,526-foot vertical drop on 406 acres:Massif de Sud is still a nice little hill, with 236 inches of average annual snowfall and a 1,312-foot vertical drop, but on just 127 skiable acres:On The Powell MovementSutner mentions an upcoming column he'll write about The Powell Movement podcast. It really is a terrific show, and covers the parts of the ski industry that I ignore (so, like, most of it). Check it out.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 108/100 in 2023, and number 493 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

For our 10th Episode we talk to Producer, Musician, and audio engineer Michael Harmon from Wachusett Recording in Princeton, MA. We talk about community recording studios, building things from the ground up, lucky breaks when buying gear off ebay, and more! Michael is on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/wachusettrecording/ Wachusett Recording is at https://www.instagram.com/wachusettrecording/ Follow the High Pass Podcast at https://www.instagram.com/highpasspodcast Your host is at https://www.instagram.com/quiethouserecording Sign up for the Boston AES Newsletter at https://www.bostonaes.org

In this episode Nicole and Sarah host Cassie Abel, ski mom and co-founder of Wild Rye. Wild Rye is a women's outdoor apparel brand dedicated to crafting beautiful and technical outdoor apparel for women. Wild Rye is well known for their cycling products, but they also have ski base layers and an active lifestyle collection. Cassie walks us through her winding career path from banking to Smith Optics and finally to co-founding Wild Rye. Cassie saw the gap in the market for technical athletic gear for women and started Wild Rye to fill that gap.  Cassie tells us about the journey, challenges and successes that led to Wild Rye (including finding their seamstress on Craigslist!). Wild Rye's clothing products are designed and manufactured with environmental impact in mind. They focus on recycled materials and their fabrics meet rigorous environmental and animal welfare standards. They also make high quality products to ensure they are built to last and don't end up in landfills. Cassie tells us about teaching her son to ski at Sun Valley's Dollar Mountain Progression Park and gives us insight into the Sun Valley business landscape.We loved learning about Wild Rye and can't wait to try their products. Like Nicole said, we're just one outfit away from the perfect workout :)Keep up with the Latest from Wild RyeWebsite: https://wild-rye.comInstagram:https://instagram.com/wild_rye_Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/WildRyeMtnAprlUse code: MOMTRENDS at checkout to get your $1 Earlybird Tickets to the Boston Snowbound Expo.November 3-5, at Boston Convention Center. 3-day expo includes XC and Snowshoe Experience,, Share Winter Trail, Learn to Ski Powered by Wachusett and more. Take the Ski Moms Childcare Survey here. Use your voice to make the outdoor industry more family friendly. This 5-minute survey will identify areas to support moms as they play outdoors.Support the showJoin the Ski Moms Fun Community! Follow us on Instagram @skimomsfunCheck out the Ski Moms Fun Store at www.skimomsfun.comContact us sarah@skimomsfun.com

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on June 15. It dropped for free subscribers on June 18. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoKeith Kreischer, General Manager of Granite Gorge, New HampshireRecorded onMay 30, 2023About Granite GorgeOwned by: Granite Gorge Partnership LLC, a group of local investorsLocated in: Roxbury, New HampshireYear founded: 1959Pass affiliations: NoneReciprocal partners: NoneClosest neighboring ski areas: Crotched (32 minutes), Brattleboro (32 minutes), Bellows Falls (35 minutes), Pats Peak (37 minutes), Mount Sunapee (50 minutes), Arrowhead (50 minutes), Ascutney (58 minutes), McIntyre (1 hour), Hermitage Club (1 hour, 6 minutes), Mount Snow (1 hour, 9 minutes), Magic (1 hour, 3 minutes), Wachusett (1 hour, 7 minutes), Bromley (1 hour, 13 minutes), Berkshire East (1 hour, 13 minutes), Okemo (1 hour, 13 minutes), Veterans Memorial (1 hour, 14 minutes), Ragged Mountain (1 hour, 16 minutes), Stratton (1 hour, 18 minutes)Base elevation: 800 feetSummit elevation: 1,325 feetVertical drop: 525 feetSkiable Acres: 25Average annual snowfall: 100 inchesTrail count: 17 (2 expert, 3 advanced, 5 intermediate, 7 beginner)Lift count: 3 (1 double, 1 handletow, 1 carpet)Why I interviewed himIt doesn't happen often, these comebacks. Ski areas die and they stay dead. Or they die and return and die again and then they're really gone.We're at a weird inflection point. After decades of exploding numbers followed by decades of divebombing ranks, the number of U.S. ski areas has stabilized over the past 20 years. Most of the ski areas that are going to die already have. Most of the ones that remain will survive indefinitely. Yes, climate change. But this has been a long-simmering storm and operators have strung lines of snowguns like cannons along a castle wall. They are ready to fight and they will.They have plenty to fight for. In most of U.S. America, it is all but impossible to build a new ski area. Imagine if no one could build a new restaurant or grocery store. The owners of existing restaurants and grocery stores would rejoice, knowing that anyone who wanted to eat out or buy a banana would have to do it through them. Such is the state of U.S. skiing – what we have is all we're ever going to get*. The established mountains are not exactly monopolies, but they do not have to worry about unexpected new competition, either.There is one hack: if a would-be owner can find an abandoned ski area, the path to selling lift tickets and hauling weekenders up the incline becomes infinitely easier. It's the difference between fixing up a junkyard car and assembling one from the raw elements of the earth. You'd have a better chance of building a time machine out of cardboard boxes and a Nintendo Game Boy than you would of constructing a ski area on a raw New England hillside. But find one already scarred with the spiderweb of named trails, and you have a chance.It's not a good chance. Ski areas do come back: Saddleback in 2020, Tenney and Granite Gorge in 2023. Les Otten may bring the Balsams Wilderness back as a mega-resort. But most simply fade. There are hundreds of lost ski areas in New England – many times more have died than survived. Many big and established ski centers evaporated: Mt. Tom, Brodie, Crotched East, King Ridge, Moose Mountain, Mt. Whittier, Maple Valley, Plymouth Notch, Snow Valley. Empty lifts still swing over many of these mountains decades after they went bust, but none ever found its way back.So why this one? Why Granite Gorge? A small ski area in a state stuffed with giant ski areas, many of them a mainline shot off the interstate from Boston. Once the joint closed after a rough winter in 1977, that should have been it. Another lost ski area in a state littered with them.But then Granite Gorge re-opened, miraculously, improbably, in 2003, under Fred Baybutt, who also ran a local construction company with his family. Baybutt added snowmaking and night skiing, built a new lodge and a new bridge over from Route 9. He bought a used Borvig double and ran it to the summit.But the ski area never really found momentum under Baybutt. By 2018, the chairlift had ceased operations. The ropetow and carpet continued to spin, but in August 2020, Baybutt died suddenly, and the ski area appeared to die with him.Except that it didn't. Granite Gorge is back. Somehow, this 525-vertical foot, low-elevation molehill whose direct competitors include basically every ski area in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts has more lives than a cartoon coyote smashed under an anvil. It's one of the best stories in New England skiing right now, and I had to hear it.*With rare exceptions, such as the forthcoming Mayflower, Utah.What we talked aboutWhat it's like to take that first general manager job; an overgrown mess; “I had to keep in mind that there was going to be an unlimited amount of punches that were going to be dealt”; how a busted Ford Taurus and a can of Red Bull foreshadowed the renaissance of Granite Gorge; Kreischer's messianic, decade-long quest to rescue Granite Gorge; how an ownership group “who really just wanted this thing back in the hands of the community” came together; advice for up-and-comers in the ski business; trying to save the lost Tanglwood ski area in Pennsylvania or Maple Valley in Vermont; Granite Gorge under the Baybutt family, the previous owners; Keene, New Hampshire; the rabid outdoor culture in the Northeast; how this time is different at Granite Gorge; fixing the bridge back to the ski area; helping ownership understand the enormous capital needs; the power of admitting your shortcomings; “if you don't know something, you need to find someone who does”; the comeback season was “awesome”; much love for Mountain Creek; finding a niche at Nashoba Valley; reviving the Granite Gorge double chair; why the ski area removed the lift's mid-station; Granite Gorge's snowmaking footprint and aspirations; how the ski area's new mountain bike operation will enhance glade skiing; surviving as a small ski area in a big ski state; night skiing; building terrain parks at an appropriate scale for mortals; running a mountain as a dad with five children; keeping lift tickets and passes affordable; a parking shortage; and competing against megapasses.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewI first connected with Keith sometime last spring, when he shot me an email with a promising update on Granite Gorge. The ski area was re-opening, he said, but I'd have to keep it to myself for the time being. Shortly after, the new ownership group officially named him general manager, and by August he was whacking weeds from beneath the Granite Gorge sign on Route 9 and brushing ticks off his legs.Excited as I was about this news, I generally don't ask folks to join me on the podcast until they've weathered at least one season leading their current resort. It's impossible to really know the place until you've sat teeth-gritted through a brown rain-soaked January and roared in glory at a nor-easter-driven March power-up. It's just not something you can appreciate through Zuckerberg's Oculus glasses. You have to be there.So we waited. In January, the ski area cranked open with its ropetow. The chairlift came online in mid-February. I was there the next day, taking fastlaps off the summit with my six-year-old. I stopped Kreischer for what would become my first #TwoMinuteStorm (basically, very short interviews with ski area managers) video on Instagram (click through to listen):Kreischer and I talked last summer, so I had a sense of his baseline. This podcast was almost like talking to a different person. It was like he'd spent 10 months cramming for a master's degree in Granite Gorge. Which I guess he had. But waiting was the right decision. Kreischer is a terrific ski area leader, thoughtful and passionate and enthusiastic and full of positive energy. He's the kind of guy who only gets more interested in a topic as he immerses himself in it. And after transforming an overgrown backwoods bump into a living business, his raw passion for the job had only amplified and become more focused. Last summer, Granite Gorge was an abstract thing. It was right there, waiting, but you could only really find it in your imagination. Now it's real. Now, he's actually done it. Actually re-opened a dead-as-the-dinosaurs ski area. Even if you normally just read this article and skip the podcast, listen to this one. Kreischer is as authentic and sincere as they get.Why you should ski Granite GorgeNot to be lazy with it, but I've covered this one already:Of all the ski states in America, I can't think of a rougher one to make a go as an operator than New Hampshire. There are so many good and large resorts and they are impossibly easy to access, stacked along I-93 like a snowy outlet mall. But here's little Granite Gorge, opened in 1959 but busted in the ‘70s and re-opened in 2003 and busted again in 2020 and now, improbably, opened again under a group of local business owners who bought it at auction last June. The joint sits in the southwest corner of the state, well off the main ski thoroughfares, which means it will make it as a locals' bump for Keene or it won't make it at all. I took my 6-year-old and we rolled 15 runs off the double chair that had re-opened the day before after not running since 2018. It was creaky and cranky and the mid-station was gone but it was running. We skied the same run over and over, a thin and windy green lolling off the summit. Six hundred vertical feet, up and down. Skier traffic was light but the tubing hill was full. It was a holiday weekend and we'd found a hack. No liftlines on a New England Sunday.Skiing there feels like being part of an excavation, as though they are digging things out of the ground and looking at them and trying to figure out what the ancients of New Hampshire could have been doing with such contraptions. It's spunky and plucky and a little ramshackle. You drive over a single-vehicle bridge to access a parking lot that's muddy and ungraded and unmanaged. They removed the chairlift mid-station, but it's still laying in parts scattered all over the woods. The lodge is squat and half-finished like a field hospital. But a strong spirit of revival is there, and if the owners can have patience enough to give this thing five years and focus on busloads of kids, it has a future.OK maybe not the best commercial for the place. But here's what Granite Gorge can give you: a completely uncrowded and inexpensive ski experience in a region that's getting short on both. Probably not your destination if you and the boys are looking to link Flipdoodle Supremes on monster kickers. Perfect if, like me, you're a dad who doesn't want to fight crowds on a holiday weekend. Or if you're a local looking to crush turns after work. Or if you live nearby and you have an Epic Pass but you just want to support the joint. There are worse places for your money.Podcast NotesOn the auction timelineThe current owners won Granite Gorge in an auction last June. From the June 6, 2022 Keene Sentinel:It took nearly 10 minutes of deliberation, two bidders dropping out and a back-and-forth bidding war amounting to $210,000 before a developer secured the rights to the former Granite Gorge Ski Area property along with the intent to reopen it for recreation.Between breaks of silence, bidders at Friday's foreclosure auction raised the stakes from an opening bid of $240,000 to a winning bid of $430,000 on site at the property, located along Route 9 in Roxbury. Bryan Granger, the senior vice president of Keene-based wholesale grocery company C&S Wholesale Grocers, clinched the final bid.Granger represented Granite Gorge Partnership, LLC at the auction, which claims itself to be a local group of Keene investors with a “shared desire of returning winter and summer activities to Granite Gorge in a safe and inclusive manner,” according to a media statement Granger provided to The Sentinel.The other bidder was a Massachusetts-based contractor named Nick Williamson.On Granite Gorge's troubled historyNew England Ski History provides a succinct timeline of Granite Gorge's history (the ski area was originally known as “Pinnacle”). A few highlights:Following the 1974-75 season, George LaBrecque transferred the ski area to Maurice Stone. One year later, Stone sold the area to Paul and Eleanor Jensen of Connecticut. Dealing with subpar snowfall, no snowmaking, and aging infrastructure, the Jensens only operated the Pinnacle for the 1976-77 season. Following the season, when mortgage payments were missed, Stone foreclosed and took back the property. There would be no more lift-served skiing at Pinnacle for the rest of the twentieth century.In November 1980, Stone sold the 94-acre Pinnacle property to Juanita Robinson of Kentucky and her three sons, one of whom lived in Massachusetts. Though “big plans” were teased with skiing to return in 1980 or 1981, Pinnacle remained idle.In December 1985, the Robinsons sold the property to Bald Mountain Park, Inc. The real estate entity held the property for fourteen years.In September 1999, Baybutt Construction purchased the former ski area and commenced studies for a potential reopening. …After a quarter of a century of idleness, the Pinnacle became a work site in the spring of 2002 when a new bridge was built from Route 9 to the base area.The Pinnacle reopened in early 2003 under the name of Granite Gorge. … The tiny startup on the Bunny Buster slope featured a rope tow and snowmaking. …After multiple years of planning and decades after the first proposal, Granite Gorge saw a significant expansion in 2005 with the addition of a double chairlift to Spruce Peak.Snowmaking and night skiing were expanded for 2006-07, which also featured a new base yurt. Snowmaking was expanded to the top of the chairlift for the 2008-2009 season, while night skiing followed up the mountain for the 2009-2010 season.In 2010 Granite Gorge was approved for a 300-person lodge, to be built in phases. Portions were completed in 2011 and 2012.In late 2012, parent company Baybutt Construction was dealing with escalating financial problems. One of Baybutt's lenders, Interstate Electrical Services Corp., arranged for a foreclosure auction of some of Baybutt's properties, including Granite Gorge ski area, for February 1, 2013. The auction was cancelled at the last minute and the ski area remained open. That month, Baybutt Construction Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.Granite Gorge continued to operate and grow in subsequent years, including adding to its off season offerings and events. …Granite Gorge scaled back operations for the 2018-19 season, as it ceased operating the chairlift and instead focused on snow tubing and skiing on the Bunny Buster trail. After nearly being auctioned off in the summer of 2019, the ski area continued to operate its surface lifts during the winter of 2019-20.On August 3, 2020, Fred Baybutt died of a sudden heart event at the age of 60. Following his death, Granite Gorge sat idle.On Tanglwood, PAKreischer recalls early snowboard adventures at Tanglwood, one of dozens of abandoned ski areas in Pennsylvania's Poconos. DCSki lists modest stats for the joint: 415 vertical feet on 35 acres served by two double chairs and a ropetow. The place closed around 2010 and liquidated its lifts in 2012. Here's a circa 2008 trailmap:I spent a few hours hiking the place back in 2021. Here's what I wrote at the time:Another 40 minutes up wild Pennsylvania highway is Tanglwood, 415 vertical feet shuttered since 2010. The mountain once had two doubles and two T-bars and a ropetow but now it has nothing, the place stripped as though looted by a ski grinch stuffing the chairs and tower guns into his wicked sleigh. Concrete lift towers anchored into the forest and the trails themselves are all that remain. The place is filled with deer. Like all the ski areas I visited that day it is lined with houses. It is late in the day and the American mole people are emerging to stand on their decks and tend to their plants and I wonder what it would be like to live on a ski area and then not live on a ski area because the ski area is gone and now you just live on a mountain where it hardly ever snows and you can hardly ever ski. I think I would be pissed.On Maple Valley, VermontKreischer also considered resurrecting Maple Valley, a thousand-footer in Southern Vermont. It had a nice little spread:The place opened in 1963 and made it, haltingly, to the end of the century under a series of owners. The culprit was likely a very tough neighborhood – Southern Vermont skiers have their choice of Stratton, Mount Snow, Bromley, or Magic. Maple Valley was just a little too close and a little too small to compete:I also included Granite Gorge on the map, so you can see how close the place is. I wouldn't have bet on Granite to re-open before Maple if pure ski terrain were the only factor to consider. But a fellow named Nicholas Mercede tried twice to open the ski area, according to New England Ski History. NIMBYs beat him back, and he died in 2018 at age 90.The lifts – a pair of 1960s Hall doubles – are, I believe, still standing. An outfit called “Sugar Mountain Holdings” has owned the ski area since 2018, and “a long-term vision was announced for possibly reopening the ski area,” according to New England Ski History.On Ski Resort Tycoon, the videogameKreischer's first run at ski resort management came via Ski Resort Tycoon, a 2000 sim game that you can still purchase on Amazon for $5.95. According to Wikipedia, “A Yeti can also be seen in the game, and it can be found eating the guests.” My God, can you imagine the insurance bill?On the density of New England ski areasNew England is one of the most competitive ski markets on the planet. It's certainly one of the densest, with 100 ski areas stuffed into 71,988 square miles – that's an area small than any major western ski state. The six New England states are small (Maine occupies nearly half of the total square mileage), so they share the glory, but their size masks just how tightly they are clustered. Check this stat: the number of ski areas per square mile across the six New England states is more than four times that of Colorado and six times that of Utah:Of course, New England ski areas tend to measure far smaller than those of the West. But the point of this exercise is to underscore the sheer volume of choices available to the New England skier. Here's what Granite Gorge is competing against as it works to establish itself as a viable business:That means the ski area is fighting against heavies like Mount Snow, Okemo, Stratton, and Mount Sunapee for its local Keene market – and the Keene market is essentially Granite Gorge's only market. There's probably a place for this little knuckler to act as a new-skier assembly line and weekend hideout for families and teenage Park Bros, but there's probably not a tougher place in America to pull this off than southwest New Hampshire.On Granite Gorge's mountain bike park and better glade skiing Kreischer believes that Granite Gorge cannot survive as a winter-only business. Earlier this spring, he announced the construction of a downhill mountain bike park. You can track their progress via Instagram:As regular readers know, I don't cover MTB, but we discuss these new trails in the context of their potential to enhance the ski area's glade network. Very little of Granite Gorge's face has been cut with trails. The potential for glade development is huge, and this initial poke into the forest is an excellent start.On Highland bike parkKreischer and I briefly discuss Highland Bike Park in New Hampshire. This is the only lift-served MTB park in New England that doesn't also double as a ski area. It was, in fact, once a 700-vertical-foot ski area. Here's a circa 1987 trailmap:Highland closed for skiing in 1995, and re-opened as a mountain bike park at some point over the next dozen years. Bike people tell me that the place is one of the best-regarded MTB facilities in New England. Here's the current bike trailmap:There are no current plans to re-open the area for skiing. “While there have been rumors that limited ski operations could resume in the future, the park remains biking-only at this point,” according to New England Ski History. Highland is in a tough spot for skiing, lodged between Ragged and Gunstock, which both have high-speed lifts and far more vertical. Highland sits just over two miles off Interstate 93, however, and there could be room in the market for a terrain-park only mountain à la Woodward Park City. Loon is the current terrain park king of New Hampshire, but it's crowded and expensive. Imagine a parks paradise with $50 day tickets and $300 season passes. That could work.On the alarm beeping in the backgroundYou may notice an alarm beeping in the background during the latter half of the podcast. I thought this was on my end, and I planned to simply edit the noise out, since I'm listening most of the time. After the podcast, I came up the stairs toting a ladder, prepared to dismantle the fire alarm. My wife looked at me, baffled. “What beeping?” she asked. Well, it was on Keith's end. Hopefully he wasn't so devoted to the podcast that he let his house burn down while recording it. Though I doubt that. Maybe he is Batman and that was his Batman alarm alerting him to nearby crimes. Though frankly I'm not sure a superhero could have revived Granite Gorge in six months. So it was probably just his You're Awesome alarm going off. All part of the story here.On an assist from Pats PeakKeith followed up via email after our call to throw some credit to his contemporary at Pats Peak: “I was reflecting on our conversation last night and one huge thing I forgot to mention was Kris Blomback and the help from Pat's Peak. They were instrumental in giving us a patrol sled and some awesome rental equipment that was a big deal getting us going this season. Kris is an amazing guy and a great leader. When I listened to his podcast episode with you, his words of advice to me was virtually verbatim, which really showcases his honesty, class, and true passion for bolstering skiing in this region. I really want to thank Kris and the rest of the Pats team for their help and assistance bringing us back to being a feeder for the entire Southern NH region.”On New Hampshire skiingI am an enormous, unapologetic fan of New Hampshire skiing. The mountains are many and varied, each one distinct. I've hosted a number of New Hampshire resort leaders on the podcast, and I have conversations scheduled with Cranmore GM Ben Wilcox and Attitash GM Brandon Swartz later this year. I also recorded an episode with Dartmouth Skiway GM Mark Adamczyk earlier this week – you'll have that one soon. Here's what's in the catalog right now:* Loon Mountain GM Brian Norton – Nov. 14, 2022* Pats Peak GM Kris Blomback – Sept. 22, 2022* Ragged Mountain GM Erik Barnes – April 29, 2022* Whaleback Executive Director Jon Hunt – June 17, 2021* Waterville Valley President and GM Tim Smith – Feb. 23, 2021* Gunstock President and GM Tom Day – Jan. 13, 2021* Cannon Mountain GM John DeVivo – Oct. 12, 2020* Loon Mountain President and GM Jay Scambio – Feb. 7, 2020The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing in North America year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 51/100 in 2023, and number 437 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

Send the PUDs Podcast a Text Message!The PUD boys are back after a brief hiatus! Join us as we recap our May including an early attempt at trail maintenance, hiking Wachusett, Chinese food preferences, what we did on Memorial Day Weekend,  how Charles Barkley may be able to help you with "Low T", and a whole bunch more on this fresh episode of the PUDs Pod!Facebook:PUDs PodcastInstagram: @pudspodcastTwitter:@pudspodcastEmail:pudspod@outlook.comRecorded and Produced in Black Cat Studios by the PUD Boys

A big snow storm means a big turnout at our most popular skiing and snowboarding destinations. WBZ's James Rojas reports.

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

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Dec. 27. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 30. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoJoe VanderKelen, President of SMI Snow Makers  Recorded onNovember 28, 2022About SMI Snow MakersSMI is the largest U.S.-based snowmaking manufacturer, and one of the biggest such outfits in the world. Their guns sit at more than 1,000 facilities – mostly, but not exclusively, ski areas – all over the world. The company is based in Midland, Michigan, a place so flat that, if you turned it on its side, you'd roll forever and then simply tumble off the edge of the planet. An odd-seeming locale, perhaps, for a snowmaking manufacturer, until you've spent a winter there on those windy, frozen plains. SMI is not what we'd call a “consumer-facing brand,” but you'll see their product markings - V2, Axis, Grizzly, FreedomX, Puma, PoleCat, Wizzard - as you ski around. Super Puma is the one I seem to see most often, a stocky cannon with adjustable footings, perched hill-wise like a medieval defense. SMI's various guns have served eight Olympic venues, a point of immense pride for what is still a family-run operation. Joe's parents founded the company back in the ‘70s. He's been running it since 1991. You can learn more about them here:If you're ever driving US 10 through central Michigan, you can't miss the SMI factory and HQ, seated off the freeway just past the junction with Business 10 as you head west:Why I interviewed himA few weeks back, I wrote about the heroic efforts of ski areas throughout the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast to open in November in spite of abnormally warm early-season weather. After nodding to the usual aggressive corporate-owned badasses such as Sunday River and Killington, I called out some of the smaller operations that cracked open around the same time:More impressive, however, was New York State-owned Belleayre, seated just over two hours north of New York City, which opened the same day as Sugarloaf, beating most of New England to launch. Sister resort Gore also opened that day. Whiteface went live the following day, delivering its first-ever opening on the mountain's full 3,166-foot vertical drop. Vail Resorts' Hunter Mountain opened that day as well. Windham, five miles away (as the crow flies), opened Monday, Nov. 21. Further south, Bousquet, Massachusetts; Wisp, Maryland; and Massanutten, Virginia opened Nov. 25. In never-snowy Indiana, Perfect North opened Nov. 22, the mountain's third-earliest opening in its 43-season history.These sudden openings were not, I continued, spontaneous:These ski areas are not anomalies. They did not get lucky. Their rapid openings under marginal conditions across vast and varied geographic regions are the direct result of yearslong investments in better and more efficient snowmaking. They are the best-case present, yes, showcases of the most technologically advanced snowmaking equipment. But they also represent the future. One in which ski area operators are not passive victims of climate change, but active combatants against it, making more snow than ever in spite of less-than-ideal conditions, and doing so with equipment that uses a fraction of the energy of previous generations of snowmaking machinery.Much of that machinery comes from SMI, including nearly the entire system at Perfect North:Perhaps the most improbable get-open-and-stay-open outfit in the country is Perfect North. The ski area's base sits at just 400 feet. Of the 108 operating Midwest ski areas, only two sit farther south (Vail-owned Paoli Peaks, Indiana and Hidden Valley, Missouri). And yet, the ski area opened on just four partial days of snowmaking, which Perfect North General Manager Jonathan Davis characterized as “two mediocre nights, one fantastic night, and one good night.” Despite having just six additional snowmaking windows since, the ski area now sits at just over 50 percent open.Davis credits a few factors for this quick ramp-up: a 12,000-gallon-per-minute pumphouse feeding 260 snowguns, a seat on a valley floor that traps cold air, and institutional knowledge that can often predict snowmaking windows that the local weather forecasters miss.Again, this ski area sits in Indiana, where it snows like four inches per decade. There should not be skiing there. But there is. Because of SMI.Lift-served skiing in the United States does not exist without snowmaking. At least not as a commercial enterprise. Maybe it's something a few Bear-Trap Billys do, tromping off into the Cascades in their Army surplus jackets and skinny skis. Perhaps there are even a few ski areas. But without the big-city bases of voyaging tourists, who learn and practice on locals like Mountain Creek, New Jersey and Wachusett, Massachusetts and Afton Alps, Minnesota and Alpine Valley in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio, the economic superstructure to support large-scale Rocky Mountain operations simply isn't there. What we talked aboutThe SMI story; Michigan skiing; a life of adventure running a global company; breaking down the company's footprint; how one of the flattest places on the planet became one of the global epicenters of snowmaking; Made in the USA pride; getting ahead of supply-chain problems and heading off future shortages; the company's one-of-a-kind snowmaking facility and why it's special; a primer on the global snowmaking industry and SMI's place in it; Snowmaking 101; why resorts blow snow into piles; the evolution of snow machines over time into more efficient, higher-capacity, simpler machines that make better snow and work in more variable temperatures; wet bulb temperature; making snow at the extremes; what snowmaking automation is and what it means; the amazing weather variability on a single mountain; “automated doesn't mean unattended”; ongoing resistance to automation and whether SMI will continue to offer manual snowmaking equipment; where snowmaking tech is headed in the future; swapping mechanical problems for tech problems as equipment grows more sophisticated; breaking down SMI's product lines; all-weather snowmaking; the lifecycle of a snowgun and how long the best of them can last; maintaining guns after install; creating a new system from scratch; a snowmaking system is like “a golf course irrigation system on a mountain,” but one that requires “really expensive sprinkler heads”; returning snowmaking water to the watershed; responding to the reductive environmental complaints about snowmaking as an energy and resource drain; [yes that's an NYC car alarm blaring in the background]; energy efficiency as a mission; creative energy-saving strategies; the amazing snowmaking installation that modernized Arizona Snowbowl; snowmaking as wildfire mitigation tool; how the ski industry can push back against the narrative that it's an energy hog and environmental liability; creating a new wonder of the world to pump snow onto the Olympic venues in Sochi; the resilience of skiing in the age of climate change; whether every ski area will eventually need snowmaking; intel on the next potential great ski regions; and skiing in Ukraine.      Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewListeners constantly write to me suggesting this or that interview. I appreciate this, and respond even when the suggestion is some version of “my cousin skied every ski area in Ohio in a single season and he has a great story and you should feature him on your podcast.” And I'm like thanks Bro but if I wanted to do podcasts with people my listeners wouldn't care about, I know plenty of them in real life. The Storm interviewee profile is not so much exclusive as it is well-defined: to qualify for this seat, you really either need to run a mountain, be in charge of people who do, write about lift-served skiing for a living, run some kind of website that's materially additive to the knowledge base around the sport, or make something that's fundamental to the enterprise, such as chairlifts or trailmaps.Joe, obviously, falls into the latter category. And he also holds the unofficial title of most-requested interview by my listeners/readers. Skiers really, really want to hear about snowmaking. Many – especially those who work in skiing – called out Joe in particular. So here you go.So why did I wait so long if this one was so obvious? Well, I tend to favor subjects I understand. And snowmaking, despite its relative simplicity from a mechanical point of view, has always seemed a bit intimidating as a discussion point. This matters when I'm shaping the questions that guide the interview.But, last summer, I finally toured the SMI factory and met Joe and his team in person. I grilled him for a couple hours and he showed me around and I was like yeah let's do this. Joe was an outstanding guest, who's lived his craft for decades, and I probably should have done it a lot sooner.What I got wrongI said that Taos was protected from wildfires because it sat at the end of a “valley.” I meant to say “canyon.” I discussed this at length with Taos CEO David Norden on the podcast last year:Podcast Notes* I mentioned that various folks claim to have invented snowmaking. Was it a Hollywood technical director in 1934? Was it a trio of Connecticut inventors? Grossinger's Resort in the Catskills? Mohawk Mountain? A Toronto ski club? It seems as though half the ski area websites in America include some tale about Old Cyrus Jenkins III creating the world's first snowgun with a hose and a ceiling fan strapped to a modified table saw. There's a reason for that: from a mechanical and physics point of view, snow is not that hard to make. What's hard is doing it well, which is why there are so few industrial-grade snowmaking companies today. Who made the first snowgun? I don't really know or, frankly, care, and I'll let the historians fight it out.* I actually grew up in Midland County, Michigan, where SMI's headquarters is located. There are no ski areas there. The closest, when I grew up in the small town of Sanford, were Apple Mountain in Freeland (now closed), Mott Mountain in Farwell (closed), and Snow Snake up in Harrison (still, thankfully, operating). All were less than an hour away, but SMI was the closest ski-related landmark. The factory sits directly off the US 10 expressway, the most important road in the area, and its multi-colored mural, rows of snowguns, and piles of manmade snow are impossible to miss while driving past.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 137/100 in 2022, and number 383 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.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us. 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

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Dec. 24. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 27. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoShaun Sutner, snowsports columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Telegram.comRecorded onNovember 21, 2022About Shaun SutnerShaun is a skier, a writer, and a journalist based in Worcester, Massachusetts. For the past 18 years, he's been pumping out a snowsports column from Thanksgiving to April. For the past two years, he's joined me on The Storm Skiing Podcast to rap about it. You should follow Shaun on social media to stay locked into his work:Why I interviewed himI've often said that the best interviews are with people who don't have bosses. That's true. Mostly. But not exclusively. Because journalists are just as good. And that's because they possess many attributes crucial to holding an interesting conversation: on-the-ground experience, the ability to tell a story, and a commitment to truth. Really. That is the whole point of the job. Listen to the Storm Skiing Podcasts with Eric Wilbur, Jackson Hogen, or Jason Blevins. They are among the best of the 122 episodes I've published before today. It's a different gig from the running-a-mountain-and-making-you-want-to-ski-that-mountain post that 75 percent of my guests hold. And these writers deliver a different kind of conversation, and one that enriches The Storm immensely.I'd like to host more ski journalists, but there just aren't that many of them. It's a weird fact of America and skiing that there are far more ski areas than there are American ski journalists. The NSAA lists 473 active ski areas. NASJA (the North American Snowsports Journalists Association) counts far fewer active members. The NBA, by contrast, has 30 teams and perhaps thousands of reporters covering them around the world. There's a lot more happening in skiing than there are paid observers to keep track of it all, is my point here.But there are a few. And Sutner is one of the real pros – one who's been skiing New England for most of his life, and writing about it for decades. His column is enlightened and interesting, essential reading for the entire Northeast. We had a great conversation last year, and we agreed to make it an annual thing.What we talked aboutWell I still can't pronounce “Worcester,” but we didn't discuss it this time which thank God; opening day vibes at Mount Snow; comparing last year's days-skied goal to reality; that Uphill Bro life and chewing up all our pow Brah; surveying the different approaches to New England uphill access; cross-country skiing and the opportunity of the Indy Pass; skiing in NYC; the countless ski areas of Quebec; Tremblant, overrated?; Le Massif; pass quivers; the importance of racing and race leagues to recreational skiing; why the rise of freeskiing hasn't killed ski racing; Sutner's long-running snowsports column; the importance of relationships in journalism; the Wachusett MACHINE; Sutner defends the honor of Ski Ward, my least-favorite ski area; the legacy of Sutner's brother Adam, former executive at Vail, Jackson Hole, and Crystal, who passed away suddenly last year; reaction to PGRI purchasing Jay Peak; what's next for Burke?; the future of Gunstock; Mount Sunapee crowding; Crotched, Attitash, and Wildcat's 2021-22 struggles; what the Epic Day Pass says about Vail's understanding of New Hampshire; whether Vail's pay increases and lift ticket sales limits will be enough to fix the company's operational issues in New Hampshire; the impact of Kanc 8 on Loon and what that could mean for new lifts at Stowe and Mount Snow; New England's lift renaissance; eight-packs and redistributing skiers; let's play Fantasy Ski Resort owner with Sugarloaf; the investment binge at Loon; high-speed double chairs; will Magic ever get Black Quad live?; the rebuilding of Catamount; a New England lift wishlist; Berkshire East; fake vertical; Smuggs' lift fleet; the future of Big Squaw; The Balsams; Whaleback; Granite Gorge; and Tenney.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewWell the intent was to push this podcast out alongside the debut of Sutner's first column of the year, on Thanksgiving Day. I, uh, missed that target. But I'll fix that whole timing bit, and you can expect a Sutner appearance on The Storm Skiing Podcast every Thanksgiving week for as long as he's interested in doing it.What I got wrong* I noted in the podcast that it was a 15-minute drive from Mountain Creek to High Point Cross Country Ski Center in New Jersey – it's closer to half an hour.* Sutner and I referenced Seven Brothers at Loon as an unfinished lift. That was true when we recorded this podcast on Nov. 21, but the lift opened on Dec. 17.* Sutner referenced a New England lift project that he knew about but that was not public yet – it's public now, and you can read about it here.* Shaun referred to a “little-known” summit T-bar at Sugarloaf. It must be a really well-kept secret, because I can't find any reference to it, now or in the past.Why you should read Sutner's columnBecause what I wrote last year is still true:Because it's focused, intelligent, researched, fact-checked, spell-checked, and generally just the sort of professional-level writing that is increasingly subsumed by the LOLing babble of the emojisphere. That's fine – everyone is lost in the scroll. But as the pillars of ski journalism burn and topple around us, it's worth supporting whatever's left. Gannett, the parent company of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, has imposed fairly stringent paywalls on his work. While I think these local papers are best served by offering a handful of free articles per month, the paper is worth supporting if it's your local – in the same way you might buy a local ski pass to complement your Epkon Pass. Good, consistent writing is not so easy to find. Sutner delivers. Support his craft.I wish there was one place where all of Sutner's columns were collected, but the reality of being part of a larger entity is that your work gets mashed together with everything else. Here are direct links to Sutner's columns so far this season:* Skiing Vail Remains a Treasured Rocky Mountain Experience* Plenty of Updates and Upgrades have Crotched Mountain Resort Thriving in New Hampshire* Key Improvements Signal Strong Seasons Ahead for Attitash, Wildcat Ski Areas* World Cup Ski Racing Continues to Thrive at KillingtonSutner's column tends to be less-newsy, more focused on the long-term than the what-just-happened? But, thanks to decades of experience and a deep well of sources, he can fire off a breaking news story in a hurry when he needs to. Earlier this month, for example, he turned around this dispatch about Wachusett's sudden cancellation of its volunteer Ski Patrol program – known locally as “Rangers” – in just a few hours:Wachusett Mountain Ski Area ended its volunteer Ranger program at the start of the ski and snowboard season last month in an unexpected move that could have safety consequences on the mountain's busy slopes, at least in the short term. The ski area apparently was forced into ending or suspending the program due to an investigation by the state attorney general's office into whether treating the Rangers as volunteers violates state labor laws. A spokeswoman for the AG's office declined to comment on whether the office is investigating Wachusett.The case could have national ramifications in the ski industry, where more than 600 ski areas across the country use volunteer ski patrollers under the umbrella of the nonprofit National Ski Patrol, as well as volunteers similar to Rangers. Read the full story here:Podcast Notes* Sutner and I discussed Wachusett quite a bit, and specifically my podcast interview with resort President Jeff Crowley from last year:* We also had a long discussion about Ski Ward, which stemmed from this write-up I published in February:Ski Ward, 25 miles southwest, makes Nashoba Valley look like Aspen. A single triple-chair rising 220 vertical feet. A T-bar beside that. Some beginner surface lifts lower down. Off the top three narrow trails that are steep for approximately six feet before leveling off for the run-out back to the base. It was no mystery why I was the only person over the age of 14 skiing that evening.Normally my posture at such community- and kid-oriented bumps is to trip all over myself to say every possible nice thing about its atmosphere and mission and miraculous existence in the maw of the EpKonasonics. But this place was awful. Like truly unpleasant. My first indication that I had entered a place of ingrained dysfunction was when I lifted the safety bar on the triple chair somewhere between the final tower and the exit ramp and the liftie came bursting out of his shack like he'd just caught me trying to steal his chickens. “The sign is there,” he screamed, pointing frantically at the “raise bar here” sign jutting up below the top station just shy of unload. At first I didn't realize he was talking to me and so I ignored him and this offended him to the point where he – and this actually happened – stopped the chairlift and told me to come back up the ramp so he could show me the sign. I declined the opportunity and skied off and away and for the rest of the evening I waited until I was exactly above his precious sign before raising the safety bar.All night, though, I saw this b******t. Large, aggressive, angry men screaming – screaming – at children for this or that safety-bar violation. The top liftie laid off me once he realized I was a grown man, but it was too late. Ski Ward has a profoundly broken customer-service culture, built on bullying little kids on the pretext of lift safety. Someone needs to fix this. Now.Look, I am not anti-lift bar. I put it down every time, unless I am out West and riding with some version of Studly Bro who is simply too f*****g cool for such nonsense. But that was literally my 403rd chairlift ride of the season and my 2,418th since I began tracking ski stats on my Slopes app in 2018. Never have I been lectured over the timing of my safety-bar raise. So I was surprised. But if Ski Ward really wants to run their chairlifts with the rulebook specificity of a Major League Baseball game, all they have to do is say, “Excuse me, Sir, can you please wait to get to the sign before raising your bar next time?” That would have worked just as well, and would have saved them this flame job. For a place that caters to children, they need to do much, much better.As I'm wont to do, I followed that write-up with casual Ward-bashing on Twitter. Sutner took exception to this, saying that I was oversimplifying it and working on too small a sample size. Which, fair enough. He further defends the ski area's honor in our pod, though frankly I remain salty about the place.* Sutner spoke at length about his brother Adam, a member of Crystal Mountain, Washington's executive team, who died suddenly in April. Shaun wrote his younger brother's obituary, which reads in part:Adam lived and worked overseas in the advertising and tech business in Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Paris, Tokyo and Melbourne. He also lived and worked in advertising and the ski industry in New York City, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and in Vail, Colo., Jackson Hole, Wyo., and Greenwater, Wash.He lived the life he wanted to live.He was widely known for working hard and being a leader in the ski industry profession he loved, often starting work before dawn.Adam loved French Martinis, fast cars and motorcycles, high-speed skiing, music, reading literature and non-fiction, wok cooking, James Bond and art heist caper movies and smoking his beloved cigarillos. He was an ardent fan of international soccer and rugby.He liked to pick up and drop off at the airport the steady stream of visitors who he accommodated, with utmost hospitality, at his various well-appointed homes. He collected watches, fine art and mid-century modern furniture and accessories.He was a witty storyteller, entertaining family and friends with tales of his lifelong travels and adventures. He had an acerbic sense of humor and keen intellect.Read the full obit here:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 136/100 in 2022, and number 382 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 14. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 17. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoBrian Norton, President and General Manager of Loon Mountain, New HampshireRecorded onNovember 1, 2022About LoonClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Boyne ResortsPass affiliations: Ikon Pass, New England PassReciprocal pass partners:* Unlimited access to Sunday River and Sugarloaf* 3 days each at Pleasant Mountain, Boyne Mountain, The Highlands, Brighton, Big Sky, Summit at Snoqualmie, CypressLocated in: Lincoln, New HampshireClosest neighboring ski areas: Kanc (3 minutes), Cannon (21 minutes), Campton (26 minutes), Mt. Eustis (28 minutes), Mt. Prospect (35 minutes), Waterville Valley (37 minutes), Bretton Woods (38 minutes), Cranmore (55 minutes), Veterans Memorial (55 minutes), Ragged (58 minutes), King Pine (58 minutes), Attitash (1 hour), Gunstock (1 hour, 6 minutes), Black Mountain NH (1 hour, 7 minutes), Pleasant Mountain (1 hour, 7 minutes), Wildcat (1 hour, 13 minutes), Abenaki (1 hour, 15 minutes)Base elevation: 950 feetSummit elevation: 3,050 feetVertical drop: 2,100 feetSkiable Acres: 370 (will increase to 400 with next year's South Peak expansion)Average annual snowfall: 160 inchesTrail count: 61 (20% black, 60% intermediate, 20% beginner)Lift count: 11, plus one train (1 four-passenger gondola, 1 eight-pack, 3 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 3 doubles, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Loon's lift fleet). Loon will add a second fixed-grip quad - this one with a carpet-loader - rising approximately 500 feet off the Escape Route parking lots, in 2023.Why I interviewed himThere are 26 ski areas in New Hampshire. And lots of good ones: Cannon, Waterville, Bretton Woods, Attitash, Wildcat. Black and Cranmore and Ragged and Gunstock and Sunapee. Pats Peak and Crotched and King Pine. Don't “you forgot…” me, You-Forgot-[Blank] Bro. I'm making a point here: there are more good ski areas in this state than even You-Forgot-[Blank] Bro can keep track of.That means I have plenty of podcast material: I've hosted the leaders of Cannon, Gunstock, Waterville Valley, Whaleback, Ragged, and Pats Peak on the podcast. And Loon, a conversation with then-President and General Manager Jay Scambio shortly after the resort launched its so-call Flight Path 2030 plan in early 2020.So why, before I've checked off Bretton Woods or Black or Cranmore or any of the four Vail properties, am I revisiting Loon? Fair question. Plenty of answers. First, the Loon I discussed with Scambio in February 2020 is not the Loon that skiers ski today. And the Loon that skiers will make turns on before the end of this month is not the same Loon they'll ski next year, or the year after that. Kanc 8 – New England's first Octopus Lift – changed the whole flow of the resort, even though it followed the same line as the legacy lift. This year's Seven Brothers upgrade should do the same. And next year's small but significant South Peak expansion will continue the evolution.Second, Scambio, young and smart and ambitious, jumped up the Boyne Resort food chain, and is now chief operating officer for the company's day areas (Brighton, Summit at Snoqualmie, Cypress, and Loon), clearing the way for the young and smart and ambitious Norton to take the resort's top job.Third, my first Loon Mountain podcast did not age well from a technical point of view. Pre-Covid, I relied mostly on a telephone recording service to capture podcast audio. Sometimes this landed fine, but Jay and I sound as though we're talking in a 1940s war movie recorded in a field tent. I also sound considerably less enthusiastic than I actually was. I wish I could re-master it or something, but for now, Storm Skiing Podcast number 12 is an artifact of a platform in motion, seeking its shape and identity. The Storm is a far better product now, and this is as close to a re-do as I'm going to get.Fourth, the guest I originally had scheduled for the week of Oct. 31 had to cancel. Loon had just announced the South expansion, and the timing seemed perfect to revisit a New England favorite. Norton was good enough to step in, even in the midst of intensive preseason prep.So here you go: Loon podcast number two. It won't be the last.What we talked aboutHow Loon determines opening day; potential changes to the terrain-opening cadence; “I hate the thought that you do something one way because you've always done it that way”; from college student/East Basin liftie to president and general manager; Wachusett nights; that New Hampshire vibe; Planet Terrain Park; living through the Booth Creek-Boyne Resorts transition; Loon, the most popular kid on the block; managing skier volume; why Loon doesn't have night skiing, and whether the ski area has ever considered it; the amazing Kanc 8; “so much of our guest's day is not skiing”; how the new lift changed Loon skier patterns and other reflections on season one; Kanc's chaotic, wonderful lift queue; evolving the Governor's Lodge side of the resort; the Seven Brothers upgrade: “it's a new lift … you won't recognize it”; the slight modifications to the location of the top and bottom terminals; the fate of the Seven Brothers triple; comparing the new and old lifts; the importance of terrain parks to Loon; thinking through long-term upgrades to the South Peak and North Peak Express quads and the gondola; what having “the most technologically advanced lift fleet in New England” means; thoughts on the future of the East Basin double; breaking down the 2023 South Peak expansion; what it means to finally run a lift up from the massive Escape Route parking lots; the importance of connecting Loon to Lincoln; evolving Loon's learning experience; breaking down the bottom and top terminals of the coming quad lift and why it will sit slightly away from the parking lot; where the expansion will fit into the terrain-opening sequence; Loon's evolving glade philosophy; where Loon will be eliminating a glade and why; where new glades will be coming online; three huge projects at Loon in three years: “this is a commitment across the board to grow”; what the Westward Trail expansion is and when we could see it; breaking down potential additional development on North Peak; why Lincoln Peak Express doesn't go to the summit of South Peak; Loon's absolute commitment to snowmaking; why Loon will require Ikon Pass reservations this coming season, and how the mountain will set the number of reservations for each day.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIt's all just changing so fast. Ever since dropping Flight Path 2030 plan in early 2020, Loon has built the massive and gorgeous Kancamagus eight-pack (New England's first), rebuilt the old Kanc quad and moved it across the mountains to replace the Seven Brothers triple chair, and announced a 30-acre 2023 expansion that will finally knot the ski area's massive Escape Route parking lots to the rest of the resort with a lift. And the mountain has built all that around Covid-19, with all its operational disorientation and a one-year delay on construction of Kanc 8 (originally scheduled to go live in 2020).They're just getting going. Flight Path's overarching goal, from a skier-experience point of view, is to stand up “the most technologically advanced lift network in the East to increase uphill speed and achieve ultimate comfort.” That means upgrades to the Lincoln and North Peak high-speed quads and that weird little four-person gondola. The snowmaking system, hundreds of guns that can already bury most of Loon's 370 acres by Christmas, is going full auto. New trails are likely incoming for North and South peaks. More glades, too. The Westward Trail expansion could potentially add hundreds more acres and shoot Loon past Bretton Woods for the largest-in-New Hampshire title.Even if Loon stopped with next year's expansion, the place would be in good shape. Lincoln Peak Express is only 15 years old. North Peak is 18. Kanc 8 is a glorious, beautiful machine, standing monolithic at Governor Adams, so smooth in its ascent that it appears to float up the rise. And Seven Brothers is more than a lift-and-shift – “It's a new lift,” Norton tells me on the podcast, after Doppelmayr spent a year on an overhaul so thorough that “you won't recognize it.”The 500-vertical-foot, beginner-oriented expansion, to be served by a carpet-loaded fixed-grip quad, seems small in the scale of 2,100-vertical-foot, super-octopus-lift-served Loon. But the new pod is a crucial connection both to the checkerboard of outer-edge parking lots currently served by shuttlebuses, and to the town of Lincoln, the edges of which sit walking distance to the new lift. The expansion will also add new beginner terrain, a product that extra-intermediate Loon currently lacks in meaningful quantities. Here's a peek:And here's how the little pod will fit in with the rest of the resort:With so much so recently accomplished, and so much more incoming, this seemed like a perfect moment to check in with one of New England – and, really, America's – most rapidly evolving ski areas.What I got wrongRumors were all over the place last year that Kanc 8 experienced intermittent power issues last season. I asked Norton about this in the podcast, and it turns out that the rumors weren't true. But I asked the question in a way that presumed they were. Instead of asking “what was happening with the intermittent power issues,” I should have framed it this way: “There was a lot of chatter that intermittent power issues interfered with Kanc 8 operating last year – was that true?” I'll do better.Why you should ski Loon MountainIf you're questing for rad, keep driving. Cannon is 20 minutes up the road. Loon is many things, but challenging is not one of them (watch this be the site of my next catastrophic injury). Here's what it is: one of the best exactly-in-the-middle mountains in New England skiing. Its peers are Okemo and Mount Snow and Bretton Woods; lots of fast lifts, ExtraGroomed and extra busy, with lots of skiers welcomed by the welcoming terrain.Loon is, in other words, what every ski area east of the Rockies was trying to be before terrain parks and glades and bumps made skiing more interesting: a perfect groomed ski area. Approachable and modest, big and sprawling enough to feel like an adventure, well-appointed with Boyne's particular brand of largess.Loon has an amazing terrain park, of course. Some steeper stuff off North and South. Some trees if you're timing is right. But that's not the point of the place (well, the park sort of is), and it doesn't need to be. Loon is for blue skiers like Jay is for glade skiers and like springtime Killington is for bump skiers. Groomers are the point here. Let them run.But stop, please, mid-mountain beneath the Kanc 8. Watch this beautiful machine glide. Up and over and away, the smoothest lift in skiing. Rising from frantic load terminal to propelled silence as it advances toward the summit, floating and flying and encased in a bubble. Then catch the J.E. Henry railroad over to the gondola, ride to the summit, board Tote Road – the party lift – across the mountain decorous with pines, sprawling like a mini-Sugarbush, and roll the endless, glorious blue-square Cruiser or Boom Run to the base. This is Loon – a big ramble, quirky and stimulating and easy – easy to ski, easy to like, easy to settle into and ride.Podcast notes* Norton noted that previous plans for the South Peak expansion had included two proposed lifts. This version, which, according to New England Ski History, dates to 2013, shows one possible alignment, with two crisscrossing fixed-grip quads oriented against the existing Cruiser and Escape Route trails. This plan also included the magic carpets:* We also briefly discussed the so-called “Westward Trail expansion,” which Flight Path 2030 names as a potential late-stage project. Norton noted that several hundred additional acres exist within Loon's permit area, that plans for such an expansion have existed for decades, and that this is what the Westward Trail expansion referred to. Unfortunately, I've been unable to locate these maps. If you are in possession of any, please send them over.* I attended Kanc 8's grand opening last December. Here's video of the first-ever chair:* And of course, the J.E. Henry, an honest-to-goodness steam engine that skiers ride between the Governor Adams and Octagon base areas:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 122/100 in 2022, and number 368 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. This is a public episode. 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To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoBill Cairns, President and General Manager of Bromley Mountain Resort, VermontRecorded onOctober 24, 2022About BromleyClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Joseph O'DonnellOperated by: The Fairbank GroupPass affiliations: NoneReciprocal pass partners: 1 day each at Jiminy Peak, CranmoreLocated 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)Uphill capacity: 10,806 skiers per hourWhy I interviewed himVermont is one of those states where you can see a lot of ski areas from the tops of other ski areas. I find this thrilling. I love all ski areas. Relish them. That such machines, so similar yet so distinct, could be so concentrated sparks within me some thrill of exotic immersion, of adventuring into zones dense and wild and compelling.Of these peak-to-peak views, none is more dramatic than south-facing Bromley viewed from north-facing Stratton. In Vermont, which manages sprawl better than the rest of U.S. America, your view is most often of mountains, the endless Greens, treed and rippling toward Canada, radio towers blinking against the sky. But Bromley, etched magnificently into the expanse, owns the view from its larger neighbor.Bromley and Stratton are two points of Southern Vermont's so-called Golden Triangle. The third is Magic. The three ski areas have a weird joint history. Of owning and buying and selling and sometimes closing one another. Right now they're all friends. Or so they say. They're each so different that it's hard to even think of them as competitors. Ultimate Indie Magic gets the beards and the FTW narrative. Ultimate Corporate Six-pack-a-tron Stratton gets the Ikon Pass-toting New Yorkers.And what is Bromley? Bromley is Ultimate Bromley. I'm not sure how else to describe it. And Bromley skiers ski Bromley. And they love the place. And why wouldn't they? The front side is blue square glory, fall lines straight and steady, cut New England narrow through the woods. There are chairlifts everywhere, flying in all directions from the base. Old doubles mostly. How ski areas once were before they simplified and streamlined. The Blue Ribbon side (like Pabst Blue Ribbon, like PBR – get it guys*), is a slightly shorter, black-diamond version of the frontside.All of this oriented gloriously toward the sun. When there's sun. In Vermont, in the winter, when it's a thousand degrees below zero, that matters a lot. This is not a great position for snowpack. Most North American ski areas face north for a reason: shadows block the sun, preserving snow depth. But skiing into May is not the point of Bromley, or its goal. The place gets enough snow, and has a good enough snowmaking system, that it can usually make the first weekend in April. Which is when Bromley skiers are tired of skiing.Or maybe they buy the Killington spring pass and keep going into June. In Vermont, you have options. The state has the same number of ski areas (26) as California, which is 17 times its size by area and 60 times larger by population. To succeed here, a ski area needs something compelling. Thirty miles south of Bromley lies the Hermitage Club, formerly Haystack, 1,400 vertical feet and 200 acres, a near Bromley clone size-wise. Yet the ski area has closed at least three times since its 1964 founding. No one could ever figure out how to compete with – or be little brother to – Mount Snow, the snowmaking Godzilla four and a half miles up the road. And yet Bromley, half the size of Stratton, which sits gigantic in the vista from Sun Mountain's frontside trails, has operated for 85 consecutive seasons. It's not like Bromley skiers don't know they have choices. They just don't care. Ultimate Bromley, with its little base village and its one high-speed lift and its zillion low-speed lifts and its sunshiney aspect, is home.*That sound you hear is every hipster in Brooklyn simultaneously mounting their single-speed banana-seat bicycles and riding north toward Vermont.What we talked aboutThe accidental career; Snow Valley, Vermont; Bromley in the ‘80s; the complex and interesting challenge of the ski business; where loyalty comes from; “our efforts are the same on a Tuesday in January as they are on a holiday Saturday at Christmas”; Vermont's first chairlift; the incredible puzzle of modernizing Bromley's snowmaking in the ‘90s; the importance of water pressure; “summer's always been a big deal at Bromley”; grab a PBR and pop a tab for this Bromley Mountain origin story; Fred Pabst's unlikely skiing legacy; snowmaking in the 1960s; Stig Albertsson buys the mountain; the arrival of the current owner, Joe O'Donnell, and his legacy and style as an owner; that one time Bromley owned Magic, or Magic owned Bromley, or Stratton owned Bromley, or something; why Bromley closed Magic; the return of The Golden Triangle; what happened when a fire hit Bromley 10 days before Christmas; the Fairbank Group arrives; last year's massive upgrade to the Sun Mountain Express; why Bromley upgraded rather than replaced the lift; the incredible resilience of Hall chairlifts; the biggest challenge in running a fleet of decades-old lifts; where else a detachable lift might make sense on the mountain; a thought experiment in what would make sense to upgrade the Plaza chairlift and Lord's Prayer T-bar; the utility and future of the old double-double; the incredible efficiency of modern snowmaking and the concomitant rise in lift-maintenance costs; managing snow quality with Bromley's southern exposure; the Bromley snow pocket; Bromley's lost trails; potential future glade and trail development; backcountry access now and in the future; the challenges of Forest Service expansion; “in some respects, the very best skiing at Bromley is not cut”; the base village; pricing season passes in the Epic and Ikon era and how Bromley has maintained its pricing power; rethinking the mountain's lift-ticket pricing structure; why we're unlikely to see a Bromley-Jiminy Peak-Cranmore joint pass anytime soon.         Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe Epic Pass hit New England like a tsunami. For decades, season pass prices had ticked upward like post-IPO Google stock. Then Vail bought Stowe, and everything instantly changed. As I wrote in March 2020 (a few days before I had something more urgent to write about), in an article headlined “The Era of the Expensive Single-Mountain Season Pass Is Over in the Northeast”:  For the 2016-17 season, the last before the Broomfield Big Boys scooped up Stowe, a season pass at that most classic of New England rough-and-tumble mountains was $2,313, according to New England Ski History. Pass prices to the other large Vermont resorts were similarly outlandish: $1,779 for Sugarbush, $1,619 for Okemo, $1,486 for Killington, $1,199 for Stratton, $1,144 for Bromley (!), $999 for Mount Snow, $992 for Mad River Glen, $974 for Jay Peak, $899 for Burke, and on and on.Granted, these were probably not early season prices, and these are presumably adult no-blackout passes. But price differential from just four seasons ago – four! – is remarkable. And none of these passes, with the exception of Killington, which gave you Pico access, came with additional days at any other mountains as far as I am aware [2022 note: the Mount Snow pass, as I'm now aware, was a Peak Pass, which would have been good for unlimited access at three New Hampshire ski areas, Hunter, and all of Peak's smaller ski areas in Pennsylvania and the Midwest]. In 2020, you can now get full unrestricted access to Stowe, Mount Snow, and Okemo for $979 on an Epic Pass [2022 note: this was the season before Vail lowered Epic Pass prices by 20 percent]. You get full Sugarbush and Stratton access for a $999 Ikon Pass, and a Beast 365 pass would be $1,344 and get you unlimited Killington and access to Sugarbush and Stratton every day of the season outside of a few blackout days.In other words, for less than the price of a Stowe season pass four years ago, you can now have season passes to six of Vermont's largest mountains. If you don't mind dealing with blackout days, you could pick up a $729 Epic Local Pass and a $699 Ikon Base Pass and ski Vermont every day of the season for $1,428 (and Okemo and Mount Snow are still not even blacked out on the Epic Local Pass). And you can further reduce this by, say, picking up a $599 Northeast Epic Pass and a (if you're renewing), $649 Ikon Base pass, which would give you blacked-out season passes to Okemo, Mount Snow, Stratton, and Sugarbush, and 10 days at Stowe and five at Killington, for all of $1,248.I could go on. There is no need to. Skiers will figure this out for themselves, and quickly. Anyone buying a season pass in Vermont just four years ago was more or less locked into that mountain for the season, as the number of ski days required to justify the pass purchase was significant, and any days invested elsewhere probably seemed excessive and indulgent. In the three-year instant it took Vail to buy Stowe and Okemo and Peak and integrate them into a regional pass, and Alterra to buy Stratton and Sugarbush and introduce the Ikon Pass and then significantly expand access in the region, the consumer expectation has shifted from season pass as an aspirational indulgence reserved for locals and second-home owners to a bargain product that offers limitless access to not one but multiple high-quality mountains, not just across the East, but in the snowy towering West.I then called out Bromley in particular:In this environment, not even the burliest mountains can stand alone. Killington just conceded that. Boyne did something similar with its New England Pass last week, tossing an Ikon Base Pass in with its $1,549 Platinum-tier product, which provides unlimited access to its standout trio of Sugarloaf, Sunday River, and Loon.All of this leaves skiers – especially mountain-hopping skiers like myself – in the best pass-shopping position imaginable. No matter which pass we buy, it will come not just with limitless days at our local mountain, but bonus or unlimited days at at least half a dozen other mountains that we can easily travel to.All of which creates a very difficult reality for independent mountains: skiers now expect access far beyond their core mountain when purchasing a season pass, and they expect those passes to be massively discounted from what they were less than one presidential election cycle ago.On both price and additional access, many independent ski areas are far behind. Bromley's season pass, for example, is $925 (all prices are for adult, no-blackout passes, unless otherwise indicated). That's early-bird pricing. It includes no free days at any other mountains, even though its parent company also owns or operates Jiminy Peak in Massachusetts and Cranmore in New Hampshire [2022 note: Bromley, Cranmore, and Jiminy Peak passes now include one day at each of their sister mountains]. It does offer some non-holiday discounts of up to half off day tickets at partner resorts, including Jay Peak.This is a completely untenable position. Bromley is a fine mountain. It is terrific for families. It has some fun terrain off the Blue Ribbon Quad. It is very easy to get to. But it is right down the road from Stratton, which is far larger, has a far more sophisticated lift network, and is on the Ikon Pass, meaning a pass to Stratton is only $74 more than a pass to Bromley and also includes a pass to Sugarbush, days at Killington, etc., etc. Unless you have a condo on the mountain and you ski there and only there and have for years and years and have no aspirations or intentions of going anywhere else ever, there is no way to justify that pass price with no access to any mountain other than your own in today's competitive ski pass environment.One of two things needs to happen in order for independent mountains to remain competitive in the season pass realm: they need to join a coalition of other independent ski areas to offer reciprocal free days at one another's mountains for passholders, or the price needs to come way down. And in most cases, the answer is probably some combination of both of those things.Well I was wrong. Bromley never joined a pass coalition and its pass price keeps increasing, and yet every year, the mountain sells more passes. So I'll own my mistake. My template was too simplistic, too focused on price and variety and size as a skier's primary motivating factors, too anchored to the assumption that all skiers were like me, seeking the most mountains for the lowest cost. It would have been like saying Whole Foods business model sucks because Kroger has larger stores and sells groceries for less money. Consumers will pay a premium for exclusivity and quality. And Bromley offers both: good snow, fewer people. A predictable, repeatable experience for a tight community of families and condo owners. These things matter more than I had supposed.Select independent ski areas all over the country are thriving in the megapass era by snubbing the trends of the megapass era: Wolf Creek, Mt. Baker, Bear Valley, Whitefish, Bretton Woods, Wachusett, Plattekill, Holiday Valley. Part of this is Epkon burnout, refugees seeking respite from the crowds. Part of it is atmosphere and community, skiers buying into a gestalt as much as a place or activity. Bromley operates in one of the toughest neighborhoods in skiing, seated within a two-hour's drive of dozens of competitors, many of them bigger and cheaper, with more terrain variety and more snowfall and more and faster lifts. And yet the Sun Mountain keeps winning. There's a reason for that, and I wanted to figure out what it was.What I got wrongI stated in the interview that Joseph O'Donnell had purchased Bromley in 1990, intimating that marked the start of his involvement with the ski area. Cairns points out that O'Donnell had worked with Bromley beginning in the 1980s.Why you should ski BromleyMount Snow and Stratton, nice as they are, tricked out as they are, have downsides. Especially on weekends. Especially midwinter. Neither does a great job managing skier volume, and neither seems particularly interested in trying. I don't know how much that really matters. It's New England, and skiers expect crowds. It's all part of the experience, like overgrooming and boilerplate and safety bars dropped on your dome before the chair is out of the barn.How to escape the human anthill ski experience? Well, you could join the Hermitage Club, which at last check-in cost $50,000 upfront and $15,000 annually thereafter. You could ski Magic, which is uncrowded but snowmaking-challenged, with just 50 percent of the mountain covered and one fixed-grip double to the top (though the Black Quad may finally be close to launch). Or you could ski Bromley, with the snowmaking and grooming firepower of its bigger corporate neighbors, but without the mosh-pit atmosphere. Unlike most of Vermont, the place is tolerable even at its busiest.And the sunshine effect is real. Stratton is often abandoned after 2:30 p.m. The sun dips, the snow bricks up, and everyone leaves. When the clouds aren't bunching heavy over New England and the wind stays down, Bromley is just a more pleasant place to be. It doesn't have the tough-guy terrain like Killington or the expanses of glades like Stratton. And it doesn't need them. Bromley, the Ultimate Bromley, is just fine being exactly what it knows it has to be.Podcast notes* We go deep on Bromley's long history, but New England Ski History has a great overview of the ski area's development, going back to the wild early days of recorded Vermont history.* Bill and I discuss the lost Snow Valley ski area extensively. Though this little spot, parked off Vermont state highway 30 between Bromley and Stratton, closed in 1984, it remains popular among backcountry skiers. Someone still maintains several runs, and the property was recently listed for sale (it was scheduled for auction in September, but I'm uncertain how that went). While it's highly unlikely that anyone could redevelop Snow Valley as a lift-served ski area, it could become New England's version of the uphill-only Bluebird Backcountry ski area in Colorado. Here's a 1982 trailmap:* Bill discusses the rising cost of everything, but point in particular to the exploding price of chairlifts. He notes that the Sun Mountain Express cost Bromley $2.7 million in 1997, and estimates that it would run $7 million to install a similar lift today. Had chairlifts followed general inflationary trends, the lift would run around $5 million today.* Bill references a 1950s trail called “Bromley Run,” that ran off the summit and didn't return to the lifts. You can see it marked as trail 10 on this “Big Bromley” trailmap from 1950:* Bill and I discuss potential terrain expansions (unlikely), and the possibility of backcountry skiing – possibly guided – from the summit down to Peru, to the east, and East Dorset, to the northwest. He also refers to the Best Farm quite a bit, which is the large circled area off highway 11. The Fairbank Group's website currently has this space scoped for real estate development. Here's the ski area in relation to these various areas:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 120/100 in 2022, and number 366 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

 To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on June 28. Free subscribers got it on July 1. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoJonathan M. Davis, General Manager of Perfect North, IndianaRecorded onJune 20, 2022About Perfect NorthClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Perfect FamilyPass affiliations: NoneLocated in: Lawrenceburg, IndianaClosest neighboring ski areas: Mad River, Ohio (2 hours, 18 minutes); Paoli Peaks, Indiana (2 hours, 39 minutes); Snow Trails (3 hours)Base elevation: 400 feetSummit elevation: 800 feetVertical drop: 400 feetSkiable Acres: 100Average annual snowfall: 24 inchesTrail count: 22 (1 double-black, 3 black, 3 blue-black, 10 intermediate, 5 beginner)Lift count: 12 (2 quads, 3 triples, 5 carpets, 2 ropetows - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Perfect North’s lift fleet)About Timberline, West VirginiaWhile this podcast is not explicitly about Timberline, Jonathan had an important role in the ski area’s acquisition in 2019. His enthusiasm for Timberline is clear, the opportunity and the investment are enormous, and this conversation acts as a primer for what I hope will be a full Timberline podcast at some future point.Click here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Perfect FamilyPass affiliations: NoneLocated in: Davis, West VirginiaClosest neighboring ski areas: Canaan Valley (8 minutes); White Grass XC touring/backcountry center (11 minutes); Wisp, Maryland (1 hour, 15 minutes); Snowshoe, West Virginia (1 hour, 50 minutes); Bryce, Virginia (2 hours); Homestead, Virginia (2 hours); Massanutten, Virginia (2 hours, 21 minutes)Base elevation: 3,268 feetSummit elevation: 4,268 feetVertical drop: 1,000 feetSkiable Acres: 100Average annual snowfall: 150 inchesTrail count: 20 (2 double-black, 3 black, 5 intermediate, 10 beginner)Lift count: 3 (1 high-speed six-pack, 1 fixed-grip quad, 1 carpet - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Timberline’s lift fleet)Why I interviewed himThere are two kinds of ski areas in the Midwest. The first are the big ones, out there somewhere in the woods. Where 10,000 years ago a glacier got ornery. Or, farther back in time, little mountains hove up out of the earth. They’re at least 400 feet tall and top out near 1,000. They’re not near anything and they don’t need to be. People will drive to get there. Often they sit in a snowbelt, with glades and bumps and hidden parts. Multiple peaks. A big lodge at the bottom. There are perhaps two dozen of these in the entire region, all of them in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Boyne, Nub’s Nob, Crystal, Caberfae, Bohemia, Powderhorn, Whitecap, Granite Peak, Spirit, Lutsen. This is not a complete list. I’m making a point here.The second kind of Midwest ski area is usually smaller. It claims 200 vertical feet and actually has 27. It has four chairlifts for every run. It has a parking lot that could swallow Lake George. It’s affordable. And it’s close. To something. Metro Detroit has four ski areas. Milwaukee has eight. Minneapolis has six. But pretty much any Lower Midwestern city of any size has at least one ski area in its orbit: Cleveland (Alpine Valley, Boston Mills, Brandywine), Columbus (Snow Trails, Mad River), St. Louis (Hidden Valley), Kansas City (Snow Creek), Des Moines (Seven Oaks), Chicago (Four Lakes, Villa Olivia), Omaha (Mt. Crescent).For Cincinnati, that ski area is Perfect North. It’s actually one of the larger city-adjacent ski areas in the region: 400 vertical feet on 100 acres (accurate numbers, as far as I can tell). Twelve lifts. Twenty-two trails. Indiana has 6.7 million residents and two ski areas. Some winter days, approximately half of them are skiing at Perfect North.I’m just kidding around about the numbers. What I’m trying to say is that urban Midwestern ski areas are terrific businesses. They’re small but handle unimaginable volume in short, intense seasons of 12-hour-plus days. Davis tells me in the podcast that the ski area hires 1,200 seasonal employees for winter. That is an almost incomprehensible number. Killington, the largest ski area in the east, 20 times the size of Perfect North, has around 1,600 wintertime employees.But that’s what it takes to keep the up-and-down moving. Perfect North was a sort of accidental ski area, born when a college student knocked on farmer Clyde Perfect’s door and said, “hey did you know your land is perfect for a ski area?” In almost snowless Indiana, this was quite a wild notion. Not that no one had tried. The state has nine lost ski areas. But Perfect North is one of only two that survived (the other is Vail-owned Paoli Peaks, which survives no thanks to the mothership). I don’t know enough about the ski areas that failed to say why they’re gone, but it’s obvious why Perfect North has succeeded: relentless investment by committed operators. Here’s an excerpt from a case study by SMI snowmakers:[Perfect North] employs 245 snowmaking machines and an infrastructure that pumps about 120 million gallons of water annually, giving the resort a 3-4 foot snowpack throughout the season. The system is so efficient that operators can start as many as 200 snowmakers in about an hour.At its modest start-up in 1980, Perfect North had only rope tows, T-bars and about a dozen snowmakers covering roughly seven acres. But the family-owned operation has expanded each year and now features five chair lifts and six surface lifts serving more than ten times the skiable terrain, as well as one of the largest tubing operations in the entire U.S. …“We knew early on that snowmaking was critical to a great experience on the hills. The snow is the reason people come; everything else is secondary. So we really focused on it right from the beginning, and we’ve enhanced our snowmaking capability every year,” said [Perfect North President Chip] Perfect.All of the snow guns now in use at Perfect North are manufactured by SMI, and every one is permanently mounted on a SnowTower™ (or pole-top unit). Most are the company’s signature PoleCat™ or Super PoleCat™ designs, with either hill air feed or onboard compressors. Unlike some resorts that boast 100% snowmaking on their trails, Perfect North runs enough machines to be able to make snow on virtually the entire skiing and tubing area at the same time.This is not one model of how to make a ski area work in the Lower Midwest – this is the only way to make a ski area work in the Lower Midwest. The region was a bit late to skiing. Perfect North didn’t open until 1980. Snowmaking had to really advance before such a thing as consistent skiing in Indiana was even conceivable. But being possible is not the same thing as being easy. There are only two ski areas in Indiana for a reason: it’s hard. Perfect North has mastered it anyway. And you’ll understand about two minutes into this conversation why this place is special.What we talked aboutA couple kids watching for the lights to flip on across the valley, announcing the opening of the ski season; Perfect North in the ‘80s; a place where jeans and “layered hunting gear” are common; ski area as machine; from bumping chairs to general manager; the pioneer days of 90s tech; moving into the online future without going bust; RFID; the surprising reason why Perfect North switched from metal wicket tickets to the plastic ziptie version; taking over a ski area in the unique historical moment that was spring 2020; staff PTSD from the Covid season; the power of resolving disputes through one-on-one talks; “we lost something in those two years with how we interact with people”; 1,200 people to run a 400-vertical-foot ski area; how Perfect North fully staffed up and offered an 89-hour-per-week schedule as Vail retreated and severely cut hours at its Indiana and Ohio ski areas; Perfect North would have faced “an absolute mutiny” had they pulled the Vail bait-and-switch of cutting operating hours after pass sales ended; how aggressive you have to be with snowmaking in the Lower Midwest; “the people of the Midwest are fiercely loyal”; reaction to Vail buying Peak Resorts; “I want Midwest skiing to succeed broadly”; Cincinnati as a ski town; skiing’s identity crisis; the amazing story behind Perfect North’s founding; the Perfect family’s commitment to annual reinvestment; remembering ski area founder Clyde Perfect, who passed away in 2020; you best keep those web cams active Son; snowmaking and Indiana; the importance of valleys; the importance of a committed owner; potential expansion; where the ski area could add trails within the existing footprint; terrain park culture in the Lower Midwest; the management and evolution of parks at Perfect North; potential chairlift upgrades and a theoretical priority order; where the ski area could use an additional chairlift; the potential for terrain park ropetows; coming updates to Jam Session’s ropetows; Perfect North’s amazing network of carpet lifts; the ski area’s massive tubing operation; why Perfect North purchased Timberline and how the purchase came together; why creditors rejected the first winner’s bid; West Virginia as a ski state; the reception to Timberline’s comeback; “it didn’t take us long to realize that the three lifts on site were unworkable”; how well Perfect North and Timberline work as a ski area network; “Timberline Mountain has got to stand on its own financially”; whether Perfect North could ever purchase more ski areas; “I hate to see ski areas wither up and die”; Perfect North’s diverse season pass suite; “what drives our guest’s visits is their availability”; and whether Timberline or Perfect North could join the Indy Pass.            Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewYou want to hear something funny? I often put out queries on Twitter or via email, asking people to tell me who they would most like to hear from on the podcast. Or sometimes people just write and say something like, “hey love the pod you should interview…” And the interview they’ve most often requested has been some combination of Timberline and Perfect North. I don’t really understand why. I mean, I think it’s an awesome story. I’ve yet to meet a ski area I wasn’t fascinated by, and this Midwest-buys-Mid-Atlantic storyline is especially compelling to me. But this one has, for whatever reason, resonated broadly. I’ve never once had someone ask me to track down the head of Telluride or Mammoth or Heavenly (I’d gladly talk to the leaders of any of the three), but the Perfect North/Timberline request has been hitting my inbox consistently for years.Well, it’s done. I’d still like to do a Timberline-first pod, but the basic story of the acquisition is there, and we spend about 15 minutes on the West Virginia ski area. Still, I was not just listening to the request line. I tracked down Davis for the same reason that I tracked down Snow Trails, Ohio’s Scott Crislip last month: these are the only two ski areas in Indiana or Ohio that functioned normally last season. And they are the only two ski areas in those states that are not owned by Vail.Paoli Peaks was open 28 hours per week, from Thursday through Sunday, with no night skiing on weekends. Perfect North was open 89 hours per week, with night skiing seven days per week. I found this fairly offensive, and WTIU Public TV in Indiana invited me on-air back in March to talk about it:How, exactly, did Vail get owned by two independent operators with a fraction of the institutional resources? That is the question that these two podcasts attempt to answer. Vail clearly misread the market in Ohio and Indiana. They did not make enough snow or hire enough people. They cut night skiing. In the Midwest. That’s like opening a steakhouse and cutting steak off the menu. Sorry, Guys, budget cuts. You can’t find steak at this steakhouse, but we have beef broth soup and canned greenbeans. And by the way, we’re only open for lunch. Like, how did they not know that? It may be the worst series of ski area operating decisions I’ve ever seen.I should probably just let this go. Now that I’ve said my piece via these two interviews, I probably will. I’ve made my point. But seriously Vail needs to look at what Perfect North and Snow Trails did this past season and do exactly that. And if they can’t, then, as Davis says in this interview, “if they don’t want Paoli and Mad River, we’ll take them.”Questions I wish I’d askedPerfect North has a really interesting pass perk for its highest-tiered pass: Perfect Season Pass holders can go direct to lift. That pass is $356. Gold passholders, who can ski up to eight hours per day, must pick up a lift ticket at the window each time they ski. That pass is $291. While the gold pass is not technically unlimited, eight hours per day seems more than sufficient. I’m ready to wrap it up after seven hours at Alta. I can’t imagine that eight hours wouldn’t be enough Indiana skiing. But I don’t think the ski area would bother with the two different passes if the market hadn’t told them there was a need, and I would have liked to have discussed the rationale behind this pass suite a bit more.What I got wrongI said on the podcast that Snow Trails was open “80-some hours per week.” The number was actually 79 hours. I also stated in the introduction that Perfect North was founded by “the Perfect family and a group of investors,” but it was the Perfect family alone.  Why you should ski Perfect NorthWe’ve been through this before, with Snow Trails, Mountain Creek, Paul Bunyan, Wachusett, and many more. If you live in Cincinnati and you are a skier, you have a choice to make: you can be the kind of skier who skis all the time, or you can be the kind of skier who skis five days per year at Whistler. I know dozens of people in New York like this. They ski at Breckenridge, they ski at Park City, they ski at Jackson Hole. But they don’t – they just couldn’t – ski Mountain Creek or Hunter or even Stowe. East Coast skiing is just so icy, they tell me. Well, sometimes. But it’s skiing. And whether you ski six days per year or 50 largely depends upon your approach to your local.If I lived in Cincinnati, I’d have a pass to Perfect North and I’d go there all the time. I would not be there for eight hours at a time. Ten runs is a perfectly good day of skiing at a small ski area. More if conditions are good or I’m having fun. Anything to get outside and make a few turns. Go, ride the lifts, get out. No need to overthink this. Any skiing is better than none at all.Most of Perfect North’s skiers, of course, are teenagers and families. And it’s perfect for both of these groups. But it doesn’t have to be for them alone. Ski areas are for everyone. Go visit.As far as Timberline goes, well, that’s a whole different thing. A thousand feet of vert and 150 inches of average annual snowfall shouldn’t take a lot of convincing for anyone anywhere within striking distance.Podcast NotesPerfect North founder Clyde Perfect passed away in 2020. Here is his obituary.I mentioned that Indiana had several lost ski areas. Here’s an inventory. My 1980 copy of The White Book of Ski Areas lists nine hills in Indiana. Perfect North isn’t one of them (Paoli Peaks, the state’s other extant ski area, is). Here’s a closer look at two of the more interesting ones (you can view more trailmaps on skimap.org):Nashville AlpsHere’s the 2001 trailmap for Nashville Alps, which had a 240-foot vertical drop. The ski area closed around 2002, and the lifts appear to be gone.If anyone knows why Nashville Alps failed, please let me know.Ski StarlightThe White Book pegs this one with an amazing 554 vertical feet, which would make it taller than any ski area in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. The map shows trails running along little ridgelines separated by valleys, which would have made this a really interesting spot on the rare occasions it snowed enough to ski the trees.Google maps suggests that this trailmap more or less reflects geologic reality. Here’s a YouTube video from a few years back, when the ski area was apparently for sale. The lifts were still intact (though likely unusable):The White Book says that this place had a double-double and two J-bars in 1980. Just 20 minutes from Louisville, this seems like the kind of little Midwestern spot that could boom with the right operators. The cost to bring it online would likely be prohibitive, however. As with most things in U.S. America, it would be the permitting that would likely kill it in the crib.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 70/100 in 2022, and number 316 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

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Paid subscribers receive thousands of extra words of content each month, plus all podcasts three days before free subscribers.WhoJoe Hession, CEO of Snow Partners, owners of Mountain Creek, Big Snow American Dream, Snowcloud, and Terrain Based LearningRecorded onJune 15, 2022About Mountain CreekLocated in: Vernon Township, New JerseyClosest neighboring ski areas: National Winter Activity Center, New Jersey (6 minutes); Mount Peter, New York (24 minutes); Campgaw, New Jersey (51 minutes); Big Snow American Dream (50 minutes)Pass affiliations: NoneBase elevation: 440 feetSummit elevation: 1,480 feetVertical drop: 1,040 feetSkiable Acres: 167Average annual snowfall: 65 inchesTrail count: 46Lift count: 9 (1 Cabriolet, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Mountain Creek’s lift fleet)About Big Snow American DreamLocated in: East Rutherford, New JerseyClosest neighboring ski areas: Campgaw, New Jersey (35 minutes); National Winter Activity Center, New Jersey (45 minutes); Mountain Creek, New Jersey (50 minutes); Mount Peter, New York (50 minutes)Pass affiliations: NoneVertical drop: 118 feetSkiable Acres: 4Average annual snowfall: 0 inchesTrail count: 4 (2 green, 1 blue, 1 black)Lift count: 4 (1 quad, 1 poma, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog’s of inventory of Big Snow American Dream’s lift fleet)Why I interviewed himTwenty-five years ago, Vail Resorts was known as “Vail Associates.” The company owned just two mountains: Vail and Beaver Creek, which are essentially right next door to each other in Eagle County, Colorado. The resorts were, as they are today, big, snowy, and fun. But they were not great businesses. Bankruptcy threatened. And the ski media – Skiing, Powder – was mostly dismissive. This was the dawn of the freeskiing era, and the cool kids were running the Circuit of Radness: Snowbird, Squaw, Mammoth, Jackson Hole, Whistler, the Powder Highway. Vail was for suburban dads from Michigan. Beaver Creek was for suburban dads from New York. If you wanted the good stuff, keep moving until you got to Crested Butte or Telluride. Vail was just another big Colorado ski resort, that happened to own another big Colorado ski resort, and that was it.Today, Vail is the largest ski company in history, with (soon to be) 41 resorts scattered across three continents. Its Epic Pass transformed and stabilized the industry. It is impossible to talk about modern lift-served North American skiing without talking about Vail Resorts.There was nothing inevitable about this. Pete Seibert, Vail’s founder, did not enter skiing with some snowy notion of Manifest Destiny. He just wanted to open a great ski resort. It was 18 years from Vail Mountain’s 1962 opening to the opening of Beaver Creek in 1980. It was nearly two more decades until Vail bought Keystone and Breck in 1997. It was 11 more years until the Epic Pass debuted, and a few more before anyone started to pay attention to it.What Snow Partners, led by Joe Hession, is doing right now has echoes of Vail 15 years ago. They are building something. Quietly. Steadily. Like trees growing in a forest. They rise slowly but suddenly they tower over everything.I’m not suggesting that Snow Partners will be the next Vail. That they will buy Revelstoke and Jackson Hole and Alta and launch the Ultimo Pass to compete with Epic and Ikon. What Snow Partners is building is different. Additive. It will likely be the best thing to ever happen to Vail or Alterra. Snow Partners is not digital cameras, here to crush Kodak. They are, rather, skiing’s Ben Franklin, who believed every community in America should have access to books via a lending library. In Snow Partners’ version of the future, every large city in America has access to skiing via an indoor snowdome.This will change everything. Everything. In profound ways that we can only now imagine. The engine of that change will be the tens of millions of potential new skiers that can wander into a Big Snow ski area, learn how to ski, and suddenly train their radar on the mountains. Texas has a population of around 29.5 million people. Florida has about 22 million. Georgia has around 11 million. Those 61.5 million people have zero in-state ski areas between them. They could soon have many. There are countless skiers living in these states now, of course, refugees from the North or people who grew up in ski families. But there are millions more who have never skied or even thought about it, but who would, given the option, at least try it as a novelty. And that novelty may become a hobby, and that hobby may become a lifestyle, and that lifestyle may become an obsession.As anyone reading this knows, there’s a pretty direct line between those first turns and the neverending lines rolling on repeat in your snow-obsessed brain. But you have to link those first couple turns. That’s hard. Most people never get there. And that’s where Big Snow, with its beginner zone loaded with instructors and sculpted terrain features – a system known as Terrain Based Learning – is so interesting. It not only gives people access to snow. It gives people a way to learn to love it, absent the broiling frustration of ropetows and ice and $500 private instructors. It’s a place that creates skiers.This – Big Snow, along with an industry-wide reorientation toward technology – is Hession’s vision. And it is impossible not to believe in his vision. Hession announces in this podcast that the company has secured funding to build multiple Big Snow ski areas within the foreseeable future. The combination of beginner-oriented slopes and simple, affordable packages has proven attractive even in New Jersey, where skiers have access to dozens of outdoor ski areas within a few hours’ drive. It makes money, and the business model is easily repeatable.Mountain Creek, where Hession began working as a parking lot attendant in his teens, is, he says, a passion project. The company is not buying anymore outdoor ski areas. But when Big Snows start minting new skiers by the thousands, and perhaps the millions, they may end up driving the most profound change to outdoor ski areas in decades.What we talked aboutThe nascent uphill scene at Mountain Creek; “most people don’t realize that this is what New Jersey looks like”; celebrating Big Snow’s re-opening; the three things everyone gets wrong about Big Snow; the night of the fire that closed the facility for seven months; how the fire started and what it damaged; three insurance companies walk into a bar…; why six weeks of work closed the facility for more than half a year; staying positive and mission-focused through multiple shutdowns at a historically troubled facility; New Jersey’s enormous diversity; skiing in Central Park?; “we’re creating a ski town culture in the Meadowlands in New Jersey”; everyone loves Big Snow; the story behind creating Big Snow’s beginner-focused business model; why most people don’t have fun skiing and snowboarding; the four kinds of fun; what makes skiing and snowboarding a lifestyle; what Hession got really wrong about lessons; the “haphazard” development of most ski areas; more Big Snows incoming; why Big Snow is a great business from a financial and expense point of view; looking to Top Golf for inspiration on scale and replicability; where we could see the next Big Snow; how many indoor ski domes could the United States handle?; what differentiates Big Snow from Alpine-X; whether future Big Snows will be standalone facilities or attached to larger malls; is American Dream Mall too big to fail?; finding salvation from school struggles as a parking lot attendant at Vernon Valley Great Gorge; Action Park; two future ski industry leaders working the rental shop; Intrawest kicks down the door and rearranges the world overnight; a “complicated” relationship with Mountain Creek; Intrawest’s rapid decline and the fate of Mountain Creek; leaving your dream job; ownership under Crystal Springs; how a three-week vacation will change your life; transforming Terrain Based Learning from a novelty to an empire; “I’ve been fascinated with how you go from working for a company to owning a company”; the far-flung but tightly bound ski industry and how Hession ended up running Big Snow; how much the Big Snow lease costs in a month; an Austin Powers moment; this is a technology company; an anti-kiosk position; the daily capacity of Mountain Creek; buying Mountain Creek; the art of operating a ski area; the biggest mistake most Mountain Creek operators have made; the bargain season pass as business cornerstone; “we were days away from Vail Resorts owning Mountain Creek today”; bankruptcy, Covid, and taking control of Mountain Creek and Big Snow in spite of it all; how much money Mountain Creek brings in in a year; “a lot of people don’t understand how hard it is to run a ski resort”; a monster chairlift project on the Vernon side of Mountain Creek; “a complicated relationship” with the oddest lift in the East ( the cabriolet) and what to do about it; “no one wants to take their skis on and off for a 1,000 feet of vertical”; which lift from Mountain Creek’s ancient past could make a comeback; bringing back the old Granite View and Route 80 trails; why expansion beyond the historic trail network is unlikely anytime soon; Creek’s huge natural snowmaking advantage; why no one at Mountain Creek “gives high-fives before the close of the season”; Hession is “absolutely” committed to stretching Creek’s season as long as possible; the biggest job of a ski resort in the summertime; the man who has blown snow at Mountain Creek for 52 years; whether Snow Operating would ever buy more outdoor ski resorts; “variation is evil”; the large ski resort that Hession tried to buy; “I don’t think anyone can run a massive network of resorts well”; an Applebee’s comparison; whether Mountain Creek or Big Snow could ever join a multi-mountain ski pass; why the M.A.X. Pass was a disaster for Mountain Creek; why Creek promotes the Epic and Ikon Passes on its social channels; changing your narrative; not a b******t mission statement; why the next decade in the ski industry may be the wildest yet; and the Joe P. Hession Foundation.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewI’ll admit that it can be awfully hard to appreciate the potential of Big Snow from the point of view of the casual observer. For anyone living in the New York metro area, the place spent a decade and a half as a vacant laughingstock, a symbol of excess and arrogance, an absurdly expensive novelty that was built, it seemed, just to be torn down. As I wrote last year:On Sept. 29, 2004, a coalition of developers broke ground on a project then known as Meadowlands Xanadu. Built atop a New Jersey swamp and hard by Interstate 95, the garish collection of boxes and ramps with their Romper Room palette could be seen from the upper floors of Manhattan skyscrapers, marooned in their vast asphalt parking lot, an entertainment complex with no one to entertain.It sat empty for years. Crushed, in turn, by incompetence, cost overruns, the Great Recession, lawsuits, and funding issues, the building that would host America’s first indoor ski slope melted into an eternal limbo of ridicule and scorn.I didn’t think it would ever open, and I didn’t understand the point if it did. This is the Northeast – we have no shortage of skiing. At four acres on 160-foot vertical drop, this would instantly become the smallest ski area in nine states. Wow. What’s the next item in your master development plan: an indoor beach in Hawaii?But eventually Big Snow did open: 5,545 days after the center’s groundbreaking. And it was not what I thought it would be. As I wrote the month after it opened:For its potential to pull huge numbers of never-evers into the addictive and thrilling gravitational pull of Planet Ski, Big Snow may end up being the most important ski area on the continent. It is cheap. It is always open. It sits hard against the fourth busiest interstate in the country and is embedded into a metro population of 20 million that has outsized influence on national and global trends. Over the coming decades, this ugly oversized refrigerator may introduce millions of people to the sport.I wrote that on Jan. 13, 2020, two months before Covid would shutter the facility for 177 days. It had only been open 94 days when that happened. Then, 388 days after re-opening on Sept. 1, 2020, fire struck. It caused millions in damage and another 244-day closure. After endless negotiations with insurance companies, Big Snow American Dream finally re-opened last month.So now what? Will this place finally stabilize? What about the disastrous financial state of the mall around it, which has, according to The Wall Street Journal, missed payments on its municipal bonds? Will we see more Big Snows? Will Snow Operating bid on Jay Peak? Will we ever get a real chairlift on Vernon at Mountain Creek? With Big Snow rebooted and live (take three), it was time to focus on the future of Snow Operating. And oh man, buckle up.Questions I wish I’d askedI could have stopped Joe at any time and asked a hundred follow-up questions on any of the dozens of points he made. But there would have been no point in that. He knew what I wanted to discuss, and the narrative is compelling enough on its own, without my input.Why you should ski Mountain Creek and Big SnowBig SnowIf you’re approaching Big Snow from the point of view of a seasoned skier, I want to stop you right there: this is not indoor Aspen. And it’s not pretending to be. Big Snow is skiing’s version of Six Flags. It’s an amusement park. All are welcome, all can participate. It’s affordable. It’s orderly. It’s easy. And it has the potential to become the greatest generator of new skiers since the invention of snow.And that will especially be true if this thing scales in the way that Hession believes it will. Imagine this: you live in Houston. No one in your family skis and so you’ve never thought about skiing. You’ve never even seen snow. You can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to. It looks cold, uncomfortable, exotic as moonrocks, and about as accessible. You’re not a skier and you probably never will be.But, what if Big Snow sprouts out of the ground like a snowy rollercoaster? It’s close. It’s cheap. It could be fun. You and your buddies decide to check it out. Or you take someone there on a date. Or you take your kids there as a distraction. Your lift ticket is well under $100 and includes skis and boots and poles and bindings and a jacket and snowpants (but not, for some reason, gloves), and access to instructors in the Terrain Based Learning area, a series of humps and squiggly snow features that move rookies with the ground beneath them. You enter as a novice and you leave as a skier. You go back. Five or six more times. Then you’re Googling “best skiing USA” and buying an Epic Pass and booking flights for Denver.And if that’s not you, how about this scenario that I face all the time: nonskiers tell me they want to try skiing. Can I take them? Given my background, this would not seem like an irrational request. But I’m not sure where to start. With lift tickets, rentals, and lessons, they’re looking at $150 to $200, plus a long car ride in either direction, just to try something that is cold and frustrating and unpredictable. I’m sure as hell not teaching them. My imagination proves unequal to the request. We don’t go skiing.Big Snow changes that calculus. Solves it. Instantly. Even, as Joe suggests in our interview, in places where you wouldn’t expect it. Denver or Salt Lake City or Minneapolis or Boston. Places that already have plenty of skiing nearby. Why? Well, if you’re in Denver, a snowdome means you don’t have to deal with I-70 or $199 lift tickets or figuring out which of the 100 chairlifts in Summit County would best suite your first ski adventure. You just go to the snowdome.The potential multiplying effect on new skiers is even more substantial when you consider the fact that these things never close. Hession points out that, after decades of refinement and tweaking, Mountain Creek is now finally able to consistently offer 100-day seasons. And given the local weather patterns, that’s actually amazing. But Big Snow – in New Jersey or elsewhere – will be open 365 days per year. That’s three and a half seasons of Mountain Creek, every single year. Multiply that by 10 or 20 or 30 Big Snows, and suddenly the U.S. has far more skiers than anyone ever could have imagined.Mountain CreekThere exists in the Northeast a coterie of unimaginative blockheads who seem to measure their self-worth mostly by the mountains that they dislike. Hunter is a big target. So is Mount Snow. But perhaps no one takes more ridicule, however, than Mountain Creek, that swarming Jersey bump with the shaky financial history and almost total lack of natural snow. Everyone remembers Vernon Valley Great Gorge (as Mountain Creek was once known), and its adjacent summertime operation, the raucous and profoundly dysfunctional Action Park. Or they remember Intrawest leaving Creek at the altar. Or that one time they arrived at Creek at noon on Dec. 29 and couldn’t find a place to park and spent half the afternoon waiting in line to buy a bowl of tomato soup. Or whatever. Now, based on those long-ago notions, they toss insults about Creek in between their Facebook posts from the Jackson Hole tram line or downing vodka shots with their crew, who are called the Drinksmore Boyz or Powder Dogzz or the Legalizerz or some orther poorly spelled compound absurdity anchored in a profound misunderstanding of how impressed society is in general with the antics of men in their 20s.  Whatever. I am an unapologetic Mountain Creek fan. I’ve written why many times, but here’s a summary:First, it is close. From my Brooklyn apartment, I can be booting up in an hour and 15 minutes on a weekend morning. It is a bargain. My no-blackout pass for the 2019-20 season was $230. It is deceptively large, stretching two miles from Vernon to Bear Peaks along New Jersey state highway 94. Its just over thousand-foot vertical drop means the runs feel substantial. It has night skiing, making it possible to start my day at my Midtown Manhattan desk job and finish it hooking forty-mile-an-hour turns down a frozen mountainside. The place is quite beautiful. Really. A panorama of rolling hills and farmland stretches northwest off the summit. The snowmaking system is excellent. They opened on November 16 this year and closed on April 7 last season, a by-any-measure horrible winter with too many thaws and wave after wave of base-destroying rain. And, if you know the time and place to go, Mountain Creek can be a hell of a lot of fun, thanks to the grown-up chutes-and-ladders terrain of South Peak, an endless tiered sequence of launchpads, rollers and rails (OK, I don’t ski rails), that will send you caroming down the mountain like an amped-up teenager (I am more than twice as old as any teenager).I don’t have a whole lot to add to that. It’s my home mountain. After spending my first seven ski seasons tooling around Midwest bumps, the glory of having a thousand-footer that near to me will never fade. The place isn’t perfect, of course, and no one is trying to tell that story, including me, as you can see in the full write-up below, but when I only have two or three hours to ski, Creek is an amazing gift that I will never take for granted:Podcast notesHere are a few articles laying out bits of Hession’s history with Mountain Creek:New VP has worked at Creek since his teens – Advertiser-News South, Feb. 22, 2012Mountain Creek Enters Ski Season With New Majority Owner Snow Operating – Northjersey.com, Nov. 23, 2018I’ve written quite a bit about Big Snow and Mountain Creek over the years. Here are a couple of the feature stories:The Curse of Big Snow – Sept. 30, 2021The Most Important Ski Area in America – Jan. 13, 2020This is the fourth podcast I’ve hosted that was at least in part focused on Mountain Creek:Big Snow and Mountain Creek Vice President of Marketing & Sales Hugh Reynolds – March 3, 2020Hermitage Club General Manager Bill Benneyan, who was also a former president, COO, and general manager of Mountain Creek – Dec. 4, 2020Crystal Mountain, Washington President and CEO Frank DeBerry, who was also a former president, COO, and general manager of Mountain Creek – Oct. 22, 2021Here are podcasts I’ve recorded with other industry folks that Hession mentions during our interview:Vail Resorts Rocky Mountain Region Chief Operating Officer and Mountain Division Executive Vice President Bill Rock – June 14, 2022Mountain High and Dodge Ridge President and CEO Karl Kapuscinski - June 10, 2022Alpine-X CEO John Emery – Aug. 4, 2021Fairbank Group Chairman Brian Fairbank – Oct. 16, 2020Killington and Pico President and General Manager Mike Solimano – Oct. 13, 2019Here’s the trailer for HBO’s Class Action Park, the 2020 documentary profiling the old water park on the Mountain Creek (then Vernon Valley-Great Gorge) grounds:Hession mentioned a retired chairlift and retired trails that he’d like to bring back to Mountain Creek:What Hession referred to as “the Galactic Chair” is Lift 9 on the trailmap below, which is from 1989. This would load at the junction of present-day Upper Horizon and Red Fox, and terminate on the landing where the Sojourn Double and Granite Peak Quad currently come together (see current trailmap above). This would give novice skiers a route to lap gentle Osprey and Red Fox, rather than forcing them all onto Lower Horizon all the way back to the Cabriolet. I don’t need to tell any regular Creek skiers how significant this could be in taking pressure off the lower mountain at Vernon/North. Lower Horizon is fairly steep and narrow for a green run, and this could be a compelling alternative, especially if these skiers then had the option of downloading the Cabriolet.Hession also talked about bringing back a pair of intermediate runs. One is Granite View, which is trails 34 (Cop Out), 35 (Fritz’s Folly) and 33 (Rim Run) on Granite Peak below. The trail closed around 2005 or ’06, and bringing it back would restore a welcome alternative for lapping Granite Peak.The second trail that Hession referenced was Route 80 (trail 24 on the Vernon side, running beneath lift 8), which cuts through what is now condos and has been closed for decades. I didn’t even realize it was still there. Talks with the condo association have yielded progress, Hession tells me, and we could see the trail return, providing another connection between Granite and Vernon.Creek skiers are also still obsessed with Pipeline, the double-black visible looker’s right of the Granite lift on this 2015 trailmap:I did not ask Hession about this run because I’d asked Hugh Reynolds about it on the podcast two years ago, and he made it clear that Pipeline was retired and would be as long as he and Hession ran the place.Here are links to a few more items we mentioned in the podcast:The 2019 Vermont Digger article that lists Snow Operating as an interested party in the Jay Peak sale.We talked a bit about the M.A.X. Pass, a short-lived multi-mountain pass that immediately preceded (and was dissolved by), the Ikon Pass. Here’s a list of partner resorts on that pass. Skiers received five days at each, and could add the pass onto a season pass at any partner ski area. This was missing heavies like Jackson Hole, Aspen, and Taos, but it did include some ballers like Big Sky and Killington. Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, which includes Fernie and Kicking Horse and is now aligned with the Epic Pass, was a member, as were a few ski areas that have since eschewed any megapass membership: Whiteface, Gore, Belleayre, Wachusett, Alyeska, Mountain High, Lee Canyon, and Whitewater. Odd as that seems, I’m sure we’ll look back at some of today’s megapass coalitions with shock and longing.This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on June 19. Free subscribers got it on June 22. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 67/100 in 2022, and number 313 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Patrons at Wachusett Mountain got the rare opportunity to give luge racing a whirl, including WBZ's Matt Shearer who said steering is harder than it looks.

Holden Selectman Anthony Renzoni on Masks in Schools (Wachusett Regional School District). February 11th, 2022.

Dave Amirault, aka “Digi Dave” was a visionary in the ski industry at a time the industry really needed it. Dave got into skiing around the time that websites had digital counters on them and by merging his affinity for tech and sliding on snow, Dave created a snow focused career that took him from Sunday River to Freeskier Magazine, to Aspen, to Sierra, and finally, to Snowbird. On the podcast, we stay away from a lot of the nerd stuff Dave is known for and ask the question, did “coming out” force him out of his most successful position in skiing?   Dave Amirault Show Notes: 3:30:  Screwing me over, growing up in Rhode Island, and skiing 9:00:  Taking apart the computer, the AOL days, HS life, and getting a gig at Sunday River and Wachusett 14:00:  College social life, traveling for skiing and meeting his heroes 16:00:  Contributing, digital innovators in skiing, getting a job at Freeskier, and the burnout level at a job like that 23:00:  Stanley:  Get 30% off site wide with the code drinkfast Peter Glenn Ski and Sports:  Over 60 years of getting you out there 10 Barrel Brewery:  Buy their beers, they support action sports more than anyone 26:00:  Building out micro sites for brand promotions, how he gets to Aspen, the Aspen life, and going to Sierra at Tahoe.     43:00:  Alpine Vans:  Upgrade your adventure, Upgrade your life Elan Skis:  Over 75 years of innovation that makes you better 45:00:  Laying people off, getting laid off, what he learned at Sierra, and taking a dream job at Snowbird 50:00:  His Rideshare app and his award-winning 1-Star marketing campaign, 58:00:  Coming out on the internet, what happens after he hits send, the internet assholes are out for them, ultimately, losing his job for no reason, and his advice for others in the closet in the industry 75:00:  Inappropriate Questions with Taylor Pratt, Mike Rogge, and his siblings

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.WhoJeff Crowley, President of Wachusett Mountain, MassachusettsRecorded onNovember 29, 2021Why I interviewed himWhen the Crowleys showed up at “Mt. Wachusett Ski Area” in 1969, the place looked like any of the hundred-plus rinky-dink operations dotting the state at the time:Like subsistence farmers coaxing shoots from cracked earth in some pre-industrial past, Wachusett and its kin eked out a seasonal living. Simple operations powered by simple machines and whatever fell from the sky. Most failed. Wachusett thrived. Today, it looks like this:As I’ve written about other regionally beloved ski areas that persisted as their neighbors disappeared into the wilderness - Plattekill, Jiminy Peak - there was nothing inevitable about this. The Crowleys made it happen. Wachusett is not merely a survivor. It is one of the most successful ski areas in the country. Beloved and profitable, it hosts more than 400,000 annual skier visits on 130-ish acres. That’s only 50,000 fewer than 3,000-acre Whitefish. And yet, it works. The place is an absolute machine, every part of the experience optimized and streamlined, the relentless focus on one thing: to get as many people as possible skiing as much as possible.What we talked aboutWachusett ranked ahead of Stowe on Ski’s reader poll; opening weekend 2021; how a Massachusetts ski area beats so many larger, farther-north ski areas to open year after year; “we’re all crazy” at Wachusett; what the mountain looked like when the Crowleys showed up in 1969; the ski area’s Civilian Conservation Corps legacy; the oldest trail on the mountain; how Wachusett thrived as so many other Massachusetts ski areas failed; how a day skiing at Mount Snow inspired Ralph Crowley to buy Wachusett; how it feels when your dad buys a ski area; a cross-country adventure in lift installation; why Wachusett is likely to be a family-run operation for the foreseeable future; the Wachusett diaspora; the origins of Wa-Wa-Wachusett:…400,000-plus skier visits on a 130-acre ski area and the Wachusett MACHINE; climate-proofing the ski area; the irrepressible Worcester ski culture; the Wachusett you encounter will depend upon the time of day you show up; the importance of local ski journalism and what we lose when it fades; the vertical-drop and French fry battles between Berkshire East and Wachusett; how turmoil over old-growth forest near the mountain’s summit set the ski area’s modern footprint; why Wachusett doesn’t have marked glades; whether the ski area could ever lose its lease; what the ski area is considering as a replacement for its summit lift; sponsored chairlifts; why Wachusett installed a 300-vertical-foot high-speed quad; where the old Monadnock lift went; the Vickery Bowl expansion; whether the ski area could ever expand again; how Wachusett helps preserve land all over the state; why the mountain grooms twice per day; why the ski area will continue making snow into the end of March; beating Killington to open in 2020; that one time you could ski in May in Massachusetts; why the mountain continued to limit season pass sales and cut the ski day into sessions for 2021-22, and whether those changes will persist; keeping lift-ticket prices low; reciprocal season-pass partners; why Wachusett didn’t migrate from the MAX Pass to the Ikon Pass; whether the mountain could ever join another multi-mountain pass; reaction to the advent of the Epkon passes in New England; why Wachusett pass sales persist in this environment; you won’t believe the ski area that Wachusett bid on last year; and why Crowley thinks I should buy a ski area and why I probably never will.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewBecause from my seat, it doesn’t make sense: the Epkon passes keep getting more affordable, their kingdoms spreading like videogame emperors, and Wachusett doesn’t flinch. It was on a megapass and the megapass disappeared and the mountain didn’t join another one. They’re just like, “nah we’re good.” But in an accent impossible to imitate and designed to make me look ridiculous if I tried. Wachusett just keeps going. A third-grade bubblegum-wrapper detective could figure out why: great location, good managers, rabid local skiers. Fine. It’s still surrounded by abandoned ski areas. What makes this place special, a true independent independent in an era of consolidation and backed-into-a-corner coalition building? Listen to Crowley and you’ll get it pretty quick. I sure did.What I got wrongI said on the podcast that Jiminy Peak and Pats Peak had lift-ticket prices exceeding $100. This is incorrect. Jiminy Peak’s top rate for the 2021-22 ski season is $99. Pats Peak tops out at $89. I also referred to Connecticut’s Woodbury ski area as “Middlebury,” making my second ridiculous yeah-I’m-not-from-New-England mistake in as many weeks.Why you should ski WachusettWell, if you live in eastern Massachusetts, the answer is pretty straightforward: because it’s right there, a thousand-footer parked in your backyard. High-speed lifts and twice-a-day grooming and ticket/pass prices that are entirely reasonable. No well-I-guess-I-don’t-really-need-my-kidney-medication sticker-shock here. Even the cafeteria is affordable. It’s the same reason I ski Mountain Creek from my perch in New York City – there’s no reason not to.If you’re anyone else, from anywhere else, there are infinite other reasons why Wachusett may appeal to you: to support a family-owned business, to be part of the mania, to witness The MACHINE. I don’t know. I figured out a while ago that I could spend the rest of my lift skiing the same six ski areas in Vermont that everyone else did, or I could explore a little. I’m having a lot more fun since I decided on the latter path. Five Star Recommend. Just go.Additional reading/videosLift Blog’s inventory of Wachusett’s lift fleetHistoric Wachusett trailmaps on skimap.orgWachusett perennially appears among the top 20 resorts on Ski magazine’s Eastern resort rankings - it nabbed the No. 15 spot this yearLongtime Worcester Telegram & Gazette snowsports columnist Shaun Sutner appeared on the podcast last week, and we discussed Wachusett and Worcester at length. His first column this season focuses on the next-generation of family managers set to guide the ski area into the future.Crowley and I discussed: what is the real vertical drop of Berkshire East (1,180 feet advertised), and Wachusett (1,000 feet advertised)?Support The Storm by shopping at our partners: Patagonia | Helly Hansen | Rossignol | Salomon | Utah Skis | Berg’s Ski and Snowboard Shop | Peter Glenn | Kemper Snowboards | Gravity Coalition | Darn Tough | Skier's Peak | Hagan Ski Mountaineering | Moosejaw | Skis.com |The House | Telos Snowboards | Christy Sports | Evo | Hotels Combined | Black Diamond | Eastern Mountain Sports Subscribe at www.stormskiing.com

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.WhoShaun Sutner, snowsports columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Telegram.comRecorded onNovember 22, 2021Why I interviewed himBecause for skiing to thrive, it needs ski media to help tell its story. And I mean actual reporting-based journalism. Yes, it needs the hype – the cliff drops, the pow shots, the flippidy-doodle park brahs, this:But it also needs writers who can tell the story of the more approachable lift-served skiing world in which most of us dwell. Writers who know the local markets and local owners and local skiers and local idiosyncrasies. In the great ski media wipeout that swept away the bulk of our U.S. magazines, we also lost a lot of local ski beats. This matters. Good journalism, grounded in relationships and research, can counterbalance the noisy and atrocious swirl of social-media garbage that has become many skier’s primary information source about the sport.Sutner provides this corrective. In a snowsports column he has written for nearly two decades, he explores the world of New England skiing from his Worcester, Massachusetts base. He knows the people who run the ski areas, understands the market dynamics driving the sport’s evolution, and skis 80 days a year on the mountains he writes about. He knows the uphill and the downhill, the groomers and the backcountry, the people who can show him the stashes in all of them. There is nobody better equipped to help us understand what New England skiing is, how it became that, and what it might be in the future.What we talked aboutI can’t pronounce “Worcester”; the appeal of New England skiing; Southeast and Mid-Atlantic ski culture; Sutner’s long-running Telegram snowsports column; it’s beef time, snowshoers; what skiing loses when local journalism shrivels; the amazing snowy ski town that is Worcester; the slick operation at Wachusett; journalism’s rough transition to digital; newspaper paywalls; how to ski 80 days a year with a full-time job; surveying the Massachusetts ski landscape; the rise of Berkshire East; the renaissance at Catamount; the art of dodging large crowds at Stowe, Mount Snow, Loon, Cannon, and other busy mountains; regional ski passes; the Berkshire East-Wachusett French fry beef; you won’t believe which Massachusetts ski area has the highest base elevation in the state; thoughts on the state’s lost ski areas – Mount Tom, Pine Ridge, Brodie, Blandford, Mt. Watatic; the most endangered ski area in Massachusetts; the resilience of the Connecticut ski scene; Worcester’s cross-country ski park; the fate of Worcester’s once-thriving network of ropetow bumps; how Ski Ward endures; the distinct ski areas of North Conway; the explosion of the Mount Washington backcountry ski scene; the North Conway-Worcester connection; the appeal and frustrations of Attitash; brainstorming solutions for the atrocious summit triple; Vail Resorts’ evolving uphill policies; the odds that currently proposed expansions at Gunstock, Ragged, Sunapee, and Waterville Valley succeed; the buzz around Ragged; thoughts on Loon’s new eight-pack; the right balance between uphill and downhill capacity; Loon’s undersized gondola; the twisted history and fate of Tenney; whether Les Otten’s huge ski area development at The Balsams could succeed; the secret behind Magic’s comeback; beef with Mad River Glen; thoughts on the evolution of Stowe under Vail; how the Indy, Epic, and Ikon passes have changed New England skiing for the better; whether Vail’s crowd-management efforts will be enough to offset exploding Epic Pass sales; why the success of Hermitage Club matters to the average skier; whether the club will succeed this time; Boyne’s purchase of Shawnee Peak; the revitalizations of Saddleback and Bosquet under socially conscious investment groups; and Vail Mountain versus Beaver CreekWhy I thought that now was a good time for this interviewBecause Sutner’s column begins every year on Thanksgiving week, just as the Northeast ski season (typically) ramps up in earnest. It seemed like a good time to survey the happenings of New England skiing, from the concussive impacts of the Epic and Ikon Passes to New Hampshire resort expansions to the diligent multi-generational families running Massachusetts ski areas. And I wanted to help promote his column, a fine piece of weekly journalism that will make your ski season better.What I got wrongDuring the interview, I estimated the number of ski areas in New England to be “80 or 90 or maybe more.” The correct number is 90, according to the National Ski Areas Association.Why you should read Sutner’s columnBecause it’s focused, intelligent, researched, fact-checked, spell-checked, and generally just the sort of professional-level writing that is increasingly subsumed by the LOLing babble of the emojisphere. That’s fine – everyone is lost in the scroll. But as the pillars of ski journalism burn and topple around us, it’s worth supporting whatever’s left. Gannett, the parent company of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, has imposed fairly stringent paywalls on his work. While I think these local papers are best served by offering a handful of free articles per month, the paper is worth supporting if it’s your local – in the same way you might buy a local ski pass to complement your Epkon Pass. Good, consistent writing is not so easy to find. Sutner delivers. Support his craft.Where you can read Sutner’s columnSutner’s column kicks off Thanksgiving week each year and runs until April. This season’s inaugural edition, released yesterday, starts, as usual, close to his home base of Worcester. A preview:The last time I checked in with Chris Stimpson in this column he was a University of Vermont student on a barnstorming van tour of Western ski areas with a band of fellow collegiate free skiers.Stimpson, now 28, is the new media spokesman and public relations manager for Wachusett Mountain Ski Area as of this season, and also serves as the ski area’s terrain park manager. He’s part of a group of third-generation Crowley family members who occupy key roles at the thriving family business founded by their grandfather, Ralph Crowley, in 1969.Stimpson’s cousin David Crowley Jr. is the operations manager, and cousin Courtney Crowley is the new head of group sales. …What this generational shift in the making means for Wachusett customers is that the independent ski area is in solid, experienced family hands for the future and is not likely to ever be sold off to a big corporate chain.Read more…A few of Sutner’s past columns:Earliest Ski-Area Opening in Northeast Goes to Wachusett (Nov. 27, 2020)Winchester a Fresh Voice on Northeast Ski Scene (Dec. 9, 2020)New Hampshire’s Black Mountain ‘Is Like a Trip into the Past’ (Feb. 17, 2021)Ski Industry Makes Strides Toward Inclusion (March 31, 2021)Follow up on stuff we talked about in the interviewFollow Shaun on Twitter, Instagram, and FacebookShaun and I discussed this lost ski area in Van Cortland Park in The Bronx. A ropetow operation may have also briefly existed in Queens.We also talked about the story I had yet to write about a new owner buying Woodbury ski area in Connecticut – that story is here.Shaun talked about the lost Mt. Atatic Ski area - it looks like a cool little operation. Here’s a great write-up about the backcountry scene there on Lift Line Blog.Shaun references the Wa-Wa-Wachusett theme song in our interview. Here you go:Support The Storm by shopping at our partners:Patagonia | Helly Hansen | Rossignol | Salomon | Utah Skis | Berg’s Ski and Snowboard Shop | Peter Glenn | Kemper Snowboards | Gravity Coalition | Darn Tough | Skier's Peak | Hagan Ski Mountaineering | Moosejaw | Skis.com |The House | Telos Snowboards | Christy Sports | Evo | Hotels Combined | Black Diamond | Eastern Mountain Sports Subscribe at www.stormskiing.com

Another Round of New England's Fastest Growing Podcast!!! Sponsored by: Empire Jerky 5% off with promo code Bullsittin TwoTours CBD 10% off & free shipping promo code Bullsittin Grind My Gears: We discuss Lil Nas X and the cancel culture coming for Nike & his devil sneakers, why NHL players are way tougher than soft ass NBA players, what is a nickname and what is just a name, & the fact that “Covid” season mask wearing might be a thing every year for the rest of our lives! (0:00-43:22) Beer Reviews: We do a blueberry beer blind taste test to see which brewery we think did the best job! We review blueberry beers from the following breweries: Wachusett, Skyroc, Opa Opa & Newport! (43:22-1:26:52) Who the fuck do you think you are!? : After a few wheel spins we land on our pet peeves topic to discuss assholes who park in handicap spots, people who cut in line at amusement parks, taking up 3 lanes at a busy bowling alley & not waving to other drivers in traffic! (1:26:52-1:53:16) Hoop Heads: Adam and Richie briefly discuss Danny Ainge failing to make an impact trade again & the two super teams forming that are ruining the league! (1:53:16-2:12:27) Rate, Review, Subscribe and most of all Enjoy! Follow us: Instagram- bullsittin_pod Twitter- @bullsittin Facebook: @bullsittinpod --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

WBZ's Jordan Rich talks with Marc Hurwitz, founder of HiddenBoston.com and writer for NECN and DigBoston.com, about the great ambiance and food found at the Wachusett Brewing Co.

Wachusett school committee blog https://tbdailynews.com/crying-race-b... Grab Some Turtle Merch https://turtleboysports.com/shop/ Get the Book https://www.amazon.com/Turtleboy-cens... Like & Follow on Facebook Pages Clarence Woods Emerson Uncle Turtleboy - Aidan Kearney Turtleboy Sports Follow on Twitter: @tb_aidan @TurtleboyTweets @TurtleboyQuotes Join our Reddit r/TurtleBoySports Soundcloud TurtleBoySports Parler @turtleboy

Read title. Lol.

In this episode, Mrs. A tells the tales of two places in Central Massachusetts that are said to be haunted. The Woods of Wachusett in Princeton, and the SK Pierce Mansion in Gardner. Are you brave enough to go visit them? Do you dare? For questions or ideas for future topics, contact me on twitter.com/ateacherwhotrav

为你读英语美文 · 第382期 把远行的风景引入到生活里来主播：永清地点：云南 曾经看到过这样一段话：“你写PPT时，阿拉斯加的鳕鱼正跃出水面。你看报表时，梅里雪山的金丝猴刚好爬上树尖。你挤进地铁时，西藏的山鹰一直盘旋云端。你在会议中吵架时，尼泊尔的背包客一起端起酒杯在火堆旁。有一些穿高跟鞋走不到的路，有一些喷着香水闻不到的空气，有一些在写字楼里永远遇不见的人。”同行的朋友，你好，我是永清，欢迎收听为你读英语美文。国庆假期，你远行了吗？今天，我想和你分享美国作家梭罗一篇关于远行的文章《漫步瓦楚塞特山》中的片段： It was at no time darker than twilight within the tent, and we could easily see the moon through its transparent roof as we lay; for there was the moon still above us, with Jupiter and Saturn on either hand, looking down on Wachusett, and it was a satisfaction to know that they were our fellow-travelers still, as high and out of our reach as our own destiny.帐篷里任何时候都比暮霭时更明亮些，我们躺下后，能通过透明的帐篷顶清晰地看到外面的月亮，它依然高高地悬于天际，木星和土星分别在手的两侧，俯视着整座瓦楚塞特山。尽管它们同我们的命运一样遥不可及，但知道它们仍是我们的游伴，这就足以宽慰人心了。Truly the stars were given for a consolation to man. We should not know but our life were fated to be always groveling[ˈɡrɑːvlɪŋ] 卑躬屈膝的, but it is permitted to behold them, and surely they are deserving of a fair destiny. 的确，星辰给人类带来了慰藉。我们不仅要明了我们的生命注定是孤单的，还应知道我们有权利去凝视群星，当然，它们理应有更好的命运。We see laws which never fail, of whose failure we never conceived; and their lamps burn all the night, too, as well as all day, -- so rich and lavish is that nature which can afford this superfluity of light.我们看见了永不失效的自然法则，我们之前也从不认为它们会失效。它们的火炬不分昼夜地燃烧着。它们提供了这份额外的光芒，足见其本性是多么富足、多么慷慨。And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let us endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur into it. 而今，我们又回到了平原的散漫生活中，那么，就让我们努力把些许山峦的雄伟壮丽引入到生活中来吧！We will remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level life too has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest valleys have a tinge of blue; 我们将记住我们躺在什么围墙里面，也将懂得这种平实的生活也有其巅峰，并且知道，为什么从山顶俯视山谷最深处时，会看到一抹淡蓝的色调。that there is elevation in every hour, as no part of the earth is so low that the heavens may not be seen from, and we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command an uninterrupted horizon.我们还会明白，每个时刻都有一定的高度，因为没有哪一部分的大地低到难以看见天空，而我们要做的就是伫立在自己时刻的顶峰，去远望连绵不绝的地平线。 ——《漫步瓦楚塞特山》A WALK TO WACHUSETT 节选大卫·梭罗[美国] 著，董晓娣 译梭罗曾在《瓦尔登湖》里说：I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. 我去森林生活的目的，就是希望过一种审慎的生活，只面对最基本的生活，我试图了解自己是否可以学会生活启示我的一切，以免在死的时候发现自己的生活没有意义。不妨，有时间的时候，走进大自然里去，仰观宇宙之大, 俯察品类之盛, 所以游目骋怀；平凡的我们，终将回到平凡的世界，不妨，把远行途中看到的风景引入到自己的生活中来，试着用另一种心境去生活。▎主播介绍永清：为你读英语美文创始人后期，编辑：永清▎节目首发，背景音乐，图文资料，更多推送敬请关注微信公众号：为你读英语美文，ID：readenglishforyou

为你读英语美文 · 第382期 把远行的风景引入到生活里来主播：永清地点：云南 曾经看到过这样一段话：“你写PPT时，阿拉斯加的鳕鱼正跃出水面。你看报表时，梅里雪山的金丝猴刚好爬上树尖。你挤进地铁时，西藏的山鹰一直盘旋云端。你在会议中吵架时，尼泊尔的背包客一起端起酒杯在火堆旁。有一些穿高跟鞋走不到的路，有一些喷着香水闻不到的空气，有一些在写字楼里永远遇不见的人。”同行的朋友，你好，我是永清，欢迎收听为你读英语美文。国庆假期，你远行了吗？今天，我想和你分享美国作家梭罗一篇关于远行的文章《漫步瓦楚塞特山》中的片段： It was at no time darker than twilight within the tent, and we could easily see the moon through its transparent roof as we lay; for there was the moon still above us, with Jupiter and Saturn on either hand, looking down on Wachusett, and it was a satisfaction to know that they were our fellow-travelers still, as high and out of our reach as our own destiny.帐篷里任何时候都比暮霭时更明亮些，我们躺下后，能通过透明的帐篷顶清晰地看到外面的月亮，它依然高高地悬于天际，木星和土星分别在手的两侧，俯视着整座瓦楚塞特山。尽管它们同我们的命运一样遥不可及，但知道它们仍是我们的游伴，这就足以宽慰人心了。Truly the stars were given for a consolation to man. We should not know but our life were fated to be always groveling[ˈɡrɑːvlɪŋ] 卑躬屈膝的, but it is permitted to behold them, and surely they are deserving of a fair destiny. 的确，星辰给人类带来了慰藉。我们不仅要明了我们的生命注定是孤单的，还应知道我们有权利去凝视群星，当然，它们理应有更好的命运。We see laws which never fail, of whose failure we never conceived; and their lamps burn all the night, too, as well as all day, -- so rich and lavish is that nature which can afford this superfluity of light.我们看见了永不失效的自然法则，我们之前也从不认为它们会失效。它们的火炬不分昼夜地燃烧着。它们提供了这份额外的光芒，足见其本性是多么富足、多么慷慨。And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let us endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur into it. 而今，我们又回到了平原的散漫生活中，那么，就让我们努力把些许山峦的雄伟壮丽引入到生活中来吧！We will remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level life too has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest valleys have a tinge of blue; 我们将记住我们躺在什么围墙里面，也将懂得这种平实的生活也有其巅峰，并且知道，为什么从山顶俯视山谷最深处时，会看到一抹淡蓝的色调。that there is elevation in every hour, as no part of the earth is so low that the heavens may not be seen from, and we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command an uninterrupted horizon.我们还会明白，每个时刻都有一定的高度，因为没有哪一部分的大地低到难以看见天空，而我们要做的就是伫立在自己时刻的顶峰，去远望连绵不绝的地平线。 ——《漫步瓦楚塞特山》A WALK TO WACHUSETT 节选大卫·梭罗[美国] 著，董晓娣 译梭罗曾在《瓦尔登湖》里说：I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. 我去森林生活的目的，就是希望过一种审慎的生活，只面对最基本的生活，我试图了解自己是否可以学会生活启示我的一切，以免在死的时候发现自己的生活没有意义。不妨，有时间的时候，走进大自然里去，仰观宇宙之大, 俯察品类之盛, 所以游目骋怀；平凡的我们，终将回到平凡的世界，不妨，把远行途中看到的风景引入到自己的生活中来，试着用另一种心境去生活。▎主播介绍永清：为你读英语美文创始人后期，编辑：永清▎节目首发，背景音乐，图文资料，更多推送敬请关注微信公众号：为你读英语美文，ID：readenglishforyou

Pesto and Dave spend an evening fishing and remote podcasting on the shores of Wachusett Reservoir in Boylston, MA chatting about turkeys, the North American Super Slam and not catching fish! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/peter-tonelli/support

Nick 'Fitzy' Stevens is joined by Christian from Wachusett Brewery to discuss brews in Quarantine and the brand new beer Glory to benefit the United Way's Covid-19 fund.

Our good friends at Wachusett have created a beer that will raise money to go to the Worcester Together Fund and help fight the effects of COVID-19 in our community. Wachusett, along with The United Way of Central Mass, The Greater Worcester Community Foundation, The City of Worcester, and Atlas Distributing, have made a commitment to step up in this time of crisis. Read more about it: https://www.telegram.com/entertainmentlife/20200413/community-beer-wachusett-brews-ipa-for-covid-19-relief Learn more about Worcester Together: unitedwaycm.org

Erin and Hannah made beans. Ben has a bad short term memory. Erin has a had long term memory. Everybody played a lot of Solitaire this week. Erin had been having a very philosophical book about cooking read to her even though she also checked it out from the library! Ben went to Wachusett for his long weekend! Hannah has been enjoying a family space adventure remake. HOMEWORK: - Check out An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler from your local library or get the audiobook - Go skiing, it’s fun - Go to bed - Watch Lost in Space on Netflix - CALL US AND TELL US YOUR OBSESSION! 774-326-0420 - Follow @Nicelyprovedben, @Hanthropology, and @TooBroadPod on Twitter - Watch Ben on twitch.tv/discogreg  - Follow WayTooBroad on IG - Email us at waytoobroad@gmail.com - Listen to So Dreamy - Visit ernbrn.com - www.waytoobroad.com for anything you want - www.ernben.com for anything you need - queerworksmap.com - Please leave us a rating/review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening!

It's been a mild winter, but business is booming on Wachusett Mountain, where 300 snow guns are painting the slopes with synthetic snow for people to enjoy. WBZ NewsRadio's Kim Tunnicliffe reports.

After almost a year of cajoling, blackmail and tears, Ryan (JRT) from The Blade Job guests on a Mags podcast. Oh, and Paul rocks up too! Between us, we pin down the definitive Mount Rushmores of Wrestling Occasions.  Twitter: https://twitter.com/dejkirkbyhttps://twitter.com/raincounterhttps://twitter.com/BadlandsPodhttps://twitter.com/theCHAIRSHOTcom Also on: https://twitter.com/5Nerdsgohttps://twitter.com/WhyWeWatchPodhttps://twitter.com/FiveRoundsPod Music: johnfrantz17- “Awake” http://ccmixter.org/files/johnfrantz17/582722018 - Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0)

Real Talk 12/1/19   Today's episode is sponsored by Never Summer Industries, 686 Technical Outerwear, and DCShoes.   We start off with Clip of the Week and we are giving away a Spark R&D swag pack this week. Next we review around 30 different snowboard videos that dropped in the past two weeks, using ingle sentences to describe each movie. We finish by going behind “Behind the Beam” with an extended interview with Joe Sexton about 50-50ing the world's longest street rail. Our last block is a check in with seven different riders around the world.    CLIP OF THE WEEK BLOCK   Head over to our Instagram page to vote for your favorite instagram clip from the past week. This week's prize is a swag pack from Spark R&D, a splitboard binding company.   @thesnowboardproject.com to vote now and win!   Last week's podium for Clip of the Week Special ‘Burton Edition' went to:     Gigi Ruf - The Futureproof Crash Terje Haakonsen - Arctic Challenge Quarter Pipe Danny Davis - X-Games Pop Tart     Last week's winner is : @thegooddirtbag   MOVIE BLOCK   Bryan Fox - Life in General https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo4gV3tuwoQ   Tenderfoot Part 4 10:59 See Chile from a storyline perspective - sledding and surfing with locals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdajuX5z7aY&t=520s   The Great Powderhound Migration British Narrator, night lapse and funner crew. Relatable.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHAvswMVJmQ&t=656s   The Glacier Express (Holden) Vacation video, Riding trains in Europe.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGhzzB4e_BM   Future of Snowboarding - Nico Bondi - 8 Year old Stale Life The future is now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC81INxxjtM   Scan - Antii Autii Splitboard Spark (7:18) For split enthusiasts.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQZ7m8G79ZY PORB Ninja Suits Powder, onsen, ramen, beer - japow.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9etPiOwiRE&t=482s   Path Finding Japan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POQN72R4ReM   Triple Overhead - Shark Movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-sRC4pOPOU   Channel - US Shapes  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLDZxmeL7oU Inexact Odyssey Bad exposure. Cut my ear off.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-33xlc0ZYqI&t=125s ThirtyTwo Spot Check Loon Zeb Powell and Johnny O'Connor.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFdKVO0QoPE   Torment Mag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYMDJSeSLNg From Scraps https://vimeo.com/373963438   Tweakend - Dreamland https://vimeo.com/376641474   Lobster - Losers Frank, Fridge and Hallador https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHGT1izv8V0   Triple Chapter 2 - Vans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8iBBLsbyJs   Bryan Fox - Life in General https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo4gV3tuwoQ   Tenderfoot Part 4 10:59 See Chile from a storyline perspective - sledding and surfing with locals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdajuX5z7aY&t=520s   The Great Powderhound Migration British Narrator, night lapse and funner crew. Relatable.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHAvswMVJmQ&t=656s   The Glacier Express (Holden) Vacation video, Riding trains in Europe.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGhzzB4e_BM   Future of Snowboarding - Nico Bondi - 8 Year old Stale Life The future is now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC81INxxjtM   Scan - Antii Autii Splitboard Spark (7:18) For split enthusiasts.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQZ7m8G79ZY   Veer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O4o6qVkm7E&t=18s   Highest of Hopes  Most views of last two weeks . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLJb2IsWfd4&t=379s   Trash Salomon hits the streets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28tHuJa3guw&t=264s Hi8us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrv2k813viE   Balance Beam https://vimeo.com/370763007   Behind the Beam https://vimeo.com/375833566 Joe Sexton Interview - The Nebraska Rail   THE CHECK-IN BLOCK   Jason Wolle (Yes! Team Rider checks in about the fall european park sessions)   Michael Kary (Update from Poland)   Eric Themel (Snowboard Cross Course Builder)   Atsushi Yamanaka (Works at Diggin Magazine in Japan)   Martin Gallant (Quebec legend Checking in from Nicaragua)   Romain De Marchi (Hair of the Dog in Revelstoke)   Nelson Wormstead (The Marketing Guy for Oakley with a real good Boston accent)

In the 2018-19 school year, Matt Lane led his team to the MA State High School championship. In this episode, he discusses the player development, team culture and hockey IQ that contributed to winning the title. Are we over-emphasizing skills instead of focusing on teaching the game? Listen in as Mat Riley asks the coach … Continue reading Wachusett HS Coach Matt Lane -001 →

Craft Brew News - 8/30/19(Courtesy of Brewbound.com)Amazon’s California Alcohol Delivery Service Under InvestigationThe California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control has opened an investigation into Amazon’s Prime Now beer, wine, and spirits delivery service in the state after wine database and news outlet Wine Searcher reported possible violations of California liquor law.According to California liquor law, alcohol delivery services are required to have brick-and-mortar stores that operate for at least half the hours of their delivery operation.When a Wine Searcher reporter went to visit the ecommerce giant’s brick-and-mortar location at 3334 North San Fernando Road in Los Angeles, there was no storefront to be found, the website reported. The reporter claimed he could only find an “Associate’s Entrance” to Amazon Flex Delivery Partners, its private delivery service.Wine Searcher alleged that Amazon, which was issued a liquor license in February, violated its license in several ways, including not displaying alcoholic beverages for sale, not having alcoholic beverages available for sale, and not posting store hours.Matthew Hydar, supervising agent for the California Department of ABC, told Wine Searcher that the article sparked the ABC’s investigation. He said if the accusations were proven, the ABC could potentially strip Amazon of its liquor license until it has established a brick-and-mortar store or fine the company. Another option would be for the case to go before an administrative law judge, although Hydar said he does not expect criminal charges against the company.Anheuser-Busch’s ZX Ventures Acquires BarbarianAnheuser-Busch InBev’s growth and innovation group, ZX Ventures, has acquired Peruvian craft brewery Barbarian. Financial details were not disclosed, although ZX acquired 100% of the company’s shares, according to La Republica.The acquisition was announced in Peru on August 13. Barbarian’s founders and collaborators will remain with the company, and ZX plans to triple Barbarian’s production by 2020, according to the outlet.Co-founder Ignacio Schwalb said “We know that Barbarian has an incredible growth potential and that is why we have made the decision to add an important partner, which will take Barbarian to the next level,”. “This partnership opens a new world full of possibilities and will give us the opportunity to look carefully at our processes and search for optimizations in order to strengthen the growth and sustainability of the brewery.”A-B InBev also owns Peruvian brewery Backus, which was obtained as part of the MegaBrew merger with SABMiller in 2015.Empire Farmstead Brewery Files for BankruptcyNew York’s Empire Farmstead Brewery and affiliate Empire Brewing Properties filed for Chapter 11 protection in the Northern District of New York’s Bankruptcy Court earlier this week, according to court records. News of the filing follows a July asset purchase agreement reached by the distressed brewing company and Wisconsin’s Burnett Dairy Cooperative for $3.25 million.Empire, which opened in June 2016, attributed the bankruptcy filing to delays and high costs during the brewery’s construction, as well as a 2016 wild yeast infection that caused the brewery to “pull back” all bottled beer from distribution.According to court records, the filing is to “to ensure the ongoing operations of the businesses so that they may be sold as going concerns, to market the Debtors’ assets for sale as going concerns through a competitive bidding process, and to address the Debtors’ financial difficulties for the benefit of their respective creditors.”In 2017, Empire began working with Community Bank in an effort to sell the brewery or refinance its debt.Wachusett Launches Fifty Trees Hard Cider BrandMassachusetts’ Wachusett Brewing Company is further diversifying its portfolio with the addition of a new cider brand, Fifty Trees Hard Cider. According to a press release, the cider will be available in two styles: Original, a semi-dry cider blended with European Bittersweets, and Cranberry, featuring locally sourced cranberries. Fifty Trees sources its apples from orchards in North Central Massachusetts.Wachusett president Christian McMahan said in the release “We have been making hard cider pretty consistently over the last two years,”. “We have done a ton of experimentation over that time and are proud to finally be able to launch Fifty Trees to a wider audience. ”In addition to beer, Wachusett’s portfolio includes the Nauti hard seltzer brand.Craft Beer Storm Website: www.craftbeerstorm.com** Check out Upcoming Craft Beer Weekends ** Hampton, NHThe Victoria Inn Bed & Breakfast and PavilionCraft Beer Weekend - Dates: October 25-27, 2019Friday - Food / Beer Pairing at Inn / Q&A Brewer's PanelSaturday - Beer Bus takes you to local Breweries/DinnerSunday - Kegs N Eggs and BeerMosasAvailability: Limited - Book NOW!http://www.thevictoriainn.com/6th-annual-craft-beer-storm-weekend-2019/If your Company, Hotel or Restaurant wants to book a CraftBeer Weekend or Craft Beer Evening for your guests or employees send an email to Michael@craftbeerstorm.com Subscribe to Craft Beer Storm Podcast iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/craft-beer-storm/id1438117278?mt=2Support ACS In NYC Marathon“32K In 64 days” - I signed up for the NYC Marathon through the American Cancer Society and I am aiming to raise $32,000 ($3,200 Minimum X 10X) - please follow link below to donate what you can - $25, $50, $30K! - Onward... - Here is link –http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR?fr_id=94035&pg=personal&px=49477898&fbclid=IwAR2mBEvhF1wMA_BbHPhkavichNSFrE9Y9gi2RVZzfQ_4Da5Sht7gvH9rY_k*** A Top 20 Podcast in Food on iTunes ***Michael Potorti is the Host of Craft Beer Storm and Founder/Brewer at Beara Brewing Co. in Portsmouth, NH*** Interested in starting your own brewery? Our Portsmouth, NH TURNKEY facility is for sale! Follow link for more info:https://www.neren.com/Listing/2800-Lafayette-Rd-12A/5cdda2dabf34cb9150a7faebMichael PotortiFounder/BrewerHost of "Craft Beer Storm" Podcastmichael@craftbeerstorm.commichael@bearairishbrew.com*** Come visit our brewery for some delicious local craft brew! ***Beara Brewing Co.2800 Lafayette RoadPortsmouth, NH 03801Tel. (857) 342-3272 www.bearairishbrew.com Like us onInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/bearairishbrew/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/BearaIrishBrewingCo Twitter: https://twitter.com/BearaIrishBrew Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beara-brewing-co-30776075/**LISTEN to our Craft Beer Storm Podcast and share with a friend**Craft Beer Storm Podcast iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/craft-beer-storm/id1438117278Craft Beer Storm You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp3PVuCGmywNWlGFh0N0ukg?view_as=subscriberCraft Beer Storm Podcast Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/podcast-center-la-2/craft-beer-stormCraft Beer Storm Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/craftbeerstorm/Craft Beer Storm Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelpotorti/

Fishing New England is weekly fishing show on Boston's WNTN 1550 AM featuring Fisherman Jason Kacoyanis. Tune in Thursday's from 4:00 - 5:00pm on the radio or stream worldwide at www.wntn1550am.com, and check out archived episodes here on SoundCloud, or on Spotify and the Apple Podcast app.

Tonight we look at one of the most famous ghost stories of Massachusetts, The Legend of Lucy Keyes and the Ghosts of Mount Wachusett! In the spring of 1755, four-year-old Lucy Keyes went missing from her semi rural home in Princeton, MA. Professionals poured in to help search for Lucy, but eventually all hope was lost and most stopped searching for the girl. Only her mother held out any hope. Most believed a tribe of Native Americans had kidnapped or murdered the girl. Still others believed her quarrelsome neighbor, Tilly Littlejohn, may have known much more than he let on. Some say Lucy never really disappeared. In fact, if you visit Mount Wachusett today, some believe there is a chance you just might run in to the ghost of little Lucy or her mother who roams the trails of the mountain still searching for her daughter. spookyas.com facebook.com/spookyas Music by Occultic Overtones

T&G sports editor Jim Wilson talks about Northbridge, Wachusett hockey and Worcester Tech basketball winning state titles

Craft Brew News – 2/22/19Courtesy of Brewbound.comReceiver Reaches Agreement to Sell DME Group’s Main BusinessCourt-appointed receiver Alvarez & Marsal filed a report Thursday saying it had reached an agreement to sell financially troubled Canadian brewing equipment manufacturer DME Group’s manufacturing and fabrication headquarters in Charlottetown.According to the receiver’s second report filed with the Superior Court of Prince Edward Island, Alvarez & Marsal said it executed a purchase agreement with CIMC Enric Tank and Process Ltd. on February 13. Now, the receiver is asking the court to approve the sale.According to CIMC’s website, the company is “one of the largest suppliers for the beverages and liquid food industries,” with operations around the globe.Alvarez & Marsal said CIMC plans to continue the DME Group’s operations in Charlottetown, employ a majority of the employees currently working at the facility and potentially rehire others.Backlash Over Boston Beer GardensA pair of Massachusetts lawmakers are attempting to rein in Boston’s popular outdoor beer gardens, according to the Boston Globe.Driven by the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, state Sens. Ed Kennedy (D-Lowell) and Nick Collins (D-South Boston) are co-sponsoring a bill that would prevent any person or company from obtaining more than 14 one-day licenses a year. Beer companies such as Trillium and Wachusett, among others, have used those licenses to operate outdoor beer gardens from the spring into the fall.Currently, the law allows applicants to obtain up to 30 one-day licenses. However, beer companies have used a loophole that allows multiple applicants to request licenses on their behalf. Last year, the city issued 82 one-day licenses, up from 39 in 2017, the Globe reported.Speaking to the Globe, Massachusetts Restaurant Association president and CEO Bob Luz said the law is being abused to the detriment of his organization’s members.The states brewers have said they’re willing to work with lawmakers to evolve the law.Meanwhile, Notch Brewing founder Chris Lohring pointed out that the bill as written wouldn’t just hurt craft brewers, but would also affect nonprofits that rely on one-day licenses.Jim Koch Responds to #CorntroversyIt’s been nearly two weeks since Anheuser-Busch launched its Bud Light Super Bowl ads pointing out MillerCoors’ use of corn syrup in its flagship Miller Lite and Coors Light offerings and upsetting corn farmers. Now, Boston Beer Company founder Jim Koch has trudged into the cornfield with a blog post on the Samuel Adams website titled “Corntroversy — Deja Vu?”Koch wrote “It’s like McDonald’s and Burger King arguing about grilling vs. broiling their burgers,” he wrote. “Who cares? Fast food is still fast food.” Koch also predicted that the next phase of A-B’s fight with MillerCoors would be either the latter’s use of hop extract or an attack on imports such as Corona and Modelo, which “use the same industrial brewing techniques and ingredients”Koch also wrote “How safe is the quality image and premium price point of imported beers if drinkers realize that their fancy, upscale image hides less expensive ingredients and industrial brewing practices, just as happened in 1986?”Drizly Partners with BevMo! in CaliforniaBoston-based on-demand alcohol delivery company Drizly is expanding its reach in California via a new partnership with retailer BevMo!, according to a press releaseBevMo has 166 beer, wine and liquor stores on West Coast.The deal will make Drizly’s 60-minute delivery service available in 45 of BevMo!’s stores, including those in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and San Diego.With the addition of BevMo!, Drizly now partners with more than 1,000 retail locations in more than 100 cities across North America. The company recently secured $34.5 million as part of a Series C fundraising round.Subscribe to Craft Beer Storm Podcast iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/craft-beer-storm/id1438117278?mt=2Michael Potorti is the Host of Craft Beer Storm and Founder/Brewer at Beara Brewing Co. in Portsmouth, NHMichael PotortiFounder/BrewerHost of "Craft Beer Storm" Podcastmichael@craftbeerstorm.commichael@bearairishbrew.com*** Come visit our brewery for some delicious local craft brew! ***Beara Brewing Co.2800 Lafayette RoadPortsmouth, NH 03801Tel. (857) 342-3272 www.bearairishbrew.com Like us onInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/bearairishbrew/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/BearaIrishBrewingCo Twitter: https://twitter.com/BearaIrishBrew Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beara-brewing-co-30776075/**LISTEN to our Craft Beer Storm Podcast and share with a friend**Craft Beer Storm Podcast iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/craft-beer-storm/id1438117278?mt=2Craft Beer Storm You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp3PVuCGmywNWlGFh0N0ukg?view_as=subscriberCraft Beer Storm Podcast Radio Public: https://radiopublic.com/craft-beer-storm-WdbK0LCraft Beer Storm Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/craftbeerstorm/Craft Beer Storm Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/craftbeerstorm/

Special guest Head Brewer at Wachusett Brewing Company Dave Higgins joins us for our second ever episode dedicated to the brew! Dave as mentioned head brewer for the local brewing company Wachusett located in Westminster, MA, where they brew for distribution as well as for their on site Brew Yard which is a killer venue for music and awesome brew! Like, Share, Listen, Repeat! Enjoy the episode and go check out Wachusett available locally and throughout the northeast! The Brewery: http://www.wachusettbrewingcompany.com https://www.facebook.com/wachusettbrewyd/ https://www.facebook.com/WachusettBrewingCo/ https://twitter.com/WachusettBrew https://www.instagram.com/wachusettbrew/ https://www.instagram.com/wachusettbrewyd/ Visit our Patreon account and contribute to the cause! https://www.patreon.com/hmoa6pack Vector Graphic credit: Vector Graphics by Vecteezy.com ARMPHIS YouTube Channel - Royalty Free Music Background https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQZ4eWuXjiHw0aurWGPFOUA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtgf00GvfFQVsYBA7V7RwUw https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fteknoaxe&redir_token=-2bh4KUz3kifjmhBBvSCdpbUPc98MTUyNjkxNzAzM0AxNTI2ODMwNjMz&event=video_description&v=HaZzgw9aWc8 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMZ8uDWrYwi62AASCNhMHcg All submissions to “Heavy Metal Over A Six Pack” are under the understanding that they are royalty free, and usage will be decided by editors and directors of “Heavy Metal Over A Six Pack”. Submissions are voluntary, we do not claim ownership of submissions but any submissions we deem free to use at our discretion. Please respect our material, share with your friends and colleagues, please do not replicate or copy. We give credit to all sources who contribute to our show and all research we use. Like, Share, Listen, Repeat respectively! Check out the material and research the topics on your own, send us your feedback at hmoa6pack@gmail.com and go to our directories and give us a rating! Cheers!

T&G sports editor Jim Wilson breaks down the Hometeam Game of the Week between Wachusett and Tantasqua, as well as the other top football games in Central Mass. this weekend.

Today the Merch Cast gang is all up in Boston. In a new series we're calling "Behind the Shop" where we sit down with members of the Spreadshop crew to discover their passions, what drives them, and what selling merch online in your very own online store. We have a nice chat with our colleague from Germany, Carolin Rother, and discover all the great things she loves about visiting the USA. Can you guess what her favorite Wachusett beer is?

Episode 30 – “The Blunt Episode: Beavin' N' Wah” - Our history with the filled cigar, Stopped by the cops on the way to Mt. Wachusett, Saliva log, homemade pipes out of desperation, One Time with Peter, The Hunt for Hot Hits (1 hr 3 min)  

This week we tried a semi-local (from Massachusetts) brew from Wachusett Brewing Co, The Wally.  A really nice, fruity, new England style IPA.  We're into our third session, and things are getting a little smoother!  Listen in to find out! Don't forget to follow us on all the social media and donate via Patreon to help us keep this thing going if you like it! Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/heavydrinkingpodcast/  Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/heavydrinkingpodcast/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/heavydrinkinpod Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/heavydrinkingpodcast

Milford softball head coach Steve DiVitto and pitcher Ali Atherton talk with host Tommy Cassell after winning Milford softball’s first state championship since 2013. Cassell sits down with DiVitto and Atherton as they celebrate the Scarlet Hawks win over Wachusett on June 17. “It doesn’t feel like it’s over,” Atherton told Cassell.    Cassell’s Corner Each week Tommy Cassell of the MetroWest Daily and Milford Daily News will talk with a high school sports figures from throughout the MetroWest and Milford areas. A new episode is released every Wednesday. Follow Cassell on Twitter at @TommyCassell44. You can subscribe via iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or any other podcast provider. Please subscribe and leave a review.

Follow the Mt. Wachusett access road to the land of claws! Kenny and his wife Julie live in Massachusetts, where mysteriously warm Winter weather transports them in the land of Wachusett. While searching their way home they meet a sleuth of bears. Escape is impossible and death is imminent from these ferocious creatures in this hilarious story. While Kenny fends off bears, Miles gets the courage to travel to Africa where he fends off lions. The boys try and return home but are thwarted by invisible aliens jerking off on them and car companies stealing their jokes. Our heroes tap their ruby boat shoes together three times and repeat, "There's no place like home," and return to sex in the kitchen, Halloween box sets, and where Zima flows like a river. No place like home indeed.

[WARNING EXPLICIT EPISODE]  Dave and Clay invite Nick and Johnny DeVincentis along for the entire show this week as the foursome covers the brothers’ Wachusett Reservior Addicts Facebook page, secrets for fishing the ‘Res and  Fish in the News which includes the viral mola mola hit from a couple of Boston anglers [loaded with crazy and foul language].  The DeVincentis brothers answer Fish Nerd fan questions and discuss their favorite lures, fishing techniques and the near state record 2lb 15  oz white perch Nick caught this year. Funding for this show is provided by our growing list of supporters on Patreon – the crowdfunding site for artists and creators.

In this episode I present for you an abridged for podcast version of Henry David Thoreau’s essay “A Walk to Wachusett”.    As you listen to these words, think about the excursion you might make wherever you live; knowing that you could cover the distance on a long run, but instead taking the time to walk and explore the world around you.    This is one of the great lessons of Thoreau: that we should savor the journey and experience our environment.  It’s as Professor Nancy Etcoff said in my episode 274 on the Pursuit of Happiness: The pleasure system in our brain responds positively to the beauty of the natural world.     I love to run, as I know you do: but maybe every once in a while we should slow down, and just go for a walk.