Podcasts about waterville valley

This week, a new episode of So You Wanna... This time Stomp's "stomping" ground - Welch Dickey! A Gem of a hike near Waterville Valley. Stomp breaks down all the details!  Will be back next week for Episode 190.  Show Notes How to get there: Orris Rd., Thornton NH Nearest Towns: Campton, WV, Plymouth, Lincoln/ Woodstock Historical Notes: Thornton was incorporated on July 6, 1763, and named for Doctor Matthew Thornton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.[4] Historical Markers Nearby: None listed Good Eats Nearby: Bergie Junior Seafood Market - Tartaglia's - Valley Chop House Good Brews Nearby: Dam Brew House;https://www.fugaky.com/find-us.html Fugaki Overnight Accommodations: AirBNB range from $150 to $500. Plenty of options in WV.   Parking - Access Roads: Trailhead Description,   Size: Fits approx 70-80 vehicles. Orris rd. Parking allowed at times but can be limited during peak visitation times such as foliage. Amenities, Privies: YES, year round Fees: $5 dollars daily.  

For a limited time, upgrade to ‘The Storm's' paid tier for $5 per month or $55 per year. You'll also receive a free year of Slopes Premium, a $29.99 value - valid for annual subscriptions only. Monthly subscriptions do not qualify for free Slopes promotion. Valid for new subscriptions only.WhoIain Martin, Host of The Ski PodcastRecorded onJanuary 30, 2025About The Ski PodcastFrom the show's website:Want to [know] more about the world of skiing? The Ski Podcast is a UK-based podcast hosted by Iain Martin.With different guests every episode, we cover all aspects of skiing and snowboarding from resorts to racing, Ski Sunday to slush.In 2021, we were voted ‘Best Wintersports Podcast‘ in the Sports Podcast Awards. In 2023, we were shortlisted as ‘Best Broadcast Programme' in the Travel Media Awards.Why I interviewed himWe did a swap. Iain hosted me on his show in January (I also hosted Iain in January, but since The Storm sometimes moves at the pace of mammal gestation, here we are at the end of March; Martin published our episode the day after we recorded it).But that's OK (according to me), because our conversation is evergreen. Martin is embedded in EuroSki the same way that I cycle around U.S. AmeriSki. That we wander from similarly improbable non-ski outposts – Brighton, England and NYC – is a funny coincidence. But what interested me most about a potential podcast conversation is the Encyclopedia EuroSkiTannica stored in Martin's brain.I don't understand skiing in Europe. It is too big, too rambling, too interconnected, too above-treeline, too transit-oriented, too affordable, too absent the Brobot ‘tude that poisons so much of the American ski experience. The fact that some French idiot is facing potential jail time for launching a snowball into a random grandfather's skull (filming the act and posting it on TikTok, of course) only underscores my point: in America, we would cancel the grandfather for not respecting the struggle so obvious in the boy's act of disobedience. In a weird twist for a ski writer, I am much more familiar with summer Europe than winter Europe. I've skied the continent a couple of times, but warm-weather cross-continental EuroTreks by train and by car have occupied months of my life. When I try to understand EuroSki, my brain short-circuits. I tease the Euros because each European ski area seems to contain between two and 27 distinct ski areas, because the trail markings are the wrong color, because they speak in the strange code of the “km” and “cm” - but I'm really making fun of myself for Not Getting It. Martin gets it. And he good-naturedly walks me through a series of questions that follow this same basic pattern: “In America, we charge $109 for a hamburger that tastes like it's been pulled out of a shipping container that went overboard in 1944. But I hear you have good and cheap food in Europe – true?” I don't mind sounding like a d*****s if the result is good information for all of us, and thankfully I achieved both of those things on this podcast.What we talked aboutThe European winter so far; how a UK-based skier moves back and forth to the Alps; easy car-free travel from the U.S. directly to Alps ski areas; is ski traffic a thing in Europe?; EuroSki 101; what does “ski area” mean in Europe; Euro snow pockets; climate change realities versus media narratives in Europe; what to make of ski areas closing around the Alps; snowmaking in Europe; comparing the Euro stereotype of the leisurely skier to reality; an aging skier population; Euro liftline queuing etiquette and how it mirrors a nation's driving culture; “the idea that you wouldn't bring the bar down is completely alien to me; I mean everybody brings the bar down on the chairlift”; why an Epic or Ikon Pass may not be your best option to ski in Europe; why lift ticket prices are so much cheaper in Europe than in the U.S.; Most consumers “are not even aware” that Vail has started purchasing Swiss resorts; ownership structure at Euro resorts; Vail to buy Verbier?; multimountain pass options in Europe; are Euros buying Epic and Ikon to ski locally or to travel to North America?; must-ski European ski areas; Euro ski-guide culture; and quirky ski areas.What I got wrongWe discussed Epic Pass' lodging requirement for Verbier, which is in effect for this winter, but which Vail removed for the 2025-26 ski season.Why now was a good time for this interviewI present to you, again, the EuroSki Chart – a list of all 26 European ski areas that have aligned themselves with a U.S.-based multi-mountain pass:The large majority of these have joined Ski NATO (a joke, not a political take Brah), in the past five years. And while purchasing a U.S. megapass is not necessary to access EuroHills in the same way it is to ski the Rockies – doing so may, in fact, be counterproductive – just the notion of having access to these Connecticut-sized ski areas via a pass that you're buying anyway is enough to get people considering a flight east for their turns.And you know what? They should. At this point, a mass abandonment of the Mountain West by the tourists that sustain it is the only thing that may drive the region to seriously reconsider the robbery-by-you-showed-up-here-all-stupid lift ticket prices, car-centric transit infrastructure, and sclerotic building policies that are making American mountain towns impossibly expensive and inconvenient to live in or to visit. In many cases, a EuroSkiTrip costs far less than an AmeriSki trip - especially if you're not the sort to buy a ski pass in March 2025 so that you can ski in February 2026. And though the flights will generally cost more, the logistics of airport-to-ski-resort-and-back generally make more sense. In Europe they have trains. In Europe those trains stop in villages where you can walk to your hotel and then walk to the lifts the next morning. In Europe you can walk up to the ticket window and trade a block of cheese for a lift ticket. In Europe they put the bar down. In Europe a sandwich, brownie, and a Coke doesn't cost $152. And while you can spend $152 on a EuroLunch, it probably means that you drank seven liters of wine and will need a sled evac to the village.“Oh so why don't you just go live there then if it's so perfect?”Shut up, Reductive Argument Bro. Everyplace is great and also sucks in its own special way. I'm just throwing around contrasts.There are plenty of things I don't like about EuroSki: the emphasis on pistes, the emphasis on trams, the often curt and indifferent employees, the “injury insurance” that would require a special session of the European Union to pay out a claim. And the lack of trees. Especially the lack of trees. But more families are opting for a week in Europe over the $25,000 Experience of a Lifetime in the American West, and I totally understand why.A quote often attributed to Winston Churchill reads, “You can always trust the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the alternatives.” Unfortunately, it appears to be apocryphal. But I wish it wasn't. Because it's true. And I do think we'll eventually figure out that there is a continent-wide case study in how to retrofit our mountain towns for a more cost- and transit-accessible version of lift-served skiing. But it's gonna take a while.Podcast NotesOn U.S. ski areas opening this winter that haven't done so “in a long time”A strong snow year has allowed at least 11 U.S. ski areas to open after missing one or several winters, including:* Cloudmont, Alabama (yes I'm serious)* Pinnacle, Maine* Covington and Sault Seal, ropetows outfit in Michigan's Upper Peninsula* Norway Mountain, Michigan – resurrected by new owner after multi-year closure* Tower Mountain, a ropetow bump in Michigan's Lower Peninsula* Bear Paw, Montana* Hatley Pointe, North Carolina opened under new ownership, who took last year off to gut-renovate the hill* Warner Canyon, Oregon, an all-natural-snow, volunteer-run outfit, opened in December after a poor 2023-24 snow year.* Bellows Falls ski tow, a molehill run by the Rockingham Recreation in Vermont, opened for the first time in five years after a series of snowy weeks across New England* Lyndon Outing Club, another volunteer-run ropetow operation in Vermont, sat out last winter with low snow but opened this yearOn the “subway map” of transit-accessible Euro skiingI mean this is just incredible:The map lives on Martin's Ski Flight Free site, which encourages skiers to reduce their carbon footprints. I am not good at doing this, largely because such a notion is a fantasy in America as presently constructed.But just imagine a similar system in America. The nation is huge, of course, and we're not building a functional transcontinental passenger railroad overnight (or maybe ever). But there are several areas of regional density where such networks could, at a minimum, connect airports or city centers with destination ski areas, including:* Reno Airport (from the east), and the San Francisco Bay area (to the west) to the ring of more than a dozen Tahoe resorts (or at least stops at lake- or interstate-adjacent Sugar Bowl, Palisades, Homewood, Northstar, Mt. Rose, Diamond Peak, and Heavenly)* Denver Union Station and Denver airport to Loveland, Keystone, Breck, Copper, Vail, Beaver Creek, and - a stretch - Aspen and Steamboat, with bus connections to A-Basin, Ski Cooper, and Sunlight* SLC airport east to Snowbird, Alta, Solitude, Brighton, Park City, and Deer Valley, and north to Snowbasin and Powder Mountain* Penn Station in Manhattan up along Vermont's Green Mountain Spine: Mount Snow, Stratton, Bromley, Killington, Pico, Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, Bolton Valley, Stowe, Smugglers' Notch, Jay Peak, with bus connections to Magic and Middlebury Snowbowl* Boston up the I-93 corridor: Tenney, Waterville Valley, Loon, Cannon, and Bretton Woods, with a spur to Conway and Cranmore, Attitash, Wildcat, and Sunday River; bus connections to Black New Hampshire, Sunapee, Gunstock, Ragged, and Mount AbramYes, there's the train from Denver to Winter Park (and ambitions to extend the line to Steamboat), which is terrific, but placing that itsy-bitsy spur next to the EuroSystem and saying “look at our neato train” is like a toddler flexing his toy jet to the pilots as he boards a 757. And they smile and say, “Whoa there, Shooter! Now have a seat while we burn off 4,000 gallons of jet fuel accelerating this f****r to 500 miles per hour.”On the number of ski areas in EuropeI've detailed how difficult it is to itemize the 500-ish active ski areas in America, but the task is nearly incomprehensible in Europe, which has as many as eight times the number of ski areas. Here are a few estimates:* Skiresort.info counts 3,949 ski areas (as of today; the number changes daily) in Europe: list | map* Wikipedia doesn't provide a number, but it does have a very long list* Statista counts a bit more than 2,200, but their list excludes most of Eastern EuropeOn Euro non-ski media and climate change catastropheOf these countless European ski areas, a few shutter or threaten to each year. The resulting media cycle is predictable and dumb. In The Snow concisely summarizes how this pattern unfolds by analyzing coverage of the recent near loss of L'Alpe du Grand Serre, France (emphasis mine):A ski resort that few people outside its local vicinity had ever heard of was the latest to make headlines around the world a month ago as it announced it was going to cease ski operations.‘French ski resort in Alps shuts due to shortage of snow' reported The Independent, ‘Another European ski resort is closing due to lack of snow' said Time Out, The Mirror went for ”Devastation” as another European ski resort closes due to vanishing snow‘ whilst The Guardian did a deeper dive with, ‘Fears for future of ski tourism as resorts adapt to thawing snow season.' The story also appeared in dozens more publications around the world.The only problem is that the ski area in question, L'Alpe du Grand Serre, has decided it isn't closing its ski area after all, at least not this winter.Instead, after the news of the closure threat was publicised, the French government announced financial support, as did the local municipality of La Morte, and a number of major players in the ski industry. In addition, a public crowdfunding campaign raised almost €200,000, prompting the officials who made the original closure decision to reconsider. Things will now be reassessed in a year's time.There has not been the same global media coverage of the news that L'Alpe du Grand Serre isn't closing after all.It's not the first resort where money has been found to keep slopes open after widespread publicity of a closure threat. La Chapelle d'Abondance was apparently on the rocks in 2020 but will be fully open this winter and similarly Austria's Heiligenblut which was said to be at risk of permanently closure in the summer will be open as normal.Of course, ski areas do permanently close, just like any business, and climate change is making the multiple challenges that smaller, lower ski areas face, even more difficult. But in the near-term bigger problems are often things like justifying spends on essential equipment upgrades, rapidly increasing power costs and changing consumer habits that are the bigger problems right now. The latter apparently exacerbated by media stories implying that ski holidays are under severe threat by climate change.These increasingly frequent stories always have the same structure of focusing on one small ski area that's in trouble, taken from the many thousands in the Alps that few regular skiers have heard of. The stories imply (by ensuring that no context is provided), that this is a major resort and typical of many others. Last year some reports implied, again by avoiding giving any context, that a ski area in trouble that is actually close to Rome, was in the Alps.This is, of course, not to pretend that climate change does not pose an existential threat to ski holidays, but just to say that ski resorts have been closing for many decades for multiple reasons and that most of these reports do not give all the facts or paint the full picture.On no cars in ZermattIf the Little Cottonwood activists really cared about the environment in their precious canyon, they wouldn't be advocating for alternate rubber-wheeled transit up to Alta and Snowbird – they'd be demanding that the road be closed and replaced by a train or gondola or both, and that the ski resorts become a pedestrian-only enclave dotted with only as many electric vehicles as it took to manage the essential business of the towns and the ski resorts.If this sounds improbable, just look to Zermatt, which has banned gas cars for decades. Skiers arrive by train. Nearly 6,000 people live there year-round. It is amazing what humans can build when the car is considered as an accessory to life, rather than its central organizing principle.On driving in EuropeDriving in Europe is… something else. I've driven in, let's see: Iceland, Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro. That last one is the scariest but they're all a little scary. Drivers' speeds seem to be limited by nothing other than physics, passing on blind curves is common even on mountain switchbacks, roads outside of major arterials often collapse into one lane, and Euros for some reason don't believe in placing signs at intersections to indicate street names. Thank God for GPS. I'll admit that it's all a little thrilling once the disorientation wears off, and there are things to love about driving in Europe: roundabouts are used in place of traffic lights wherever possible, the density of cars tends to be less (likely due to the high cost of gas and plentiful mass transit options), sprawl tends to be more contained, the limited-access highways are extremely well-kept, and the drivers on those limited-access highways actually understand what the lanes are for (slow, right; fast, left).It may seem contradictory that I am at once a transit advocate and an enthusiastic road-tripper. But I've lived in New York City, home of the United States' best mass-transit system, for 23 years, and have owned a car for 19 of them. There is a logic here: in general, I use the subway or my bicycle to move around the city, and the car to get out of it (this is the only way to get to most ski areas in the region, at least midweek). I appreciate the options, and I wish more parts of America offered a better mix.On chairs without barsIt's a strange anachronism that the United States is still home to hundreds of chairlifts that lack safety bars. ANSI standards now require them on new lift builds (as far as I can tell), but many chairlifts built without bars from the 1990s and earlier appear to have been grandfathered into our contemporary system. This is not the case in the Eastern U.S. where, as far as I'm aware, every chairlift with the exception of a handful in Pennsylvania have safety bars – New York and many New England states require them by law (and require riders to use them). Things get dicey in the Midwest, which has, as a region, been far slower to upgrade its lift fleets than bigger mountains in the East and West. Many ski areas, however, have retrofit their old lifts with bars – I was surprised to find them on the lifts at Sundown, Iowa; Chestnut, Illinois; and Mont du Lac, Wisconsin, for example. Vail and Alterra appear to retrofit all chairlifts with safety bars once they purchase a ski area. But many ski areas across the Mountain West still spin old chairs, including, surprisingly, dozens of mountains in California, Oregon, and Washington, states that tends to have more East Coast-ish outlooks on safety and regulation.On Compagnie des AlpesAccording to Martin, the closest thing Europe has to a Vail- or Alterra-style conglomerate is Compagnie des Alpes, which operates (but does not appear to own) 10 ski areas in the French Alps, and holds ownership stakes in five more. It's kind of an amazing list:Here's the company's acquisition timeline, which includes the ski areas, along with a bunch of amusement parks and hotels:Clearly the path of least resistance to a EuroVail conflagration would be to shovel this pile of coal into the furnace. Martin referenced Tignes' forthcoming exit from the group, to join forces with ski resort Sainte-Foy on June 1, 2026 – teasing a smaller potential EuroVail acquisition. Tignes, however, would not be the first resort to exit CdA's umbrella – Les 2 Alpes left in 2020.On EuroSkiPassesThe EuroMegaPass market is, like EuroSkiing itself, unintelligible to Americans (at least to this American). There are, however, options. Martin offers the Swiss-centric Magic Pass as perhaps the most prominent. It offers access to 92 ski areas (map). You are probably expecting me to make a chart. I will not be making a chart.S**t I need to publish this article before I cave to my irrepressible urge to make a chart.OK this podcast is already 51 days old do not make a chart you moron.I think we're good here.I hope.I will also not be making a chart to track the 12 ski resorts accessible on Austria's Ski Plus City Pass Stubai Innsbruck Unlimited Freedom Pass.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Hannah Kearney is one of those perfectionist type people who are good at whatever they do because not only are they talented, not only do they eat, sleep and breathe their sport, but they also outwork everyone in the pursuit of crushing their goals on the way to greatness. And Hannah was great, 74 World Cup Podiums, 46 wins, Crystal Globes, and an Olympic Gold and Bronze medals. Her intensity and competitiveness are what make Hannah and this podcast so enjoyable and after listening, you'll know why she's getting into the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame this month. Hannah Kearney Show Notes: 4:00: Hall of Fame, Norwich Olympians, Jay Peak, being competitive, good at other sports, was she the weird sports kid, Waterville Valley, and family support 21:00:   Stanley:  The brand that invented the category! Only the best for Powell Movement listeners.  Check out Stanley1913.com   Best Day Brewing:  All of the flavor of your favorite IPA or Kolsch, without the alcohol, the calories or sugar. Ski Idaho:  The best, least crowded, skiing in the world, happens in Idaho 24:00:  Forerunning the Olympics in SLC, making the US Team at 16, relationships on the team, Dual Moguls, freeskiing on the road, did she party, the pressure at the Torino Olympics, knee injury, concussion,  and how it made her better     40:00:   Elan Skis:  Over 75 years of innovation that makes you better. Outdoor Research: Click here for 25% off Outdoor Research products (not valid on sale items or pro products) 42:00: Crystal Globes, dialing in her flip, Vancouver 2010, winning gold, why she didn't cash in, sponsors, and top 3 experiences 54:00: Another injury, Sochi, retirement, and Nick Preston 61:00: Inappropriate Questions with Nick Preston

Episode 61 celebrates an extraordinary 22-year journey to reach the century club. The one and only Erik “The ECloud” Lundquist returns to the podcast to talk about an incredible personal and musical milestone – 100 Phish shows! (And he has the custom Phunky Threads t-shirt to prove it.) Now you may be wondering what the heck Phish the band has to do with skiing in the northeast. Well; stick around, because we're going to tell you. In typical phish fashion, the episode will have 3 games that will take the form of Set 1, Set 2 and an Encore. Expect a few extended jams along the way. Grab a pint of Phish Food, settle in and bask in the wonder of 100 Phish shows – the people, travel, meals, venues, weather, credit card points, and of course musical improvisation at its finest. Read the f'ing book!   Segment Time 0:00: Punch You in the Eye (12.31.23) 4:20: 100 Phish Shows 26:11: Game 1 – 100s of Skiing 31:39: The Lizards (12.31.23) 34:00: Game 2 - Phish Food for Thought 53:58: Tweezer (12.30.24) 55:37: Game 3 - Final Jeff-Pardy 1:01:40: Tweezer Reprise (12.31.24) 1:02:40: Gag (B-roll)   Notes: Total Points: 20 pts (Game 1: 3 pts; Game 2: 7 pts; Game 3: 10 pts) Correction: Oblivion is a trail (blue square) at Waterville Valley, NH; Ovation is a trail (double black diamond-lower and black diamond-headwall and middle) at Killington, VT. Dank Mix Gamehendge (04.16.92)

Join us for an exclusive interview with Olympic Gold Medalist and freestyle skiing legend, Upper Valley local Hannah Kearney. Just ahead of the thrilling Freestyle World Cup event at Waterville Valley, NH, Hannah provides insights into the world of moguls and dual-mogul competition. We'll delve into the challenges and thrills of elite-level freestyle skiing, hear about Hannah's journey to Olympic glory, and celebrate her upcoming induction into the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame. And as a special treat, we'll share our mutual love for Whaleback Mountain, a beloved local resort and a proud partner of Ski Rex Media. This is a must-listen episode for all winter sports enthusiasts! Be sure to check out the Ski Rex Media Partners, as well: Whaleback Mountain ⁝ Imbrace  Join the Ski Rex Media Community! Share your voice! We love hearing from listeners. Share your skiing and snowboarding stories, favorite winter memories, or holiday traditions on social media using the hashtag #SkiRexMedia. You might just be featured in an upcoming episode! Stay connected! Follow us on social media for updates, behind-the-scenes content, and exclusive offers: Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram: @skirexmedia Got a question, comment, or topic suggestion? We'd love to hear from you! Email us: contact@skirexmedia.com Leave us a voicemail: Ski Rex Media Voicemail at Speakpipe Visit our website: skirexmedia.com for more information about the show, past episodes, and exclusive content.

Send us some fan mail here!Hope you all had a great Christmas, Happy Holidays, and New Year's! The holidays are over, and the boys are back with a fresh episode for 2025!Josh questions what kind of Taco Bell item Nick is, the boys recap their holiday celebrations, Josh visits the "Boston Museum of Illusion" and stays in Waterville Valley over New Year's and gets our for a few hikes; including Big Pines Path and Boulder Path, Nick continues chipping away at his Winter New Hampshire Four-Thousand-Footers with hikes of the Osceolas and Carrigain, how does Squid Game Season 2 stack up to the original, and the first hyperthetical of 2025 on this new-year-same-PUDs-episode of the PUDs Podcast!Special Thanks to Our Sponsor:Impact Botanicals - use code "puds" for 20% off your order!Nick's Music Moment: Rome - The National - 2024 Josh's Jazzy Music Moment: Decide - Djo - 2022 ("End of Beginning" single)Episode Links:Waterville Valley - Best Hikes for KidsOsceolas via Greeley Ponds Trail - AllTrailsCarrigain via Signal Ridge Trail - AllTrails (keep in mind you will have to walk ~2 miles from 302 to reach this on Sawyer River Road and ~2 miles back on the way out)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: @josh___talksEmail us at: pudspod@outlook.comRecorded and Produced in Black Cat Studios by Nick Sidla© 2024 PUDs Podcast

Send us some fan mail here!Happy New Year everyone!!!We've got a special hiking podcast crossover episode for the holidays! On this episode of the PUDs Podcast, we kick it back to the first time Nick appeared as a guest on the Sounds Like A Search And Rescue (SLASR) Podcast Episode 157 back in June of this year! Nick is Josh-less in Rehoboth while Mr. Rogers is up hiking with family and hanging out in New Hampshire's Waterville Valley, we hear about Nick's hiking background, Stomp recaps running the Mount Washington Road Race, some details on trail maintenance, Nick's trip to Joshua Tree National Park, and some very interesting White Mountains trail history from Mike, on this its-a-SLASR-Podcast-episode-wrapped-in-a-PUDs-Podcast-episode(?!) of the PUDs Podcast!Special Thanks to Our Sponsors:Impact Botanicals - use code "puds" for 20% off your order!Adventurisitq Clothing - use code "PUDSPOD" for 20% off your first order and free shipping!Episode Link:Sounds Like A Search And Rescue Podcast WebsiteFollow 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

https://slasrpodcast.com/      SLASRPodcast@gmail.com  This week we recap 2024, we have new year resolutions, Favorite hikes, new gear, memorable moments, an update on a backpacking youtuber who died in Sweden, Stomp and Dave hike a lost pass in Waterville Valley, Recent Search and Rescue news including a missing hiker in the Adirondacks and a hiker who tried to warm up on a snow cat at the summit of mount washington and ended up getting a ride down the mountain after realizing he was woefully prepared for the weather conditions. This weeks Higher Summit Forecast   Donations Conservation Officer to run Boston Marathon in memory of Levi Frye and suicide awareness.   Topics Home Alone Vibes Homework for Stomp - Favorite Christmas Songs and New Years Resolutions Favorite Hikes of 2024 New Gear  We joined PUDs Podcast this week  A look back at some guests from 2024 Events coming up Update on YouTuber Death in Sweden TrailsNH  Pop Culture Talk Recent Hikes - Webster Cliffs, Ossipee Range Stomp hikes the Lost Pass with Dave - Some History of the Area Recent Search and Rescue News    Show Notes Apple Podcast link for 5 star reviews SLASR Merchandise SLASR LinkTree Michael W Smith - No Eye Had Seen Atlas Helium Snow Shoes Lowe Backpacks PUDs Podcast KaBoom X Freestyle Show free park days for 2025 the Eaglet Youtubers death in Sweden the Outdoor Boys DIY pull-pin firestarter for backpacking 2nd method with cotton rounds Snow Depth Report Injured Hiker on Shoestring Gully Missing Hiker in the Adirondacks Two Hikers lost on Mount Chocorua Unprepared Hiker driven off the summit of Mount Washington Rescuers recount rescue in the Maine wilderness Sponsors, Friends  and Partners Wild Raven Endurance Coaching CS Instant Coffee 2024 Longest Day - 48 Peaks Mount Washington Higher Summits Forecast Hiking Buddies  Vaucluse - Sweat less. Explore more. – Vaucluse Gear Fieldstone Kombucha

We welcome Hunter back to the studio this time with his sister Grace, another rising star on the U.S. Freeski team. Grace and Hunter were back east visiting family and getting some training days at their home mountain of Waterville Valley, which currently has one of the most impressive early-season parks we've ever seen.

Send us some fan mail here!It's the "Pulp Fiction" of podcast episodes as Nick and Josh conclude a busy week of pre-Thanksgiving recording, and sit down with one of their favorite hikers to follow; Gwenn Stratton!Turkeys have been acquired, Nick bags Tecumseh for "Fall" as well as all four seasons and revisits Cascade Path in Waterville Valley, Josh plans another New Year's Eve visit to the Whites, "Coach Josh" is back on the court, and we learn about what drives Gwenn to do what she does in the Whites; creating, crushing, and sharing impressive (and often shapely!) routes through some of New Hampshire's most rugged terrain, including traditional trails, slides, and bushwhacks, on this let's-pretend-it's-after-Thanksgiving-but-it-really-isn't-episode of the PUDs Podcast!Special Thanks to Our Sponsors: Adventurisitq Clothing - use code "PUDSPOD" for 20% off your first order and free shipping!Impact Botanicals - use code "puds" for 20% off your order!Episode Links:Gwenn's InstagramMountain Wandering (Steve Smith's) BlogNick's Music Moment: Threads - Now, Now - 2012 Josh's Jazzy Music Moment: Fame - David Bowie - 1975Follow 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

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 13. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 20. 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:WhoMatt Jones, President and Chief Operating Officer of Stratton Mountain, VermontRecorded onNovember 11, 2024About Stratton MountainClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Alterra Mountain Company, which also owns:Located in: Winhall, VermontYear founded: 1962Pass affiliations:* Ikon Pass: Unlimited* Ikon Base Pass: Unlimited, holiday blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Bromley (:18), Magic (:24), Mount Snow (:28), Hermitage Club (:33), Okemo (:40), Brattleboro (:52)Base elevation: 1,872 feetSummit elevation: 3,875 feetVertical drop: 2,003 feetSkiable Acres: 670Average annual snowfall: 180 inchesTrail count: 99 (40% novice, 35% intermediate, 16% advanced, 9% expert)Lift count: 14 (1 ten-passenger gondola, 4 six-packs, 1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 4 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Stratton's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himI don't know for sure how many skier visits Stratton pulls each winter, or where the ski area ranks among New England mountains for busyness. Historical data suggests a floor around 400,000 visits, likely good for fifth in the region, behind Killington, Okemo, Sunday River, and Mount Snow. But the exact numbers don't really matter, because the number of skiers that ski at Stratton each winter is many manys. And the number of skiers who have strong opinions about Stratton is that exact same number.Those numbers make Stratton more important than it should be. This is not the best ski area in Vermont. It's not even Alterra's best ski area in Vermont. Jay, MRG, Killington, Smuggs, Stowe, and sister resort Sugarbush are objectively better mountains than Stratton from a terrain point of view (they also get a lot more snow). But this may be one of the most crucial mountains in Alterra's portfolio, a doorway to the big-money East, a brand name for skiers across the region. Stratton is the only ski area that advertises in the New York City Subway, and has for years.But Stratton's been under a bit of stress. The lift system is aging. The gondola is terrible. Stratton was one of those ski areas that was so far ahead of the modernization curve – the mountain had four six-packs by 2001 – that it's now in the position of having to update all of that expensive stuff all at once. And as meaningful updates have lagged, Stratton's biggest New England competitors are running superlifts up the incline at a historic pace, while Alterra lobs hundreds of millions at its western megaresorts. Locals feel shafted, picketing an absentee landlord that they view as negligent. Meanwhile, the crowds pile up, as unlimited Ikon Pass access has holstered the mountain in hundreds of thousands of skiers' wintertime battle belts.If that all sounds a little dramatic, it only reflects the messages in my inbox. I think Alterra has been cc'd on at least some of those emails, because the company is tossing $20 million at Stratton this season, a sum that Jones tells us is just the beginning of massive long-term investment meant to reinforce the mountain's self-image as a destination on its own.What we talked aboutStratton's $20 million offseason; Act 250 masterplanning versus U.S. Forest Service masterplanning; huge snowmaking upgrades and aspirations; what $8 million gets you in employee housing these days; big upgrades for the Ursa and American Express six-packs; a case for rebuilding lifts rather than doing a tear-down and replace; a Tamarack lift upgrade; when Alterra's investment firehose could shift east; leaving Tahoe for Vermont; what can be done about that gondola?; the Kidderbrook lift; parking; RFID; Ikon Pass access levels; and $200 to ski Stratton.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewHow pissed do you think the Punisher was when Disney announced that Ant Man would be the 12th installment in Marvel's cinematic universe? I imagine him seated in his lair, polishing his grenades. “F*****g Ant Man?” He throws a grenade into one of his armored Jeeps, which disintegrates in a supernova of steel parts, tires, and smoke. “Ant Man. Are you f*****g serious with this? I waited through eleven movies. Eleven. Iron Man got three. Thor and Captain f*****g America got two apiece. The Hulk. Two Avengers movies. Something called ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,' about a raccoon and a talking tree that save the goddamn universe or some s**t. And it was my turn, Man. My. Turn. Do these idiots not know that I had three individual comic lines published concurrently in the 1990s? Do they not know that I'm ranked as the ninth-greatest Marvel superhero of all time on this nerd list? Do you know where Ant Man is ranked on that list? Huh? Well, I'll tell you: number 131, behind Rocket Raccoon, U-Go Girl, and Spider Man 2099, whatever the hell any of those are.” The vigilante then loads his rocket launcher and several machine guns into a second armored Jeep, and sets off in search of jaywalkers to murder.Anyway I imagine that's how Stratton felt as it watched the rest of Alterra's cinematic universe release one blockbuster after another. “Oh, OK, so Steamboat not only gets a second gondola, but they get a 600-acre terrain expansion served by their eighth high-speed quad? And it wasn't enough to connect the two sides of Palisades Tahoe with a gondola, but you threw in a brand-new six-pack? And they're tripling the size of Deer Valley. Tripling. 3,700 acres of new terrain and 16 new lifts and a new base village to go with it. That's equal to five-and-a-half Strattons. And Winter Park gets a new six-pack, and Big Bear gets a new six-pack, and Mammoth gets two. Do you have any idea how much these things cost? And I can't even get a gondola that can withstand wind gusts over three miles per hour? Even goddamn Snowshoe – Snowshoe – got a new lift before I did. I didn't even think West Virginia was actually a real place. I swear if these f*****s announce a new June Mountain out-of-base lift before I get my bling, things are gonna get Epic around here.”Well, it's finally Stratton's turn, with $20 million in upgrades inbound. Alterra wasn't exactly mining the depths of locals' dreams to decide where to deploy the cash – snowmaking, employee housing, lift overhauls – and a gondola replacement isn't coming anytime soon, but they're pretty smart investments when you dig into them. Which we do.Questions I wish I'd askedAmong the items that I would have liked to have discussed given more time: the Appalachian Trail's path across the top of Stratton Mountain, Stratton as birthplace of modern snowboarding, and the Stratton Mountain School.What I got wrong* I said that Epic Pass access had remained mostly unchanged for the past decade, which is not quite right. When Vail first added Stowe to the Epic Local Pass for the 2017-18 season, they slotted the resort into the bucket of 10 days shared with Vail, Beaver Creek, and Whistler. At some point, Stowe received its own basket of 10 days, apart from the western resorts.* I said that Sunday River's Jordan eight-pack was wind-resistant “because of the weight.” While that is one factor, the lift's ability to run in high winds relies on a more complex set of anti-sway technology, none of which I really understand, but that Sunday River GM Brian Heon explained on The Storm earlier this year:Why you should ski StrattonA silent skiing demarcation line runs roughly along US 4 through Vermont. Every ski area along or above this route – Killington, Pico, Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, Stowe, Smuggs – lets trails bump up, maintains large glade networks, and generally provides you with balanced, diverse terrain. Everything below that line – Okemo, Bromley, Mount Snow – generally don't do any of these things, or offer them sporadically, and in the most shrunken form possible. There are some exceptions on both sides. Saskadena Six, a bump just north of US 4, operates more like the Southies. Magic, in the south, better mirrors the MRG/Sugarbush model. And then there's Stratton.Good luck finding bumps at Stratton. Maybe you'll stumble onto the remains of a short competition course here or there, but, generally, this is a groom-it-all-every-day kind of ski area. Which would typically make it a token stop on my annual rounds. But Stratton has one great strength that has long made it a quasi-home mountain for me: glades.The glade network is expansive and well-maintained. The lines are interesting and, in places, challenging. You wouldn't know this from the trailmap, which portrays the tree-skiing areas as little islands lodged onto Stratton's hulk. But there are lots of them, and they are plenty long. On a typical pow day, I'll park at Sun Bowl and ski all the glades from Test Pilot over to West Pilot and back. It takes all day and I barely touch a groomer.And the glades are open more often than you'd think. While northern Vermont is the undisputed New England snow king, with everything from Killington north counting 250-plus inches in an average winter, the so-called Golden Triangle of Stratton, Bromley, and Magic sits in a nice little micro-snow-pocket. And Stratton, the skyscraping tallest peak in that region of the state, devours a whole bunch (180 inches on average) to fill in those glades.And if you are Groomer Greg, you're in luck: Stratton has 99 of them. And the grooming is excellent. Just start early, because they get scraped off by the NYC hordes who camp out there every weekend. The obsessive grooming does make this a good family spot, and the long green trail from the top down to the base is one of the best long beginner runs anywhere.Podcast NotesOn Act 250This is the 20th Vermont-focused Storm Skiing Podcast, and I think we've referenced Act 250 in all of them. If you're unfamiliar with this law, it 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.On Stratton's masterplanStratton is currently updating its masterplan. It will retain some elements of this 2013 version. Some elements of this – most notably a new Snow Bowl lift in 2018 – have been completed:One curious element of this masterplan is the proposed lift up the Kidderbrook trail – around 2007, Stratton removed a relatively new (installed 1989) Poma fixed-grip quad from that location. Here it is on the far left-hand side of the 2005 trailmap:On Stratton's ownership historyStratton's history mirrors that of many large New England ski areas: independent founders run the ski area for decades; founders fall into financial peril and need private equity/banking rescue; bank sells to a giant out-of-state conglomerate; which then sells to another giant out-of-state conglomerate; which eventually turns into something else. In Stratton's case, Robert Wright/Frank Snyder -> Moore and Munger -> Japanese company Victoria USA -> Intrawest -> Alterra swallows the carcass of Intrawest. You can read all about it on New England Ski History.Here was Intrawest's roster, if you're curious:On Alterra's building bingeSince its 2018 founding, Alterra has invested aggressively in its properties: a 2.4-mile-long, $65 million gondola connecting Alpine Meadows to the Olympic side of Palisades Tahoe; $200 million in the massive Mahogany Ridge expansion and a three-mile-long gondola at Steamboat; and an untold fortune on Deer Valley's transformation into what will be the fourth-largest ski area in the United States. Plus new lifts all over the place, new snowmaking all over the place, new lodges all over the place. Well, all over the place except for at Stratton, until now.On Boyne and Vail's investments in New EnglandAmplifying Stratton Nation's pain is the fact that Alterra's two big New England competitors – Vail Resorts and Boyne Resorts – have built a combined 16 new lifts in the region over the past five years, including eight-place chairs at Loon and Sunday River (Boyne), and six-packs at Stowe, Okemo, and Mount Snow (Vail). They've also replaced highly problematic legacy chairs at Attitash (Vail) and Pleasant Mountain (Boyne). Boyne has also expanded terrain at Loon, Sunday River, and, most notably – by 400 acres – Sugarloaf. And it's worth noting that independents Waterville Valley and Killington have also dropped new sixers in recent years (Killington will build another next year). Meanwhile, Alterra's first chairlift just landed this summer, at Sugarbush, which is getting a fixed-grip quad to replace the Heaven's Gate triple.On gondola wind holdsJust in case you want to blame windholds on some nefarious corporate meddling, here's a video I took of Kirkwood's Cornice Express spinning in 50-mile-per-hour winds when Jones was running the resort last year. Every lift has its own distinct profile that determines how it manages wind.On shifting Ikon Pass accessWhen Alterra launched the Ikon Pass in 2018, the company limited Base Pass holders to five days at Stratton, with holiday blackouts. Ahead of the 2020-21 season, the company updated Base Pass access to unlimited days with those same holiday blackouts. Alterra and its partners have made several such changes in Ikon's seven years. I've made this nifty chart that tracks them all (if you missed the memo, Solitude just upgraded Ikon Base pass access to eliminate holiday blackouts):On historic Stratton lift ticket pricesAgain, New England Ski History has done a nice job documenting Stratton's year-to-year peak lift ticket rates: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 76/100 in 2024, and number 576 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Sept. 15. It dropped for free subscribers on Sept. 22. 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:WhoKelly Pawlak, President & CEO of the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA)Recorded onAugust 19, 2024About the NSAAFrom the association's website:The National Ski Areas Association is the trade association for ski area owners and operators. It represents over 300 alpine resorts that account for more than 90% of the skier/snowboarder visits nationwide. Additionally, it has several hundred supplier members that provide equipment, goods and services to the mountain resort industry.NSAA analyzes and distributes ski industry statistics; produces annual conferences and tradeshows; produces a bimonthly industry publication and is active in state and federal government affairs. The association also provides educational programs and employee training materials on industry issues including OSHA, ADA and NEPA regulations and compliance; environmental laws and regulations; state regulatory requirements; aerial tramway safety; and resort operations and guest service.NSAA was established in 1962 and was originally headquartered in New York, NY. In 1989 NSAA merged with SIA (Snowsports Industries America) and moved to McLean, Va. The merger was dissolved in 1992 and NSAA was relocated to Lakewood, Colo., because of its central geographic location. NSAA is located in the same office building as the Professional Ski Instructors of America and the National Ski Patrol in Lakewood, Colo., a suburb west of Denver.Why I interviewed herA pervasive sub-narrative in American skiing's ongoing consolidation is that it's tough to be alone. A bad winter at a place like Magic Mountain, Vermont or Caberfae Peaks, Michigan or Bluewood, Washington means less money, because a big winter at Partner Mountain X across the country isn't available to keep the bank accounts stable. Same thing if your hill gets chewed up by a tornado or a wildfire or a flood. Operators have to just hope insurance covers it.This story is not entirely incorrect. It's just incomplete. It is harder to be independent, whether you're Jackson Hole or Bolton Valley or Mount Ski Gull, Minnesota. But few, if any, ski areas are entirely and truly alone, fighting on the mountaintop for survival. Financially, yes (though many independent ski areas are owned by families or individuals who operate one or more additional businesses, which can and sometimes do subsidize ski areas in lean or rebuilding years). But in the realm of ideas, ski areas have a lot of help.That's because, layered over the vast network of 500-ish U.S. mountains is a web of state and national associations that help sort through regulations, provide ideas, and connect ski areas to one another. Not every state with ski areas has one. Nevada's handful of ski areas, for example, are part of Ski California. New Jersey's can join Ski Areas of New York, which often joins forces with Ski Pennsylvania. Ski Idaho counts Grand Targhee, Wyoming, as a member. Some of these associations (Ski Utah), enjoy generous budgets and large staffs. Others (Ski New Hampshire), accomplish a remarkable amount with just a handful of people. But layered over them all – in reach but not necessarily hierarchy – is the National Ski Areas Association. The NSAA helps ski areas where state associations may lack the scale, resources, or expertise. The NSAA organized the united, nationwide approach to Covid-era operations ahead of the 2020-21 ski season; developed and maintained the omnipresent Skier Responsibility Code; and help ski areas do everything from safely operate chairlifts and terrain parks to fend off climate change. Their regional and national shows are energetic, busy, and productive. Top representatives – the sorts of leaders who appear on this podcast - from every major national or regional ski area are typically present.This support layer, mostly invisible to consumers, is in some ways the concrete holding the nation's ski areas together. Most of even the most staunchly independent operators are members. If U.S. skiing were really made up of 500 ski areas trying to figure out snowmaking in 500 different ways, then we wouldn't have 500 ski areas. They need each other more than you might think. And the NSAA helps pull them all together.What we talked aboutLow natural snow, strong skier visits – the paradox of the 2023-24 ski season; ever-better snowmaking; explaining the ski industry's huge capital investments over recent years; European versus American lift fleets; lift investments across America; when it's time to move on from your dream job; 2017 sounds like yesterday but it may as well have been 1,000 years ago; the disappearing climate-change denier; can ski areas adapt to climate change?; the biggest challenges facing the NSAA's next leader, and what qualities that leader will need to deal with them; should ski areas be required to report injuries?; operators who are making progress on safety; are ski area liability waivers in danger?; the wild cost of liability insurance; how drones could help ski area safety; why is skiing still so white, even after all the DE&I?; why youth skier participation as a percentage of overall skier visits has been declining; and the enormous potential for indoor skiing to grow U.S. participation.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewFirst, Pawlak announced, in May, that she would step down from her NSAA role whenever the board could identify a capable replacement. She explains why on the podcast, but hers has been a by-all-accounts successful seven-year run amidst and through rapid and irreversible industry change – Covid, consolidation, multi-mountain passes, climate change, skyrocketing costs, the digitization of everything – and it was worth pausing to reflect on all that the NSAA had accomplished and all of the challenges waiting ahead.Second, our doomsday instincts keep running up against this stat: despite a fairly poor winter, snow-wise, the U.S. ski industry racked up the fifth-most skier visits of all time during its 2023-24 campaign. How is that possible, and what does it mean? I've explored this a little myself, but Pawlak has access to data that I don't, and she adds an extra dimension to our analysis.And this is true of so many of the topics that I regularly cover in this newsletter: capital investment, regulation, affordability, safety, diversity. This overlap is not surprising, given my stated focus on lift-served skiing in North America. Most of my podcasts bore deeply into the operations of a single mountain, then zoom out to center those ski areas within the broader ski universe. When I talk with the NSAA, I can do the opposite – analyze the larger forces driving the evolution of lift-served skiing, and see how the collective is approaching them. It's a point of view that very few possess, and even fewer are able to articulate. Questions I wish I'd askedWe recorded this conversation before POWDR announced that it had sold Killington and Pico, and would look to sell Bachelor, Eldora, and Silver Star in the coming months. I would have loved to have gotten Pawlak's take on what was a surprise twist in skiing's long-running consolidation.I didn't ask Pawlak about the Justice Department's investigation into Alterra's proposed acquisition of Arapahoe Basin. I wish I would have.What I got wrongI said that Hugh Reynolds was “Big Snow's head of marketing.” His actual role is Chief Marketing Officer for all of Snow Partners, which operates the indoor Big Snow ski area, the outdoor Mountain Creek ski area, and a bunch of other stuff.Podcast NotesOn specific figures from the Kotke Report:Pretty much all of the industry statistics that I cite in this interview come from the Kotke Demographic Report, an annual end-of-season survey that aggregates anonymized data from hundreds of U.S. ski areas. Any numbers that I reference in this conversation either refer to the 2022-23 study, or include historical data up to that year. I did not have access to the 2023-24 report until after our conversation.Capital expendituresPer the 2023-24 Kotke Report:Definitions of ski resort sizesAlso from Kotke:On European lift fleets versus AmericanComparing European skiing to American skiing is a bit like comparing futbol to American football – two different things entirely. Europe is home to at least five times as many ski areas as North America and about six times as many skiers. There are ski areas there that make Whistler look like Wilmot Mountain. The food is not only edible, but does not cost four times your annual salary. Lift tickets are a lot cheaper, in general. But it snows more, and more consistently, in North America; our liftlines are more organized; and you don't need a guide here to ski five feet off piste. Both are great and annoying in their own way. But our focus of difference-ness in this podcast was between the lift fleets on each continent. In brief, you're far more likely to stumble across a beefcaker on a random Austrian trail than you are here in U.S. America. Take a look at skiresort.info's (not entirely accurate but close enough), inventory of eight-place chairlifts around the world:On “Waterville with the MND lift”Pawlak was referring to Waterville Valley's Tecumseh Express, built in 2022 by France-based MND. It was the first and only lift that the manufacturer built in the United States prior to the dissolution of a joint venture with Bartholet. While MND may be sidelined, Pawlak's point remains valid: there is room in the North American market for manufacturers other than Leitner-Poma and Doppelmayr, especially as lift prices continue to escalate at amazing rates.On my crankiness with “the mainstream media” and climate changeI kind of hate the term “mainstream media,” particularly when it's used as a de facto four-letter word to describe some Power Hive of brainwashing elitists conspiring to cover up the government's injection of Anthrax into our Honey Combs. I regret using the term in our conversation, but sometimes in the on-the-mic flow of an interview I default to stupid. Anyway, once or twice per year I get particularly bent about some non-ski publication framing lift-served skiing as an already-doomed industry because the climate is changing. I'm not some denier kook who's stockpiling dogfood for the crocodile apocalypse, but I find this narrative stupid because it's reductive and false. The real story is this: as the climate changes, the ski industry is adapting in amazing and inventive ways; ski areas are, as I often say, Climate Change Super Adapters. You can read an example that I wrote here.On the NSAA's Covid responseThere's no reason to belabor the NSAA's Covid response – which was comprehensive and excellent, and is probably the reason the 2020-21 American ski season happened – here. I already broke the whole thing down with Pawlak back in April 2021. She also joined me – somewhat remarkably, given the then-small reach of the podcast – at the height of Covid confusion in April 2020 to talk through what in the world could possibly happen next.On The Colorado Sun's reporting on ski area safety and the NSAA's safety reportThe Colorado Sun consistently reports on ski area safety, and the ski industry's resistance to laws that would compel them to make injury reports public. I asked Pawlak about this, citing, specifically, this Sun article From April 8, 2024:[13-year-old] Silas [Luckett] is one of thousands of people injured on Colorado ski slopes every winter. With the state's ski hills posting record visitation in the past two seasons — reaching 14.8 million in 2022-23 — it would appear that the increasing frequency of injuries coincides with the rising number of visits. We say “appear” because, unlike just about every other industry in the country, the resort industry does not disclose injury data. …Ski resorts do not release injury reports. The ski resort industry keeps a tight grasp on even national injury data. Since 1980, the National Ski Areas Association provides select researchers with injury data for peer-reviewed reports issued every 10 years by the National Ski Areas Association. The most recent 10-year review of ski injuries was published in 2014, looking at 13,145 injury reports from the 2010-11 ski season at resorts that reported 4.6 million visits.The four 10-year reports showed a decline in skier injuries from 3.1 per 1,000 visitors in 1980-81 to 2.7 in 1990-91 to 2.6 in 2000-01 to 2.5 in 2010-11. Snowboarder injuries were 3.3 in 1990, 7.0 in 2000 and 6.1 in 2010.For 1990-91, the nation's ski areas reported 46.7 million skier visits, 2000-01 was 57.3 million and 2010-11 saw a then all–time high of 60.5 million visits. …The NSAA's once-a-decade review of injuries from 2020-21 was delayed during the pandemic and is expected to land later this year. But the association's reports are not available to the public [Pawlak disputes this, and provided a copy of the report to The Storm – you can view it here].When Colorado state Sen. Jessie Danielson crafted a bill in 2021 that would have required ski areas to publish annual injury statistics, the industry blasted the plan, arguing it would be an administrative burden and confuse the skiing public. It died in committee.“When we approached the ski areas to work on any of the details in the bill, they refused,” Danielson, a Wheat Ridge Democrat, told The Sun in 2021. “It makes me wonder what it is that they are hiding. It seems to me that an industry that claims to have safety as a top priority would be interested in sharing the information about injuries on their mountains.”The resort industry vehemently rebuffs the notion that ski areas do not take safety seriously.Patricia Campbell, the then-president of Vail Resorts' 37-resort mountain division and a 35-year veteran of the resort industry, told Colorado lawmakers considering the 2021 legislation that requiring ski resorts to publish safety reports was “not workable” and would create an “unnecessary burden, confusion and distraction.”Requiring resorts to publish public safety plans, she said, would “trigger a massive administrative effort” that could redirect resort work from other safety measures.“Publishing safety plans will not inform skiers about our work or create a safer ski area,” Campbell told the Colorado Senate's Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee in April 2021.On ASTM International Pawlak refers to “ASTM International” in the podcast. That is an acronym for “American Society for Testing and Materials,” an organization that sets standards for various industries. Here's an overview video that most of you will find fairly boring (I do, however, find it fascinating that these essentially invisible boards operate in the background to introduce some consistency into our highly confusing industrialized world):On Mammoth and Deer Valley's “everyone gets 15 feet” campaignThere's a cool video of this on Deer Valley's Instapost that won't embed on this page for some reason. Since Alterra owns both resorts, I will assume Mammoth's campaign is similar.On Heavenly's collision prevention programMore on this program, from NSAA's Safety Awards website:Heavenly orchestrated a complex collision prevention strategy to address a very specific situation and need arising from instances of skier density in certain areas. The ski area's unique approach leveraged detailed incident data and distinct geographic features, guest dynamics and weather patterns to identify and mitigate high-risk areas effectively. Among its efforts to redirect people in a congested area, Heavenly reintroduced the Lakeview Terrain Park, added a rest area and groomed a section through the trees to attract guests to an underutilized run. Most impressively, these innovative interventions resulted in a 52% year-over-year reduction of person-on-person collisions. Judges also appreciated that the team successfully incorporated creative thinking from a specialist-level employee. For its effective solutions to reduce collision risk through thoughtful terrain management, NSAA awarded Heavenly Mountain Resort with the win for Best Collision Prevention Program.On the Crested Butte accidentPawlak and I discuss a 2022 accident at Crested Butte that could end up having lasting consequences on the ski industry. Per The Colorado Sun:It was toward the end of the first day of a ski vacation with their church in March 2022 when Mike Miller and his daughter Annie skied up to the Paradise Express lift at Crested Butte Mountain Resort. The chair spun around and Annie couldn't settle into the seat. Mike grabbed her. The chair kept climbing out of the lift terminal. He screamed for the lift operator to stop the chair. So did people in the line. The chair kept moving. Annie tried to hold on to the chair. Mike tried to hold his 16-year-old daughter. The fall from 30 feet onto hard-packed snow shattered her C7 vertebrae, bruised her heart, lacerated her liver and injured her lungs. She will not walk again. The Miller family claims the lift operators were not standing at the lift controls and “consciously and recklessly disregarded the safety of Annie” when they failed to stop the Paradise chair. In a lawsuit the family filed in December 2022 in Broomfield County District Court, they accused Crested Butte Mountain Resort and its owner, Broomfield-based Vail Resorts, of gross negligence and “willful and wanton conduct.”In May, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on the incident, per SAM:In a 5-2 ruling, the Colorado Supreme Court found that liability waivers cannot be used to protect ski areas from negligence claims related to chairlift accidents. The decision will allow a negligence per se claim brought against Vail Resorts to proceed in the district courts.The decision, however, did not invalidate all waivers, as the NSAA clarified in the same SAM article:There was concern among outdoor activity operators in Colorado that the case might void liability waivers altogether, but the narrow scope of the decision has largely upheld the use of liability waivers to protect against claims pertaining to inherent risks.“While the Supreme Court carved out a narrow path where releases of liability cannot be enforced in certain, unique chairlift incidents, the media downplayed, if not ignored, a critical part of the ruling,” explained Dave Byrd, the National Ski Areas Association's (NSAA) director of risk and regulatory affairs. “Plaintiffs' counsel had asked the [Colorado] Supreme Court to overturn decades of court precedent enforcing the broader use of ALL releases in recreation incidents, and the court unanimously declined to make such a radical change with Colorado's long-standing law on releases and waivers—and that was the more important part of the court's decision from my perspective.”The Colorado Supreme Court's ruling “express[es] no view as to the ultimate merit of the claim,” rather it allows the Millers' claim to proceed to trial in the lower courts. It could be month or years before the lawsuit is concluded.On me knowing “all too well what it's like to be injured on a ski trip”Boy do I ever:Yeah that's my leg. Ouch.Don't worry. I've skied 102 days since that mangling.Here's the full story.On “Jerry of the Day”I have conflicted feelings on Jerry of the Day. Some of their posts are hilarious, capturing what are probably genuinely good and seasoned skiers whiffing in incredible fashion:Some are just mean-spirited and stupid:Funny I guess if you rip and wear it ironically. But it's harder to be funny than you may suppose. See The New Yorker's cloying and earnest (and never-funny), Shouts & Murmurs column.On state passport programsState passport programs are one of the best hacks to make skiing affordable for families. Run by various state ski associations, they provide between one and three lift tickets to every major ski area in the state for some grade range between third and fifth. A small administrative fee typically applies, but otherwise, the lift tickets are free. In most, if not all, cases, kids do not need to live in the state to be eligible. Check out the programs in New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and Utah. Other states have them too – use the Google machine to find them.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 58/100 in 2024, and number 558 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on 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:WhoTom Day, President and General Manager of Gunstock, New HampshireRecorded onMarch 14, 2024About GunstockClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Belknap County, New HampshireLocated in: Gilford, New HampshireYear founded: 1937Pass affiliations: Unlimited access on New Hampshire College Pass (with Cannon, Cranmore, and Waterville Valley)Closest neighboring ski areas: Abenaki (:34), Red Hill Ski Club (:35), Veterans Memorial (:43), Tenney (:52), Campton (:52), Ragged (:54), Proctor (:56), Powderhouse Hill (:58), McIntyre (1:00)Base elevation: 904 feetSummit elevation: 2,244 feetVertical drop: 1,340 feetSkiable Acres: 227 Average annual snowfall: 120 inchesTrail count: 49 (2% double black, 31% black, 52% blue, 15% green)Lift count: 8 (1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples, 3 carpets - view Lift Blog's inventory of Gunstock's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himIn the roughly four-and-a-half years since I launched The Storm, I've written a lot more about some ski areas than others. I won't claim that there's no personal bias involved, because there are certain ski areas that, due to reputation, convenience, geography, or personal nostalgia, I'm drawn to. But Gunstock is not one of those ski areas. I was only vaguely aware of its existence when I launched this whole project. I'd been drawn, all of my East Coast life, to the larger ski areas in the state's north and next door in Vermont and Maine. Gunstock, awkwardly located from my New York City base, was one of those places that maybe I'd get to someday, even if I wasn't trying too hard to actually make that happen.And yet, I've written more about Gunstock than just about any ski area in the country. That's because, despite my affinity for certain ski areas, I try to follow the news around. And wow has there been news at this mid-sized New Hampshire bump. Nobody knew, going into the summer of 2022, that Gunstock would become the most talked-about ski area in America, until the lid blew off Mount Winnipesaukee in July of that year, when a shallow and ill-planned insurrection failed spectacularly at drawing the ski area into our idiotic and exhausting political wars.If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can read more on the whole surreal episode in the Podcast Notes section below, or just listen to the podcast. But because of that weird summer, and because of an aspirational masterplan launched in 2021, I've given Gunstock outsized attention in this newsletter. And in the process, I've quite come to like the place, both as a ski area (where I've now actually skied), and as a community, and it has become, however improbably, a mountain I keep taking The Storm back to.What we talked aboutRetirement; “my theory is that 10 percent of people that come to a ski area can be a little bit of a problem”; Gunstock as a business in 2019 versus Gunstock today; skier visits surge; cash in the bank; the publicly owned ski area that is not publicly subsidized; Gunstock Nice; the last four years at Gunstock sure were an Asskicker, eh?; how the Gunstock Area Commission works and what went sideways in the summer of 2022; All-Summers Disease; preventing a GAC Meltdown repeat; the time bandits keep coming; should Gunstock be leased to a private operator?; qualities that the next general manager of Gunstock will need to run the place successfully; honesty, integrity, and respect; an updated look at the 2021 masterplan and what actually makes sense to build; could Gunstock ever have a hotel or summit lodge?; why a paved parking lot is a big deal in 2024; Maine skiing in the 1960s; 1970s lift lines; reflecting on the changes over 40-plus years of skiing; rear-wheel-drive Buicks as ski commuter car; competing against Epic and Ikon and why independent ski areas will always have a place in the market; will record skier-visit numbers persist?; a surprising stat about season passes; and how a payphone caused mass confusion in Park City.  Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewOn January 19, Gunstock Marketing Director Bonnie MacPherson (long of Okemo and Bretton Woods), shot me a press release announcing that Day would retire at the conclusion of the 2023-24 ski season.It was a little surprising. Day hadn't been at Gunstock long. He'd arrived just a couple months before the March 2020 Covid shutdowns, almost four years to the day before he announced retirement. He was widely liked and respected on the mountain and in the community, a sentiment reinforced during the attempted Kook Coup of summer 2022, when a pair of fundamentalist nutjobs got flung out of the county via catapult after attempting to seize Gunstock from Day and his team.But Gunstock was a bit of a passion project for Day, a skiing semi-lifer who'd spent three decades at Waterville Valley before fiddling with high-end odd-jobs of the consultancy and project-management sort for 10 years. In four years, he transformed county-owned Gunstock from a seasonal business that tapped bridge loans to survive each summer into a profitable year-round entertainment center with millions in the bank. And he did it all despite Covid, despite the arrival of vending-machine Epic and Ikon passes, despite a couple of imbeciles who'd never worked at a ski area thinking they could do a better job running a ski area than the person they paid $175,000 per year to run the ski area.  I still don't really get it. How it all worked out. How Gunstock has gotten better as everything about running a ski area has gotten harder and more expensive and more competitive. There's nothing really special about the place statistically or terrain-wise. It's not super snowy or extra tall or especially big. It has exactly one high-speed lift, a really nice lodge, and Awe Dag views of Lake Winnipesaukee. It's nice but not exceptional, just another good mid-sized ski area in a state full of good mid-sized ski areas.  And yet, Gunstock thrives. Day, like most ski area general managers, is allergic to credit, but I have to think he had a lot to do with the mountain's late resilience. He's an interesting guy, thoughtful and worldly and adventurous. Talking to him, I always get the sense that this is a person who's comfortable with who he is, content with his life, a hardcore skier whose interests extend far beyond it. He's colorful but also plainspoken, an optimist and a pragmatist, a bit of back-office executive and good ole' boy wrencher melded into your archetype of a ski area manager. Someone who, disposition baked by experience, is perfectly suited to the absurd task of operating a ski area in New Hampshire. It's too bad he's leaving, but I guess eventually we all do. The least I could do was get his story one more time before he bounced.Why you should ski GunstockSkiing Knife Fight, New Hampshire Edition, looks like this:That's 30 ski areas, the fifth-most of any state, in the fifth-smallest state in America. And oh by the way you're also right next door to all of this:And Vermont is barely bigger than New Hampshire. Together, the two states are approximately one-fifth the size of Colorado. “Fierce” as the kids (probably don't) say.So, what makes you choose Gunstock as your snowsportskiing destination when you have 56 other choices in a two-state region, plus another half-dozen large ski areas just east in Maine? Especially when you probably own an Indy, Epic, or Ikon pass, which, combined, deliver access to 28 upper New England ski areas, including most of the best ones?Maybe that's exactly why. We've been collectively enchanted by access, obsessed with driving down per-visit cost to beat inflated day-ticket prices that we simultaneously find absurd and delight in outsmarting. But boot up at any New England ski area with chairlifts, and you're going to find a capable operation. No one survived this long in this dogfight without crafting an experience worth skiing.It's telling that Gunstock has only gotten busier since the Epic and Ikon passes smashed into New England a half dozen years ago. There's something there, an extra thing worth pursuing. You don't have to give up your SuperUltimoWinterSki Pass to make Gunstock part of your winter, but maybe work it in there anyway?Podcast NotesOn Gunstock's masterplanGunstock's ambitious masterplan, rolled out in 2021, would have blown the ski area out on all sides, added a bunch of new lifts, and plopped a hotel and summit lodge on the property:Most of it seems improbable now, as Day details in the podcast.On the GAC conflictSomeone could write a book on the Gunstock Shenanigans of 2022. The best I can give you is a series of article I published as the whole ridiculous saga was unfolding:* Band of Nitwits Highjacks Gunstock, Ski Area's Future Uncertain - July 24, 2022* Walkouts, Resignations, Wild Accusations: A Timeline of Gunstock's Implosion - July 31, 2022* Gunstock GM Tom Day & Team Return, Commissioner Ousted – 3 Ways to Protect the Mountain's Future - Aug. 8, 2022If nothing else, just watch this remarkable video of Day and his senior staff resigning en masse:On the Caledonian Canal that “splits Scotland in half”I'd never heard of the Caledonian Canal, but Day mentions sailing it and that it “splits Scotland in half.” That's the sort of thing I go nuts for, so I looked it up. Per Wikipedia:The Caledonian Canal connects the Scottish east coast at Inverness with the west coast at Corpach near Fort William in Scotland. The canal was constructed in the early nineteenth century by Scottish engineer Thomas Telford.The canal runs some 60 miles (100 kilometres) from northeast to southwest and reaches 106 feet (32 metres) above sea level.[2] Only one third of the entire length is man-made, the rest being formed by Loch Dochfour, Loch Ness, Loch Oich, and Loch Lochy.[3] These lochs are located in the Great Glen, on a geological fault in the Earth's crust. There are 29 locks (including eight at Neptune's Staircase, Banavie), four aqueducts and 10 bridges in the course of the canal.Here's its general location:More detail:On Day's first appearance on the podcastThis was Day's second appearance on the podcast. The first was way back in episode 34, recorded in January 2021:On Hurricane Mountain, MaineDay mentions skiing a long-gone ropetow bump named Hurricane Mountain, Maine as a child. While I couldn't find any trailmaps, New England Lost Ski Areas Project houses a nice history from the founder's daughter:I am Charlene Manchester now Barton. My Dad started Hurricane Ski Slope with Al Ervin. I was in the second grade, I remember, when I used to go skiing there with him. He and Al did almost everything--cranked the rope tow motor up to get it going, directed traffic, and were the ski patrol. As was noted in your report, accommodations were across road at the Norton farm where we could go to use the rest room or get a cup of hot chocolate and a hamburger. Summers I would go with him and Al to the hill and play while they cleared brush and tried to improve the hill, even opened one small trail to the right of the main slope. I was in the 5th grade when I tore a ligament in my knee skiing there. Naturally, the ski patrol quickly appeared and my Dad carried me down the slope in his arms. I was in contact with Glenn Parkinson  who came to interview my mother , who at 96 is a very good source of information although actually, she was not much of a skier. The time I am referring to must have been around 1945 because I clearly recall discussing skiing with my second grade teacher Miss Booth, who skied at Hurricane. This was at DW Lunt School in Falmouth where I grew up. I was in the 5th grade when I hurt my leg.My Dad, Charles Manchester , was one of the first skiers in the State, beginning on barrel staves in North Gorham where he grew up. He was a racer and skied the White Mountains . We have a picture of him at Tuckerman's when not many souls ventured up there to ski in the spring. As I understand it, the shortage of gas during WWII was a motivator as he had a passion for the sport, but no gas to get to the mountains in N.H. Two of his best ski buddies were Al Ervin, who started Hurricane with him, and Homer Haywood, who was in the ski troopers during WWII, I think. Another ski pal was Chase Thompson. These guys worked to ski--hiking up Cranmore when the lifts were closed due to the gas shortage caused by WWII. It finally got to be too much for my Dad to run Hurricane, as he was spending more time directing traffic for parking than skiing, which after all was why he and Al started the project.I think my Dad and his ski buddies should be remembered for their love of the sport and their willingness to do whatever it took to ski. Also, they were perfect gentlemen, wonderful manners on the slope, graceful and handsomely dressed, often in neckties. Those were the good old days!The ski area closed around 1973, according to NELSAP, in response to rising insurance rates.On old-school Sunday RiverI've documented the incredible evolution of Sunday River from anthill to Vesuvius many times. But here, to distill the drama of the transformation, is the now-titanic ski area's 1961 trailmap:This 60s-era Sunday River was a foundational playground for Day.On the Epic and Ikon New England timelineIt's easy to lose track of the fact that the Epic and Ikon Passes didn't exist in New England until very recently. A brief timeline:* 2017: Vail Resorts buys Stowe, its first New England property, and adds the mountain to the Epic Pass for the 2017-18 ski season.* 2018: Vail Resorts buys Triple Peaks, owners of Mount Sunapee and Okemo, and adds them to the Epic Pass for the 2018-19 ski season.* 2018: The Ikon Pass debuts with five or seven days at five New England destinations for the 2018-19 ski season: Killington/Pico, Sugarbush, and Boyne-owned Loon, Sunday River, and Sugarloaf. Alterra-owned Stratton is unlimited on the Ikon Pass and offers five days on the Ikon Base Pass.* 2019: Vail buys the 17-mountain Peak Resorts portfolio, which includes four more New England ski areas: Mount Snow in Vermont and Crotched, Wildcat, and Attitash in New Hampshire. All join the Epic Pass for the 2019-20 ski season, bumping the number of New England ski areas on the coalition up to seven.* 2019: Alterra buys Sugarbush. Amps up the mountain's Ikon Pass access to unlimited with blackouts on the Ikon Base and unlimited on the full Ikon for the 2020-21 ski season. Alterra also ramps up Stratton Ikon Base access from five days to unlimited with blackouts for the 2020-21 winter.* 2020: Vail introduces New England-specific Epic Passes. At just $599, the Northeast Value Pass delivers unlimited access to Vail's four New Hampshire mountains, holiday-restricted unlimited access to Mount Snow and Okemo, and 10 non-holiday days at Stowe. Vail also rolls out a midweek version for just $429.* 2021: Vail unexpectedly cuts the price of Epic Passes by 20 percent, reducing the cost of the Northeast Value Pass to just $479 and the midweek version to $359. The Epic Local Pass plummets to $583, and even the full Epic Pass is just $783.All of which is background to our conversation, in which I ask Day a pretty interesting question: how the hell have you grown Gunstock's business amidst this incredibly challenging competitive marketplace?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 30/100 in 2024, and number 530 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

Tom Bowker is the undeniable godfather of the climbing scene in Waterville Valley. Tom's prolific number of first ascents over his 40 year climbing career make him one of the most well known names in the region. His first ascents include Peer Pressure, Journey to Lost World, and dozens more. Today, Tom shares awesome tales about how his routes came to be, why he still hand drills all of his bolts, why he thinks climbers are the most privileged users of public lands, and which first ascent he is more proud of than all of the others combined. Do you want more of this conversation? We continue our chat with Tom over on the First Ascent Patreon! For $5, $7 or $10 a month, you'll get access to wide ranging bonus content from greats like Mark Hudon, Scott Stevenson and many more. Plus you'll get a Discord chat, exclusive beta, route info, and more. Check it out here:  https://www.patreon.com/FirstAscentPodcastDo you have a listener question or a topic idea? Let us know at @firstascentpod on Instagram! Jay and Lee can be found at @jayknower and @xxleeweexx Disclaimer: The information expressed in this episode is for entertainment purposes only, and is not intended as, nor should it be interpreted as, informational or instructional.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 8. It dropped for free subscribers on April 15. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoDan Egan, General Manager of Tenney Mountain, New HampshireRecorded onMarch 14, 2024About Tenney MountainOwned by: North Country Development GroupLocated in: Plymouth, New HampshireYear founded: 1960 (closed several times; re-opened most recently in 2023)Pass affiliations:* No Boundaries Pass: 1-3 days, no blackoutsClosest neighboring ski areas: Campton (:24), Kanc Recreation Area (:33), Loon (:34), Ragged (:34), Waterville Valley (:35), Veteran's Memorial (:39), Red Hill Ski Club (:42), Cannon (:44), Proctor (:44), Mt. Eustis (:50), Gunstock (:52), Dartmouth Skiway (:54), Whaleback (:55), Storrs (:57), Bretton Woods (:59)Base elevation: 749 feetSummit elevation: 2,149 feetVertical drop: 1,400 feetSkiable Acres: 110 acresAverage annual snowfall: 140 inchesTrail count: 47 (14 advanced, 27 intermediate, 6 beginner) + 1 terrain parkLift count: 3 (1 triple, 1 double, 1 platter - view Lift Blog's inventory of Tenney's lift fleet)View historic Tenney Mountain trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himDan Egan is an interesting guy. He seems to have 10 jobs all at once. He's at Big Sky and he's at Val-d'Isère and he's writing books and he's giving speeches and he's running Tenney Mountain. He's a legendary freeskier who didn't die young and who's stayed glued to the sport. He loves skiing and it is his whole life and that's clear in talking to him for 30 seconds.So he would have been a great and compelling interview even outside of the context of Tenney. But I'm always drawn to people who do particular, peculiar things when they could do anything. There's no reason that Dan Egan has to bother with Tenney, a mid-sized mountain in a mid-sized ski state far from the ski poles of the Alps and the Rockies. It would be a little like Barack Obama running for drain commissioner of Gladwin County, Michigan. He'd probably do a good job, but why would he bother, when he could do just about anything else in the world?I don't know. It's funny. But Egan is drawn to this place. It's his second time running Tenney. The guy is Boston-core, his New England roots clear and proud. It makes sense that he would rep the region. But there are New England ski areas that stand up to the West in scope and scale of terrain, and even, in Northern Vermont, snow volume and quality (if not consistency). But Tenney isn't one of them. It's like the 50th best ski area in the Northeast, not because it couldn't be better, but because it's never been able to figure out how to become the best version of itself.Egan – who, it's important to note, will move into an advisory or consultant role for Tenney next winter – seems to know exactly who he is, and that helps. He understands skiing and he understands skiers and he understands where this quirky little mountain could fit into the wide world of skiing. This is exactly what the ski area needs as it chugs into the most recent version of itself, one that, we hope, can defy its own legacy and land, like Egan always seems to, on its skis.What we talked aboutA vision for Tenney; what happened when Egan went skiing in jeans all over New Hampshire; the second comeback season was stronger than the first; where Tenney can fit in a jam-packed New Hampshire ski scene; why this time is different at Tenney; the crazy gene; running a ski area with an extreme skier's mindset; expansion potential; what's lost with better snowmaking and grooming and wider trails; why New England breeds kick-ass skiers; Tenney's quiet renovation; can Tenney thrive long-term with a double chair as its summit lift?; what's the worst thing about a six-person chair?; where Tenney could build more beginner terrain; expansion opportunities; the future of the triple chair; an endorsement for surface lifts; the potential for night skiing; the difference between running Tenney in 2002 and 2024; the slow death of learn-to-ski; why is skiing discounting to its most avid fans?; the down side of online ticket discounts; warm-weather snowmaking; Tenney's snowmaking evolution; the best snowmaking system in New Hampshire; “any ski area that's charging more than $100 for skiing and then asking you to put your boots in a cubby outside in the freezing cold … to me, that's an insult”; the importance of base lodges; “brown-baggers, please, you're welcome at Tenney”; potential real estate development and the importance of community; New England ski culture – “It means something to be from the East”; “why aren't more ski area operators skiing?”; skiing as confidence-builder; the No Boundaries Pass; the Indy Pass; Tenney season pass pricing; and Ragged's Mission: Affordable pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIn late 2022, as Tenney's social media feeds filled with hyperactive projects to re-open the ski area, I asked a veteran operator – I won't say which one – what they thought of the ski area's comeback potential.“No chance,” they'd said, pointing to lack of water, strained and dated infrastructure, and a mature and modern competitive marketplace. “They're insane.”And yet, here we are. Tenney lives.The longer I do this, the less the project of operating a ski area makes sense to me. Ski areas, in my head, have always been Mount Bohemia: string a lift up the mountain and let the skiers ride. But that model can only work in like four places on the continent, and sometimes, like this year, it barely works there. The capital and labor requirements of running even a modest operation in schizophrenic New England weather are, by themselves, shocking. Add in a summit lift built six decades ago by a defunct company in an analogue world, an already overcrowded New Hampshire ski market, and a decades-long legacy of failure, and you have an impossible-seeming project.But they're doing it. For two consecutive winters, lift-served snowskiing has happened at Tenney. The model here echoes the strategy that has worked at Titus and Holiday Mountain and Montage: find an owner who runs other successful, non-ski businesses and let those businesses subsidize the ski area until it can function independently. That could take a while. But Steven Kelly, whose Timberline Construction Company is big-timing it all over New England, seems committed.Some parts of the country, like Washington, need more ski areas. Others, like New Hampshire, probably have too many. That can be great for skiers: access road death matches are not really a thing out here, and there's always some uncrowded bump to escape to on peak days. Operators competing for skiers, however, have a tricky story to tell. In Tenney's case, the puzzle is this: how does a fixed-grip 1,400-footer compete in a crowded ski corridor in a crowded ski state with five-dollar Epic Passes raining from the skies and Octopus lifts rising right outside of town and skiers following habits and rituals formed in childhood? Tenney's operators have ideas. And some pretty good ones, as it turns out.Questions I wish I'd askedI know some of you will be disappointed that I didn't get into Egan's career as a pro skier. But this interview could have been nine hours long and we wouldn't have dented the life of what is a very interesting dude. Anyway here's Egan skiing and talking about skiing if you were missing that:What I got wrongWe recorded this before 2024-25 Tenney season passes dropped. Egan teased that they would cost less than 2023-24 passes, and they ended up debuting for $399 adult, down from $449 for this past winter.When describing the benefits of nearby Ragged Mountain's $429 season pass, I mention the ski area's high-speed lifts and extensive glades, but I neglected to mention one very important benefit: the pass comes loaded with five lift tickets to Jay freaking Peak.Why you should ski TenneyBefore high-speed lifts and Colorado-based owners and Extreme Ultimo Megapasses, there was a lot more weird in New England skiing. There was the Cranmore Skimobile:And these oil-dripping bubble doubles and rocket-ship tram at Mount Snow:And whatever the hell is going on here at now-defunct King Ridge, New Hampshire:I don't really know if all this was roadside carnival schtick or regional quirk or just a reflection of the contemporary world, but it's all mostly gone now, a casualty of an industry that's figured itself out.Which is why it's so jarring, but also so novel and so right, to pull into Tenney and to see this:I don't really know the story here, and I didn't ask Egan about it. They call it the Witch's Hat. It's Tenney's ticket office. Perhaps its peculiar shape is a coincidence, the product of some long-gone foreman's idiosyncratic imagination. I don't even know why a ski area with a base lodge the size of Rhode Island bothers to maintain a separate building just for selling lift tickets. But they do. And it's wonderful.The whole experience of skiing Tenney evokes this kind of time-machine dislocation. There's the lattice-towered Hornet double, a plodding 60-year-old machine that moves uphill at the pace of a pack mule:There's the narrow, twisty trails of Ye Old New England:And the handmade trail signs:Of course, modernity intrudes. Tenney now has RFID, trim grooming, a spacious pub with good food. And, as you'll learn in the podcast, plans to step into the 2020s. The blueprint here is not Mad River Glen redux, or even fixed-grip 4EVA Magic Mountain. It's transformation into something that can compete in ski area-dense and rapidly evolving New Hampshire. The vision, as Egan lays it out, is compelling. But there will be a cost to it, including, most likely, the old Hornet. That Tenney will be a Tenney worth skiing, but so is this one, and better to see it before it's gone.Podcast NotesOn 30 Years in a White HazeI mentioned Egan's book, 30 Years In A White Haze, in the intro. I dedicated an entire podcast with his co-author, Eric Wilbur, to this book back in 2021:On Jackson Hole's jeans-skiing daySo this happened in December:On the December washoutEgan references the “December washout” – this is the same storm I went deep on with Sunday River GM Brian Heon recently. Listen here.On “what I did 20 years ago” and warm-weather snowmakingThis was Egan's second run as Tenney general manager. His first tenure, near the turn of the century, overlapped with the ski area's experiments in warm-weather snowmaking. New England Ski History summarizes:In October of 2002, Tenney was purchased by SnowMagic, a company seeking to showcase its snowmaking technology. The company's origins dated back to the late 1980s, when Japanese skier Yoshio Hirokane developed an idea to make snow in warmer temperatures, called Infinite Crystal Snowmaking. Hirokane later joined forces with Albert Bronander to found the New Jersey-based SnowMagic company. A significant investment was planned at Tenney, rumored to be a choice of either replacing the 1964 Stadeli double chairlift with a high speed detachable quad or installing the high-tech snowmaking system.In advance of the 2002-2003 ski season, the investment in a SnowMagic system was announced. The system, rumored to cost $1,000,000, would allow the ski area to stay open year round. There was some speculation that the runaway success of this new system would allow for the purchase of a high speed quad shortly thereafter. Famous skier Dan Egan served as General Manager when the area reopened in December 2002.After dealing with equipment shipping delays reportedly caused by a longshoreman's strike, Tenney was able to open during the summer and fall of 2003 thanks to the system. Numbers were disappointing and costs were high, especially considering it was only covering a small slope. Summer snowmaking operations were cancelled in 2004 and the snowmaking system was sent to Alabama. While summertime snowmaking was expected to return to Tenney in 2005, it was all but forgotten, as the company determined the systems yielded better revenue in warmer climates.The most recent headline-making experiment in warm-weather snowmaking landed last October, when Ski Ward, Massachusetts beat everyone to open for the 2023-24 ski season with an assist from an expensive but powerful piece of technology:It cost $600,000. It's the size of a shipping container. In an August test run, it cranked out a six-foot-tall pile of snow in 83-degree weather.It's the L60 snowmaking machine from Quebec-based Latitude 90. And it just helped Ski Ward, Massachusetts beat every other ski area in North America to open for the 2023-24 ski season.The skiing wasn't much. A few feet of base a few hundred feet long, served by a carpet lift. Ski Ward stapled the novelty to its fall festival, a kitschy New England kiddie-fest with “a petting zoo, pony rides, kids crafts, pumpkin painting, summer tubing, bounce houses … and more.” Lift tickets cost $5.On potential Tenney expansionsWe discuss several expansion opportunities for Tenney, including a proposed-but-abandoned upper-mountain beginner area. This 1988 trailmap shows where the potential new lift and trails could sit:On the evolution of LoonLoon, in recent years, has leapt ahead of its New Hampshire competitors with a series of snowmaking and lift upgrades that are the most sophisticated in the state (Waterville Valley might argue with me on that). I've profiled this evolution extensively, including in a conversation with the ski area's current GM, Brian Norton, in 2022 - listen here.On Waterville Valley's summit T-barOne of the most underrated lifts in New England is Waterville Valley's summit T-bar. The story behind it is instructive, though I'm not sure if anyone's paying attention to the lesson. Here's the background – in 1988, the ski area installed the state's first high-speed quad, a base-to-summit machine then known as High Country Express (the ski area later changed the name to “White Peaks Express”:But detachable lifts were new in the ‘80s, and no one really understood that stringing one to the top of White Peak would prove problematic. Wind holds were a constant problem. So, in 1996, Waterville took the extraordinary step of shortening the lift by approximately 400 vertical feet. Skiers could still travel to the summit on the High Country double chair, a Stadeli machine left over from the 1960s:But that lift was still prone to wind holds. So, in 2018, Waterville GM Tim Smith tried something both simple and brilliant: replacing the double chair with a brand-new T-bar, which cost all of $750,000 and is practically immune from wind holds:The result is a better ski experience enabled by a lost-cost, low-tech lift. The ski area continued to invest heavily in the rest of the mountain, throwing down $12 million on the Tecumseh Express bubble six-pack – which replaced the old White Peaks Express – in 2022.Video by Stuart Winchester.On JP AuclairEgan mentions JP Auclair, a Canadian freeskier who died in an avalanche in 2014. Here's a nice tribute to JP from Chris O'Connell, who cofounded Armada Skis with Auclair:There are a million things that can be said about JP as a skier—how he pioneered and transcended genres, and the indelible mark he has made on the sport. But there is so much more: he was a genuinely good human; he was my favorite person to be around because he was hilarious and because he was kind.In the summer of 1997 I watched a VHS tape of JP Auclair and JF Cusson skiing the park at Mt. Hood. It was a time when snowboarding was peaking and, in many places, skiers weren't even allowed in the park. Skiers certainly weren't doing tricks that rivaled snowboarders—in difficulty or in style. To see JP and JF doing cork 720s blew my mind, and, as a snow sports photographer, I wanted to meet them. At the time, I was a senior photographer at Snowboarder Magazine and I had begun contributing with a start-up ski magazine called Freeze. The following spring the photo editor of Freeze blew out his knee and in his place, I was sent to the Nordic jib land, Riksgransen, Sweden to meet these guys.JP and I hit it off and that's how it began – 16 years of traveling and shooting with him. Often, those travels were the kind which involved appearances, autograph sessions and less than ideal ski situations. He would put on a smile and give it 100 percent at an awkward press conference in China when we knew Interior BC was getting hammered. He would shred the icy slopes of Quebec when duty called, or log long hours in the Armada office to slam out a product video. JP was a champion no matter how adverse or inane. That was part of what made him so good.Ironically, JP and I had a shared sense that what we were doing, while fulfilling in context, at times seemed frivolous. We spent our lives traveling to the far ends of the earth, and we weren't doing it to build bridges or irrigations systems or to help people have clean drinking water. Instead, we were doing it for skiing. Read the rest…On Crotched and Peak ResortsEgan is right, Crotched is often overlooked and under-appreciated in New England skiing. While much of the region fell behind the West, from a technology point of view, in the 2000s, Peak Resorts rebuilt Crotched almost from scratch in 2003, relocating three lifts from Virginia and installing a new snowmaking system. Per New England Ski History:At the turn of the millennium, Midwestern ski operator Peak Resorts started looking into either acquiring an operational mid-sized area or reopening a defunct area in New England. Though Temple Mountain was heavily considered, Peak Resorts opted to invest in defunct Crotched Mountain. According to Peak Resorts' Margrit Wurmli-Kagi, "It's the kind of small area that we specialize in, but it skis like a larger mountain. It has some nice glades and some nice steeps, but also some outlying areas that are perfect for the beginners."In September 2002, Peak Resorts formed S N H Development, Inc. as a New Hampshire corporation to begin rebuilding the former western side of the ski area. In terms of vertical feet, the prospective ski area was three times larger than any of Peak Resorts' current portfolio. After a 50 year lease of the property was procured in May 2003, a massive reconstruction project subsequently took place, including reclearing the trails, constructing a new snowmaking system, building a new base lodge, and installing rebuilt lifts from Ski Cherokee, Virginia. A reported ten million dollars later, Crotched Mountain reopened as essentially a new ski area on December 20, 2003. Though most of the terrain followed the former western footprint, the trails were given a new science fiction naming scheme.While the reopened ski area initially did not climb to the top of the former quad chairlift, additional trails were reclaimed in subsequent years. In February of 2012, it was announced that Crotched would be acquiring Ascutney's detachable quad, reopening the upper mountain area. The lift, dubbed the Crotched Rocket, opened on December 1, 2012.On “Rusty” in the hall of fameEgan refers to “Rusty's” U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame induction speech. He was referring to Rusty Gregory, former CEO of Alterra Mountain Company and three-time Storm Skiing Podcast guest. Here's the speech (with an intro by Egan):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 26/100 in 2024, and number 526 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

As it happens here at the Ski Rex Media Podcast, I present another sequel episode. If you go back two episodes, you can listen to guest Geoff Hanson talk about how the Imbrace Snow Sports Leggings went from dream to reality. Part of the design effort came from a 4x Olympic Alpine Skier who not only weighed in on the leggings for snow sports in general but how to make a better product for women. This week, we talked to that Olympian. Chemmy Alcott, a former Alpine ski racer from England joins the program to discuss her part in the design process for Imbrace. Afterwards, we get to talk a little about her career, which brought her to Waterville Valley in her youth, we talk about ski broadcasting with a GS World Cup prediction, and she even gives me a tip that I might have to try. It's a fun episode with a lot of information, My Friends. Strap in and enjoy!   Remember, if you'd like to try a pair of the Imbrace Snow Sports Leggings or any of their other products for yourself, head to https://imbrace.com and use the code "SKIREX10" to get 10% off your order.   Be sure to check out the Ski Rex Media Partners, as well: Whaleback Mountain Please follow/subscribe to the Ski Rex Media Podcast on Podbean, your favorite podcast app, or YouTube. Head to http://www.skirexmedia.com for more from Ski Rex Media, which includes links to social media, contact links, merch, and a link to the Ski Rex Media Patreon page, which is at https://www.patreon.com/skirexmedia. Subscribing there gets you the podcast on Sunday instead of Wednesday, priority call-ins during live streams, bonuses, and other tasty tidbits. Thank you!!!

In a recent episode of the 603Podcast, Lindsay Rustad, Scientist and Forest Service Team Lead at Hubbard Brook, sat down with Dan Egan to discuss a crucial topic: effectively sharing scientific research on environmental conservation. Lindsay's insights covered everything from the role of art and poetry in connecting people to environmental issues to the profound impact of acid rain and Hubbard Brook's long-term ecosystem monitoring.A Legacy of Discovery: Acid Rain and BeyondHubbard Brook has been a cornerstone of environmental research since its designation in 1955. It's here that the groundbreaking discovery of acid rain was made—a discovery that played a pivotal role in shaping the Clean Air Act of 1992. This legislation significantly improved air quality, showcasing the power of scientific research to drive policy change. As Lindsay puts it, "We can't make people care with science alone. We need people to translate the science." She emphasizes that when individuals understand what's happening in their own backyards, they're more likely to make small changes that lead to big impacts.Bridging Science and Emotion: The Role of Art and CommunityLindsay passionately discusses the need for translating scientific findings into relatable terms. She highlights the work of Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring used poetic language to raise awareness about environmental issues, building a deep emotional connection with readers. Inspired by this, Lindsay launched the “Postcard for a Forest” project, encouraging kids to write postcards to the forest, expressing their appreciation and drawing their favorite trees. Such initiatives help foster a sense of connection and community, proving that art can be a powerful tool in environmental advocacy.Engage with Hubbard Brook: Events, Tours, and Citizen ScienceIf you're inspired by Lindsay's conversation and want to get involved, the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest offers numerous ways to engage:Public Events and Open HousesWebinars and Virtual ToursGuided ToursCitizen Science Projects: Participate in data collection and monitoring activities, contributing to significant research efforts.Educational Programs and Field Trips: Ideal for students and educators looking to deepen their understanding of forest ecology.To start your journey with Hubbard Brook, visit the Hubbard Brook website and follow their social media channels for the latest updates on events, programs, and opportunities. Mad River Coffee is located at Exit 28 off Highway 93 in Campton, NH. You'll find a inviting atmosphere where community is shared over a cup of fresh roasted coffee and homemade pastries at a fair price. Mad River Coffee is where your adventure starts.Jean's Playhouse in Lincoln, NH is the premier arts center presents plays, musicals, comedians, cover bands, films. Visit https://jeansplayhouse.com/ Waterville Valley is New Hampshire's Family Resort. Ranked the #1 ski resort in the East by Condé Nast Traveler, Waterville offers year-round activities and events, including 265 acres of alpine skiing, lift-serviced mountain biking, disc golf, cross-country skiing, food festivals, live outdoor concerts, and more! All kids under 5 ski free, when you purchase an Adult Plus Pass at Waterville.com Recorded at Studio Lab in Derry NHProduced by: Sammy BlairWritten and Directed by: Dan EganHosted by: Dan EganSponsored by:Mad River Coffee Roasters, Waterville Valley Resort, Jean's Playhouse and Ski Fanatics For more information about the 603podcast visit 603podcast.com

What began as a project to tell the story of Waterville Valley as the birthplace of Freestyle skiing quickly morped into Waterville Valley as a crucible of cultural vision and change. In the coming weeks we'll take you into the lives of JD Nelson and his friend Jack Sanders who took a young Wayne Wong, Floyd Wilkie and George Askevold under their wings to make sure that they were not taken advantage of as they began their journey to superstardom in the brand new world of Hotdog Skiing - soon to be called "Freestyle". You'll meet Frank Dubois, the first certified African American ski instructor in America, Jerry Dunfey who intersected with their lives from his perch at the Parker House Hotel in Boston and the slopes of Waterville. as well as John and Donni Hughes, Bernie Weichsel, Executive Director of the first professional Freestyle association The International Freestyle Skiers Association, and others. Through it all Tom Gross, trusted friend to Olympic superstar and Waterville Valley founder Tom Cochran, was often at the center of the media storm. He was there at the beginning, announced races and competitions all over the country, and hobnobbed with celebrities (He's the only person I know who actually got Bill Russell to autograph something for him.)Whenever I would engage someone from Waterville Valley the conversation would invariably lead to Tom Gross who has forgotten more about Waterville Valley than the rest of us know.He's a great storyteller on top of it all.

Dive into the arduous yet rewarding journey of hosting a World Cup event at Waterville Valley, the historical cradle of freestyle skiing, with our special guests Tim Smith, President of Waterville Valley. Explore the detailed preparation, from setting up facilities to dealing with unexpected weather patterns, the meticulous attention to maintaining perfect runs, and the importance of spectator experience in crafting a remarkable event. From the construction of the skiing venue to its eventual execution, get an insider's look at the labor and love that goes into building a World Cup caliber event. Experience ski culture, through parties, signature events, engagement of community and athletes, reflecting on Waterville's rich skiing history, and a sneak peek into upcoming World Cup events. This episode is for anyone interested in understanding the monumental task of putting together a major sporting event and the vibrant ski culture of New England.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Nov. 21. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 28. 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:WhoBrandon Swartz, General Manager of Attitash Mountain Resort, New HampshireRecorded onNovember 6, 2023About AttitashClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Bartlett, New HampshireYear founded: 1964Pass affiliations:* Epic Pass: unlimited access* Epic Local Pass: unlimited access* Northeast Value Pass: unlimited access* Northeast Midweek Pass: unlimited midweek access* Epic Day Pass: 1 to 7 days of access with all resorts, 32-resorts, and 22-resorts tiersClosest neighboring ski areas: Black Mountain (:14), Cranmore (:16), Wildcat (:23), Bretton Woods (:28), King Pine (:35), Pleasant Mountain (:45), Mt. Eustis (:49), Cannon (:49), Loon (1:04), Sunday River (1:04), Mt. Abram (1:07)Base elevation: 600 feetSummit elevation: 2,350 feet at the top of Attitash PeakVertical drop: 1,750 feetSkiable Acres: 311-plusAverage annual snowfall: 120 inchesTrail count: 68 (27% most difficult, 44% intermediate, 29% novice)Lift count: 8 (3 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples, 1 surface lift – view Lift Blog's inventory of Attitash's lift fleet)View historic Attitash trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himAsk any casual NBA fan which player won the most championships in the modern era, and they will probably give you Michael and Scottie. Six titles, two threepeats, '91 to '93 and '96 to '98. And it would've been eight in a row had MJ not followed his spirit animal onto the baseball diamond for two summers, they might add.But they're wrong. The non-1950s-to-‘60s player with the most NBA titles is Robert Horry, Big Shot Bob, who played an important role in seven title runs with three teams: the 1994 and '95 Houston Rockets; the 2000, 2001, and 2002 Lakers; and the 2005 and '07 San Antonio Spurs. While he's not in the hall of fame (Shaq thinks he should be), and doesn't make The Athletic or Hoops Hype's top 75 lists, Stadium Talk lists Horry as one of the 25 most clutch players of all time.Attitash might be skiing's Robert Horry. Always in the halo of greatness, never the superstar. Vail Resorts is the ski area's third consecutive conglomerate owner, and the third straight that doesn't quite seem to know what to do with the place. LBO Resort Enterprises opened Bear Peak in 1994, but then seemed to forget about Attitash after the merger with American Skiing Company two years later (ASC did install the Flying Yankee detachable quad in 1998). Peak Resorts picked Attitash out of ASC's rubbish bin in 2007, then mostly let the place languish for a decade before chopping down the Top Notch double chair in 2018 with no explanation. That left no redundant route to the top of Attitash peak, which became a problem when the Summit Triple dropped dead for most of the 2018-19 ski season. Rather than replace the lift, Peak repaired it, then handed the spruced-up-but-still-hated machine off to Vail Resorts, along with the rest of its portfolio, that summer.Like someone who inherits a jam-packed storage bin from a distant strange relative, Vail spent a couple of years just staring at all the boxes, uncertain what was in them and kind of afraid to look. Those first few winters, which corresponded with Covid, labor shortages, and supply-chain issues, weren't great ones at Attitash. A general sense of dysfunction reigned: snowmaking lagged, lifts opened late in the season or not at all, generic corporate statements thanked the hardworking teams without acknowledging the mountain's many urgent shortcomings. As it was picking through the storage unit, Vail made the strange decision of stacking the New Hampshire box next to the Midwest boxes, effectively valuing Attitash and long-suffering sister resort Wildcat – both with 2,000-ish-foot vertical drops and killer terrain – on the same day-pass tier as 240-foot Mad River, Ohio and 35-acre Snow Creek, Missouri. Anyone committed to arguing against absentee ownership of New England ski areas had a powerful exhibit A with Attitash.Then, last year, Vail opened the Attitash box. And instead of the Beanie Baby collection and Battle of Hamburger Hill commemorative coins that the company expected to find, they pulled out a stack of Microsoft stock certificates from the 1986 IPO. And they were like, “Well now, these might be worth something.”So they got to work. The company improved snowmaking. They replaced the 49-year-old East/West double-double with a brand-new fixed-grip quad. They raised the companywide minimum wage to $20 an hour, well above average for New Hampshire, helping Attitash staff up and resemble a functioning business. Then, this summer, they finally did it: demolished the wickedly inefficient Summit Triple and replaced it with a glimmering high-speed quad.Of course, in true Attitash fashion, the Mountaineer, as the new lift is called, was the last of 60-plus 2023 lift projects in North America to fly towers. But the chair will be open this winter, and it should reset the mountain's rap. Whether Mountaineer will finally push the resort's reputation and stature to match its burly vertical drop and trail count remains to be seen. Ski's readers did not list Attitash on their top 20 eastern ski areas for 2023. Z Rankings lists the mountain 28th in the East.Unlike NBA players, ski areas' careers span generations. In this way, they're more like the franchises themselves. Sometimes the Lakers have Magic or Kobe, and in some eras, well, they don't. Attitash just went a few decades without a franchise player. They may have finally drafted one. This is a top-20 New England ski area that may finally be ready to act like it.What we talked aboutThe overdue death of the Attitash triple; the story behind the “Mountaineer” lift name; why a high-speed quad was the right replacement lift; take the train to the mountain; what happened to the lift tower that Flying Yankee and Summit Triple shared; expansion opportunities off Attitash Peak; other alignments the ski area considered for Mountaineer; why and where Attitash moved the Mountaineer lift load station; the circa-Peak Resorts Mount Snow intelligentsia; Vail's culture of internal development and promotion; the unique challenges of running Attitash in a very crowded neighborhood; the Attitash-Wildcat combo; the Progression Quad replacement for the East/West double-double; considering Bear Peak's lift fleet; why glades disappeared from Attitash's trailmap, and why they're back; whether the old Top Notch double chair line could ever enter the official trail network; snowmaking upgrades; how big of an impact the $20-an-hour minimum wage had on Attitash; employee housing; Northeast-specific Epic Passes; and the Epic Day Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe Mountaineer, of course. For 30 years, successive owners have insisted that Attitash Peak was incompatible with a high-speed quad: too much capacity feeding too few trails from a lift that would cost too much to build.Well, Vail built it. So Swartz and I discuss why, after saying no for so long, mom finally bought us our expensive toy. I won't get into that here, because that's what the podcast is for, but I will make this point: there is a dirt-stupid but persistent narrative that Vail Resorts doesn't care about its eastern properties, and only bought them to entice monied New Englanders to its western trophies. But, nearly seven years after entering the region with the surprise purchase of Stowe, Vail has done plenty to disprove that notion, launching Northeast-specific Epic Passes in 2020; installing new six-packs at Stowe, Mount Snow, and Okemo; adding high-speed quads at Attitash and Mount Snow; and moving another HSQ at Okemo. It's been a quiet but complete gut-renovation of what had been some very tired ski areas.Vail must feel, often, like it can't win. They're often framed as elitists for building too much and as cheapskates for investing too little. Social media piles on because their resorts are too busy but also because they're priced too high. I'll admit that I criticize them for making lift tickets too expensive and passes too cheap. The Mountaineer, which New England has spent two decades begging for, will likely draw criticism for overcrowding Attitash as skiers soon forget the aches and pains of the Summit Triple.Skiers can be impossible pains in the ass, no question. But Vail showed up at the steakhouse and came back to the table with the whole buffet. In the five years from 2016 to 2021, Vail purchased 29 ski areas. Prior to that, it owned just 11. That's nearly a quadrupling of size in half a decade. That would be challenging at any time. Add the Covid face-rearranging, and it was nearly impossible to digest.After several rough winters, however, Vail may be taming this herd of feral horses. They're not done yet, but things are calming down. The lift investments are helping, management is stabilizing. They still need to loosen the reigns on snowmaking outside of the West, better limit crowds on peak days, and find a less-gun-to-the-head method of incentivizing Epic Pass sales than $299 lift tickets. But Vail Resorts, as a stable entity rather than a growth monster, is beginning to gel, and Attitash symbolizes that metamorphosis as well as any mountain in the portfolio.What I got wrongWe alluded to the fact that Attitash would fly the Mountaineer towers on the day we recorded this, Nov. 6. Weather delays pushed that installation to later in the month.This isn't something I got wrong at the time, but the Epic Day Pass rates I mentioned were tier four prices. They've since increased slightly. Here are the current (and final) rates (the 22-resorts tier gets you in the door at Attitash):Why you should ski AttitashLet's continue the basketball metaphor. Who's your starting five if New Hampshire is your basketball team? Cannon makes the roster by default, a 2,180-footer with the best terrain in the state. Go ahead and fill out the roster with your other 2,000-footers: Loon, with its jungle gym of fancy upgraded lifts; Wildcat, with its Mount Washington views and high-speed top-to-bottom laps of twisted glory; and sprawling, falling Waterville Valley.So who's your number five? I'd accept arguments for gorgeous Mount Sunapee, beefy Bretton Woods, or Attitash. But as captain, I'm probably picking Attitash. Maybe not the Attitash of three years ago, but the Attitash that just got back from Chairlift Camp and can now offer a true, modern ski experience across its two mountains.But, carve away the cosmetics, and the truth is that Attitash is an incredible ski mountain. That 1,750 vertical feet is all fall line, consistent, beautiful cruisers up and down. It's not the steepest mountain, or the snowiest, or the most convenient to get to – you'll drive past Waterville and Loon and Cannon to get there (or not, Route Expert Bro; save it for your Powder DAWGZ WhatsApp chat). But from a pure, freefalling skiing point of view, it's among the best in the east. Just maybe don't show up at 11 a.m. on a Saturday.Podcast NotesOn the Top Notch DoubleI'm not sure if anyone ever really loved Attitash's Summit Triple, but the removal of the parallel Top Notch double in 2018 intensified focus on the summit lift's shortcomings. Here's where Top Notch ran (Lift 1 far looker's left):No one has ever really given me a good answer as to why former owner Peak Resorts removed that lift without a backup plan, but the timing could not have been worse – the Summit Triple suffered a series of catastrophic mechanical failures in late 2018 and early 2019, effectively shuttering the upper part of Attitash Peak for the bulk of that ski season.Anyway, once Peak removed the lift, the liftline stayed on the trailmap, suggesting that it may join the official trail network at some point:But the liftline slowly faded:This year, the old ghost line is gone completely:On the shared Flying Yankee-Attitash Summit Triple towerAn engineering quirk of the Summit Triple is that it shared a tower with the Flying Yankee high-speed quad, which crossed below the older lift:So what happened to that tower? We discuss it in the podcast.On the train from North ConwayEventually, U.S. America will have to figure out better ways to tie cities to its mountains. One of the best ways to do this is also one of the oldest: trains. Swartz and I briefly discuss the train that runs from downtown North Conway and drops you at the Attitash base. I looked into this a bit more, and unfortunately it's more of a novelty than a practical commuter service at this point. It's expensive ($40 per person roundtrip for coach), slow (the train ride takes around half an hour, compared to a 16-minute drive), and inconvenient, with the first trains arriving at the mountain around 11 a.m. and the latest one departing the mountain at 2:40. Not a great ski day, and the schedule is, for now, fairly limited, running weekends and holidays from the day after Christmas to late February. You can book rides and see details here.On the Attitash masterplanAttitash, like all ski areas that sit partially or fully on Forest Service land, is required to file an updated masterplan every so often. Unlike the highly organized western Forest Service divisions, however, which often have their ski area masterplans neatly organized online (three cheers for Colorado's White River National Forest), eastern districts rarely bother. So, while we discuss the mountain's masterplan, I couldn't find it, and the ski area couldn't readily provide it.On the Mystery of the Missing GladesCirca 2011, Attitash's trailmap called out several named glades on Bear Peak:By 2020, 10 marked glades appeared across both peaks, though Attitash had removed their names:By last season, all of them had disappeared:But this year, some (but not all) of the legacy glades, are back:What's going on? We discuss this in the podcast.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 101/100 in 2023, and number 487 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Oct. 26. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 2. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoBen Wilcox, President and General Manager of Cranmore Mountain Resort, New HampshireRecorded onOctober 16, 2023About CranmoreClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Fairbank GroupLocated in: North Conway, New HampshireYear founded: 1937Pass affiliations: NoneReciprocal partners: 1 day each at Jiminy Peak and BromleyClosest neighboring ski areas: Attitash (:16), Black Mountain (:18), King Pine (:28), Wildcat (:28), Pleasant Mountain (:33), Bretton Woods (:42)Base elevation: 800 feetSummit elevation: 2,000 feetVertical drop: 1,200 feetSkiable Acres: 170 acresAverage annual snowfall: 80 inchesTrail count: 56 (15 most difficult, 25 intermediate, 16 easier)Lift count: 7 (1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 2 triples, 1 double, 2 carpets)Why I interviewed himNowhere does a high-speed quad transform the texture and fate of a mountain so much as in New England. Western mountains, geographically dispersed and disposed to sunshine, can still sell you a ride on a 1,700-vertical-foot fixed grip triple, as Montana Snowbowl did with their new Transporter lift last year, and which Mt. Spokane has promised to do should the ski area ever upgrade its Jurassic Riblets. Midwest hills are too short for lift speed to matter as anything other than a novelty.But in the blustery, frenetic East, a single detachable lift can profoundly alter a ski area's reach and rap. Such lifts have proven to be stabilizing mechanisms at Burke, Gunstock, Ragged, Bromley, and Saddleback – mountains without the terrain or marketing heft of their much-larger neighbors. In each case, one high-speed quad (and a sixer at Ragged), cracked the mountain open to the masses, uniting all or most of the terrain with one six-minute lift ride and, often, stabilizing operations that had struggled for decades.Cranmore is one such mountain. Had the Skimobile Express quad not gone up in 1995, Wilcox tells us on the podcast, he's not so sure that the ski area hanging over North Conway would have gotten out of the last century alive. A “dark period” followed the Skimobile's 1990 demolition, Wilcox says, during which Cranmore, tottering along on a double chair strung to the summit, fell behind its high-dollar, high-energy, rapidly consolidating competitors. The Skimobile had been pokey and inefficient, but at least it was freighted with nostalgia. At least it was novel. At least it was cool. An old double chair was just an old double chair, and local skiers had lost interest in those when high-speed lifts started rising up the New England mountainsides in the late 1980s.It's true that a handful of New England ski areas continue to rely on antique doubles: Smugglers' Notch, Magic, Black Mountain in New Hampshire, Mt. Abram. But Smuggs delivers 300 inches of snow per winter and a unique, sprawling terrain network. The rest are improbable survivors. Magic sat idle for half the ‘90s. We nearly lost Black earlier this month. All anybody knows about Mt. Abram is that it's not Sunday River.The Skimobile Express did not, by itself, save Cranmore. If such a lift were such a magic trick, then we'd still be skiing the top of Ascutney today (yes Uphill Bro I know you still are). But the lift helped. A lot.There is a tendency among skiers to conflate history with essence. As though a ski area, absent the trappings of its 1930s or ‘40s or ‘50s origins, loses something. These same skiers, however, do not rip around on 240s clapped to beartrap bindings or ski in top hats and mink shawls. Cranmore could not simply be The Ski Area With The Skimobile forever and ever. Not after every other ski area in New England, including Cranmore, had erected multiple chairlifts. There is a small market for such tricks. Mad River Glen can spin its single chair for 100 more years if the co-op ownership model holds up. But that is a rowdy, rugged hunk of real estate, 2,000 feet of nasty, a place where being uncomfortable is half the point. Cranmore… is not.So Cranmore changed. It is now a nice, modern, mid-sized New England ski area, with a 1,200-foot vertical drop and a hotel at the base. More important, it is an 86-year-old New England ski area, one that began in the era when guys named Harv and Mel and Bob and Jenkins showed up with a hacksaw and a 12-pack and started building a lift-served snowskiing operation, and transitioned into a new identity suited to a new world. Wilcox, with his grasp of the resort's sprawling, mad history, is a capable ambassador to tell us how they did it.What we talked aboutThe new Fairbank base lodge; what Cranmore found when they tore down the old lodge; the future of Zip's Pub; who the lodge is named after; the base lodge redevelopment plan; what happened when the Fairbanks purchased Cranmore; North Conway; traffic; Bretton Woods; Booth Creek; Cranmore pride; “if [the Skimobile Express] hadn't gone in in the mid-90s, I'm not sure if we'd still be here”; the Skimobile Express upgrade and why Cranmore didn't replace it with a new lift; the history of America's Zaniest lift, the original Skimobile; why Cranmore ultimately demolished the structure; potential upgrades for Lookout; the long-rumored but never-built Blackcap expansion; the glory and grind of southern exposure; night skiing; what happened when Vail came to town; competing against discount Epic Passes; why the days of car-counting are over; the history and logic behind the White Mountain Super Pass and the Sun and Snow Pass; Black Mountain; staffing up when your biggest rival raises minimum wage to $20 an hour; and whether Cranmore has considered a Jiminy Peak-esque wind turbine.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe Fairbank Group did something unsung and brilliant over the past two years. While major resorts across the continent razed and replaced first-generation detachables at a per-project cost approaching or exceeding double-digit millions, Cranmore (which Fairbank owns), and Bromley (which they operate), modernized in a more modest way. Rather than tearing down the high-speed quads that act as base-to-summit people-movers for each ski area, they gut-renovated them. For around $1 million per lift, Bromley's Sun Mountain Express and Cranmore's Skimobile Express got new, modern drives, comms lines, safety systems, and more. The result: two essentially brand-new lifts with three-plus decades of good life ahead of them.Skiers may not see it that way, and most won't even know about the upgrades. The aesthetics, mostly, remain unchanged. But for independent ski area operators knocked into eyes-bulging terror as they see price quotes for a Double Clutch Z-Link Awesomeness 42-passenger Express Lift, the Fairbank model offers an approachable alternative. Knock down the walls, but keep the building intact, a renovation rather than a rebuild.Boyne does this all the time, mostly with lifts the company is relocating: the Kanc quad at Loon becomes the Seven Brothers quad; Big Sky's Swift Current quad becomes Sugarloaf's Bucksaw Express; Sunday River's Jordan quad is, someday, maybe, supposedly going to land at Pleasant Mountain. Sugarloafers may grumble on their message boards about getting a used quad while Sunday River erects its second D-Line bubble lift in two years, but, as Loon President/GM Brian Norton told me about the Seven Brothers upgrade on the podcast last year, the effect of such projects are that skiers get “a new lift… you won't recognize it.” Other than the towers and the chairs, the machine parts of these machines really are brand new.Cranmore and its sister resorts have found a different way to sustainably operate, is my point here. The understated chairlift upgrades are just one expression of this. But both operate, remember, in impossible neighborhoods. Bromley is visible from almost any point on Alterra-owned Stratton, Southern Vermont's Ikon Pass freight train. Cranmore sits just down the road from Vail-owned Attitash and Wildcat, both of which are larger, and both of which share a pass – which, by the way, is less expensive than Cranmore's – with each other and with their 20 or 50 or 60 best friends, depending upon how Epic you want your winter to be. The local lift-served skiing market is so treacherous that Black Mountain, less than 11 miles north of Cranmore and in continuous operation since 1935, was saved from permanent closure last week only when Indy Pass called in the cavalry.Yet, Cranmore thrives. Wilcox says that season pass sales continue to increase every year. Going into year five of Northeast-specific Epic Pass offerings and year six of the Ikon Pass, that's an amazing statistic. Cranmore's pass is not cheap. The early-bird adult price for the 2023-24 ski season came in at $775. It's currently $1,139. For a 1,200-vertical-foot mountain in a state full of 2,000-footers, with just one high-speed lift in a neighborhood where Sunday River runs five, statistical equivalencies quickly fail any attempt to explain this momentum.So what does explain it? Perhaps it's the resort's massive, ongoing base area renovation that landed a new hotel and lodge onsite within the past year. Perhaps it's consumer habit and proximity to North Conway, looming, as the mountain does, over town. Perhaps it's the approachable, just-right size of the mountain or, for families, the fact that all trails funnel back to a single base. Perhaps it's the massive seasonal youth and race programs. It is, most likely, a combination of all of these things, as well as atmospheric intangibles and managerial competence.Whatever it is, Cranmore shows us that a pathway exists for a Very Good Mountain to thrive in the megapass era without being a direct party to it. It's worth noting that Black, which nearly failed, is a fifth-year member of Indy Pass, which Cranmore has declined to join. While this conversation with Wilcox does not exactly explain how the mountain has been so successful even as it sidesteps megatrends, it's easy enough to appreciate, as you listen to his passion for and appreciation of the place, why it does.What I got wrongI noted that the Skimobile Express quad had been upgraded “last year, or maybe the year before.” Cranmore completed the lift overhaul in 2022.I referred to Vail's Northeast Value Epic Pass as the “Northeast Local Pass.”Why you should ski CranmoreThe New England Ski Safari is not quite the social media meme that it is in the big-mountain West, where Campervan Karl and Bearded Bob document their season-long adventures over switchbacking passes with their trusty dog, Labrador Larry. Alta/Snowbird to Jackson to Big Sky to Sun Valley to Tahoe with a sickness Brah. Hella wicked rad. Six weeks and 16 storms, snowshovels in the roof box and Larry pouncing through snow in IG Stories.Distance is not such an obstacle in the East. New England crams 100 ski areas into a six-state region half the size of Montana (which is home to just 17, two of which it shares with Idaho). Between pow runs we can just… go home. But the advent of the megapass in the Northeast over the past decade has enabled this sort of resort-hopping adventure. Options abound:* Epic Pass gives you three of Vermont's largest ski areas (Okemo, Mount Snow, Stowe); one of New England's best ski areas (also Stowe); and four stops in New Hampshire, three of which (Mount Sunapee, Wildcat, and Attitash), are sizeable. Crotched gives you night skiing.* Ikon Pass delivers four of New England's biggest, best, and most complete ski areas: Killington, Sugarbush, Sunday River, and Sugarloaf; as well as two of its best lift systems (Stratton and Loon – yes, I know the gondolas are terrible at both); and a sleepy bomber in Pico.* Indy Pass gives you perhaps New England's best ski area (Jay Peak); three other mountains that stack up favorably with anything on Epic or Ikon (Waterville Valley, Cannon, Saddleback); and a stack of unheralded thumpers where light crowds and great terrain collide (Black Mountain of Maine, Black Mountain NH, Magic, Bolton Valley, Berkshire East); and a bunch of family-friendly bumps (Whaleback, Dartmouth Skiway, Pats Peak, Saskadena Six, Mohawk, Catamount, Bigrock).Hit any of those circuits, and you're bound for a good winter. So why tack on an extra? Cranmore is one of the few large New England independents (along with Bretton Woods, Smugglers' Notch, Mad River Glen, Bromley), to so far decline megapass membership. That makes it a tricker sell to the rambling resort-hopper.But this is not Colorado. You can score a Cranmore lift ticket for as little as $65 on select Sundays, even in mid-winter, (including, as of this writing, the always raucous St. Patrick's Day). If you're skiing Attitash and staying in North Conway, you can roll up to Cranmore starting at 2 p.m. on Wednesday or Saturday for a $69 night-ski and some pre-dinner turns.And it's worth the visit. This is a very good ski mountain. The stats undersell the place. It skis and feels big. The fall lines are sustained and excellent. Glades are more abundant than the trailmap suggests. The grooming is outstanding. It faces south – a not unimportant feature in often-frigid New England.Even if you're megapass Bro (and who among us is not?), this one fits right into the circuit, close to Attitash, Black, Wildcat, Cannon, Loon, Waterville. It's easy to ski multiple New England mountains on a single trip, or even in a single day. The last time I skied Cranmore, I cranked through 17 high-speed laps in three hours and then bumped over to Pleasant Mountain, half an hour down the road.Podcast NotesOn Hans SchneiderHenry Dow Gibson, who New England Ski History refers to as an “international financier” founded Cranmore in 1937, but it was Austrian ski instructor Hannes Schneider who institutionalized the place. Per New England Ski History:Hannes Schneider was born on June 24, 1890 in Stuben, a small town west of Arlberg Pass in Austria. At the age of 8, Schneider started skiing on makeshift skis.While becoming a renowned skier in his teenage years, Schneider developed the Arlberg technique. The Arlberg technique quickly caught on, resulting in Schneider becoming in demand for demonstrations, films, and military training.Following Nazi Germany taking Austria in the Anschluss, Schneider was imprisoned March 12, 1938.In January of 1937, international financier Harvey Gibson purchased land on Cranmore Mountain in Conway with the aim to make North Conway a winter destination. Two years later, after lawyer Karl Rosen managed to transfer Schneider from prison to house arrest, Gibson leveraged his firm's German holdings and negotiated with Heinrich Himmler to get Schneider and his family released from Germany and transported to the United States. Following a massive welcoming party in North Conway in February of 1939, Schneider took over Cranmore and worked quickly to make it one of the best known ski areas in the country.One of Schneider's first big decisions at Cranmore was to expand lift service to the summit, which was accomplished during his first full season when the upper section of the Skimobile was installed. With top to bottom Skimobile coverage, Cranmore was second only to Cannon's tram in terms of continuous lift served vertical drop in New England.With the onset of World War II, Hannes was reportedly involved in the training and providing intelligence for United States and British ski troops. His son Herbert served in the 10th Mountain Division during World War II, earning a Bronze Star for his heroic actions in Italy. Following the war, Herbert returned to North Conway to work for his father.In 1949, Hannes Schneider was hired to oversee construction of the new Blue Hills ski area outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Schneider referred to the ski area was "Little Cranmore."In the spring of 1955, Schneider was actively working to open new terrain at Cranmore, serviced by its first chairlift. Following a day of laying out new terrain in what would become the East Bowl, Schneider died of a heart attack. Schneider's son Herbert assumed control of the Cranmore ski school and, circa 1963 started a two decade run as owner of the ski area.Schneider's name lives on at Cranmore, as a trail (Schneider in the East Bowl) and the annual Hannes Schneider Meister Cup Race.On the Fairbank GroupCranmore is owned by the Fairbank Group, whose chairman and namesake, Brian Fairbank, transformed Jiminy Peak from a Berkshires backwater into the glimmering modern heart of Massachusetts skiing. The company also operates Bromley (which is owned by Joseph O'Donnell), and owns a renewable energy operation (EOS Ventures), a ski industry e-learning platform (Bullwheel Productions), and a snowmaking outfit (Snowgun Technologies). For all this and more, including Jiminy Peak's early embrace of clean energy to power its operation, Brian Fairbank earned a spot in the Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2020. I hosted him on the podcast that autumn to discuss his career and achievements:On Booth Creek Ski HoldingsIn an alternate universe, Booth Creek may stand today on Alterra's throne, Vail's foil in the Skico Wars. For a brief period in the late ‘90s, the company, founded by former Vail and Beaver Creek owner George Gillett Jr., owned eight ski areas across the United States: Cranmore, Loon, Waterville Valley, Grand Targhee, Summit at Snoqualmie, Bear Mountain (now part of Big Bear), Northstar, and Sierra-at-Tahoe. In 1998, the company attempted to purchase Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. But, as this summary chart from New England Ski History shows, Booth Creek began selling off resorts in the early 2000s. Today, it owns only Sierra-at-Tahoe:On the SkimobileHad Cranmore's monolithic Skimobile survived to the present day, most visitors would probably mistake it for a mountain coaster. When it went live, in 1938, skiers likely mistook it for the future. “Well, by gum, a contraption that just takes you right up the mountain while you sit on your heinie. This will change skiing forever!”Instead, the Skimobile, a two-track monster that toted skiers uphill in single-passenger carts, passed five decades as a beloved novelty before Cranmore demolished it in 1990. The New England ski diaspora is still sore about this. But imagine building a Great Wall of China vertically up your mountain. It would kind of make it hard for skiers, Patrol, groomers, etc. to move around the bump. And someone came up with a better idea called a “chairlift.” When the only feasible alternative was the ropetow, the Skimobile probably seemed like the greatest invention since electricity. But once the chairlift proliferated, the shortcomings of a tracked lift became obvious.The Skimobile rose Cranmore's full 1,200 vertical feet in two sections: the lower, built in 1938, and the upper, constructed the following year. Skiers had to disembark the first to take the second. Here's how they laid out in a circa 1951 trailmap:On the potential Black Cap expansionWilcox and I discussed Cranmore's long-proposed Black Cap expansion, which would give Cranmore a several-hundred-acre, several-hundred-vertical-foot boost off the backside. New England Ski History includes the following details in its short write-up of Black Cap:In 1951, Cranmore obtained an easement on 500 acres of land on Black Cap, a ledgy peak located to the east of the ski area. If the ski area were expanded to the top of Black Cap, Cranmore would see an increase of 700 vertical feet to 1,800 feet, making it the second highest in the Mount Washington Valley.Wilcox provides slightly different numbers, but doesn't rule out the possibility of this significant expansion at some future point. The current trailmap shows Black Cap looming in the background:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 91/100 in 2023, and number 477 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Sept. 7. It dropped for free subscribers on Sept. 14. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoMike Solimano, President and General Manager of Killington and Pico Mountains, VermontRecorded onSept. 5, 2023About KillingtonClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Powdr CorpLocated in: Killington, VermontYear founded: 1958Pass affiliations: Ikon Pass: 5 or 7 combined days with PicoReciprocal partners: Pico access is included on all Killington passesClosest neighboring ski areas: Pico (:12), Saskadena Six (:39), Okemo (:40), Twin Farms (:42), Quechee (:44), Ascutney (:55), Storrs (:59), Harrington Hill (:59), Magic (1:00), Whaleback (1:02), Sugarbush (1:04), Bromley (1:04), Middlebury Snowbowl (1:08), Arrowhead (1:10), Mad River Glen (1:11)Base elevation: 1,156 feet at Skyeship BaseSummit elevation: 4,241 feet at Killington PeakVertical drop: 3,085 feetSkiable Acres: 1,509Average annual snowfall: 250 inchesTrail count: 155 (43% advanced/expert, 40% intermediate, 17% beginner)Lift count: 20 (2 gondolas, 1 six-pack, 5 high-speed quads, 5 fixed-grip quads, 2 triples, 1 double, 1 platter, 3 carpets - view Lift Blog's inventory of Killington's lift fleet)About PicoClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Powdr CorpLocated in: Mendon, VermontYear founded: 1934Pass affiliations: Ikon Pass: 5 or 7 combined days with KillingtonReciprocal partners: Pico access is included on all Killington passes; four days Killington access included on Pico K.A. PassClosest neighboring ski areas: Killington (:12), Saskadena Six (:38), Okemo (:38), Twin Farms (:38), Quechee (:42), Ascutney (:53), Storrs (:57), Harrington Hill (:55), Magic (:58), Whaleback (1:00), Sugarbush (1:01), Bromley (1:00), Middlebury Snowbowl (1:01), Mad River Glen (1:07), Arrowhead (1:09)Base elevation: 2,000 feetSummit elevation: 3,967 feetVertical drop: 1,967 feetSkiable Acres: 468Average annual snowfall: 250 inchesTrail count: 58 (36% advanced/expert, 46% intermediate, 18% beginner)Lift count: 7 (2 high-speed quads, 2 triples, 2 doubles, 1 carpet - view Lift Blog's inventory of Pico's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himImagine if the statistical bureaus of nations operated like ski areas - the countries just threw around numbers with no basis in measurable reality. China could say it was bigger than Russia, U.S. America could claim more territory than Canada, and North Korea could say it was bigger than all of them combined (hell, it probably does).This is the world one steps into when trying to ascertain the size of New England ski areas. Mt. Abram claims 450 acres. Middlebury Snow Bowl brags on “600-plus acres of woods and glades,” which would make it larger than Sugarbush, the Alterra-owned mega-resort that undersells itself with a 581-acre tally. Here's what the aliens would see if they were to match our internet boasts up to measurable reality:Did Middlebury Snowbowl acquire the air rights over its mountain? Is Mt. Abram built like Istanbul, with several ancient ski areas buried beneath the modern foundation, giving us a vast ski labyrinth to explore?This strategy probably worked better when most skiers' mode of resort comparison was “scanning a bunch of brochures at a rest area.” It's harder to maintain when every human carries a device equipped with a map of planet earth in their pocket at all times. But ski areas keep fibbing anyway.Which is probably why, several years ago, Killington started measuring itself like a Western ski area: draw a border around the property – that's your skiable terrain. Oh, and we'll no longer yell at you for skiing in the woods, which is technically “terrain” even if the underbrush is too thick for anything larger than a chipmunk to navigate.Some of you would like me to challenge statistical inconsistency across the ski industry as a main feature of this newsletter. But I prefer to just make fun of it. If Mt. Abram wants to be the Baghdad Bob of New England skiing, well, what else are you going to do for attention when you're across the street from Sunday River, whose annual lift-upgrade budget exceeds the GDP of Australia?But until the North Conway Treaty of 2038, at which the ski areas of North America will collectively agree upon a universal statistical standard based upon actual measurements, I'm just going to take their word for it (sort of). Here's a list of New England ski areas from largest to smallest, by skiable acreage, according to the ski resort's own claims (I excluded Middlebury Snowbowl and Mt. Abram, which more accurately measure out at 110 and 170 acres, respectively):Anyone who's spent any amount of time skiing New England knows that something feels off with this list. Sugarbush, Stowe, and Jay – three of the dozen or so New England ski areas with reliable glades – ski as big as anything in the East. All three feel substantively larger than Stratton or Mount Snow. And neither Bolton Valley nor Black Mountain of Maine ski on the scale of Cannon or Waterville Valley.But no one is disputing that top line. Killington is the largest ski area in New England. You can quibble about the vertical drop – the gut of Killington is the 1,650-ish-foot K-1 face. To scoop up the full 3,000-plus feet requires a rarely-skied meander down to the Skyeship Base at US 4. Mt. Ellen at Sugarbush (2,600 vertical feet), Madonna at Smuggs (2,150), FourRunner at Stowe (2,046), the single chair at Mad River Glen (1,972 feet), and Sugarloaf's spectacular 2,820-foot face all deliver more sustained steep skiing than The Beast.But there's nothing else in the East on Killington's scale, the massive overlapping network of six peaks rolling in all directions from the frantic hub. It's one of the few ski areas, East or West, where I ever truly feel lost. There's something brilliantly scattershot about it, something feral and boundless and enigmatic, as though 16 small ski areas had been stapled together by someone who's never skied. There are insane traverses and endless flats, riotously steep trees and bumps all over, long groomers that you think lead back to the same lift you just exited, but instead seem to deposit you in New Hampshire. There are trails on the far fringe that feel abandoned on even the busiest days, where you suspect without being able to prove it that you've been transported to an alternate dimension of groomed forever-down, or at least back to a time before the Ikon Pass gave every skier on the eastern seaboard an annual allotment of Killington lift tickets.It all works somehow. This great machine, howling like an armor-plated Mad Max rig, a cobbled-together war machine screaming across the winter plains. It feels like it should fall apart, disintegrate by the combined forces of speed and volume. But it carries on, the growling, supercharged id of New England winter, The Beast a gloss well-earned.What we talked aboutWhat's behind Killington's run of June closings; building the Superstar Glacier; why “The Beast” returned; how Killington pulled off the 2022 World Cup with a wildly warm November; what happened to October openings; early- versus late-season energy; whether social media makes the spring skiing party seem bigger than it is; Pico's massive, multi-year snowmaking evolution; “Pico's probably not worth what one detachable lift costs on its own” – the hard math of lift upgrades; Powdr Corp's long-term commitment to Pico; Pico's private mid-week mountain rentals; the new K-1 lodge; falling in love with skiing on a Magic Mountain powder day; when you start as chief financial officer and the parent company informs you that they may not be able to make payroll the following month; Killington's rowdy transition from American Skiing Company to Powdr Corp to present-day calm; why Powdr Corp had such a tough time adapting to New England, and how the company finally did; online absurdities; the evolution of Powdr Corp; a Killington base village, on the way at last; why the village took so long to permit; “to be a successful village, it can't just be a bunch of condos”; putting pedestrians first; what the village will mean for parking at Ramshead, Snowshed, Vale, and K-1; employee housing; how the village will connect to the resort's lift system; whether we could see a lift from the village up to K-1; why Killington hasn't upgraded Snowshed yet; redesigning Killington Road; fixing Killington's water-quality issues; considering mass transit along Killington Road; priorities for lift upgrades at both ski areas; where Killington could install another six-pack; whether future sixers would have bubbles or D-line tech; why eight-pack lifts are unlikely; the potential for upgrades for the Bear Mountain quad and Snowden triple; what could eventually replace Outpost at Pico; current thinking around the Killington-Pico Interconnect; Fast Tracks two years in; Fast Tracks season passes; the Beast 365 and Ikon Base Pass add-on; and whether Beast 365 passholders are complaining about the dilution of the Ikon Base Pass (spoiler alert: they are).Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewStorm Skiing Podcast #1: Killington & Pico President & General Manager Mike Solimano, was not the first episode I ever recorded, but it was the first one I released. Because, as I wrote at the time, “if you're going to start something like a podcast about Northeast skiing, you really ought to lead off with the most punch-you-in-your-face prominent part of Northeast skiing.” Starting this series with the head of the largest and baddest ski resort in New England injected The Storm with an instant patina of legitimacy, a forked road into journalism from the speculating, self-assured masses endlessly debating ski areas on social media.There are hazards, of course, to going first, especially for a rapidly evolving brand like The Storm. A lot has changed in four years. The podcast sounds better. The Storm's scope has expanded nationwide, embedding each subject in a national, rather than a regional, context. The article accompanying each episode is far richer, with maps and stats and charts that the reader once had to source on their own. And I hope – I'll let the listener decide – that I've improved as an interviewer and as a host.It was time to reset Killington and Pico. But with purpose. My mission, at The Storm's outset four years ago, was simply to make connections with ski area leaders. The podcast episodes were more general-information sessions than conversations tuned to the moment. But almost every podcast on the current schedule is pegged to some tangible development: Keystone (scheduled for the week of Sept. 11), is opening the Bergman Bowl expansion after a one-year delay; Snowbird (Sept. 18), is a big player in the controversial Little Cottonwood Canyon gondola project; Attitash (Nov. 6), is at long last replacing the Summit Triple with a high-speed quad. Even Great Bear, South Dakota – scheduled for the week of Sept. 25 – is planning a new lift and expansion.Killington just announced what is potentially the most transformative project in New England skiing for at least a generation: the approval to build, at long last, a (hopefully pedestrian) base village in the vast basin between Snowshed and Ramshead, a space currently occupied by parking lots sizeable enough to house the population of Ecuador. The East does not currently have anything like this – at least not at the foot of a ski area, where such things ought to be. But the region desperately needs this sort of human-scaled infrastructure.I live in New York City, which means I am surrounded by acquaintances who have the means and desire to ski, but who do not necessarily ski that often. They will frequently petition me for recommendations that sound something like: where can I take my family/group of friends/brunch club skiing for a long weekend that is within driving distance of the city, has somewhere to stay on the mountain, and has food/drinking options within a short walk? And my answer to them is: there is nothing like that here. Go to Park City/Breckenridge/Aspen/somewhere else out West. New England is so preoccupied with preserving their natural environment that most meaningful development is done a several-mile drive from the major ski hills, which of course compromises the natural environment with sprawl, excessive traffic, and parking lots the size of the Mendenhall Glacier.There are some minor exceptions to this: small villages at Stratton and Stowe. Ample slopeside accommodations at Smugglers' Notch and Okemo. But none of these give the skier that sense of place they'll find in Steamboat or Crested Butte or even Vail Village, with its pedestrian walkways paved over what had been wilderness until the 1960s. But who says a new village is a “fake” village, as they're so often framed? A place for people to gather is a place for people to gather, and if we could build such places 2,000 years ago, we can build them today.New England deserves this. Because great ski areas are better when the community doesn't end at the bottom of the lift queue. Because once we build one, others will follow. Because it's a fairly stupid fact that the region of the United States most known for its quaint small towns is without a single quaint ski town (meaning, one that backs up to the ski resort). Because Built America has sprawled out enough, and its time to back up and fill in all the blank space with something better. Because there is no better way for a state preoccupied with preserving its natural environment to build than in dense clusters of life and activity. And because it would be fabulous and because it would work and because I'm tired of telling New Yorkers to fly to Aspen when Killington ought to be able to give them everything they need.Questions I wish I'd askedI wanted to talk a bit about the Woodward park that Powdr has been dropping at Killington each of the past several winters. I also had a few questions about passes: the Pico K.A.'s odd name, the creeping price of the Killington spring pass, whether the Mountain Collective was in play for Killington.What I got wrongAbout the size of PicoI said Pico was about “the size of Cannon or the size of Waterville Valley.” This is kind of true but was also an on-the-fly guess. As is clear from the skiable acreage discussion above, gauging the size of New England ski areas is a little bit of a party game. I think Pico and Waterville are about the same size, but Pico, mimicking Killington's border-to-border measurement philosophy, claims 468 acres. Waterville, which, according to general manager Tim Smith, only counts trail acreage, sits at 265 acres. But both hit right around 2,000 feet of vert. Cannon is a bit higher, at 2,180. Still, I think it was a fair comparison. Here are New England's tallest ski areas, organized by vertical drop:About resumesI said in the intro that Solimano had joined Killington in 2002. He actually started in December 2001, as he clarifies in the interview.About the Ikon Base PassWhen discussing the erosion of the Ikon Base Pass over time, I said that “Alterra had taken mountains off” the pass. That wasn't exactly right or fair. Former Alterra CEO Rusty Gregory told me on the podcast last year that Alterra resisted creating the Plus tier for Ikon Base. But Jackson Hole and Aspen, facing locals' revolts over the pass' impact, insisted on doing something. The Ikon Base Plus, then, was a compromise. Other ski areas have followed since the Base Plus debuted in 2020: Alta and Deer Valley (the latter of which Alterra does own) in 2022, and Taos in 2023. Snowbasin and Sun Valley opted for Base Plus over Base when they joined the coalition in 2022.Still, however we got here, the fact is this: the Ikon Base Pass excludes seven of the pass' most attractive destinations. Unfortunately, passholders at partner resorts that offer an Ikon Base Pass with their top-tier season passes (Sugarloaf, Sunday River, Loon, Killington, Windham, Aspen, Big Sky, Taos [sold out], Alta, Snowbasin, Snowbird, Brighton, Jackson Hole [sold out], Sun Valley, Mt. Bachelor, Boyne Mountain), are not able to upgrade to an Ikon Base Plus or full Ikon Pass. Several leaders of the above-mentioned mountains have confirmed to The Storm that their passholders find this annoying, like getting a year of free Domino's but being told that you can only order salad and sandwiches. No pizza for you. Alta is the pizza on the Ikon Pass. Jackson Hole is pizza. Aspen is pizza. Blue Mountain is a Chicken Ceasar salad. It's nice. It tastes fine. But really everyone wants the pizza.Here's that chart again tracking Ikon Pass partners by tier over time:Why you should ski Killington and PicoOne reason to ski Killington is easy: often, it's your only option. The mountain closed June 1 this year, more than a month after every other resort in the region other than Jay and Sugarbush, which both ran to May 7. On the other end, The Beast has somewhat ceded its rush to open. After six October openings in the eight seasons beginning in 2011, Killington hasn't spun the lifts before Halloween since 2018 (warm falls and Covid haven't helped). But they're rarely beaten to go-live in New England, and seasons that push or exceed 200 days make sure the mountain's expensive season pass is worth it.Pico is funny. If it were anywhere else other than exactly next door to the largest ski area in New England, Pico might be a major ski area. Its 468 acres would make it the largest ski area in New Hampshire. A 2,000-foot vertical drop is impressive anywhere. The mountain has two high-speed lifts. And, by the way, knockout terrain. There is only one place in the Killington complex where you can run 2,000 vertical feet of steep terrain: Pico.The American norm is that skier visits move east-to-west. But I'll get an occasional email from a Rocky Mountain dweller who's visiting family out east, and they want to know where to ski. There are 100 ski areas in New England – more than in Colorado (34), California (30), Utah (18), and Montana (16) combined. How do you sort through all that? If you want my recommendations of what to do with a week, I'd tell you to start with Killington, then move north through Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, Stowe, Smugglers' Notch, and Jay Peak. Then cross the top of New England to Sugarloaf. That's the best of what we've got. But The Beast, the king of them all, is Killington.Podcast NotesMiscellany on items discussed in the podcast:On Killington's historic opening and closing datesKillington has done a nice job documenting these on its website:On the history of the Women's World Cup at KillingtonSince 2016, Killington has acted as the early-season U.S. stop on the Women's World Cup, drawing enormous, raucous crowds. While I don't cover ski racing or competition, I acknowledge the importance of this event to Killington, as an ancillary business, as a celebration of the sport, as a cultural token, and as a showcase of the resort's singular snowmaking firepower. You can sign up for Killington's World Cup updates here.On North Ridge early-season skiingEarly-season skiing at Killington is a novel, inventive, highly orchestrated event. Typically, only three runs are open, and they are lodged on an area called North Ridge near the top of Killington Peak. Skiers park in the K-1 lot, ride the K-1 gondola over brown slopes to the summit, walk across a catwalk (and its many, many steps), and arrive in winter: typically the Rime, Reasons, and East Fall trails, snowy and frantic with fellow early-season lunatics. The concentration of very good skiers tends to be quite amazing, as the Park Brahs are Parking Out Brah – with whatever little knoll they can turn into a feature (plus, usually, a few built on Reason by Killington's parks crew). You lap North Ridge Quad for as long as you can tolerate, but you can't ski back down – there's no snow below East Fall. So you have to hike back up the catwalk, back to K-1, and ride the gondy back down to the parking lot. Here's a diagram:It's less about the skiing, frankly, than about being a part of something unique and joyful. The skiing, however, is sometimes quite good, especially if it's cold enough to leave the snowguns running, refreshing the surface all day long.On Pico's lift fleetPico has one of the oldest lift fleets in New England – the last new lift install was 35 years ago. Strangely, the mountain also has two high-speed quads, both the (historically) problematic Yan detachables (read more on that in the Podcast Notes section here). But, for reasons Solimano details in the podcast, new lifts are unlikely anytime soon. Pico's current state, per Lift Blog:On Powdr Corp's portfolioKillington is one of 10 North American ski areas owned by Park City-based Powdr Corp:On the lawsuit around lifetime season passesWhen Powdr Corp purchased Killington in 2007, the company inherited the largest ski area in New England – and a gigantic anchor in the form of 1,243 “lifetime” season passes distributed by a former owner. Powdr said, “Yeah we're not doing that,” the passholders sued, and Powdr ultimately won. A 2010 synopsis from Legal Blog Watch:Twenty years ago, Killington, Vt., resident Martin Post and his wife, Jill, paid about $3,500 each for lifetime ski passes at Killington Resort. The Posts are happily still alive but, as of May 17, 2010, their passes are not.The Times Argus reports that in May, U.S. Judge Christina Reiss found that the resort's current owners, SP Land Co. and Powdr Corp., which purchased Killington Resort in 2007, were under no legal obligation to honor the passes that were sold in the early years of the ski area as an incentive to attract investors.The class action litigation before Judge Reiss involved 1,243 pass holders -- 342 yearly transferable passes and 901 passes that could be transferred a single time. The plaintiffs alleged that under the wording of the investor passes, the holder is entitled "to the free use of all ski lifts operated by (Sherburne) Killington Ltd. at (Killington Basin) Killington Ski Area so long as the corporation shall operate in that area under an agreement with the state of Vermont." Plaintiffs claimed that the reference to "the corporation" meant any subsequent operator of the ski area, including the new owners, but the court disagreed.Judge Reiss granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment, finding that "the only reasonable interpretation of that language is that it requires Killington Ltd. to provide the designated passholder free use of all ski lifts operated by Killington Ltd. at the Killington Ski Area so long as it operates in that area ... "The term corporation, she wrote, "clearly refers to the named corporations, Sherburne and Killington Ltd." and "reveals no intention to bind Killington Ltd's successors ... To the contrary, Killington Ltd.'s obligations under the passes clearly terminate with its cessation of operations in the area."The plaintiffs have appealed Reiss' decision to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.I'm assuming the plaintiffs lost the appeal, but I can't find any record of it.On New England's 100 ski areasHere's the inventory - collect them all! (let me know if you have):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 74/100 in 2023, and number 460 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

The Big Nansen Ski JumpRegion: Berlin, The Great North WoodsThe Nansen Ski Club was founded in 1872 and is one of the oldest ski clubs in the United States. The club is named after Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian explorer, scientist, and humanitarian. Between 1936-1938, the Big Nansen was the world's tallest ski jump and was the site of the first ever ski jumping Olympic trials in 1938 and the FIS World Championships in 1939 which attracted more than 25,000 spectators who traveled to the Great North Woods navigating small windy backroads and snow trains. More than 87 radio stations broadcasted the event live. The jump eventually hosted four U.S. National Ski Jumping Championships, a North American Championship, Eastern Championships, and numerous international competitions before holding its last event in March of 1985.In 2017, former World Champion ski jumper Sarah Hendrickson, who has family in Plymouth, NH, decided to join the effort to revive the Big Nansen. She convinced her sponsor, Red Bull Energy Drink, to re-deck the jump for one “Last Leap.” On the morning of March 4th, 2017, Hendrickson launched off of the Big Nansen, symbolizing the beginning of a new era for the jump. Even now, with restorative efforts, enthusiasts say the jump is one of the scariest they've ever experienced—it sways with the wind!Read more about Hendrickson's jumpIn this episode of the 603podcast, Dan Egan sits down with guest Scott Halvorson to discuss the history and culture of the Big Nansen Ski Jump. Scott Halvorson is a member and the treasurer of the Friends of the Nansen Ski Jump Committee. He is also the grandson of Alf Halvorson, who oversaw construction of the jump back in 1937-38. Tune in for more on the Big Nansen and ski jumping in New Hampshire. Mad River Coffee is located at Exit 28 off Highway 93 in Campton, NH. You'll find a inviting atmosphere where community is shared over a cup of fresh roasted coffee and homemade pastries at a fair price. Mad River Coffee is where your adventure starts.Jean's Playhouse in Lincoln, NH is the premier arts center presents plays, musicals, comedians, cover bands, films. Visit https://jeansplayhouse.com/ Waterville Valley is New Hampshire's Family Resort. Ranked the #1 ski resort in the East by Condé Nast Traveler, Waterville offers year-round activities and events, including 265 acres of alpine skiing, lift-serviced mountain biking, disc golf, cross-country skiing, food festivals, live outdoor concerts, and more! All kids under 5 ski free, when you purchase an Adult Plus Pass at Waterville.com Recorded at Studio Lab in Derry NHProduced by: Sammy BlairWritten and Directed by: Dan EganHosted by: Dan EganSponsored by:Mad River Coffee Roasters, Waterville Valley Resort, Jean's Playhouse and Ski Fanatics For more information about the 603podcast visit 603podcast.com

Send the PUDs Podcast a Text Message!Tune in as Josh and Nick recap their vacations to Waterville Valley, New Hampshire and Warren, Vermont! Why you shouldn't drink pond water (even if it's just "by accident"), Nick almost loses his wedding ring (again), black bears crashing dinner, hiking the 4000 Footers of Vermont, plus a new segment, and more, on this lush and green 10th(!) episode of the PUDs Podcast!Nick's Music Moment Picks for Episode 10:About You - The 1975 - Being Funny in a Foreign LanguageThe Less I Know the Better - Tame Impala - CurrentsBe Sweet - Japanese Breakfast - JubileeYoung Blood - The Naked and Famous - Passive Me, Aggressive YouThe Take Over - Poppy Jean Crawford - The Takeover EPFacebook:PUDs PodcastInstagram: @pudspodcastTwitter:@pudspodcastEmail:pudspod@outlook.comRecorded and Produced in Black Cat Studios by the PUD Boys

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on July 8. 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 for free below:WhoMark Adamczyk, General Manager of Dartmouth Skiway, New HampshireRecorded onJune 12, 2023About Dartmouth SkiwayClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Dartmouth CollegeLocated in: Lyme Center, New HampshireYear founded: 1956Pass affiliations:* No Boundaries Pass: between 1 and 3 days, depending upon when the pass is redeemed* Indy Pass Allied Resorts: Indy Pass holders get 50 percent off weekday lift tickets and 25 percent off weekends and holidaysReciprocal partners: NoneClosest neighboring ski areas: Storrs Hill (33 minutes), Whaleback (36 minutes), Northeast Slopes (36 minutes), Harrington Hill (41 minutes), Quechee (42 minutes), Ragged (48 minutes), Tenney (53 minutes), Saskadena Six (54 minutes), Ascutney (55 minutes), Arrowhead (59 minutes), Mount Sunapee (59 minutes), Veterans Memorial (1 hours, 6 minutes), Campton (1 hour, 6 minutes), Kanc (1 hour, 10 minutes), Loon (1 hour, 11 minutes), Waterville Valley (1 hour, 17 minutes), Cannon (1 hour, 17 minutes), Killington (1 hour, 20 minutes), Pico (1 hour, 21 minutes), Okemo (1 hour, 22 minutes)Base elevation: 968 feetSummit elevation: 1,943 feetVertical drop: 968 feetSkiable Acres: 104Average annual snowfall: 100 inchesTrail count: 28 (25% advanced/expert, 50% intermediate, 25% beginner)Lift count: 4 (1 fixed-grip quad, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Dartmouth Skiway's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himIsn't it interesting what exists? Imagine if Yale or Dartmouth or hell the University of Vermont wanted to build a ski area today. They'd have better luck genetically splicing a goat with an Easter egg. Or building a Chuck E. Cheese on Jupiter. Or sealing the Mariana Trench with toothpaste. Imagine the rage from alumni, from the Leaf Defenders, from whatever town they decided to slice the forest up over. U.S. American colleges collectively acting as the NFL's minor league while piling up millions in broadcast and ticket revenue – totally fine. A college owning a ski area? What are you, insane?But here we are: Dartmouth College owns a ski area. The origin story, in my imagination: Eustacious VonTrappenSquire VIII, president of Dartmouth and also Scout Emeritus of his local outing club, orders his carriage driver to transport him up to Lyme, where he intends to stock up on parchment and whale oil. As he waits for the apothecary to mix his liver tonic, the old chum takes a draw from his pipe and, peering through his spectacle, spies Holt's Ledge and Winslow Ledge rising more than 2,100 feet off the valley floor. “Charles, good fellow, the next time you draw up the horses, be a swell and throw my old snowskis into the carriage. I fancy a good ski on those two attractive peaks yonder.” He then loads his musket and shoots a passenger pigeon mid-flight.“But Sir,” Charles replies, “I'm afraid there's no trails cut for snow-skiing on those peaks.”“Well by gum we'll see about that!” the esteemed president shouts, startling one of the horses so badly that it bolts into Ms. McHenry's salon and knocks over her spittoon. VonTrappenSquire, humiliated, repays her by making McHenry Dartmouth Skiway's first general manager.Unfortunately for my imagination, the actual story is provided in Skiway: A Dartmouth Winter Tale by Everett Wood (sourced from the Skiway's website):With its northern New England location and an active Outing Club, Dartmouth College was “the collegiate champion of the outdoor life and winter sports” in the early 1900s. A number of men skied for the United States in the 1936 Winter Olympics in Germany, an amazing feat given that their local ski hills were what is today the Hanover Country Club.In April 1955, a report, spearheaded by John Meck '33 entitled, “Development of Adequate Skiing Facilities for Dartmouth Students in the Hanover Area,” was submitted to the Dartmouth Trustee Planning Committee. The report outlined five basic principles, the first two stating, “Dartmouth has had a preeminence in skiing which has been beneficial and… it is very desirable that this preeminence be maintained… both in terms of competition at the ski team level and of recreational skiing for the student body generally.” The Trustees were sold with the idea.New England Ski History provides the rest:Following John Meck's report … Dartmouth developed trails on the northeastern slope of Holt's Ledge for the 1956-57 season. Climbing up the new 968 vertical foot complex was a 3,775 foot Poma lift, which reportedly served 5 trails. At the foot of the area, the Peter Brundage Lodge was constructed, designed by local architect W. Brooke Fleck. Dartmouth College formally dedicated its new Holt's Ledge ski area on January 12, 1957, while the lodge was inaugurated on March 3. Accomplished racer Howard Chivers, class of 1939, was the area's first manager.So there you go: Dartmouth College owns a ski area. But what has kept the college from filing the Skiway in the basement alongside the Latin curriculum and phrenology textbooks? Why does the 12th best university in America, according to U.S. News & World Reports' rankings, own the 42nd largest ski area in New England by vertical drop? How does Dartmouth Skiway enrich the culture and mission of Dartmouth College in 2023? And where does this peculiar two-sided ski area fit into a New England ski scene increasingly dominated by out-of-state operators with their megapasses and their 42-passenger steamship lifts and their AI-generated, 3D-printed moguls? I had to find out.What we talked aboutBreaking down the 2022-23 ski season; blowing snow on Holt's earlier in the season; staying competitive in a New England dripping with Epic and Ikon Passes; turning skiing into bowling; staying mentally strong through weeks-long stretches of crummy weather; the Indy Allied Resorts program and whether Dartmouth Skiway would join the Indy Pass; the No Boundaries ski pass; Victor Constant; Winter Park and the impact of the Ikon Pass; the angst of taking over a ski area in spring 2020; why Dartmouth College owns a ski area; it's a public ski area, Folks; Olympic legacy; Dartmouth College 101; students on Patrol; the financial relationship between the college and the ski area; Friends of the Skiway; Dartmouth's unusual two-face layout; whether the two sides could be connected via tunnel or other means; why both sides of the Skiway stop more than 1,000 vertical feet short of their mountain summits, and whether that could ever change; expansion opportunities; a student-led environmental assessment of the Skiway; “we have great potential to be one of the most sustainable ski areas in the country”; upgrading snowmaking; the Dupree family and HKD's support of the ski area; upgrading the Holt's Ledge double; where we could see a non-beginner surface lift; whether we could ever see a high-speed lift on either side of the mountain; building out the glade network; the potential for night-skiing; and season passes.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewAdamczyk is relatively new to Dartmouth Skiway, arriving that first Covid summer with a Winter Park employee pass still dangling from his ski jacket. It was a scary time to punch in for your first ski area general manager role, but also an opportune one: suddenly, none of the old ways worked anymore. Rethink everything. Try anything. It was a moment of maximum creativity and flexibility in a sometimes-staid industry.Not that Adamczyk has done anything radical. Or needed to – Dartmouth Skiway, unlike so many small New England ski areas living and dead, is well-financed and well-cared-for. But his timing was exquisite. Covid reshuffled the purpose and place of small-mountain skiing in the lift-served food chain. If Loon and Cannon and Sunapee and Waterville and Killington sold out or ran out of parking spots and you still needed someplace to ski that weekend, well, you may have ended up at Dartmouth Skiway.The Skiway has been able to ride that momentum to steady increases in annual skier visits. What led directly to this podcast conversation was the Skiway's first annual report, which Adamczyk assembled last November:Adamczyk also helped found a Friends of Dartmouth Skiway group, a popular mechanism for supporting nonprofit organizations. You can contribute here:Yes, the lifts are still slow, and they're likely to stay that way. Dartmouth Skiway isn't going to become Loon West, despite the thousand feet of unused vert hanging out on either side of the ski area. But the place holds a different sort of potential. Dartmouth Skiway can transform itself into a model of: a sustainable, energy-efficient ski area; a small mountain thriving in big-mountain country; and a nonprofit operating in a profit-driven industry. They're off to a good start.What I got wrongAdamczyk and I briefly discussed when the Skiway updated the drive on its Holt's Ledge Hall double. According to New England Ski History, the ski area upgraded the machine with a Doppelmayr-CTEC drive in 2005.I had a squint-at-the-screen moment when I mis-guessed the name of the Winslow-side glade trail several times, calling it “M.R.O.,” “H.R.O.,” and “N.R.O.” It is N.R.O., as you can see (I do not know what “N.R.O.” stands for):Why you should ski Dartmouth SkiwayIt you're looking for a peak-days getaway from the chaos of Killington or Cannon or Bretton Woods, this isn't a bad alternative. Dartmouth Skiway's 38,000 annual skier visits wouldn't fill the K-1 gondola queue on a February Saturday. Sure, the Skiway's lifts are slow and stop far below the summits, but the place is cheap and well-maintained, and it delivers a thousand(-ish) feet of vert, two distinct faces, and twisty-fun New England rollers.But there's something else. Over the past decade, I've shifted my ski season philosophy to emphasize exploration and novelty. I've always been a resort-hopper; my typical mid-90s ski season rotated through a dozen Michigan bumps punctuated by a run east or west. But by the time I'd moved east in the early 2000s, I held a firm prejudice for larger mountains, sculpting a wintertime rotation of Killington-Mount Snow-Stratton-Sugarbush-Gore-Whiteface (and the like), peppered with some Hunter Mountain or Windham. I'd convinced myself that the smaller ski areas weren't “worth” my time and resources.But then my daughter, now 15, started skiing. I hauled her to Gore, Sugarbush, Killington, Sunday River, Loon, Steamboat, Copper. Her preference, from the start, was for the smaller and less frantic: Thunder Ridge, Bousquet, Plattekill, Catamount, Royal, Willard, Mohawk, and her favorite, 200-vertical-foot Maple Ski Ridge outside Schenectady, New York. She's at ease in these places, free to ski without mob-dodging, without waiting in liftlines, without fighting for a cafeteria seat.And on these down-day adventures, I realized something: I was having a great time. The brutal energy of The Beast is thrilling and invigorating, but also exhausting. And so I began exploring: Elk Mountain, Montage, Greek Peak, Song, Labrador, Peek'N Peak, Oak Mountain, Mount Pleasant, Magic, Berkshire East, Butternut, Otis Ridge, Spring Mountain, Burke, Magic, King Pine, Granite Gorge, Tenney, Whaleback, Black Mountain of Maine. And so many more, 139 ski areas since downloading the Slopes app on my Pet Rectangle at the beginning of the 2018-19 ski season. This process of voyaging and discovery has been thrilling and gratifying, and acted as a huge inspiration for and catalyst of the newsletter you're reading today.I've become a completist. I want to ski every ski area in North America. Each delivers its own thrill, clutches its own secrets, releases its own vibe. This novelty is addictive. Like trying new restaurants or collecting passport stamps. Yes, I have my familiars – Mountain Creek, everything in the Catskills – where I can rip off groomers and max out the floaters and have calibrated the approach speed on each little kicker. But the majority of my winter is spent exploring the Dartmouth Skiways of the world.Budget megapasses, with their ever-expansive rosters, have made it easier than ever to set up and cross off a wintertime checklist of new destinations. So take that Indy Pass, and, yes, cash in your days at Jay and Waterville and Cannon and Saddleback. But linger in between, at Black New Hampshire and Black Maine and Saskadena Six and Pats Peak. And cash in those discount days for the Indy Allied resorts: McIntyre and Whaleback and Middlebury Snowbowl and King Pine. And Dartmouth Skiway.Podcast NotesOn the No Boundaries PassDartmouth Skiway was an inaugural member of the No Boundaries Pass, a coupon book that granted access to four New England ski areas for $99 last season:The pass was good for up to three days at each ski area. The concept was novel: No Boundaries mailed each passholder a coupon book that contained three coupons for each partner mountain. Skiers would then trade in one coupon for a non-holiday weekday lift ticket, two coupons for a Sunday lift ticket, and all three coupons for a Saturday or holiday lift ticket. So you could clock between four and 12 days, depending on when you skied. The pass delivers a payout to each ski area for each skier visit, just like Indy or Ikon or Mountain Collective.The Indy Pass, of course, has already scooped up most of New England's grandest independent mountains, and they don't allow their mountains to join competing, revenue-generating passes. Dartmouth Skiway and Whaleback are both Indy Allied members, and it's unclear how long Indy will tolerate this upstart pass. So far, they're ignoring it, which, given the limited market for a small-mountain pass in a region rippling with deep megapass rosters, is probably the correct move.On Victor Constant ski areaAdamczyk's first job in skiing was at Victor Constant, a 475-vertical-foot ski area run by the U.S. Army at West Point, New York. It is one of the closest ski areas to New York City and is priced like it's 1972, but almost no one has heard of the place. I wrote a brief recap after I stopped in two years ago:Victor Constant pops off the banks of the Hudson, 500 vertical feet of pure fall line served by an antique yellow triple chair. It's 45 miles north of the George Washington Bridge and no one knows it's there. It's part of West Point and managed by the Army but it's open to the public and lift tickets are $27. The terrain is serviceable but the few inches of fresh snow had been paved into blacktop by inept grooming, and so I lapped the wild lumpy natural-snow trails through the trees for two hours. This tiny kingdom was guarded by the most amazing ski patroller I'd ever seen, an absolute zipper bombing tight lines all over the mountain and I could almost see the cartoon bubble popping out of his brain saying Goddamn I can't believe I'm getting paid to crush it like this.Here's the trailmap:If you live anywhere near this joint, do yourself a favor and swing through next winter.On the Dartmouth Outing ClubWe briefly discuss the Dartmouth Outing Club, which bills itself as “the oldest and largest collegiate outing club in the country. Anyone — member or not — may stay at our cabins, go on our trips, rent our gear, and take our classes.” Founded in 1909, the club, among other things, maintains more than 50 miles of the Appalachian Trail. Learn more here.On the original Dartmouth ski area at Oak HillI couldn't find any trailmaps of Dartmouth's original ski hill, which Adamczyk and New England Ski History agree was a surface-lift bump at Oak Hill in Hanover. The area continues to operate as a Nordic center. My best guess is that the surface lift served the cleared area still visible on Google Maps:If you have any additional insight here, please let me know.On Dartmouth Skiway in letters and moving picturesDartmouth Skiway is the subject of at least two books and a PBS documentary:* Skiway: A Dartmouth Winter Tale, book by Everett Wood – order here* Passion for Skiing, book by Stephen L. Waterhouse – for some reason, this is priced at $489.89 on Amazon* Passion for Snow, PBS documentary based upon the Passion for Skiing book:On Dartmouth's two sidesDartmouth Skiway is, like many ski areas, segmented by a road. But unlike Belleayre, which has addressed the issue with a bridge, or Titus, which has bored a tunnel underneath the highway, the Skiway hasn't gotten around to creating a ski-across connection. You can skate across, of course, when the road has sufficient snow, but mostly you have to remove your skis and trek.Holt's Ledge opened first, with a 3,775-foot Poma in 1956 or ‘57, according to New England Ski History. Winslow followed in 1967, when the ski area opted to expand rather than install snowmaking. Grim winters followed – the Skiway operated just 34 days over the 1973-74 season and just four days in the 1979-80 campaign – before the mountain installed snowmaking in 1985.On the Appalachian trail crossing over Holt's LedgeDartmouth Skiway has compelling expansion potential. While the lifts rise just shy of 1,000 vertical feet on either side of the ski area, Holt's Ledge holds 2,220 feet of total vertical, and Winslow soars 2,282 feet. Maximizing this on either side would instantly thrust the Skiway into the Cannon/Loon/Wildcat league of big-time New Hampshire ski areas. Adamczyk and I discuss vertical expansion potential on either face. There is some, it turns out, on Winslow. But Holt's Ledge runs into the Appalachian Trail shortly above the top of the double chair. Meaning you have a better chance of converting the baselodge into a Burger King than you do of pushing the lift any higher than it goes today: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 58/100 in 2023, and number 444 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

Highland Bike Park was once known as Highland Ski Area which operated between 1968-1995 before closing due to mountain debts and dysfunction. In 2003, when the opportunity to buy the defunct ski resort coincided with the sale of his family's fiber optic business, owner and founder Mark Hayes purchased the mountain. In an effort to preserve the place's history and community, he  created Highland Bike Park–same mountain, same name, new purpose. At the risk of sounding too bold, Hayes set out to create “America's Bike Park,” and for a long while it was the only exclusively biking lift-accessed area in the country. Hayes grew up mountain biking in the 1990s and after seeing Whistler Moutnain's bike park in British Columbia, he realized we needed something similar in the US. What set Whistler's bike park apart from other mountain bike systems was their intentionally engineered trails, with machine built berms, drops, and features to create “flow.” This design and execution took capital investment, design, and skilled labor to create. Hayes was prepared to support and invest in a project of this scale at Highland.What is Highland Bike Park's Model?Mountain Bike Park: Highland is the only 100% bike-dedicated, lift-access mountain bike park on the East Coast. They offer the longest riding season in the Northeast. There are no other “things” at the park. It is 100% mountain bike related Camps & Programs: Highland offers overnight camps and programs for adults and kids. Mark describes the park as a place for anyone to come get better and take their riding to the next level.Trail Building Business- Highland Trails is transforming ski resorts worldwide to year-round operation through bike park construction. Mark's brand is leading the mountain bike industry in the development of learn to ride programs, trail design, construction, and maintenance services. By growing the sMad River Coffee is located at Exit 28 off Highway 93 in Campton, NH. You'll find a inviting atmosphere where community is shared over a cup of fresh roasted coffee and homemade pastries at a fair price. Mad River Coffee is where your adventure starts.Jean's Playhouse in Lincoln, NH is the premier arts center presents plays, musicals, comedians, cover bands, films. Visit https://jeansplayhouse.com/ Waterville Valley is New Hampshire's Family Resort. Ranked the #1 ski resort in the East by Condé Nast Traveler, Waterville offers year-round activities and events, including 265 acres of alpine skiing, lift-serviced mountain biking, disc golf, cross-country skiing, food festivals, live outdoor concerts, and more! All kids under 5 ski free, when you purchase an Adult Plus Pass at Waterville.com Ski Fanatics is the ski shop of the white mountains. Located in Campton, NH, the small, family owned business keeps the community supplied with everything you could need for year-round fun. Whether you ski, snowboard, snowshoe, hike, kayak, canoe, stand up paddle board, or camp, stop by Ski Fanatics this season for expert advice, professional gear fitting, or rentals to keep you playing outside. https://www.skifanatics.net/ Recorded at Studio Lab in Derry NHProduced by: Sammy BlairWritten and Directed by: Dan EganHosted by: Dan EganSponsored by:Mad River Coffee Roasters, Waterville Valley Resort, Jean's Playhouse and Ski Fanatics For more information about the 603podcast visit 603podcast.com

Ty Gagne, CEO of New Hampshire Public Risk Management Exchange (Primex), and author of the books Where You'll Find Me: Risk, Decisions, and the Last Climb of Kate Matrosova and The Last Traverse: Tragedy and Resilience in the Winter Whites, visited Dan Egan to record 603podcast's first episode on what it means to adventure in New Hampshire, specifically in the infamously challenging White Mountains. Gagne got his first taste of the Whites in grade school on class trips to mountains like Chocorua and Moosilauke. In this episode, Gagne digs into some of the most memorable and tragic fatalities in the White Mountains and how risk management and decision making are key elements to our experiences in the outdoors. Gagne has spent hundreds of hours speaking with First Responders and the communities affected by these incidents to create a story through a relatively objective lens. In this episode, Gagne reflects on his own adventures in the Whites and shares his professional perspective on risk in the outdoors, what it means to be experienced in the backcountry, how to create safe group environments in the mountains, and more.(Visit your public library or local independant bookstore for copies of Gagne's books!Mad River Coffee is located at Exit 28 off Highway 93 in Campton, NH. You'll find a inviting atmosphere where community is shared over a cup of fresh roasted coffee and homemade pastries at a fair price. Mad River Coffee is where your adventure starts.Jean's Playhouse in Lincoln, NH is the premier arts center presents plays, musicals, comedians, cover bands, films. Visit https://jeansplayhouse.com/ Waterville Valley is New Hampshire's Family Resort. Ranked the #1 ski resort in the East by Condé Nast Traveler, Waterville offers year-round activities and events, including 265 acres of alpine skiing, lift-serviced mountain biking, disc golf, cross-country skiing, food festivals, live outdoor concerts, and more! All kids under 5 ski free, when you purchase an Adult Plus Pass at Waterville.com Ski Fanatics is the ski shop of the white mountains. Located in Campton, NH, the small, family owned business keeps the community supplied with everything you could need for year-round fun. Whether you ski, snowboard, snowshoe, hike, kayak, canoe, stand up paddle board, or camp, stop by Ski Fanatics this season for expert advice, professional gear fitting, or rentals to keep you playing outside. https://www.skifanatics.net/ Recorded at Studio Lab in Derry NHProduced by: Sammy BlairWritten and Directed by: Dan EganHosted by: Dan EganSponsored by:Mad River Coffee Roasters, Waterville Valley Resort, Jean's Playhouse and Ski Fanatics For more information about the 603podcast visit 603podcast.com

https://slasrpodcast.com/   SLASRPodcast@gmail.com   Welcome to the Sounds Like a Search and Rescue Podcast! Also known as SLASR. Join an experienced search and rescue volunteer and his friend as they discuss all things related to hiking and search and rescue in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. This week we are joined by Charlie Buterbaugh, Director of Communications for the Mount Washington Observatory. The Observatory is a private, nonprofit, member-supported institution with a mission to advance understanding of the natural systems that create Earth's weather and climate. It serves this mission by maintaining a weather station on the summit of Mount Washington, performing weather and climate research, conducting innovative science education programs, and interpreting the heritage of the Mount Washington region. Charlie will give us some background about the Observatory's annual Seek the Peak fundraiser, the operations behind the observatory, details about the upcoming summit opening and more! In addition to Charlie sitting in, Stomp has pulled even more info about places and features in and around Waterville Valley that you don't know about but will not have to check out.  All this plus, hikes updates from Black mountain and Timber Camp, and recent search and rescue news including rescues in and around Mount Moosilauke and Mount Passaconaway This weeks Higher Summit Forecast Support Mount Washington Observatory Seek The Peak Website  Become a Member Shop Online Window Cling Order Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScAWSpyB3_6IbQF84DaSkJ1KdlUzQkY6DDNM2S-8axYK98NyQ/viewform    Topics Welcome Charlie Buterbaugh, Director of Communications from the Mount Washington Observatory Killer Whales are attacking boats off Europe Reminder - SLASR is selling anti-SMASR Window Clings Miscellaneous - NE K9, Brain implants for helping paralyzed people walk Canadian Wildfires Sherpa hikes Everest 28 times Hiker's family files civil suit against man who killed hiker in Washington Pop Culture Talk - RIP Tina Turner, Taylor Swift Concert Tickets Topic of the Week - Charlie from the Mount Washington Observatory Recent Hikes - Black Mountain in Benton, Timber Camp in Greeley Notch Stomp breaks down Hidden Gem hikes in and around the Waterville Valley Region Fletcher Cascade Norway Rapids - From Livermore Trailhead East Ponds Loop - Off Tripoli Road  Fool Killer - Great beginner bushwhack off Sabbaday Falls Trail,  Greeley Ponds - In the heart of the Mad River Notch,  Flat Mountain Pond and Shelter Noon Peak - Off rt 49, take the Sandwich Mountain Trail Acteon Ridge  Sleepers East (3840) & West (3881) -  Algonquin Trail - Accessed from either Sandwich Notch Road or from the Drakes / Sandwich Mtn Trail, both off rt. 49.  Recent Search and Rescue News Show Notes Apple Podcast link for 5 star reviews SLASR Merchandise SLASR LinkTree Orcas are attacking boats A nice article about NEK9 Brain implant helps paralyzed man walk again Canadian wildfires continue Nepali sherpa summits Everest for 28th time while death toll mounts to 11 story coming out of Washington State. Dad spends 21k on Tay Tay tickets ( shame)  2 hikers killed by 'rushing wall of water' in Utah Canyon Rangers rescue 3 hikers lost on dark, snowy ADK trail.  Hiker rescued on Gorge Brook Trail  Hiker rescued on Mt. Passaconaway   10 Essentials Links https://www.nps.gov/articles/10essentials.htm  https://americanhiking.org/resources/10essentials/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Essentials  https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/ten-essentials.html  https://www.outdoors.org/resources/amc-outdoors/outdoor-resources/the-10-essentials-what-to-pack-for-a-backcountry-hike/  https://www.mountaineers.org/blog/what-are-the-ten-essentials    Sponsors and Partners Mount Washington Higher Summits Forecast Bay Slate Coasters Vaucluse - Sweat less. Explore more. – Vaucluse Gear Alzheimer's Association - 48 Peaks Seek The Peak Website   

https://slasrpodcast.com/   SLASRPodcast@gmail.com  Welcome to the Sounds Like a Search and Rescue Podcast! Also known as SLASR. Join an experienced search and rescue volunteer and his friend as they discuss all things related to hiking and search and rescue in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. This week, we visit one of the most popular mountains in the White Mountains National Forest - Mount Chocorua. We've talked about Chocorua in the past but we've never done a deep dive so get ready to learn everything you need to know about the trails, camping options, safety considerations and the legends around this iconic mountain. In addition to the Chocorua preview we welcome Lynn Swezey back to the show to share her recent adventures on the mid state trail and to discuss her disastrous slacklining missteps which has sidelined her from hiking for the foreseeable future. , we have an update on some people summiting mount everest this week, Waterville Valley to host a world cup mogul race, more tick talk, Stomp is going back to his hometown of Lynn to talk about how Lynn is on fire and he will give us a history lesson on Lynn Woods, REI stores are unionizing, a history segment on Colonel Joseph Whipple of Jefferson, NH, Gear reviews, Zealand Road, recent search and rescue news and we welcome a new sponsor - Seek the Peak. Window Cling Order Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScAWSpyB3_6IbQF84DaSkJ1KdlUzQkY6DDNM2S-8axYK98NyQ/viewform  Topics North Carolina, New York, Connecticut driving nightmare Welcome back Lynn New merchandise Mount Everest Talk Waterville Valley to host Moguls World Cup Ticks are back Lynn Woods on fire - History of Lynn Woods Cat talk - Daphne catches a bird, naming Stomps new cat REI Stores are starting to unionize White Mountain History - Joseph Whipple, Granny Stalbird Gear Talk Alex Honnold Beer talk Welcome Back Lynn - Mid State Trail, Slacklining, Dealing with injury Road Openings - Zealand and Sawyer River Segment of the Week - Mount Chocorua Recent Search and Rescue News   Show Notes Apple Podcast link for 5 star reviews SLASR Merchandise SLASR LinkTree Interesting Blog about Mount Everest IMG is updating their summit push as of today Boston Globe Article  Ski & Snowboard Moguls World Cup coming to Waterville '24-25 season. Ticks are back with a vengeance.  tickreport.com  Tick testing for Maine residents only. Great resource for NH residents. Lynn Woods & Breakheart Reservations fighting brush fires.. History of Lynn Woods Colonel Joseph Whipple Historical Marker Hikers hidden suspenders Mike's gear summary for summer day hiking  Alex Honnold is back at it again About Mount Chocorua GPS Tracks on Chocorua https://www.strava.com/activities/7750112111  https://www.strava.com/activities/1642400436  https://www.strava.com/activities/1601950784  https://www.strava.com/activities/4083475935  Mountain Rescue team saves tired dog. 10 hikers rescued via Apple ios feature 4 Children rescued in Columbia after plane crash and then story is retracted, fate unknown Hiker rescued on Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail  Hiker rescued on Old Bridle Path   10 Essentials Links https://www.nps.gov/articles/10essentials.htm  https://americanhiking.org/resources/10essentials/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Essentials  https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/ten-essentials.html  https://www.outdoors.org/resources/amc-outdoors/outdoor-resources/the-10-essentials-what-to-pack-for-a-backcountry-hike/  https://www.mountaineers.org/blog/what-are-the-ten-essentials    Sponsors and Partners Mount Washington Higher Summits Forecast Bay Slate Coasters Vaucluse - Sweat less. Explore more. – Vaucluse Gear CS Instant Coffee Alzheimer's Association - 48 Peaks Sweet Beginnings Daycare

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 2. It dropped for free subscribers on April 5. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoJim Quimby, General Manager of Saddleback, MaineRecorded onMarch 6, 2023About SaddlebackClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Arctaris InvestmentsLocated in: Rangeley, MaineYear founded: 1960Pass affiliations: Indy PassReciprocal partners: NoneClosest neighboring ski areas: Sugarloaf (52 minutes), Titcomb (1 hour), Black Mountain of Maine (1 hour, 9 minutes), Spruce Mountain (1 hour, 22 minutes), Baker Mountain (1 hour, 33 minutes), Mt. Abram (1 hour, 36 minutes), Sunday River (1 hour, 41 minutes)Base elevation: 2,120 feetSummit elevation: 4,120 feetVertical drop: 2,000 feetSkiable Acres: 600+Average annual snowfall: 225 inchesTrail count: 68 (23 beginner, 20 intermediate, 18 advanced, 7 expert) + 2 terrain parksLift count: 6 (1 high-speed quad, 3 fixed-grip quads, 1 T-bar, 1 carpet)Why I interviewed himThe best article I've ever read on Saddleback came from Bill Donahue, writing for Outside, with the unfortunate dateline of March 9, 2020. That was a few days before the planet shut down to prevent the spread of Covid-19, and just after Arctaris had purchased Saddleback and promised to tug the ski area out of its five-year slumber. Donahue included a long section on Quimby:But to really register the new hope that's blossomed in Rangeley, I needed to drive up the winding hill to Saddleback's lodge and talk to Jimmy Quimby. Fifty-nine years old and weathered, his chin specked with salt-and-pepper stubble, Quimby is the scion of a Saddleback pillar. His father, Doc, poured concrete to build the towers for one of Saddleback's first lifts in 1963 and later built trails and made snow for the mountain. His mother, Judy, worked in the ski area's cafeteria for about 15 years. “We were so poor,” Quimby told me, “that we didn't have a pot to piss in, but I skied every weekend.” Indeed, as a high schooler, Quimby took part in every form of alpine ski competition available—on a single pair of skis. His 163-centimeter Dynastar Easy Riders were both his ballet boards and his giant-slalom guns. They also transported him to mischief. In his teenage years, Quimby was part of a nefarious Saddleback gang, the Rat Pack. “We terrorized the skiing public,” he said. “We built jumps. We skied fast. We made the T-bar swerve so people fell off.”Just days after his 18th birthday, Quimby left Maine to serve 20 years in the Air Force as an electrical-line repairman and managed, somehow, to spend a good chunk of time near Japan's storied Hakkoda Ski Resort, where he routinely hucked himself off 35-foot cornices while schussing in blue jeans. When he returned to Maine in 1998, he commenced working at Saddleback and honed such a love for the mountain that, when it closed in 2015, his heart broke. He simply refused to ski after that. “I decided,” he said, “that I just wouldn't ski anywhere else.” Friends in the industry offered him free tickets at nearby mountains; Quimby demurred and hunkered down at Saddleback, where he remained mountain manager. The Berrys paid him to watch over the nonfunctioning trails and lifts during the long closure. “I'm a prideful person,” he explained. “OK, I did do a little skiing with my grandchildren, but they're preschoolers. I haven't made an adult turn since Saddleback closed.”Quimby is now working for Arctaris, which owns Saddleback Inc., but that's a technicality. His mission is spiritual, and when I met him in his office, I found that I had stepped into a shrine, a jam-packed Saddleback museum. There were lapel pins, patches, bumper stickers, posters, and also a wooden ski signed in 1960 by about 35 of Saddleback's progenitors. Quimby's prize possession, though, is a brass belt buckle he bought in the Saddleback rental shop in the 1970s. “I used to wear it every day,” he told me, “but when Saddleback closed, I put it on a dresser and never wore it again.”Quimby stood up from the desk now, to reveal that he was wearing the buckle once more. In capitalized brass letters, it read “SKI.” His eyes were glassy with emotion.“We're going to do this,” he said quietly, speaking of Saddleback's resurrection. “We're going to make this happen.”They did make this happen. One feature of improbable feats is that they are often taken for granted once achieved. The number of people who confessed doubts to me privately about the viability of Saddleback is significant. It won't work because… it's too remote, there are not enough skier visits to spread around Maine, there are too many bodies buried on the property, the previous owners emptied the GDP of a small country onto the property and it still failed. All fair arguments, but for every built thing there are reasons it should have failed. The great advantage of humans over other animals is our ability to solve the unsolvable. I push a button on my phone and a person 5,000 miles away sees a note from me in an instant. That would have been dubbed magic for 100,000 years and now it is a fact of daily existence. Humans can do amazing things. And the humans who dug Saddleback out of the grave did an amazing thing, and it's a story I just can't get enough of.What we talked aboutSaddleback's strong 2022-23 ski season; the Casablanca Glades; the ski area in the sixties; “Saddleback was my babysitter”; Rangeley reminisces; when the U.S. Air Force stations a ski bum in Northern Japan; the Donald Breen era of Saddleback and a long battle with the Forest Service; Saddleback's relationship with the Forest Service today; the Berry family arrives; an investment spree; why Saddleback closed in 2015; why the Berrys replaced the Kennebago T-bar with a quad and whether they should have upgraded the Rangeley lift first; Quimby's reaction when Saddleback closed; how Quimby kept Saddleback from falling apart during his five years as caretaker of a lost ski area; why Arctaris finally revitalized the ski area after so many other potential buyers had faded; the most important man at Saddleback; the blessing and the curse of rebuilding a ski area in the pandemic year of 2020; how close Saddleback came to upgrading Rangeley to a fixed-grip, rather than a detachable, quad; how much that lift transformed the ski area; the legacy of Andy Shepard, the former general manager who oversaw the ski area's comeback; Saddleback the business in year three of its comeback; surveying Saddleback's ultra-new lift fleet; why Saddleback replaced the 900-year-old Cupsuptic T-bar with a brand-new T-bar; why the ski area chose Partek to build the new Sandy quad and how successful that lift has been; the story behind the old Saddleback trailmaps with theoretical lifts scribbled all over them (yes, this one):… whether Saddleback will expand terrain any time soon; the ski area's next likely chairlift; the potential for a hotel; the mountain's masterplan; how important the Indy Pass has been to Saddleback's comeback; and Indy blackouts and whether they will continue.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewWith lift towers rising up the mountainside and hammers clanging through the valleys and autumn frosts biting the New England hills, Andy Shepard hacked out an hour for me in October 2020 to discuss the previous six months at Saddleback. He itemized the tasks that Saddleback's crews had achieved in the maw of Covid. An incomprehensible list. Rebuild everything. Clean everything. Hire an army. Demolish and build a chairlift. Stand up a website and an e-commerce platform. All in the midst of the most confusing and contentious time in modern American history. The mission was awesome, and so was the story behind it:Congratulations, you did it. But the second that new detachable quad started spinning in December 2020, Saddleback became just another New England ski area, just another choice for skiers who already have dozens. So now what? What of all those old masterplans showing terrain expansions and lifts extending halfway to Canada? When can we get more places to stay on the hill? Can we get snowmaking on the trail back to the condos finally?Two and a half years later, it was time for a check-in. To see how Shepard and Quimby and the crew had quietly transformed what was long a backwater bump into one of the most modern ski areas in the country. To see how the Indy Pass – which hadn't existed when Saddleback went into its shell – had turbocharged the mountain's comeback tour. And to see, indeed, what is next for this New England gem.What I got wrongI wasn't wrong on this so much as late to publish: Quimby and I discussed season passes at the end of the podcast. At the time, details on the 2023-24 pass suite had not yet been released, and we talked a bit about where pricing would land. These details have long gone public, but I kept the section intact because Quimby details why the ski area was compelled to raise rates from previous seasons (the increase ended up being modest in the context of ongoing inflation, from $699 this season to $799 for next).Also there's a reference in our conversation to Sandy being a detachable quad, but the 227-vertical-foot quad is in fact a fixed-grip lift.Why you should ski SaddlebackMan is this place big. Two broad ridges staggered and stacked and parallel, with dozens of ways down each. Glades all over. Amazing fall line skiing. Lift lines? Not many. Maybe on Rangeley, maybe on big days. But mostly, the place is a glorious wide-open banger, stuffed into a north country snow pocket that most always stands above New England's notorious rain-snow line as storms roll through.“Yes but is it worth the drive?” asks Overthinks Everything Bro. Yes it's worth the drive. “But I have to pass 19 other big ski areas to get there.” So? If a genie erupts out of my next can of Bang Energy Drink, my first wish will be to eliminate this brand of thinking from existence. Passing other ski areas to ski Saddleback is not like passing a McDonald's at exit 100 to eat at a McDonald's at exit 329, more than 200 miles down the road. You're passing a number of distinct and unique ski areas to experience another distinct and unique ski area. A Saddleback run will imprint on your experience in a way that your 400th day at Waterville Valley will not.Not all of us, I realize, are so driven by novelty and the unknown. To many of you, turns are turns. Yee-haw. But I'm not suggesting you drive four hours out of your way to lap a town ropetow. This is a serious mountain, with terrain that has few peers in New England. It is special, and it is most definitely worth it.Podcast NotesOn the ski area's battle with the National Park ServiceQuimby and I had a long discussion on Saddleback's 15-plus-year war with the National Park Service over former owner Donald Breen's expansion plans. While Saddleback sits on private land, the Appalachian Trail runs over the mountain's summit, giving the government a say in any development that may impact the trail. As with most things New England, New England Ski History provides a comprehensive synopsis of what amounts to Saddleback's lost generation:With Saddleback finally financially stable and controlling 12,000 acres of land, Breen sought to tap into its vast potential in the mid 1980s. In 1984, Breen told Ski magazine, "Saddleback has the potential to be one of the largest resorts in this part of the country" and could become "the Vail of the East."While a massive development was possible, including above treeline skiing as well as a bowl on the back side of the mountain, initial plans were made for a phased $36 million expansion "opening up the entire bowl where the ski area sits with three more lifts and numerous trails."Working to gain approvals, Saddleback offered to donate a 200-foot easement to the National Park Service for the Appalachian Trail while retaining the ability to have skiers and equipment cross the corridor if needed. Countering the ski area's plans, the National Park Service recommended taking 3,000 acres of Saddleback's land. As a result, instead of investing in the mountain, Breen was forced to spend large sums of money to defend his property from eminent domain.Attempting to break the impasse in the early 1990s, Saddleback offered to pare back expansion plans and sell 2,000 acres to the National Park Service. The National Park Service responded with an offer for one sixth of the amount Saddleback wanted from the property.By the mid 1990s, Saddleback was offering to donate 300 acres of land to the National Park Service, while retaining the right to cross the Appalachian Trail with connector ski trails. The National Park Service once again refused, sticking with its eminent domain plan. Later Congressional testimony revealed that the Breen family was forced to negotiate with and give concessions to the Appalachian Trail Conference, only to have the agreements retracted by the National Park Service. In addition, the National Park Service would refuse to turn over documents relating to its involvement with other ski areas, or to put parameters of potential agreements in writing.After having spent a decade and a half of his life trying to work with the Forest Service, Donald Breen took a step back from negotiations in 1997, handing the reins over to his daughter Kitty. The Maine Congressional Delegation was brought in to attempt to get the National Park Service to negotiate.At Senator Olympia Snowe's urging, Saddleback offered to sell the bowl on the back side of the mountain to the Park Service in exchange for being able to develop its Horn Bowl area. The National Park Service rejected the offer, insisting the expansion was not viable, that the ski area could sustain increased skier visits on its existing footprint, and that Saddleback's undeveloped land had little financial value.Negotiations continued into 2000, at which point Saddleback had increased its donation offer to 660 acres, while the National Park Service still wanted to take 893 acres by eminent domain. Five proposals were put on the table while the National Park Service threatened to turn the matter over to the Department of Justice for condemnation. Finally, on November 2, 2000, the National Park Service and Saddleback reached a deal in which the Breens donated 570 acres along the Appalachian Trail corridor, while selling the 600 acre back bowl for $4 million. While the deal meant Breen could move forward with his development of the resort, the long battle with the government had consumed millions of dollars and nearly two decades of his life. Now in his 70s, Breen was ready to retire. In 2001, the massive resort property was put on the market for $12 million.To understand just how deeply this conflict stalled the ski area's potential evolution, consider this: when Breen and the Forest Service squared off in 1984, Sunday River, less than two hours away and closer to pretty much everyone, looked like this:And Saddleback looked like this:While both had just five lifts – Sunday River sported a triple, two doubles, and two T-bars; Saddleback had two doubles and three T-bars – Saddleback was the larger of the two, with a more interesting and complex trail network. But while Breen fought the Forest Service, his mountain stood still. Meanwhile, Les Otten went ballistic at Sunday River, stringing terrain pods for miles in each direction. By 2001, when Breen sold, Sunday River looked like this:While Saddleback had languished:Whatever market share Saddleback could have earned during New England's Great Ski Area Modernization – which more or less exactly coincided with his Forest Service fight from 1984 to 2001 – was lost to Sunday River and Sugarloaf, both of which spent that era building rather than fighting.And yes, I also thought, “well what did Sugarloaf look like in 1984 and 2001?” So here you go:On the Berry familyBreen sold Saddleback in 2001 to the Berry family, who absolutely mainlined cash into the joint. Over the next decade, the family replaced the upper (Kennebago) and lower (Buggy) T-bars with fixed-grip quads, and substantially blew out the trail and glade network. Check the place in 2014:But two big problems remained. First, that double chair marked “C” on the map above is the Rangeley lift, the alpha chair out of the base. It was a 1963 Mueller that could move all of 900 skiers per hour. And while skiers could have ridden Sandy to the Cupsuptic T-bar (if both were running), to the Pass trail to access the Kennebago quad and the upper mountain, that's not how most people think. They want to go straight to the top. So they'd wait.Which leads to the second problem. Queueing up for a double chair that was pulled off of Noah's Ark when you could be skiing onto high-speed (or at least modern) lifts just down the road at Sunday River or Sugarloaf is frustrating. Lines to board the lift could reportedly stretch to an hour on weekends. Facing such gridlock and frustration, most casual skiers who stumbled onto the place probably thought some version of, “This is cute, but next weekend, I'm going to Sunday River.”And they did. If the Berrys could have upgraded Rangeley, the whole project may have worked. But financing fell through, as Quimby details in the podcast, and the ski area closed shortly after. But to underscore just how crucial the Rangeley lift is to Saddleback's viability as a modern resort, Arctaris, the current owners, reportedly paid more to replace the chairlift ($7 million), than they did for the ski area itself ($6.5 million).On potential buyers between the Berrys and ArctarisQuimby notes that a parade of suitors tromped through Saddleback between 2015, when the ski area closed, and 2020, when it finally re-opened. The most significant of these was Australia-based Majella Group, whose courtship New England Ski History summarizes:On June 28, 2017, the Berry family announced they had reached an agreement to sell Saddleback to the Australia-based Majella Group. Grandiose plans were announced, as Majella declared it would be "turning Saddleback into the premier ski resort in North America." Initial plans called for reopening for the 2017-18 season with a new fixed-grip quad replacing the Rangeley Double and a new Cupsuptic T-Bar. However, despite announcements that "physical work" had started in September and that the company was "committed to opening in some capacity for the 2017-18 ski season," the area remained idle that winter and the sale was not completed.Nearly one year after the original sale announcement, the Majella Group CEO Sebastian Monsour was arrested in Australia for alleged investor fraud, revealing a financial house of cards. The Majella branding was removed from the Saddleback web site that fall and the ski area sat idle during the snowy winter of 2018-19.So things could have been much worse. Had Majella completed the purchase and then fallen apart, Saddleback would likely still be idle, caught in a Jay Peak-esque vortex of court-led asset salvation, but without the benefit of operating revenue.On Mount WashingtonQuimby notes that the weather at Saddleback can be “comparative to Mount Washington and that's no joke.” For those of you unfamiliar with just how ferocious Mount Washington weather can be, here's a synopsis from the Mt. Washington State Park website (emphasis mine):…in winter, sub-zero temperatures, hurricane-force winds, blowing snow and incredible ice claim the peak, creating an arctic outpost in a temperate climate zone. Known as the Home of the World's Worst Weather, Mount Washington's winter conditions rival those of Mount Everest and the Polar regions.The mountain's summit holds the world record for the “highest surface wind speed ever observed by man,” at 231 miles per hour. As I write this, the summit temperature is 4 degrees Fahrenheit, with 62-mile-per-hour winds driving the windchill to 28 degrees below zero. It's April 2. There's surely some hyperbole in Quimby's statement, but the spirit of the declaration is clear: if you go to Saddleback, go prepared.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 30/100 in 2023, and number 416 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on March 29. It dropped for free subscribers on April 1. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoNick Polumbus, President of Whitefish Mountain Resort, MontanaRecorded onJanuary 13, 2023About WhitefishClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Winter Sports, Inc.Pass affiliations: NoneReciprocal pass partners:* 3 days each at Great Divide, Loveland, Mt. Hood Meadows* 5 days at Red LodgeLocated in: Whitefish, MontanaClosest neighboring ski areas: Blacktail (1 hour, 15 minutes), Fernie (2 hours), Turner (2 hours, 30 minutes), Kimberley (2 hours, 45 minutes), Montana Snowbowl (3 hours), Lookout Pass (3 hours) – travel times will vary considerably pending weather, border traffic, and time of yearBase elevation: 4,464 feetSummit elevation: 6,817 feetVertical drop: 2,353 feetSkiable Acres: roughly 3,000 acresAverage annual snowfall: nearly 300 inchesTrail count: 128 (8 expert, 49 advanced, 40 intermediate, 25 beginner, 6 terrain parks)Lift count: 15­­ (1 six-pack, 3 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 6 triples, 2 T-bars, 1 carpet)Why I interviewed himYou can be forgiven for thinking that Epkon chewed them all up. That the only ski areas worth skiing are those stacked on the industry's twin magic carpets. These shuttles to something grand, to what you think of when you think about the mountains. Ikon got Jackson and Palisades and the Cottonwoods and Taos. Epic got Vail and Telluride and Heavenly and Park City. What more could be left? What more could you need?You probably need this. Whitefish. Or Big Mountain, as you will. Three thousand acres of Montana steep and white. Plenty of snow. Plenty of lifts. A new sixer to boom you up the hillside. The rootin'-tootin' town below. A C-note gets you a lift ticket and change to buy a brew. No bitterness in the exchange.It's hard to say exactly if Whitefish is an anachronism or an anomaly or a portent or a manifestation of wanton Montana swagger. Among big, developed U.S. mountains, it certainly stands alone.This model is extinct, I thought. Coercion-by-punishment being the preferred sales tactic of the big-mountain conglomerates. “Four lift tickets for today, Mr. Suburban Dad who decided to shepherd the children to Colorado on a last-minute spring break trip? That will be $1,200. Oh does that seem like a lot to you? Well that will teach you not to purchase access to skiing 13 months in advance.”So far, Whitefish has resisted skiing's worst idea. Good for them. Better for them: this appears to be a winning business strategy. Skier visits have climbed annually for more than a decade. Look at a map and you'll see that's more impressive than it sounds. Whitefish is parked at the top of America, near nothing, on the way to nothing. You have to go there on purpose. And with Epic and Ikon passes tumbling out of every other skier's jacket pockets, you need a special story to bait that journey.So what's going on here? Why hasn't this mountain done what every other mountain has done and joined a pass? Like the comely maiden at the ball, Whitefish could have its pick: Epic, Ikon, Mountain Collective, Indy. An instant headliner and pass-mover. But the single life can be appealing. Do as you please, chill with who you want, set your own agenda. That's Whitefish's game. And I'm watching.What we talked aboutWhy Whitefish typically calls it a season with a 100-inch summit base depth; Front Range Colorado and I-70 in the 1970s; how Colorado and Utah snow and traffic impacts skier traffic at Whitefish; how a Colorado kid enters the ski industry in Vermont; a business turnaround at Whitefish; “get the old fish out of the fridge”; how Whitefish has stayed affordable as it's modernized; why the ski area changed its name from “Big Mountain” and how that landed locally; who owns Whitefish and how committed they are to independence; the new Snow Ghost Express sixer; ripple effects on other chairlifts after Snow Ghost popped live; record skier visits; snow ghosts; the best marketing line of Polumbus' career; a big-time potential future expansion; the mountain's recent chairlift shuffles; why chairs 5 and 8 don't go to the summit; the art of terrain-pod building; why Bad Rock isn't running this winter; thoughts on the future of Tenderfoot and the Heritage T-bar; Why Whitefish lift tickets cost a fraction of what similarly sized mountains charge; an amazing season pass stat; the mountain's steady rise of skier visits; and much love for the Indy Pass even if it “isn't a good fit for us.”Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewWell I actually thought that January was a great time for this interview. Which is why I recorded it then. And here it is in your inbox, a mere 11 weeks later. Which is a bad look for me and a bad look for the brand and not very considerate to my guest. I'll offer an explanation, but not an excuse: the sound quality on this recording was, um, not good. Most podcasts take two to four hours to edit. This one required 10 times that. So why didn't I just blast it out back in January? Since so much of what I write is reaction to breaking news, every hour I spend on a pod is an hour I'm not delivering more urgent content. And most Storm Skiing Podcasts are fairly evergreen. Skiers binge them on long roadtrips – I know this because they tell me so and because the numbers keep going up on eps that I dropped back in 2019.But none of that matters to you or to the team at Whitefish, and it shouldn't. I know that a lot of you have been waiting for this one since I started hyping it last year, and this long delay was disappointing. I get it. One core promise of The Storm, however, is that I will continually improve the product and the process. So I'll own this one and refine my workflow to prevent future delays. Sorry.But, to address the actual purpose of this section: why did I think that now was a good time for this interview? It's everything I said above. Alterra has copied Vail's ridiculous day-ticket price structure, and Boyne and Powdr aren't far behind. Even little Mountain Capital Partners is allowing the robots to price-surge Arizona Snowbowl tickets past the $300 mark on peak days. Whitefish doesn't exactly stand alone in resisting these price schemes – plenty of other ski areas will still sell you a walk-up lift ticket that costs less than a heart transplant. But none are as large, as high-profile, and as modern as Whitefish – at least not in our beloved U.S. America. Like some brash hipster rocking a Walkman on his fixed-gear bicycle, Whitefish has made the once-pedestrian into the novel. Innovation by staying in place.The Epic Pass gets a lot of well-deserved credit for stabilizing skiing by front-loading pass sales to springtime, insulating revenue from weather-dependency. But Vail and Alterra have cast the $250-plus lift ticket as an essential piece of their passes' success. As though no one would buy the pass if they knew they could still go ski Beaver Creek for $100 anytime they liked. There is a brutal logic to this. You're only going to buy a $275 lift ticket one time. Then you'll go looking for hacks. But the process is demeaning and embarrassing, like you're the last guy to the gas pump in the apocalypse.I wrote a story on Whitefish's business model back in 2021, profiling both that mountain and Jay Peak. Both are run, perhaps coincidentally, by headmen who are fist-bump bros that came up together at late-ASC Killington in the ‘90s: Polumbus and Jay Peak's Steve Wright. I don't know how much they brought their brains together to arrive at similar ticket menus, but I know from interacting with both that they share the same kind of heart. A down-to-earth humility and empathy that considers humans in the business equation, rather than just making them the number at the transactional finish line.Why you should ski WhitefishDid you see the part above about 3,000 acres of terrain and 300 inches of average annual snowfall? Yeah, go enjoy that.But let me harp on the lift ticket thing just a little bit more. If your boys are anything like mine, they are more likely to translate War and Peace into Braille than they are to heed your advice to purchase lift tickets 10 months before your next ski trip. I say this not because my friends are brilliant, but because they are lazy a******s who need their wives to label their underwear drawers lest they be forced to go commando for months on end. So if you're planning, say, “Gary's 50th Birthday Ski Adventure,” you have choices: Heavenly (South Tahoe!), Jackson (Jackson!), Telluride (Telluride!), etc. My buddies, mostly Three-Day Dans, are going to ignore my clear and repeated reminders to purchase Epic Day or Mountain Collective Passes, and are instead going to commandeer their monthly car payment to cover the cost of two days' skiing. And then be all shocked and annoyed about it. Whitefish, where even last-minute skiing runs less than $100 per day, is the solution to such gatherings.That's an edge case, I realize. And surely there are attributes of skiing Whitefish beyond the low cost at the turnstile: the terrain, the views, the snowghosts, the unpretentious vibe, the snowfall, the enormous breadth of it all. But the price thing matters enormously. If you have an Ikon Pass and you're passing through Park City, you're probably not stopping to scope the place out. Throwing down $269 for a day of skiing seems a little stupid if you have unlimited skiing on a $1,000-plus pass that you already own. But if you're rolling from Sun Peaks down to Big Sky and you want to sidebar to Whitefish, well, that lift ticket's not going to kill you in the same way. That sort of pop-around spontaneity defined a big piece of the road-trip ski scene for decades, and it's fading. Too bad.  Podcast NotesOn American Skiing Company and S-K-IPolumbus refers to the S-K-I and American Skiing Company (ASC) Merger, which roughly coincided with the beginning of his Killington tenure in 1996. Check this crazy portfolio, as documented by New England Ski History:At the time of the deal, both companies only had New England ski areas, with LBO Resort Enterprises' portfolio composed of Attitash Bear Peak, NH, Cranmore, NH, Sugarbush, VT, and Sunday River, ME, while S-K-I Ltd. owned Haystack, VT, Killington, VT, Mt. Snow, VT, Sugarloaf, ME, and Waterville Valley, NH.Can you imagine if that crew had held into the megapass era? Instead, they are split between seven different owners:The coalition didn't hold for long. The Justice department made ASC sell Cranmore and Waterville Valley immediately. And even though the company was like “F you Brah” and purchased Pico five minutes later, and went on to purchase The Canyons (then Wolf Mountain, formerly Park West, now part of Park City), Steamboat, and Heavenly, the whole enterprise disintegrated in slow motion over the next dozen years. New England Ski History documents the company's arc comprehensively:On lift shufflesWhitefish moves lifts around its mountain like some of us re-organize our living room couches. Check out the 2005 front-side trailmap on the left. By 2007, the Glacier Chaser Express had been shortened and slid looker's left to replace the old Swift Creek double, and the Easy Rider triple had moved down-mountain and become Elk Meadows. The new Easy Rider, a quad seated across the mountain, was also a relocated machine, from Moab Scenic Skyway, according to Lift Blog.In 2017, Whitefish moved Glacier View, a 1981 CTEC triple, to a new location and renamed it East Rim:Then last year, Whitefish moved the Hellroaring triple looker's left across the mountain. Note the changes in the trail network below Lacey Lane, which ran under the old line:Amazingly, that was the second time Whitefish had relocated that same chair. It began life in 1985 as the Big Creek chairlift, which served the North Side in this circa 1995 trailmap:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 27/100 in 2023, and number 413 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 all year long. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Did you enjoy our recap of Cannon Mountain and Franconia, NH? Well, we're doing the same thing with Waterville Valley, another Epic Pass resort we visited on our trip to New Hampshire.

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Jan. 31. It dropped for free subscribers on Feb. 3. To receive future pods as soon as they're live and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoJeremy Clark, Founder of New England Ski History and contributor to New England Ski Industry NewsRecorded onDecember 6, 2022About New England Ski HistoryNew England Ski History has two main components:1) NewEnglandSkiHistory.comThis is HQ. Each New England state gets a landing page, which in turn links out to profiles of all its active ski areas, its major lost ski areas, and many planned-but-never built ski areas:* Connecticut* Maine* Massachusetts* New Hampshire* Rhode Island* VermontThere are also pages devoted to expansions (both realized and cancelled), lifts (sorted by type, brand, or year installed or removed), and trailmaps. One of my favorite features is the inventory of historic lift ticket and season pass prices (select the drop-downs at the top to change the state or season).The site, like its subject matter, is a little retro, but the information is, in general, very current. For New England podcast prep, this site is gold.2) NewEnglandSkiIndustry.comThis is a news site, focused always and only on New England. The subject matter is expansive and often esoteric: updates on chairlift construction or obscure ski area re-openings – topics few other outlets would cover, but of clear interest to the typical Storm reader. I never send out a news update without checking this site for tidbits that I would otherwise miss. Clark recently launched a Substack newsletter that pushes these headlines right to your email inbox - subscribe below:Why I interviewed himThere has been organized skiing in New England for at least 100 years. Rolling terrain, half-year-long winters, and population density made that inevitable. As soon as machines tiptoed their way into Earth's timeline, New Englanders began flinging them up hillsides. Some stuck. Most didn't. Today, New England skiing is a couple dozen monsters, a few dozen locals, and a scattering of surface-lift bumps where a lift ticket costs less than a pack of smokes.As rich as this history is, there are few reliable sources of historical information on New England skiing. New England Lost Ski Areas Project has documented more than 600 lost ski areas across the region – the site's founder, Jeremy Davis, was one of my first guests on The Storm Skiing Podcast back in 2019 (it's still one of my favorite episodes). The New England Ski Museum has put together timelines on the development of lifts, snowmaking, grooming, and more. But current information on still-operating ski areas is hard to find outside of the ski area sites themselves, and even those are often unhelpful for anything more in-depth than pulling up the current trailmap.New England Ski History hosts the best and most comprehensive library of information not just on the region's major lost ski areas, but on the 90-ish active ones. One thing that has frustrated me in the internet age is how difficult it can be to find what should be the most basic information. What year did Jay Peak open? What is the vertical drop of Veterans Memorial ski hill in New Hampshire? Why did Mt. Tom, Massachusetts, close despite its popularity?For the past 15 to 20 years, Jeremy Clark, who as a tech-brained 1990s teenager built Berkshire East's first website, has been organizing all of this information in one place. The site is free for all, but it has been invaluable to me as a reliable information source on all things New England skiing. I never knew who ran it – unlike The Storm, there is no name adjacent to the masthead - until late last year, when I fired off an email to the anonymous address posted on the site. Clark answered right away, and here we are.What we talked aboutNew England snowmaking superpowers; New England Ski History HQ; the rotation theory of skiing; unsung but interesting small ski areas; growing up at atmospheric and primitive Berkshire East; the power plant that changed weather in the entire valley; Roy Schaefer, savior of Berkshire East; building the ski area's first website for $180 in the ‘90s; the annual continent-wide hunt for used equipment; the evolution of Berkshire East from backwater to four-seasons resort that's a top-10 draw on the Indy Pass; the 100-year-old but little-known Eaglebrook ski area; Proctor Academy ski area; “I realized I'd be able to ski a lot more if I didn't work in the ski business”; how and why Jeremy created New England Ski History; building the site's tremendous ski area profiles; the value of showing up; the potential to scale the site up; assembling the jigsaw puzzle of a decades-long ski-area history; “the goal of the site is to get the history right”; sorting out Berkshire East's complicated history; the role of the interstates in building New England skiing; keeping the site updated; New England Ski Industry News and its corresponding Substack newsletter; why Clark shut down the New England Ski History Facebook page, even though it had approximately 10,000 followers; lost ski areas; the devastating loss of Mt. Tom and why it will likely never return; the value of small ski areas; Brodie; “intermediate terrain is great for business”; the rise and fall of Ski Blandford; Woodbury, Connecticut and whether it could ever come back; assessing Saddleback two years in; the attempted comebacks of Granite Gorge and Tenney; what it would take to make The Balsams happen; what it takes to bring a lost ski area back from the dead; the drama at Big Squaw and whether the upper mountain will ever re-open; whether Big Squaw's minimalist model would work to keep other lost ski areas alive; potential lost ski areas that could re-emerge from the dead; Mt. Prospect; the comeback potential of Plymouth Ski Area in Vermont; New England expansion plans; Ragged; the good and bad of multi-mountain passes; what skiing and smoking have in common; reaction to Pacific Group Resorts purchasing Jay Peak; Vail and New Hampshire – “I hope they've learned that New Hampshire is a lot different than Vermont”; and upgrades at Attitash.          Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewOne of The Storm's animating principles is the celebration of excellence. Who is doing things right in the ski world? Sometimes that's Jay Peak and Whitefish middle-fingering astronomical big-mountain walk-up lift ticket prices. Sometimes that's Alterra assembling the greatest ski area lineup in the history of multi-mountain passes. And sometimes it's someone who has quietly built a damn good website that enriches the world of lift-served skiing in a way that no one else has managed to do. That's why I've hosted the owners of Lift Blog, Real Skiers, and Seniors Skiing on the pod. And that's why I invited Clark onto the show.Industrialized skiing is evolving at an insane pace. It was just six years ago that Vail purchased its first New England ski area. At the time – 2017 – there was no Ikon Pass, no Alterra Mountain Company, no Indy Pass, no Covid, no eight-place chairlifts (in America). The more debris there is blowing around in the storm, the harder it can be to remember the world before it floated in. We all need centering mechanisms, places where we can draw context and anchor our understandings. For New England skiing – one of the most vibrant wintertime cultures on the planet – there is really no better or more comprehensive source than New England Ski History. As we all try to make sense of our ever-changing megapass-dominated ski world of 2023 together, I thought that it would be valuable to point out that the region's past, at least, was already capably organized.What I got wrong* I said that I couldn't think of any New England ski areas that remain under their original ownership, and Clark quickly pointed out that Pats Peak has been under the stewardship of the Patenaude family since it opened in 1962, which of course: I had just discussed that very point with Pats Peak GM Kris Blomback on the podcast a few months before.* I said offhand that Killington and Sugarbush's max 2022-23 lift tickets were in the $180 range, and that I would confirm those prices. Both are hitting closer to $200.Podcast NotesWe discussed quite a few active-but-lesser-known ski areas on the podcast – I've linked to their New England Ski History profile pages below:* Eaglebrook, a 440-vertical-footer in Massachusetts served by a double chair. This is the second-oldest ski area in the country, and serves the students at the private Eaglebrook School. I just love their trailmap:* Proctor is another private-academy bump, a 436-footer in Andover, New Hampshire. This one has occasionally opened to the public in the past, but I haven't been able to find any information on open ski days since the pandemic hit in 2020.We talked a lot about Berkshire East, which Clark worked at for more than a decade:* Clark referenced a cancelled but partially built expansion for the ski area in the 1970s – read the full history here.* Clark designed Berkshire East's first website. The earliest screenshot I could find was from April 18, 1998, and it's a beauty:We also discussed several lost ski areas, including:* Chickley Alps, Massachusetts rose 300 vertical feet and operated from 1937 to 1979.* Mt. Tom, Massachusetts, a fairly successful ski area whose sudden closing in 1998 is still a bit mystifying. This 680-vertical-foot ski area ran on four double chairs and a collection of surface lifts.* Brodie, which the owners of neighboring Jiminy Peak bought and shuttered around the beginning of the century.I asked Clark which lost ski areas had the best chance of a comeback:* Monteau in northern New Hampshire, which rose 650 vertical feet and was served by a double chair and some surface lifts, and has been closed since 1990.* Farr's Hill, Vermont. This 160-foot bump has been closed since the 1960s. A couple years back, however, a new owner purchased a used T-bar from Oak Mountain, New York, with the intention of re-opening the ski area. I haven't heard any updates in a while, and the ski area's Facebook page is now inactive.* Plymouth Notch/Roundtop/Bear Creek – this is the most recent lost chairlift-served ski area in Vermont. It operated as a private club as recently as 2018, and has a fairly extensive trail network. The problem? It's sandwiched between Killington and Okemo.Clark and I discussed the upcoming expansion plans at:* Waterville Valley – the resort hopes to finally link the village to the ski area with a gondola up the back side of Green Peak:* Sunday River, where the recently opened Jordan 8 chairlift will act as the gateway to the massive Western Reserve territory, which could double the size of the resort. Unfortunately, there are no renderings of the expansion to share yet.* Sugarloaf – West Mountain, which is scheduled to open in early 2024 (I did a full write-up on this one a few weeks back):We also discussed abandoned or suspended potential expansions at:* Ragged Mountain – Pinnacle Peak, where the ski area cut trails years ago; owner Pacific Group Resorts confirmed to me last year that they do not intend to proceed with the expansion.* Killington – the proposed but cancelled Parker's Gore project would have added 1,500 acres with a sustained 3,000 foot vertical drop, served by up to 10 lifts.* Cranmore – Black Cap, which would boost the ski area's vertical drop from 1,200 to 1,800 feet.* Bolton Valley, which was originally proposed as a far larger resort than the three-peak operation you can ski today. Clark said he found this masterplan, which shows chairlifts running all the way down to Interstate 89 – 1,800 feet below where the current Vista base area sits:We discussed the Hall double chair that once acted as a redundant lift to the Attitash Summit Triple, which Peak Resorts removed without explanation around 2018. This turned out to be the worst possible decision, as the triple then conked out for months at the end of the 2018-19 ski season. Vail Resorts will finally replace the triple with a high-speed quad this summer, making the decision to remove the double moot. It's the Top Notch Double on the map below:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 7/100 in 2023, and number 393 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 all 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

Good Day To You All & Welcome To A New Podcast Episode! This week, I'm joined by Tim Smith, President, and GM of Waterville Valley Resort in New Hampshire. Not only do we talk about running a mountain, which we usually do with folks in similar positions, but Tim has a ton of stories beyond that. He also has a real passion for New England ski culture and some interesting insight into that culture since he is from the midwest. Also, he answers what it's like to run a mountain that is owned by politicians. This episode is a ton of fun and I hope you all enjoy it. Thank you for listening.   Be sure to check out the Ski Rex Media Partners, as well: Whaleback Mountain - Saint Custom Ski & Snowboards - Skiing With No Filter Please follow/subscribe to the Ski Rex Media Podcast on Podbean, your favorite podcast app, or YouTube. Head to http://www.skirexmedia.com for more from Ski Rex Media, which includes links to social media, contact links, merch, and a link to the Ski Rex Media Patreon page, which is at https://www.patreon.com/skirexmedia. Subscribing there gets you the podcast on Sunday instead of Wednesday, priority call-ins during live streams, bonuses, and other tasty tidbits. Thank you!!!

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

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 support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Sept. 26. Free subscribers got it on Sept. 29. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoKris Blomback, General Manager of The Mighty Pats Peak, New HampshireRecorded onSeptember 19, 2022About Pats PeakClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Patenaude familyPass affiliations: Indy PassReciprocal pass partners: NoneLocated in: Henniker, New HampshireClosest neighboring ski areas: Crotched (30 minutes), Mount Sunapee (30 minutes), McIntyre (30 minutes), Veterans Memorial (50 minutes), Ragged Mountain (50 minutes), Granite Gorge (50 minutes – scheduled to return this season), Whaleback (50 minutes), Gunstock (1 hour), Storrs Hill (1 hour),Base elevation: 690 feetSummit elevation: 1,460 feetVertical drop: 770 feetSkiable Acres: 115 acres      Average annual snowfall: 100 inchesTrail count: 28 trails, 9 glades (17% double-black, 12% black, 21% intermediate, 50% beginner)Lift count: 11 (4 triples, 2 doubles, 2 carpets, 1 J-bar tow, 2 handle tows - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Pats Peak's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himLiving next door to Vermont is probably a little like being Hoboken. Nice town, great location, all the advantages of city life, but invisible in the orbit of Earth's most famous island. Did you know that the population density of Hoboken is about double that of New York City? Probably not. It's fine. Most people don't. Nobody cares about Hoboken.That's how it seems the ski intelligentsia sometimes views New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, the three ski states bordering Vermont. By whatever accident of geology and meteorology, the Pretentious Beer State possesses most of the region's biggest ski areas and its most reliable snowzone: the Green Mountain Spine. Along this rim sit your headliners: Killington, Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, Stowe, Smugglers' Notch, Jay Peak. If you tried to tell me these were the six best ski areas between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, I'd probably be like, “OK” and go eat my Pop-Tarts.But if The Storm was just a documentary tool for places where New Yorkers vacation, then I would have wrapped this project up two years ago. This is a big New Hampshire house, and always has been: the heads of Loon, Cannon, Gunstock, Waterville Valley, Whaleback, and Ragged have all made podcast appearances. Still, the Vermont interview tally is 15, even though I ski New Hampshire as often as I do Vermont. Clearly I have work to do.So here we are. A New Hampshire ski area with the best attributes of New Hampshire ski areas: service- and snowmaking-oriented; steep and varied; busy because it's close to everything; lots of lifts; lots of community and tradition. If you don't think all that fits into 115 acres, you haven't skied New England. The Mighty Pats Peak jams it all in just fine.What we talked aboutReaction to the Jay Peak sale;Ragged Mountain; Pats Peak in the early ‘90s; a brief history of Pats Peak; Blomback's 100-point list to modernize Pats Peak; “when you operate a ski area 60 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, she's got something to say about that”; how Pats Peak survived when so many Southern New Hampshire ski areas died; the overcorrection that nearly wiped out Pats Peak's competition; the problem with debt; thoughts on the pending comebacks of Granite Gorge and Tenney; why the ski area has dubbed itself “the mighty Pats Peak”; knowing who you are; cheapskate expert skiers; who owns Pats Peak; the value of autonomy; what's kept Blomback at Pats Peak for 31 years; Magic Mountain in the ‘80s; why Pats buys used lifts; where Pats' current lifts came from; which lifts are next in line for an upgrade and what may replace them; the poor-man's detachable; a history of (non-mechanical) high-speed lift fails in New England; the “magic length” of a detach; ski areas are littered with dead halfpipes; some unique attributes of Mueller lifts; whether it's a pain in the butt to have chairlifts made from a half-dozen different manufacturers; why Vortex rarely has liftlines even when the bottom triples have 20-minute waits; how Pats Peak crushes its larger competitors in snowmaking on a regular basis; the ski area's audacious goal to go from nothing open to every trail open in 48 hours; the history, purpose, and experience of Cascade Basin; additional trail and glade expansion opportunities; snowmaking in the glades; why Pats Peak was an early Indy Pass adopter; Pats Peak is the third-most redeemed Indy resort and I mean damn; why Indy draws so many first-time visitors to Pats Peak; a new reason to hate Liftopia; Indy Pass D-day at Pats Peak; reaction to Vail entering New Hampshire; competing with the Northeast Value Epic Pass; “skiing is an experience”; the logic of over-staffing; “service and experience is what sets Pats Peak apart”; and competing against Vail's $20-an-hour minimum wage.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewAs the Indy Pass settled in over the past three years, an interesting pattern has emerged: New England absolutely crushes the rest of the country in total redemptions. During the 2020-21 ski season, six of the top 10 resorts by number of Indy skiers were in New England. Last season, that number rose to seven of 10. With long, cold winters; generation-spanning ski traditions; and incredible population density, these results weren't surprising so much as affirming of what anyone who has skied out here already knows: the Northeast loves to ski.But there's data within the data, and surprises abound. Those seven New England ski areas do not stack up according to vertical drop or skiable acreage or average annual snowfall. Sometimes, as in the case of perennial Indy number one Jay Peak, mountain stats – especially 349 inches of average annual snowfall – do trump distance. By the statistical standard, no one is really surprised to see 2,020-vertical-foot Waterville Valley sitting in the two-spot. But statistical assumptions break down after that, because instead of 2,000-plus-footers Cannon or Saddleback claiming the third spot, you have the Mighty Pats Peak, with a third of the rise and a bunch less snow.There are a few obvious contributing factors to the ski area's Indy rank: Pats Peak is the easiest mid-sized ski area to reach from Boston; the mountain had zero Indy Base Pass blackouts until this coming season; Crotched, its closest competitor, was constrained in operating hours and open terrain last year; it's open all the time – nearly 90 hours on peak weeks. But those attributes alone aren't enough to explain how a 770-vertical-foot mountain finished number three out of 82 – 82! – Indy Pass partners for total redemptions last season.A succession of bigfoots were expected to stomp Pats Peak flat over the past three decades, Blomback tells us in the podcast. SKI, Peak Resorts, Vail. But business has never been stronger. The product on the snow doesn't just matter a lot, it turns out – it matters more than anything.Questions I wish I'd askedI already have a bad habit of keeping my guests way too long, but, believe it or not, there are almost always un-asked questions remaining at interview's end: why are all Pats Peak's trails named after winds? How important is it to retain some New England indies as Jay Peak joins a conglomerate? How can Vail make sure Crotched is as good as Pats Peak from a snowmaking and open-terrain point of view? How are season pass sales going? And on and on. Somehow I usually have the sense to keep these under two hours, but that rises more from guilt over time theft than any sense of personal decency.What I got wrongI think I mispronounced “Patenaude” – the last name of the ski area's owners – about every way that it could be mispronounced over the course of an hour-long interview.Why you should ski Pats PeakAs you can imagine, I possess a lot of ski passes. And despite the lack of an in-town bump, I can reach around 150 of them within a five-hour drive. So my options on any given day are fairly vast. While my travels – well documented on Twitter, Instagram, and the “this week in skiing” section of the weekly-ish news update – may seem random, I am almost always chasing snow and conditions. Who, within that vast radius fanning off New York City, is firing? Eerie? Ontario? The Green Mountain Spine? The Whites? And what's the path of least resistance? If the Catskills get hammered, I'm unlikely to plow through to the Adirondacks. If the Poconos get their once-every-five-year dump, I'm going. Almost any ski area can deliver a riotous day with the right conditions. The secret trees pop open. The jumps and drops are more forgiving. The ice evaporates and for one afternoon you can close your eyes* and pretend you're in Utah.But sometimes it doesn't snow anywhere. And I still have to ski every week because you know why. Last December-to-January we hit just such a hellstreak in the Northeast. The kind that makes you wonder how long an industry reliant upon temperatures below freezing can stitch together sustainable seasons. The fats were all in various states of open but many of the littles sat brown-hilled and empty over Christmas week. No one was offering anything resembling their trailmaps.Except Pats Peak. One hundred percent open by the first day of 2022. And why? It was weird. Its base elevation is 690 feet. The mountain sits in Southern New Hampshire, outside of the major snowbelts. Unlike similarly sized Crotched, right down the road, it's not owned by a CorpCo that can helicopter in snow from the Wasatch. It's just a 770-foot local bump owned and operated by locals.And yet there it is, routinely the first ski area in New England to pop its full menu open for the season. How? “We often joke we're a snowmaking system with a ski area attached,” Blomback tells me. Go there and you'll see it. That's what I did in January. And there: Unimaginable snowmaking firepower. Gunning anytime temperatures allow. Day or night, chairlifts spinning or idle. A plume of white powder erupting from the stubborn brown hills around it.And guess what? The skiing is pretty good too. From the parking lot the ski area erupts, fall lines apparent. Lifts everywhere. In the backyard a hidden pod, Cascade Basin, like a second miniature ski area of its own. Glades tucked all around. Weekdays it's all yours. Until school lets out. Then it belongs to the kids. Busloads of them, learning, racing, messing around. To the baselodge, and one of the great bars in New England skiing.Just remember to make your Indy Pass reservation first. The information era has been good for the mighty Pats Peak. Real-time weather and trail reports have made it obvious who's mastered the snowmaking game. Pats Peak isn't the only snowmaking killer in New Hampshire. But I'd argue that there's no one better. I'm not the only one. The place parked out for the first time last season. Blomback and team quickly adjusted, limiting Indy Pass slots and bringing back the Covid-season reservation system. This year, Pats Peak will have Indy Base blackouts for the first time. But these won't matter in mid-December when the big bombers are five percent open and Pats Peak is breaking out new terrain out daily.*Actually maybe don't do this.Podcast NotesBlomback notes that, “at one time, in southern New Hampshire, we lost King Ridge, Ragged, Whaleback, Crotched, Temple, Highlands, and Pinnacle.” Ragged, Whaleback, and Crotched are obviously back, and Pinnacle is orchestrating its second comeback as Granite Gorge. But here's a quick look at the others:King RidgeVertical drop: 775 feet; Lifts: 2 triples, 1 double, several surface liftsThis was a terrific little ski area that made the mistake that just about every terrific little ski area made in the ‘80s: it decided that snowmaking was a fad. Then it dropped dead. Really the important thing about King Ridge though is that it has the single greatest trailmap ever printed (circa 1994):TempleVertical drop: 600 feet; Lifts: 1 quad, 1 doubleThis little spot, just down the road from Crotched, ran for 63 seasons before shutting down in 2001. The quad now stands at Nashoba Valley, according to New England Ski History. The state purchased what was left of the ski area in 2007 and let it fade back into nature.HighlandsVertical drop: 700 feet; skiable acres: ; Lifts: 1 triple, 2 T-bars, 1 pony, 1 ropetowHighlands stood as a ski area from the late ‘60s to the mid-90s. Today, it's the only lift-served mountain-bike-only area in New England (the rest all offer wintertime skiing). This one, seated just a few minutes off I-93, seems like a good candidate to re-open for skiing at some point, perhaps with a parks focus.Crotched EastWhile Peak Resorts famously resuscitated the then-long-dead Crotched in 2003, they did not revive all of it. The ski area was once a two-sided operation, consisting of Crotched East and West (also known as Onset or Bobcat). West is present-day Crotched. East sits right next door, liftless, fading away. I doubt Vail has any ambitions to revive it, though they could certainly use the extra capacity. Crotched circa 1988:And this is what survives today:Similarly, Magic Mountain, Vermont has an abandoned ski area on the backside (which you are still allowed to ski, though the lifts are long gone). Here's what the place looked like in its 1980s ultimate form, when Blomback worked there:Magic today:Blomback and I discussed the phenomenon of the Vortex double chair, which terminates just alongside the Hurricane and Turbulence triples, but rarely has a line, even when the other two are backed up for 20 minutes. This, Blomback says, is because the double loads above the lodge, rather than continuing the 50 vertical feet to the true base at the Peak chair. The same phenomenon happens all over, but the similar instance we discussed was Sunday River's Locke and Barker chairs. Locke, a triple, rarely has a line, while Barker – a high-speed quad – often has lines longer than the gestational cycle of several species of mammal. Why? I don't know. There is a lot of terrain crossover between the two lifts. The main difference is that one is faster (and racers often commandeer large chunks of Locke). I've always wondered what would happen if Sunday River were to bring the Locke loading station down beside Barker? Unless they upgrade it to a high-speed lift, I can't imagine it would matter much – which is fine with me, as I'll lap the slow lift with no line all day long:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing all year round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 102/100 in 2022, and number 348 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

Get to know a bit about Jay and Lee and how they each found their passion for climbing. Then, listen to them spray about their favorite recent climbs and learn why they believe they are experiencing the golden age of Waterville Valley climbing. Climbing in the Waterville Valley area:https://www.mountainproject.com/area/107346408/wm-waterville-valleyDickey Ledge climbing:https://www.mountainproject.com/area/120605174/high-camp-cragsYellowjacket climbing:https://www.mountainproject.com/area/108300240/yellowjacket-areaMount Oceola climbing:https://www.mountainproject.com/area/120605174/high-camp-cragsRussell Crags climbing:https://www.mountainproject.com/area/120706547/russell-cragsFollow along with First Ascent on Instagram at  @firstascentpod. Jay and Lee can be found at @jayknower and @xxleeweexx 

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on June 25. Free subscribers got it on June 28. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoRusty Gregory, CEO of Alterra Mountain Company, owner of the Ikon PassRecorded onJune 23, 2022About Alterra Mountain CompanyOwned by: KSL Capital and Henry Crown and CompanyAbout the Ikon PassHere’s a breakdown of all the ski areas that are party to Alterra’s Ikon Pass:Why I interviewed himIn its first five years, Alterra has gotten just about everything right – or about as right as any ski company can as it Starfoxes its way through an asteroid belt filled with Covid and empowered workers and shattered supply chains and The Day After Tomorrow weather patterns and an evolving social fabric and the sudden realization by U.S. Americans that there’s such a thing as outside. The company changed the name of one of America’s iconic resorts, managed a near meltdown of its Pacific Northwest anchor, met Covid as well as it could, and continually tweaked Ikon Pass access tiers to avoid overwhelming partner mountains while still offering skiers good value. Oh, and adding Sun Valley, Snowbasin, Chamonix, Dolomiti Superski, Kitzbühel, Schweitzer, Red Mountain, Mt. Bachelor, and Windham to the pass – all since Covid hit.If it’s all seemed a little improvisational and surprising, that’s because it has been. “I have a great propensity for enjoying chaos and anarchy,” Gregory tells me in the podcast. That explains a lot. In the frantic weeks after Covid zipped North American skiing shut in March 2020, angry skiers demanded concessions for lost spring skiing. Vail released, all at once, an encyclopedic Epic Pass credit plan, which metered discounts based upon number of days skied and introduced an “Epic Coverage” program that secured your investment in the event of everything from a Covid resurgence to the death of a beloved houseplant. Alterra, meanwhile, spun its plan together in four dispatches weeks apart – a renewal discount here, a deferral policy there, an extension six weeks later. “We’re continuing to strengthen our offerings,” Gregory told me on the podcast mid-way through this staggered rollout.In other words, Dude, just chill. We’ll get it right. Whether they ultimately did or not – with their Covid response or anything else – is a bit subjective. But I think they’ve gotten more right than wrong. There was nothing inevitable about Alterra or the Ikon Pass. Vail launched the Epic Pass in 2008. It took a decade for the industry to come up with an effective response. The Mountain Collective managed to gather all the best indies into a crew, but its reach was limited, with just two days at each partner. M.A.X. Pass, with five days per partner, got closer, but it was short on alpha mountains such as Jackson Hole or Snowbird (it did feature Big Sky, Copper, Steamboat, and Winter Park) and wasn’t a season pass to any ski area. The Ikon Pass knitted together an almost impossible coalition of competitors into a coherent product that was an actual Epic Pass equal. Boyne, Powdr, and the ghosts of Intrawest joining forces was a bit like the Mets and the Red Sox uniting to take on the Yankees. It was – and is – an unlikely coalition of competitors fused around a common cause.The Ikon Pass was a great idea. But so was AOL-Time Warner – or so it seemed at the time. But great things, combined, do not always work. They can turn toxic, backfire, fail. Five years in, Alterra and Ikon have, as Gregory tells me, “dramatically exceeded our expectations in every metric for the fifth year in a row.” While Rusty is allergic to credit, he deserves a lot. He understands how complex and unruly and unpredictable skiing and the ski industry is. He came up under the tutelage of the great and feisty Dave McCoy, founder of the incomparable and isolated Mammoth Mountain, that snowy California kingdom that didn’t give a damn what anyone else was doing. He understood how to bring people together while allowing them to exist apart. That’s not easy. I can’t get 10 people to agree to a set of rules at a tailgate cornhole tournament (the beer probably doesn’t help). Everyone who loves the current version of lift-served skiing – which can deliver a skier to just about any chairlift in the United States on a handful of passes (and that’s definitely not all of you), and has inspired an unprecedented wave of ski area re-investment – owes Gregory at least a bit of gratitude.What we talked aboutThe accidental CEO; Alterra’s “first order of business was to do no harm”; Rusty’s mindset when the Ikon Pass launched; the moment when everyone began believing that the Ikon Pass would work; reflections on the first five years of Alterra and Ikon; the challenges of uniting far-flung independent ski areas under one coalition; “every year we have to make the effort to stay together”; the radically idiosyncratic individualism of Dave McCoy; what it means that Ikon has never lost a partner – “there’s no points in life for losing friends”; Alterra doesn’t like the Ikon Base Plus Pass either; Covid shutdown PTSD; the long-term impact of Covid on skiing and the world; the risks of complacency around the Covid-driven outdoor boom; why Alterra’s next CEO, Jared Smith, comes from outside the ski industry; how the Ikon Pass and Alterra  needs to evolve; preserving the cultural quirks of individual mountains as Alterra grows and evolves under new leadership; “we dramatically exceeded our expectations in every metric for the fifth year in a row”; the importance of ceding local decisions to local resorts; “I have a great propensity for enjoying chaos and anarchy”; the current state of the labor market; Ikon Pass sales trends; “having too many people on the mountain at one time is not a great experience”; staying “maniacally guest-experience focused”; Crystal Mountain’s enormous pass price increase for next season; why Deer Valley and Alta moved off the Base Pass for next season; Mayflower, the resort coming online next to Deer Valley; the Ikon Session Pass as a gateway product; why Alterra pulled Mammoth, Palisades Tahoe, and Sugarbush off the Mountain Collective Pass; Sun Valley and Snowbasin joining Ikon; Ikon’s growing European network; whether Alterra would ever look to buy in Europe; “we’re making constant efforts” to sign new Ikon Pass partners; “we’re very interested in Pennsylvania”; I just won’t let the fact that KSL owns Blue and Camelback go; “Alterra needs to move at the right pace”; whether we will ever see more Ikon partners in the Midwest; why Alterra hasn’t bought a ski area since 2019; whether Alterra is bidding on Jay Peak; and thoughts on Rob Katz’s “growth NIMBYism” speech.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewGregory has been Alterra’s CEO for about four and a half years. That seems to be about four and a half years longer than he wanted the job. In 2017, he was enjoying retirement after four decades at Mammoth. As an investor in the nascent Alterra Mountain Company – a Frankenski made up of Mammoth, Palisades Tahoe, and the remains of Intrawest – he helped conduct a wide-reaching search for the company’s first CEO. He ended up with the job not through some deft power play but because the committee simply couldn’t find anyone else qualified to take it.His only plan, he said, was to do no harm. There are, as we have seen, plenty of ways to make multi-mountain ski conglomerates fail. Boyne alone has managed the trick over the extra long term (a fact that the company does not get nearly enough credit for). The years after Gregory took the job in February 2018 certainly tested whether Alterra and Ikon, as constructs, were durable beyond the stoke of first concept.They are. And he’s done. At 68, confined for the past half decade to a Denver office building, I get the sense that Gregory is ready to get away from his desk and back in the liftline (or maybe not – “I will be so pissed if I have to wait in a line,” he tells me on the podcast). He’s earned the break and the freedom. It’s someone else’s turn.That someone else, as we learned last month, will be Jared Smith, Alterra’s current president. Gregory will move into a vice chairman of the board role, a position that I suspect requires extensive on-the-ground snow reporting. Smith, who joined Alterra last year after nearly two decades with Live Nation/Ticketmaster, has plenty to prove. As I wrote in May:Gregory was the ultimate industry insider, a college football player-turned-liftie who worked at Mammoth for 40 years before taking the top job at Alterra in 2018. He’d been through the battles, understood the fickle nature of the ski biz, saved Mammoth from bankruptcy several times. Universally liked and respected, he was the ideal leader for Alterra’s remarkable launch, an aggressive and unprecedented union of the industry’s top non-Vail operators, wielding skiing’s Excalibur: a wintry Voltron called the Ikon Pass. That such disparate players – themselves competitors – not only came together but continued to join the Ikon Pass has no doubt been at least partly due to Gregory’s confidence and charisma.Smith came to Alterra last June after 18 years at Live Nation and Ticketmaster. I don’t know if he even skis. He is, by all accounts, a master of building products that knit consumers to experiences through technology. That’s a crucial skillset for Alterra, which must meet skiers on the devices that have eaten their lives. But technology won’t matter at all if the skiing itself suffers. Alterra has thrived as the anti-Vail, a conglomerate with an indie sheen. Will the Ikon Pass continue to tweak access levels to mitigate crowding? Will Alterra continue its mega-investments to modernize and gigantify its resorts? Can the company keep the restless coterie of Boyne, Powdr, Jackson Hole, Alta, Taos, A-Basin, Revelstoke, Red, and Schweitzer satisfied enough to stay united on a single pass? For Alterra, and for the Ikon Pass, these are the existential questions.I have been assured, by multiple sources, that Smith does, in fact, ski. And has an intuitive understanding of where consumers need to be, helping to transform Ticketmaster from a paper-based anachronism into a digital-first experience company. Covid helped accelerate skiing’s embrace of e-commerce. That, according to Gregory, is just the beginning. “Different times require different leadership, and Jared Smith is the right leader going forward,” Gregory tells me in the podcast.Alterra’s first five years were a proof of concept: can the Ikon Pass work? Yes. It works quite well. Now what? They’ve already thought of all the obvious things: buy more mountains, add more partners, play with discounts to make the thing attractive to loyalists and families. But how does Alterra sew the analogue joy that is skiing’s greatest pull into the digital scaffolding that’s hammering the disparate parts of our modern existence together? And how does it do that without compromising the skiing that must not suffer? Is that more difficult than getting Revelstoke and Killington and Taos to all suit up in the same jersey? It might be. But it was a good time to get Gregory on the line and see how he viewed the whole thing before he bounced.Questions I wish I’d askedEven though this went long, there were a bunch of questions I didn’t get to. I really wanted to ask how Alterra was approaching the need for more employee housing. I also wanted to push a little more on the $269 Steamboat lift tickets – like seriously there must be a better way. I also think blackout dates need to evolve as a crowding counter-measure, and Vail and Alterra both need to start thinking past holiday blackouts (as Indy has already done quite well). I’ve also been preoccupied lately with Alterra’s successive rolling out of megaprojects at Palisades Tahoe and Steamboat and Winter Park, and what that says about the company’s priorities. This also would have been a good time to check in on Alterra’s previously articulated commitments to diversity and the environment. These are all good topics, but Alterra has thus far been generous with access, and I anticipate ample opportunities to raise these questions with their leadership in the future.What I got wrongWell despite immense concentration and effort on my part, I finally reverted to my backwater roots and pronounced “gondola” as “gon-dole-ah,” a fact that is mostly amusing to my wife. Rusty and I vacillated between 61 million and 61.5 million reported U.S. skier visits last year. The correct number was 61 million. I also flip-flopped Vail’s Epic Pass sales number and stated at one point that the company had sold 1.2 million Epic Passes for the 2021-22 ski season. The correct number is 2.1 million – I did issue a midstream correction, but really you can’t clarify these things enough.Why you should consider an Ikon PassI feel a bit uncomfortable with the wording of this section header, but the “why you should ski X” section is a standard part of The Storm Skiing Podcast. I don’t endorse any one pass over any other – my job is simply to consider the merits and drawbacks of each. As regular readers know, pass analysis is a Storm pillar. But the Ikon Pass is uniquely great for a handful of reasons:An affordable kids’ pass. The Ikon Pass offers one of the best kids’ pass deals in skiing. Early-birds could have picked up a full Ikon Pass (with purchase of an adult pass) for children age 12 or under for $239. A Base Pass was $199. That’s insane. Many large ski areas – Waterville Valley, Mad River Glen – include a free kids pass with the purchase of an adult pass. But those are single-mountain passes. The Ikon lets you lap Stratton from your weekend condo, spend Christmas break at Snowbird, and do a Colorado tour over spring break. The bargain child’s pass is not as much of a differentiator as it once was – once Vail dropped Epic Pass prices last season, making the adult Epic Pass hundreds of dollars cheaper than an Ikon Pass, the adult-plus-kids pass equation worked out about the same for both major passes. Still, the price structures communicate plenty about Alterra’s priorities, and it’s an extremely strong message.A commitment to the long season. On April 23 this year, 21 Ikon partners still had lifts spinning. Epic passholders could access just nine resorts. That was a big improvement from the previous season, when the scorecard read 20-2 in favor of Ikon. Part of this is a coincidence – many of Alterra’s partners have decades-long histories of letting skiers ride out the snow: Killington, Snowbird, Arapahoe Basin, Sugarloaf. Others. But part of it is Alterra’s letting of big operational decisions to its individual resorts. If Crystal Mountain wants to stay open into June, Crystal Mountain stays open into June. If Stevens Pass has a 133-inch base on April 18… too bad. Closing day (in 2021) is April 18. The long season doesn’t matter to a lot of skiers. But to the ones it does matter to, it matters a lot. Alterra gets that.That lineup though… The Ikon Pass roster has been lights out from day one. But as the coalition has added partners, and as key mountains have migrated from Epic to Ikon, it has grown into the greatest collection of ski areas ever assembled. As I wrote in March:Whatever the reason is that Snowbasin and Sun Valley fled Epic, the ramifications for the North American multipass landscape are huge. So is Alterra’s decision to yank its two California flagships and its top-five New England resort off of the Mountain Collective. Those two moves gave the Ikon Pass the best top-to-bottom destination ski roster of any multi-mountain ski pass on the continent.Good arguments can still be made for the supremacy of the Epic Pass, which delivers seven days at Telluride and unlimited access to 10 North American megaresorts: Whistler, Northstar, Heavenly, Kirkwood, Park City, Crested Butte, Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, and Breckenridge, plus Stowe, one of the top two or three ski areas in the Northeast.But many of Vail’s ski areas are small and regionally focused. I like Hunter and Jack Frost and Roundtop and Mount Brighton, Michigan, and their value as businesses is unquestioned, both because they are busy and because they draw skiers from rich coastal and Midwestern cities to the Mountain West. But the Epic Pass’ 40-some U.S. and Canadian mountains are, as a group, objectively less compelling than Ikon’s.The Ikon Pass now delivers exclusive big-pass access to Steamboat, Winter Park, Copper Mountain, Palisades Tahoe, Mammoth, Crystal Washington, Red Mountain, Deer Valley, Solitude, and Brighton, as well as a killer New England lineup of Killington, Stratton, Sugarbush, Sunday River, and Loon. The pass also shares big-mountain partners with Mountain Collective: Alta, Arapahoe Basin, Aspen Snowmass, Banff Sunshine, Big Sky, Jackson Hole, Lake Louise, Revelstoke, Snowbasin, Snowbird, Sugarloaf, Sun Valley, and Taos. For pure fall-line thrills and rowdy, get-after-it terrain, there is just no comparison on any other pass.In large parts of America, it’s become impossible to imagine not buying an Ikon Pass. The lineup is just too good. Epic still makes more sense in many circumstances. But for the neutral party, aimed primarily for big-mountain destinations in a city not defined by access to a local, the Ikon is telling a damn good story.Podcast NotesRusty and I talked a bit about the huge jump in Crystal’s pass price for next season. Here’s a more comprehensive look that I wrote in March, based on conversations with Crystal CEO Frank DeBerry and a number of local skiers.We also discuss Mayflower Mountain Resort, which is to be built adjacent to Deer Valley. Here’s a bit more about that project, which could offer 4,300 acres on 3,000 vertical feet. The developers will have to overcome the ski area’s relatively low elevation, which will be compounded by Utah’s larger water issues.Rusty explained why Alterra pulled Palisades Tahoe, Mammoth, and Sugarbush off the Mountain Collective pass ahead of next ski season. Here were my initial thoughts on that move. A tribute to Mammoth Mountain founder Dave McCoy, who died in 2020 at age 104:Previous Storm Skiing Podcasts with Rusty or Ikon Pass mountain leadersThe Summit at Snoqualmie President & GM Guy Lawrence – April 20, 2022Arapahoe Basin COO Alan Henceroth – April 14, 2022Big Sky President & COO Taylor Middleton – April 6, 2022Solitude President & COO Amber Broadaway – March 5, 2022The Highlands at Harbor Springs President & GM Mike Chumbler – Feb. 18, 2022Steamboat President & COO & Alterra Central Region COO Rob Perlman – Dec. 9, 2021Jackson Hole President Mary Kate Buckley – Nov. 17, 2021Crystal Mountain, Washington President & CEO Frank DeBerry – Oct. 22, 2021Boyne Mountain GM Ed Grice – Oct. 19, 2021Mt. Buller, Australia GM Laurie Blampied – Oct. 12, 2021Aspen Skiing Company CEO Mike Kaplan – Oct. 1, 2021Taos Ski Valley CEO David Norden – Sept. 16, 2021Alterra CEO Rusty Gregory – March 25, 2021Sunday River GM Brian Heon – Feb. 10, 2021Windham President Chip Seamans – Jan. 31, 2021Sugarbush President & GM John Hammond – Nov. 2, 2020Sugarloaf GM Karl Strand – Part 2 – Sept. 30, 2020Sugarloaf GM Karl Strand – Part 1 – Sept. 25, 2020Palisades Tahoe President & COO Ron Cohen – Sept. 4, 2020Alterra CEO Rusty Gregory – May 5, 2020Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher – April 1, 2020Sunday River President & GM Dana Bullen – Feb. 14, 2020Loon Mountain President & GM Jay Scambio – Feb. 7, 2020Sugarbush President & COO Win Smith – Jan. 30, 2020Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher – Nov. 21, 2019Killington & Pico President & GM Mike Solimano – Oct. 13, 2019Future Storm Skiing Podcasts scheduled with Ikon Pass mountainsBoyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher – September 2022Sun Valley VP & GM Pete Sonntag – September 2022The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 69/100 in 2022, and number 315 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. Please be patient - my response may take a while. 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. Starting in June, paid subscribers will receive podcasts three days before free subscribers.WhoTJ and Wendy Kerscher, Owners of Paul Bunyan Ski Hill, WisconsinRecorded onMay 23, 2022About Paul BunyanOwned by: TJ and Wendy KerscherLocated in: Lakewood, WisconsinClosest neighboring ski areas: Keyes Peak, Wisconsin (1 hours); Ski Brule, Michigan (1.25 hours); Camp 10, Wisconsin (1.25 hours); Granite Peak, Wisconsin (1.5 hours); Pine Mountain, Michigan (1.5 hours)Vertical drop: 150 feetAverage annual snowfall: 65 inchesTrail count: 6 (2 black, 2 intermediate, 2 beginner)Lift count: 3 (1 T-bar, 2 ropetows - view Lift Blog’s of inventory of Paul Bunyan’s lift fleet)Trailmap: Paul Bunyan has yet to create an updated trailmap. This overhead-oriented version created by skimap.com is the closest thing I could find, though TJ told me that the ropetow and tubing park - and associated trails - looker’s left on this map have not yet re-opened (he hopes to have them ready for the 2022-23 ski season, along with a top-to-bottom ropetow that runs parallel to the T-bar):This map, from 1993, shows the state of the ski area just before it closed, in 1995:This map, from 1980, is probably my favorite from an aesthetic point of view:Why I interviewed themIn 2016, a California businessman named Jeff Katofsky purchased the long-dormant Sugar Loaf ski area in northern Michigan. A real estate developer and minor league baseball team owner, he seemed to barely understand skiing, declaring shortly after taking possession of the property that he had visited Whistler “to get ideas.” Which is like visiting the Palace of Versailles to get ideas on how to decorate your hunting cabin. The next year, he stripped all five Hall* doubles from the hillside. “The ski hill presently has to basically be gutted because nothing on there can work,” he told the Glen Arbor Sun. “Whether we can put another ski hill together or not, we’re crunching a lot of numbers together to see if that works.”The Crunchinator came up with some pretty intense numbers. For Katofsky, skiing was a high-end pursuit, which could only be provided in an ultra-luxurious context. “Skiing is purely a financial question,” Katofsky told the Sun in 2018. “I have to take it seriously because I know it’s important to people. But I’m not doing this for charity. We’ll invest literally tens of millions of dollars in this. If skiing works financially, you’ll have it. If not, you won’t.”Skiing must not have worked financially. In December 2020, Katofsky sold the property to an anonymous buyer and disappeared, without comment, into the void.Katofsky, to be fair, was not trying to spend tens of millions of dollars to resuscitate a ski resort, explicitly. He intended to spend tens of millions to build a year-round spa-and-valet sort of place that had a little ski hill as an addendum. Something like Villa Roma in New York’s Catskills, which offers a minimalist ski experience but long ago mothballed an entire terrain pod.That’s a shame. Sugar Loaf was once one of the best ski areas in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, a nationally unsung ski mecca as nuts about this stupid snoskiing thing as anyplace that’s cold and remotely hilly. The front side was 500 feet of pure fall line, the backside woods and narrow lanes. The summit view was gorgeous. The vibe pure zest and zeal. No pretention here. The place was fabulous, as good as Boyne Mountain from a pure skiing point of view. I couldn’t believe it when the hill closed in 2000.I’m still miffed. I’m not alone: the 5,015-member Friends of Sugar Loaf Facebook group is an online watering hole for the nostalgic and the hopeful (though IT’S NOT HAPPENING Bro is an unfortunate omnipresent parasite as well). I tend to be It Could Happen Bro, certain that a minimalist version of skiing could be viable. Last year, I exchanged emails with Traverse City native, former Sugar Loaf ski patroller, and Waterville Valley general manager Tim Smith about the possibility of a minimalist version of Sugar Loaf resurfacing at some point:Stuart: I'm really curious about your point of view on Sugarloaf, since you've been in skiing so long and really understand what it takes to bring a mountain back to life, and you seem to have a knack for making things happen. How much would it take to bring a minimum level of skiing back to Sugarloaf? Like let's say you sent [Waterville Valley’s retiring] Sunnyside Triple there and strung it base to summit up Awful Awful and brought in some mobile snow guns - would that be enough? I'm probably over-simplifying it, but I feel like the current owner has it in his head that skiing needs to be uber luxurious before you sell a lift ticket. But you look at Mount Bohemia in the UP, and the guy basically opened the place with some yurts, a base lodge, and a lift.Tim: Your simplification is pretty spot on. Minimum infrastructure to get going again would be a new/used lift, say $2 million will cover that with installation. For snowmaking pipe/pond/pumps/electrical for the frontside (Round About, Nastar, Waful, k2 and Awful Awful) 25 acres or so (that’s twice the size of Waterville Valley’s high country) feed that with 2,000 gpm giving an acre foot of snow every 1.33 hours, so 33 hours at full blast to cover the area with a foot of snow. To blast that type of snow the area would need at least 20 guns but I would recommend 40 as maxing out requires extreme cold. That’s 500k in guns, 500k in pumping, $1.5M for pipe, hydrants, electrical (bit of a WAG as I don’t know what is still there for primary electrical). A steel building lodge like Crotched runs about $2.5 but a yurt village would be doable for a few 100k so let say $1M for now. Parking is still in OK shape but I think the thing that would kill the project is the demo of the old lodge, but the county or state may help as it is a public nuisance at this point, so let’s say the fire department does a controlled burn 🔥 All said and done on a shoe string $5M should get it up and running. But if it was me I would go all in as I think the area could support a higher end resort, just need the right money man 😎. This is off the top of my head, some day it would be fun to run these numbers down and see if something could really work.OK, aren’t we here to talk about Paul Bunyan? Indeed. Excuse the detour, but I had a point: In about nine months in 2020, TJ and Wendy Kerscher and their family accomplished what gazillionaire Katofsky couldn’t in four years. In the midst of the early Covid lockdowns, their bar and their figurine factory idled, the Kerschers looked out at the overgrown and long-abandoned ski hill in their backyard and got to work. TJ meticulously dismantled and reassembled the 1967 Hall T-bar and several ropetows that had been A-Teamed together from 1940s truck parts. With crews of chainsaw-wielding friends, they marched up the hillside and cleared 25 years of forest. They borrowed snowguns from idled Norway Mountain, Michigan; picked up a trio of used Snowcats from Granite Peak; worked with K2 to build a small fleet of rental gear. In February 2021, the ski area re-opened to ecstatic locals.“They filled this place,” Wendy Kerscher told me in the interview. “They filled the hill. We ran out of rentals. It was amazing.”The Katofskys and IT’S NOT HAPPENING Bros of the world would have taken one look at Paul Bunyan and came up with a thousand reasons why the place was inoperable. Too decrepit, too small, too remote, too tired, too knotted to a bygone era of skiing, when surface lifts and five turns top-to-bottom were good enough.I have little use for such people. The cynics and the you-can’ts, the ones who always tell you why not. I am searching for the TJ and Wendy Kerschers of the world, the optimists and the puzzle-solvers, the people who are too busy working to realize that what they’re doing is impossible.The way they did what no one else could do was to simply do it. No master plans. No consultants. No expensive crews. No engineers. Just chainsaws and shovels and some borrowed heavy equipment. A little assistance from the ski industry. It helped that TJ had enough mechanical acuity to rebuild the lifts himself. It was a lot of work, but the result was a ski hill summoned out of the grave by Midwest FTW grit-and-grind.“You never can count sweat equity,” TJ told me. “It was awesome. I would do it all over again five times. I don’t count the work at all. We just had so much fun with this project.”It’s too bad the Kerschers didn’t live in front of Sugar Loaf. Were the mountain’s Hall lifts – famously reliable machines – really beyond repair? Could a more restlessly optimistic soul like TJ have saved them? Someone who truly loved and understood skiing? I tend to think the answer is yes. And we’ve got a story to prove it, a ski area saved, improbably but truly: Paul Bunyan is back.*Props to Lift Blog for ID’ing these lifts for me.What we talked aboutThe Kerscher family story; the family’s various businesses; the origins of Paul Bunyan as a local nonprofit; when and why the Kerscher family purchased the hill; growing up in an entrepreneurial family; how you react when your father buys a ski area; running a mountain at age 18; why Paul Bunyan closed in the mid-90s; deciding to re-open the ski area after 25 years dormant; a silver lining in Covid; the state of Paul Bunyan’s lifts, trails, and snowmaking after two and a half decades idle; improvisational snowmaking and long-term plans for improvement; that DIY Midwestern grit; restoring the fantastic homemade ropetow network cobbled together with 1940s truck parts; restoring a 1960s Hall T-bar; a fortuitous call from a friendly neighboring ski area; which of the four classic ropetows have been brought back into service, and which are next; the status of the tubing operation; reviving the overgrown trail network – “we got some guys together with some chainsaws and started cutting”; where the ski area is adding runs this summer; options for the forthcoming terrain park; skiers are “really embracing” Paul Bunyan’s “old-school … hang-on-tight ropetows”; restoring the hill’s 1969 Tucker Sno-Cat and why those machines still beat modern groomers for certain tasks; the large ski area that helped Paul Bunyan modernize its grooming fleet with a deal on used machines; setting up a rental shop, ski school, and patrol from scratch; managing labor as a small ski area; insurance; approaching such a massive project day-by-day; how it felt to see the lifts spinning again; “every single weekend, we are sold out of ski equipment”; bringing back night skiing; whether Paul Bunyan could ever be a seven-day-per-week operation; optimism and attitude are everything; advice for aspiring saviors of lost ski areas; the generosity of the greater ski industry; and whether Paul Bunyan had considered the Indy Pass Allied Resorts program.   Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewI spend a lot of time shuffling through skiing’s online fringe. I am obsessed, for whatever reason, with completeness. This most obviously manifests itself through the Pass Tracker 5001, where I’ve been tracking U.S. America’s season pass prices for the past couple years. For hundreds of resorts, tracking down these numbers is a fairly simple exercise. Northstar – Epic Pass. Mammoth – Ikon Pass. And so on. But perhaps a quarter of the nation’s ski areas exist in a sort of steampunk half-world, online but without a formal website, a Facebook page usually, pointing skiers in a choppy, inconstant way toward their little hills, typically a neighborhood bump with a collection of Rube Goldberg surface lifts trundling up a few acres of clear-cut.I’ll frequently message these pages with queries about hours of operation or season pass prices. They almost never write back. So I was fairly surprised last month when a query to Paul Bunyan’s account produced a coherent response within hours. We exchanged a few messages and I invited them onto the podcast. So here we are.Believe it or not, it is typically more difficult to secure an interview with the operators of the Paul Bunyans of the world than the Steamboats or Beaver Creeks. The large ski areas have budgets, communications teams, marketing departments. The executives have talking points and media training. They expect me to knock on the door, and they’re usually willing to talk when I do. With the smaller places, it’s often difficult to determine who owns or manages the hill, and there’s rarely an obvious way to connect with them.So when I had the opportunity to talk to a family who had the audacity to say, “yeah we’re just going to re-open this ski hill with 60-year-old lifts on a minimal budget and by the way if you think this is impossible we’re just going to ignore you,” I couldn’t book it fast enough.Part of what makes skiing great is the raw adventure of a four-thousand-footer sprawling across a half dozen peaks with 35 lifts driving up and over cliffs and trees and elevator-shaft inclines. But a big part of what makes it interesting is that it’s not just that. That a network of hundreds of small-bore versions of this gigantic thing exist anywhere that cold weather and hills collide. If The Storm is after the full story of lift-served skiing, it must be not only aware of the world outside the Epkon flex palace, but immersed in it. There’s no better way to do that – and to bring you along with me – than to connect with operators like the Kerschers, whose story is one of pure love and passion, the one-turn-at-a-time kind of fun that so many in skiing have forgotten.Why you should ski Paul BunyanIf you live anywhere nearby, the answer to this question is obvious: because it’s there. In-between turns when you can’t make the drive over to Granite Peak. Because skiing can be your wintertime gym. Dip in, get your reps on, bounce. Don’t overthink it.For the rest of us – I live 1,100 miles away – the answer is more complicated. I acknowledge that only a handful of the most curious outsiders will ever deliberately visit the Midwest to ski. The ski media has ignored this region for its entire existence, focusing instead on two themes that invariably lead skiers north to New England or west to the Rockies: the ultra-rad or the ultra-luxe. Understandable. However, there exists a third narrative in skiing: discovery. I’ve spent the past two ski seasons in a state of perpetual ramble, bouncing from neighborhood bump to backwoods freeride to ridgeline 500-footer lodged at the top of America. It’s fun. You find little stashes, quirks, thrills. I almost never find crowds. Lift-served skiing is an impossibly rich world, dynamic and varied, funky and weird, curious and fascinating.Someday, I will roll through Wisconsin, and I’ll of course ski Cascade and Devil’s Head and La Crosse and Granite Peak and Whitecap. But I’ll also float through Paul Bunyan, ride the old T-bar, angle jet-fighter style toward one of the hill’s many ropetows and grab on mid-flight, as TJ so exuberantly suggests in our conversation. It won’t be Vail, but I won’t go in expecting that. You shouldn’t either. And what you’ll take away will be pretty cool: a mental snapshot of skiing stripped of all glam and pretense, of a snowsliding business defined by the activity itself, of a place homey and welcoming. That sort of ski-them-all completeness is not for everyone, I understand. But for those of us who adopt such a mentality, the rewards for going in on a Paul Bunyan lift ticket are enormous. More Paul BunyanCoverage of Paul Bunyan’s re-opening:Paul Bunyan Ski Hill to Reopen in Oconto County – Fox 11 Online, Nov. 30, 2020Lakewood Family Re-Opens Paul Bunyan Ski Hill – Spectrum News 1 – Feb. 9, 2021Dozens of Skiers Hit the Slopes at Paul Bunyan Ski Hill in Lakewood – Fox 11 Online, Dec. 26, 2021Paul Bunyan’s comeback is inspirational, but it’s an anomaly. The Midwest Lost Ski Areas Project has documented 374 lost ski areas across the 12-state region, including 97 in Wisconsin. Let’s hope there are more people like Wendy and TJ Kerscher out there, willing and able to take the low-budget path back to viability. You can follow along with updates on Paul Bunyan’s very active Facebook page:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 58/100 in 2022, and number 304 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

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Organizations can email skiing@substack.com to add multiple users on one account at a per-subscriber enterprise rate.WhoErik Barnes, General Manager of Ragged Mountain, New HampshireRecorded onApril 26, 2022About Ragged MountainClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Pacific Group ResortsSummit elevation: 2,286 feet at the top of Pinnacle PeakVertical drop: 1,240 feet Skiable Acres: 250Average annual snowfall: 100 inchesSnowmaking coverage: 85%Trail count: 57 (40% expert/advanced, 30% intermediate, 30% beginner)Terrain parks: 3Lift count: 5 (1 high-speed six-pack, 1 high-speed quad, 1 triple, 2 surface lifts - view Lift Blog’s  inventory of Ragged’s lift fleet)Why I interviewed himI usually start with the mountain, but this time I’ll start with the man. Barnes spent 33 years at Mount Snow before landing at Ragged last October. That makes him one of the most seasoned ski area heads in a region where experience matters a hell of a lot. As Vail struggled to fully open and manage its New Hampshire properties last year, little, little-known Ragged seemed to do just fine. Outside of a four-day lift failure in early January, the ski area was staffed up and moving all season, in spite of warm December temps and a stubborn rain-snow line that sopped Ragged while its neighbors just to the north tallied a foot-plus in a series of storms. The ski area’s stability in the maw of all this instability demonstrates the importance of appointing experienced leaders such as Barnes to captain this temperamental region’s ships.And this is a pretty nice little ship. Not a super-yacht or anything, but a solid pleasure cruiser. Ragged has all of the things: glades, detachables, that indie vibe, reasonable prices, and an experienced snowmaking and management team that can keep the boat sailing through the Northeast’s it’s-raining-lava-and-elephant-poop winters.It’s pretty easy for a ski area to get lost in New Hampshire. It’s a great ski state with a lot of great ski areas: Waterville Valley, Loon, Cannon, Bretton Woods, Attitash, Wildcat, Black Mountain, Cranmore, Mount Sunapee, Gunstock. King Pine and Pats Peak are two of the best-run small ski areas in New England. So Ragged has some standing-out to do. It’s doing its best, but it’s one of the state’s least-appreciated spots, and I figured it was time to do some appreciating.What we talked aboutRagged’s 2021-22 weather short straw; back when everyone used to learn on a ropetow and how that went; how you get from ski instructor to general manager of Mount Snow; ski school camaraderie and culture; the distinct culture of Mount Snow and why the ski area has been such an incubator of industry talent; how Mount Snow evolved as it was passed along from SKI to American Skiing Company to Peak Resorts to Vail Resorts; 251 fanguns will change your day; building Mount Snow’s Attack of The Planets snowmaking system and what makes it so powerful; what it takes to open a mountain in October in southern Vermont; Barnes’ reaction when Peak Resorts sold their entire portfolio to Vail; “what do you think?” versus “this is what we’re doing”; the East is a different game, Kids; what Vail needs to do to bring its Northeast ski areas up to standards; the particular challenges of running oft-bankrupted and frequently shuffled Ragged Mountain; Ragged’s unique snowmaking and snow-management systems; why Ragged didn’t suffer the same staffing challenges as other New England resorts this past season; how the ski area will respond to Vail’s new $20-an-hour minimum wage; a primer on Ragged owner Pacific Resorts Group and its five ski areas; the insane expenses of lift maintenance; an update on the Pinnacle Peak and beginner area expansions; how much land Ragged owns and what the eventual expansion options look like; Ragged’s big-bomber high-speed lift fleet; the importance of redundancy; whether we could ever see a surface lift serving the Wildside terrain park; Ragged’s extensive, wildly fun, and ever-growing glade network; whether we could ever see night skiing at Ragged; long-term snowmaking upgrades; the ski area’s Mission: Affordable season pass; whether Ragged could ever add reciprocal season pass partner deals, as its sister resort, Powderhorn in Colorado, has done; and whether Ragged has considered joining the Indy Pass.     Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewBecause it’s been nagging at me for years: this “FUTURE EXPANSION” promised on two sides of the ski area on Ragged’s old trailmaps:I see something like this and I become 7 years old. When will it happen? When will it happen? When will it happen? When will it happen? When will it happen? When will it happen? When will it happen? It’s insane. I won’t say that this particular expansion nag is why I started the podcast, but I will say that things like this are exactly why The Storm exists: I am obsessed with the long-term evolution of lift-served ski areas, more immersed, at times, in what a thing could be than what it actually is. This one is particularly compelling, for a number of reasons. First, the trails are already cut, and have been for years:Second, Ragged has done a better job than just about any ski area in New England outside of northern Vermont in developing a balanced ski experience. Loon is a big, well-appointed mountain, but it lacks a strong glade network (which is odd, considering Boyne’s strength in this area up at Sugarloaf). Okemo and Mount Snow host the largest collection of intermediate groomers on planet Earth. Ragged could be a smaller version of this, a glide-and-fly bump for families and the opening-bell groomer brigades. But the ski area makes the most of its two little mountains, and it’s fun to assume that it would develop Pinnacle Peak in the same manner.Ragged is interesting in a lot of other ways. What’s with this weird little conglomerate that owns ski areas in New Hampshire, Maryland, Virginia, Colorado, and coastal BC? That sounds more like a rich person’s inventory of second homes than a logical network of ski resorts. And what’s with the cheapo season pass? And why doesn’t it have a network of reciprocals like sister resort Powderhorn? And oh by the way when will Pinnacle Peak happen? When? When, man? JUST TELL ME AND I’LL STOP ASKING!He didn’t tell me.Questions I wish I’d askedYou know, I didn’t ask what it felt like to leave Mount Snow after 33 years, and I should have. I didn’t ask why Barnes left the mountain, because it was pretty obvious. The new owners, Vail, shuffled executives, as new corporate owners of new corporate things often do. I figured there was no point in dwelling on it. The Storm is sometimes deferential to or critical of the past, but it is mostly about the now and the what’s-to-come (I said mostly, Annoyingly Correct Bro). But it was obvious – in the way Barnes talked about Mount Snow and his time there and the people he worked with and the modern machine that he had helped evolve it into – that this was a man connected to his mountain in a way you might be connected to a kid or a home or a really great dog. He would not have left it on purpose. That was a story that would have been worth getting into, and it was a failure on my part not to.What I got wrongI mentioned the power of Mount Snow’s snowmaking system, and intimated that they were “the first in the Northeast to really build out” such a system. There’s a lot of nuance to that statement, and the way I framed it in the podcast wasn’t clear at all. Here’s what I meant: while every large resort in the Northeast has a snowmaking system that could blow the doors off of any 5,000-acre western rambler, Mount Snow’s is one of the most modern and efficient, able to make the most of its water in a way that is more advanced than many of its competitors (though that gap shrinks yearly as all of the big Northeast mountains continuously upgrade their snowmaking arsenals).I also stated that this was Vail’s fourth season of operating the former Peak Resorts, when it was actually their third, after acquiring the portfolio in July 2019. I also asked Barnes to tell us about Pacific Resorts Group and the five different ski areas that it owns “around the country.” Only four of their resorts are in the United States, however – the other is in British Columbia, Canada.I didn’t get this wrong, but a lot of New England people will accuse me of doing so: I stated that the region did not have the rabid night-skiing culture that the Midwest does. This is true. While Southern New England does feature several extensive night-skiing operations, the total number of ski areas, and the total hours that they operate after dark, are far less numerous than in the Midwest, where nearly 100 percent of the ski areas offer night skiing across 100 percent of their terrain seven nights per week from December to March.Why you should ski Ragged MountainSecrets are a little easier to come by in the West, where bigness is the default and out-of-staters fly by the off-brands to cash in their Epkon coupons at the headliners. Take Sunlight, Colorado, for example, 2,000 vertical feet fading into the rear-views of the Aspen-bound. Or Sugar Bowl, 1,650 acres and 500 inches of snow served by five high-speed quads half an hour closer to San Fran than Palisades Tahoe or Northstar. That’s a little tougher in the East, where the drop-off is fairly severe between the chest-thumbing 2,000-foot bad boy bristling with detachables and the family-owned 500-footer served by a single double chair that’s older than plant life.But there are a few big-but-mine-all-mine-evil-cackling-laugh ski areas dotted around the East. Burke, 2,000 empty vertical feet of goldmine glades served by two high-speed quads just a few miles off (a very remote section of) I-91. Saddleback, modernized and re-opened and glorious with fall lines and glades of all kinds, but far enough out in the wilderness that you have to be careful you don’t turn the wrong way off the edge of the planet on your way to the hill.And Ragged. For 20 years, there has been exactly one six-place detachable chairlift in New Hampshire, and it’s at Ragged Mountain, serving one of two glade-laced peaks. Serving the other, exactly adjacent glade-laced peak is an eight-year-old high-speed quad. There’s a whole complex of beginner lifts at the bottom for kids or whatever you call them. Lift tickets sit comfortably below triple digits. The season pass is one of the cheapest in New England, debuting this year at just $379 (it’s now $479 through Sept. 5). All this sits about equidistant between Interstates 89 and 93.So what gives? How come skiers tend to blow right past Ragged on their way to Waterville Valley or Loon or Cannon? Well, those ski areas are bigger and, despite being farther from Boston, easier to get to, as they’re mostly right off Interstate 93. Each of them tops 2,000 feet of vert and tends to draw more snow than Ragged. Either state- or corporate-owned for decades, New Hampshire’s big resorts have been well-tended-to and well-taken care of, stable wintertime draws for basically the entire history of lift-served skiing.But Pacific Resorts Group, which added Ragged to its far-flung, five-resort network back in 2007, has brought much-needed stability to this rad little mountain. The company has continued to improve the property, cutting new glades and upgrading the lifts. Long-term, they intend to expand onto a third mountain, Pinnacle Peak (as I may have mentioned above), and trails are already cut (also mentioned above). In Barnes, Ragged has one of the most experienced and well-liked ski area managers in the region. As megapass mania transforms the character of many of New Hampshire’s beloved ski areas, sending refugees scrambling for alternatives, Ragged is poised to become something big. Go there before that happens.More RaggedThe excellent New England Ski History website has pages on just about any operating or lost ski area in the region, including Ragged.New England Ski Journal TV visited Ragged back in 2016:Ragged’s dense glade network speaks to the mountain’s long-established identity. Decades before thinned tree runs became ski area mainstays, Ragged called out a cluster of upper-mountain glades on this 1969 trailmap:This has nothing to do with Ragged, but while researching this article, I came across this amazing trailmap of nearby (and now lost) King Ridge ski area. I really have no idea what the hell is going on here, but it makes me vaguely miss the ‘90s, the last decade before the world hyper-connected itself into a bottomless information and ridicule machine and it was possible for absurd things like this to exist in glorious obscurity:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 46/100 in 2022. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer. You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

So, Ski Rex Media has done a few things involving skiing youth, as of late. I was at the Tristate Championship for the Big Air & Slopestyle days. I also visited the Waterville Valley Acad. kids at Waterville Valley for a moguls training session. Then, I got to talk to Seth Ehrlich, the Exec. Director of SOS Outreach, an organization dedicated to getting kids on snow. This week, the podcast continues to work with kids by having four of them, over two sessions, as guests on the podcast. In this episode, we get the kid's perspective and feelings on snowsports. In fact, you could say this is the episode that comes from the mouths of babes. Enjoy as some of my youngest fans get to take part in the Ski Rex Media Podcast. Thank you for listening!--Ski Rex Media - We talk skiing, snowboarding, general snow sports, and push the idea that these can be for everyone.--Visit skirexmedia.com for more, including the Ski Rex Media Blog, and/or follow Ski Rex Media on the following platforms:Ski Rex Media On Facebook: @SkiRexMediaSki Rex Media On Twitter: @SkiRexMediaSki Rex Media On Instagram: @skirexmediaSki Rex On YouTube: Ski Rex MediaEmail Ski Rex Media: skirex4ever@gmail.com--Ski Rex Media Is On Patreon--If you would like to support Ski Rex Media, and believe me, it will be wicked appreciated, you can head to my Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/skirexmediaThe Ski Rex Media Podcast Is Also Available Through;BuzzsproutSpotifyiHeartRadioApple Podcasts or The Apple Podcasts AppStitcherAmazon MusicPandoraThe Ski Rex Media Mersh Shop is open and ready for you. If you'd like to check it out, please head to skirexmediamerchshop.com.Intro/Outro Music:“Death Ensemble”Jacob Lizottehttps://www.darkcabin-studios.com/Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/skirexmedia)

4-Time Paralympian, 2 x Silver Paralympic Silver Medalist, and 3 x Gold Medalist X-Games Tyler Walker joins us on Nametags Chat! Walker was born with lumbar sacral agenesis, a condition that resulted in his spine missing after the first vertebra; he had both legs amputated at the knee at age four...He grew up skiing in adaptive programs at Waterville Valley and Loon Mountain, eventually joining the New England Disabled Ski Team. At just 19, he was the world cup overall runner-up for giant slalom. A year later, he earned his first trip to the Paralympic Winter Games and captured the giant slalom overall world cup title.

Weather: -Friday, Jan 14, mostly cloudy, with a temperature rising to near 27 by 8am, then falling to around 15. Northwest wind as high as 25 mph. -Saturday, Jan 15, Sunny and cold, with a high near 1. Northwest wind with gusts as high as 30 mph. -Sunday, Jan 16, Sunny, a high near 17. -Snow is on the forecast for Monday! Multiple weather stations are predicting that Waterville Valley will be hit by a major snowstorm this Monday. Snowmaking: -High Country opened for the season on Wednesday! - Grooming is pushing out piles on And Tyler Too, Lower Tippy, and Siegel Street and snowmaking is stacking up snow on Tippecanoe as we speak. -We anticipate to have them open for the weekend along with Grimes Way and Sidewinder. -This would bring our trail count to 41, with 175 skiable acres. -70% OF OUR TERRAIN COULD BE OPEN! Events: -Tonight, our first Thursday night race league taking place on Exhibition under the lights. Registration can be found on our online store. Freestyle lounge will be open before and after the event where you can enjoy some hot food and cold drinks while racing results are announced. -Saturday January 15th, we have Après hosted by Switchback in the Freestyle lounge and T-Bars. 3-6pm and live music from Matt Langley Duo and Doug Thompson. -After that, we'll be hosting a firework display over Corcoran Pond at 7:30. Be sure to snag a spot in Town Square for the best view of the show. -On Saturday and Sunday, BMW will be Hosting a NASTAR Race from 12-2. BMW will be giving away FREE NASTAR vouchers to the first 100 guests who stop by their Vehicle Display booth in the Courtyard. Get here early to secure your complementary 2 run NASTAR voucher! Vouchers can be redeemed at the top of the NASTAR course located on Exhibition. Food and Beverage: -This weekend we will have The Market Place, Freestyle Lounge, Schwendi Hutte, and T-Bars Friday through Sunday, and the waffle cabin Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. -Specialty Drinks are now being offered at the Freestyle Lounge. Try ‘em out! Other actives: -If you are looking for another way to enjoy the Valley while you are here, be sure to check out the Adventure Center in Town Square. -Explore the beautiful snowy White Mountains via Nordic Skis, Fat Bike, or Snow Shoe. LINKS: Website: https://www.waterville.com/ Online Store: www.shop2.waterville.com Event Calendar: ttps://www.waterville.com/calendar Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wvresort Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/visitwatervillevalleynh/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/waterville Pinterest: https://pin.it/gT9oaFR YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDsgc2IKEZ4

Thursday, December 9 Masking Effective immediately, Masks are required indoors, and also required outdoors when physical distancing cannot be maintained. Mask usage will continue at Waterville Valley until rates of community transmission improve in our region. Waterville Valley operates on federal land and, as permit holders operating on federal land, we are required to follow guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), consistent with Executive Order 13991. Food and Beverage, Masks are required if not at your seat. Next subject for housekeeping Personal Bags and Belonging Bags and gear left around the Base Lodge create clutter, which reduces the amount of space for guests to spread out and remain physically distanced. Therefore, Bags, equipment, or any other personal items must be stored in 1 of 3 places: within a locker (located on the first floor of Base Lodge) you can now access through the kiosk located in between the restrooms, At bag-check (located on the first floor of the Base Lodge at the Season Pass Desk), Free of charge or left behind in vehicles. Any unattended personal items will be removed Unload Area Parking Our unload area is a very busy place. Please Park your vehicles parallel to the road. This ensures a safe drop-off area for our guests. Vehicles should not be left unattended for any amount of time. We will be enforcing this policy all season. Trails: This weekend we are expecting to have Old Tecumseh connecting to Lower Periphery offering our first Blue intermediate terrain open from the summit Baseway and Revelation are also planned to open as well Bringing the trail total to 13 with 4 lifts, White Peaks, Lower Meadows, and both pasture carpet surface lifts. Snowmaking is working hard on getting coverage on Valley Run, they have some big piles up there that they are getting ready to push out. They are looking to get that trail open mid-week next week. Weekend Details: Friday Is Looking Cloudy with a slight chance of a dusting, the high will be around 29-33 degrees Saturday: 42-46 Base, Cloudy, with mixed precipitation Sunday: 34-38 Base, Partial Sun, Windy Monday: 39-43 Base, Becoming Sunny Reminder Friday, December 10th, 4-7 pm Santa Claus Visits Jugtown Country Store, in Town Square. Bring your wish list. Masking is required. Light Refreshments will be offered Links: Website: https://www.waterville.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wvresort Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/visitwatervillevalleynh/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/waterville Pinterest: https://pin.it/gT9oaFR YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDsgc2IKEZ4

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

Michelle Grenier is the current President of the National Consortium for Physical Education for Individuals with Disabilties (NCPEID). She is an expert in the field of adapted physical education. Michelle received her Bachelor's degree in Physical Education from the University of Massachusetts, her MS in Special Physical Education from the University of New Hampshire, and her PhD in Physical Education and Disability from the University of New Hampshire. She is Professor Emeritus for the University of New Hampshire where she has been in the Department of Kinesiology since 2000. Michelle is well known for her numerous publications and presentations. Michelle's teaching career spans more than 30 years. She is the recipient of many awards and honors, such as: 2021 SHAPE America- Julian U. Stein Lifetime Achievement Award 2020 NHAHPERD Meritorious Achievement Award. 2019 Outstanding Program Award. SHAPE America. Tampa, FL. 2018 Outstanding Achievement Award from the New Hampshire Governor's Council on Physical Activity and Health. 2015 Inducted International Federation of Adapted Physical Activity as a Research Fellow, Netanya, Israel. 2009 Outstanding College Faculty Award, American Associated of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Waterville Valley, NH We were honored to have Michelle on our show. Be sure to visit the NCPEID website for resources mentioned in the show. To view the ASAHPERD UDL webinar mentioned in the show, visit the ASAHPERD Connection website.

Writer James Jung is perhaps better known by his Instagram handle, @theapresski, a feed that picture-perfectly captures the essence of the après ski scene. James has skiing in his blood, with family lineage going back to the Austrian Alps and childhood memories at Waterville Valley in New Hampshire's White Mountains. 

On this week's episode of the #EShow we feature a program that reached the 2021 Frozen Finals with both their EHL and EHLP teams. The Vermont Lumberjacks battled through anything and everything this past season, including relocating to Waterville Valley, NH for the 2nd half of the year. Jim Mosso is forever proud of what his organization accomplished (1:11), and getting a taste of the finals is hopefully just the beginning of what's to come in the future. As always, we wrap up our Lumberjacks team of the week feature by putting together the program's all-time lineup (26:03).

On this week's episode of the #EShow we feature a program that reached the 2021 Frozen Finals with both their EHL and EHLP teams. The Vermont Lumberjacks battled through anything and everything this past season, including relocating to Waterville Valley, NH for the 2nd half of the year. Jim Mosso is forever proud of what his organization accomplished (1:11), and getting a taste of the finals is hopefully just the beginning of what's to come in the future. As always, we wrap up our Lumberjacks team of the week feature by putting together the program's all-time lineup (26:03).

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored in part by:Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.Helly Hansen - Listen to the podcast to learn how to get an 18.77 percent discount at the Boston and Burlington, Vermont stores.WhoDoug Fish, President and Founder of the Indy PassRecorded onApril 26, 2021Why I interviewed him Because the Indy Pass materialized out of nowhere to help solve so many of skiing’s intractable problems: the problem of affordability, of outsized attention to too few ski areas, of the ski family as a viable entity. Even as Vail and Alterra have consolidated the continent’s best mountains onto megapasses far below the cost of single-mountain passes of five or 10 years ago, occasional skiers have recoiled at daily lift-ticket prices that blew right past the three-digit mark without even stopping to kick the dirt off their shoes. And as good a deal as the Epic and Ikon passes are, a stack of them can still stretch well beyond a family’s annual ski budget. Indy fixed this. For $796 – a touch more than the cost of a single adult Epic Pass and well below the price of an adult Ikon Pass – a family of four can ski for the season. It will require some travel and some creativity and some patience, but the reward will be days at an interesting patchwork of ski areas. There was nothing inevitable about this. Yes, there have always been independent alternatives to the so-called corporate resorts, but it took some vision to weave dozens of distinct mountains into a coherent coalition united around a common product that’s good both for ski areas and the skiers that love them. I wanted to talk to Fish about Indy’s evolution up to now and how the pass would continue to adapt to skiing’s rapid changes. Leftover powder for days at Powder Mountain. Photo courtesy of Indy Pass.What we talked aboutDoug’s great Western roadtrip of 2021; a case for ignoring ski area statistics and just showing up; exactly how much Indy Pass skier visits exploded this past season; landing Powder Mountain on the Indy Pass; how the mountain stands out even in Utah’s powder paradise; the wisdom of limiting the number of people on the mountain; why the ski area will limit the number of Indy Pass redemptions on any given day; which other Indy partners will follow suit; which parts of the sprawling Powder Mountain terrain network you can access with a lift ticket; the snowball effect of signing a big-name mountain; why some mountains don’t need the Indy Pass; skiing in Kalamazoo; a primer on Mt. Ashland, Oregon; the Indy Pass explorer; why density is good but too much density is bad; the renaissance at West Mountain, New York; the weirdness of New York skiing and which other ski areas may join; don’t give up on ORDA just yet; what happened in New England when Indy added Cannon; whether Indy is done in New England after adding Cannon, Jay Peak, Waterville Valley, and Saddleback; which New England partners Fish would add if he had his pick; whether we’re getting closer to partners in Tahoe or Colorado; where there may still be room to expand in the Midwest; the last ski area in the region that Fish covets; the top 10 Indy ski areas for 2020-21 ticket redemptions and what was surprising on that list; the appeal of White Pass; the shocking number of redemptions for Waterville Valley; what makes a ski area work and not work as an Indy partner; an updated goal for the desired number of Indy Pass resorts; Indy’s next great expansion opportunity; the novel program Indy is considering to support independent mountains that aren’t partners; how Indy set its 2021-22 pass prices and why they increased as much as they did; Indy’s financial model; why 100 percent of partners are returning for next season in spite of a smaller-than-expected Indy Pass payout; the explosion in the number of resorts with blackouts; whether the Indy Spring pass will return in 2022; why the assurance program won’t return for 2021-22; moving the Indy Pass on-sale date to the spring; Indy’s payment plan; and limiting the number of Indy Passes at the early-bird rate. Mt. Ashland, Oregon is one of Indy’s three new partners for the 2021-22 season. Photo courtesy of Indy Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview Because as it enters its third season, Indy Pass is transitioning from rough-hewn concept to polished product, with a roster of well-known and well-regarded mountains. New partners keep coming and established partners are staying. That’s good. But redemptions exploded 1,100 percent last season, pushing the payout-per-visit below the pass’ target. That’s bad. For Indy to be sustainable, it has to find the price point where skiers still feel like they’re getting a bargain and ski areas still feel like they’re not getting ripped off. Thus, new prices and lots of new blackouts. That’s going to be rough for some people who had become accustomed to Indy’s freewheeling early days. I wanted to talk to Fish about why Indy had to raise prices, how he found the right tiers, why so many more mountains have blackouts than in the past, and, maybe most important of all, how he landed Powder Mountain, the 500-inches-per-year Utah titan with strict ticket limits and a veil of exclusivity.West Mountain, New York’s owners have pumped $17 million into a gut renovation of the ski area over the past several years. Photo courtesy of West Mountain.Why you should buy this passEven with the price hikes, I still think the Indy Pass is a no-brainer if you live in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, or Upper Rockies. At least it is if you have a sampler’s mentality, a willingness to drive long distances on a regular basis, and an urge to ski every possible mountain and day that you can. That or a couple of weeks off and the patience to plan a resort-hopping roadtrip. I still like Indy as a holiday complement to an Epic or Ikon Pass – hit Bolton Valley on Stowe’s busiest days, or hop over to Magic when Stratton goes nutso. The new blackout tiers will make this more challenging, and the Indy+ feels as though it’s creeping out of bargain pass territory, but you’ll have to make that choice depending on how often you think you’ll ski, how far you’re willing to travel, and how flexible your schedule is. For the organized and the committed, it’s not going to be difficult to ski this pass down to per-day prices of decades past, and have a damn good time doing it.Additional reading/videosI released a full breakdown of Indy’s 2021-22 pass suite earlier today. Here’s some of my past coverage of Indy Pass and its partners:PodcastsWest Mountain, New York owners Sara and Spencer MontgomeryGranite Peak, Wisconsin GM Greg FisherWaterville Valley, New Hampshire GM Tim SmithBolton Valley, Vermont President Lindsay DesLauriersSaddleback, Maine GM Andy Shepard (recorded before the ski area joined the pass)Jay Peak, Vermont GM Steve WrightCannon Mountain, New Hampshire GM John DeVivoIndy Pass Founder Doug Fish (May 31, 2020)Berkshire East and Catamount, Massachusetts Owner Jon Schaefer Magic Mountain, Vermont President Geoff HathewayArticlesIndy Pass Signs Saddleback, Waterville Valley (Feb. 23, 2021)Indy Pass Adds Idaho’s Pomerelle and Soldier Mountains, Introduces Discounted Spring Pass (Feb. 2, 2021)Lift-Served Skiing Returns to Saddleback After Five-Year Hiatus (Dec. 16, 2020)Indy Pass Fills Out 2020-21 Lineup with Snow Ridge, Antelope Butte (Nov. 18, 2020)Indy Pass Signs Vermont’s Jay Peak (Oct. 19, 2020)Indy Pass Erupts Into Second Year With 630 Percent Sales Boom, Picks Up 12th New Mountain (Oct. 2, 2020)Indy Pass Solidifies Second-Year Coalition as It Breaks Into Wyoming, Loses Mt. Abram (Sept. 1, 2020)Magic Announces Record Pass Sales After Slashing Prices (June 21, 2020)Indy Pass Adds Cannon and Six Other Resorts, Kids Pass, Season Pass Add-On, Simple Pass Assurance Program (May 20, 2020) Get on the email list at www.stormskiing.com