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This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Feb. 12. It dropped for free subscribers on Feb. 19. 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 David Makarsky, General Manager of Camelback Resort, Pennsylvania Recorded on February 8, 2024 About Camelback Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: KSL Capital, managed by KSL Resorts Located in: Tannersville, Pennsylvania Year founded: 1963 Pass affiliations: * Ikon Pass: 7 days, no blackouts * Ikon Base Pass: 5 days, holiday blackouts Reciprocal partners: None Closest neighboring ski areas: Shawnee Mountain (:24), Jack Frost (:26), Big Boulder (:27), Skytop Lodge (:29), Saw Creek (:37), Blue Mountain (:41), Pocono Ranchlands (:43), Montage (:44), Hideout (:51), Elk Mountain (1:05), Bear Creek (1:09), Ski Big Bear (1:16) Base elevation: 1,252 feet Summit elevation: 2,079 feet Vertical drop: 827 feet Skiable Acres: 166 Average annual snowfall: 50 inches Trail count: 38 (3 Expert Only, 6 Most Difficult, 13 More Difficult, 16 Easiest) + 1 terrain park Lift count: 13 (1 high-speed six-pack, 1 high-speed quad, 1 fixed-grip quad, 3 triples, 3 doubles, 4 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Camelback’s lift fleet) View historic Camelback trailmaps on skimap.org. Why I interviewed him At night it heaves from the frozen darkness in funhouse fashion, 800 feet high and a mile wide, a billboard for human life and activity that is not a gas station or a Perkins or a Joe’s Vape N’ Puff. The Poconos are a peculiar and complicated place, a strange borderland between the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Northeast. Equidistant from New York City and Philadelphia, approaching the northern tip of Appalachia, framed by the Delaware Water Gap to the east and hundreds of miles of rolling empty wilderness to the west, the Poconos are gorgeous and decadent, busyness amid abandonment, cigarette-smoking cement truck drivers and New Jersey-plated Mercedes riding 85 along the pinched lanes of Interstate 80 through Stroudsburg. “Safety Corridor, Speed Limit 50,” read the signs that everyone ignores. But no one can ignore Camelback, at least not at night, at least not in winter, as the mountain asserts itself over I-80. Though they’re easy to access, the Poconos keeps most of its many ski areas tucked away. Shawnee hides down a medieval access road, so narrow and tree-cloaked that you expect to be ambushed by poetry-spewing bandits. Jack Frost sits at the end of a long access road, invisible even upon arrival, the parking lot seated, as it is, at the top of the lifts. Blue Mountain boasts prominence, rising, as it does, to the Appalachian Trail, but it sits down a matrix of twisting farm roads, off the major highway grid. Camelback, then, is one of those ski areas that acts not just as a billboard for itself, but for all of skiing. This, combined with its impossibly fortuitous location along one of the principal approach roads to New York City, makes it one of the most important ski areas in America. A place that everyone can see, in the midst of drizzling 50-degree brown-hilled Poconos February, is filled with snow and life and fun. “Oh look, an organized sporting complex that grants me an alternative to hating winter. Let’s go try that.” The Poconos are my best argument that skiing not only will survive climate change, but has already perfected the toolkit to do so. Skiing should not exist as a sustained enterprise in these wild, wet hills. It doesn’t snow enough and it rains all the time. But Poconos ski area operators invested tens of millions of dollars to install seven brand-new chairlifts in 2022. They didn’t do this in desperate attempts to salvage dying businesses, but as modernization efforts for businesses that are kicking off cash. In six of the past eight seasons, (excluding 2020), Camelback spun lifts in

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Feb. 9. It dropped for free subscribers on Feb. 16. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below: Who Charles Hlavac, Owner of Teton Pass, Montana Recorded on January 29, 2024 About Teton Pass Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Charles Hlavac Located in: Choteau, Montana Year founded: 1967 Pass affiliations: None Closest neighboring ski areas: Great Divide (2:44), Showdown (3:03) Base elevation: 6,200 feet Summit elevation: 7,200 feet (at the top of the double chair) Vertical drop: 1,000 feet Skiable Acres: 400 acres Average annual snowfall: 300 inches Lift count: 3 (1 double, 1 platter, 1 carpet – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Teton Pass’ lift fleet) View historic Teton Pass trailmaps on skimap.org. Why I interviewed him There was a time, before the Bubble-Wrap Era, when American bureaucracy believed that the nation’s most beautiful places ought to be made available to citizens. Not just to gawk at from a distance, but to interact with in a way that strikes awe in the soul and roots the place in their psyche. That’s why so many of our great western ski areas sit on public land. Taos and Heavenly and Mt. Baldy and Alta and Crystal Mountain and Lookout Pass. These places, many of them inaccessible before the advent of the modern highway system, were selected not only because they were snow magnets optimally pitched for skiing, but because they were beautiful. And that’s how we got Teton Pass, Montana, up a Forest Service road at the end of nowhere, hovering over the Rocky Mountain front. Because just look at the place: Who knew it was there then? Who knows it now? A bald peak screaming “ski me” to a howling wilderness for 50 million years until the Forest Service printed some words on a piece of paper that said someone was allowed to put a chairlift there. As bold and prescient as the Forest Service was in gifting us ski areas, they didn’t nail them all. Yes, Aspen and Vail and Snowbird and Palisades Tahoe and Stevens Pass, fortuitously positioned along modern highways or growing cities, evolved into icons. But some of these spectacular natural ski sites languished. Mt. Waterman has faltered without snowmaking or competent ownership. Antelope Butte and Sleeping Giant were built in the middle of nowhere and stayed there. Spout Springs is too small to draw skiers across the PNW vastness. Of the four, only Antelope Butte has spun lifts this winter. Remoteness has been the curse of Teton Pass, a fact compounded by a nasty 11-mile gravel access road. The closest town is Choteau, population 1,719, an hour down the mountain. Great Falls, population 60,000, is only around two hours away, but that city is closer to Showdown, a larger ski area with more vertical drop, three chairlifts, and a parking lot seated directly off a paved federal highway. Teton Pass, gorgeously positioned as a natural wonder, got a crummy draw as a sustainable business. Which doesn’t mean it can’t work. Unlike the Forest Service ski areas at Cedar Pass or Kratka Ridge in California, Teton Pass hasn’t gone fallow. The lifts still spin. Skiers still ski there. Not many – approximately 7,000 last season, which would be a light day for any Summit County ski facility. This year, it will surely be even fewer, as Hlavic announced 10 days after we recorded this podcast that a lack of snow, among other factors, would force him to call it a season after just four operating days. But Hlavic is young and optimistic and stubborn and aware that he is trying to walk straight up a wall. In our conversation, you can hear his belief in this wild and improbable place, his conviction that there is a business model for Teton Pass that can succeed in spite of the rough access road and the lack of an electrical grid connection and the small and scat

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Feb. 8. It dropped for free subscribers on Feb. 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: Who Nathan Birr, Chief Operating Officer of Buck Hill, Minnesota Recorded on January 26, 2024 About Buck Hill Owned by: David and Corrine (Chip) Solner Located in: Burnsville, Minnesota Year founded: 1954 Pass affiliations: * Indy Base Pass – 2 days with 16 holiday blackouts * Indy+ Pass – 2 days with no blackouts Closest neighboring ski areas: Hyland Hills (:21), Como Park (:33), Afton Alps (:41), Elm Creek (:43), Welch Village (:46) Base elevation: 919 feet Summit elevation: 1,225 feet Vertical drop: 306 feet Skiable Acres: 45 Average annual snowfall: 60 inches Trail count: 14 (2 most difficult, 6 intermediate, 6 beginner), 4 terrain parks Lift count: 9 (2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 4 ropetows, 2 conveyors - view Lift Blog’s inventory of Buck Hill’s lift fleet) View historic Buck Hill trailmaps on skimap.org. Why I interviewed him Buck Hill rises like a ludicrous contraption, impossible there in the Twin Cities flatlands, like the ski resort knotted into Thneedville’s inflatable glades and shirt-sleeve clime (1:25): How did it get there? What does it do? Did someone build it? At first, I thought someone must have, like Mount Brighton, Michigan. But no. The glaciers made it, a gift to the far future as these ice walls retreated and crumbled. It is the highest point for 200 miles in any direction. Before skiing, Native Americans used the hill as a vantage to stalk deer drinking from Crystal Lake. Thus the name. It has probably been “Buck Hill” for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. Now the lake is covered in ice-fishing shanties all winter, and the hill is hemmed in by an interstate on one side and housing developments on all the rest. And the hill, 45 acres of fall line that erupts from seemingly nowhere for seemingly no reason, is covered with skiers. Good skiers. I am enormously fond of the Midwest’s blue-collar ski scene, its skiers on rental gear in hunter-orange jackets, rat-packing with their buddies as a hootalong thing to do on a Wednesday night. This does not exist everywhere anymore, but in the Midwest skiing is still cheap and so it still does. And these rough fellows dot the slopes of Buck. But they don’t define the place like they do at Spirit or Nub’s Nob or Snowriver. Because what defines Buck Hill is the shin-guard-wearing, speed-suit wrapped, neon-accented-even-though-neon-has-been-over-for-30-years squadrons of velocity-monsters whipping through plastic poles drilled into the snow. It can be hard to square smallness with might. But England once ruled half the world from a nation roughly the size of Louisiana. Some intangible thing. And tiny Buck Hill, through intention, persistence, and a lack of really anything else to do, has established itself, over the decades, as one of the greatest ski-race-training centers on the planet, sending more than 50 athletes to the U.S. Ski Team. Credit founders Chuck and Nancy Stone for the vision; credit confused-upon-arrival Austrian Erich Sailer (“Where’s the hill?” he supposedly asked), for building the race program; credit whatever stalled that glacier on that one spot long enough to leave us a playground that stuck around for 10,000 years until we invented chairlifts. Buck is a spectacular amalgam of luck and circumstance, an improbable place made essential. What we talked about Buck Hill’s brand-new quad; party up top; the tallest point in 200 miles; Chuck and Nancy Stone, who started a ski area on a farmer’s pasture; a glacier’s present to skiers; the hazards of interstate-adjacent snowmaking; why the resort’s founders and long-term owners finally sold the bump in 2015; Erich Sailer and Buck’s incredible ski racing legacy; Lindsay Vonn; a

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Jan. 16. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 23. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below: Who Troy Nedved, General Manager of Big Sky, Montana Recorded on January 11, 2024 About Big Sky Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Boyne Resorts Located in: Big Sky, Montana Year founded: 1973 Pass affiliations: * 7 days, no blackouts on Ikon Pass (reservations required) * 5 days, holiday blackouts on Ikon Base and Ikon Base Plus Pass (reservations required) * 2 days, no blackouts on Mountain Collective (reservations required) Reciprocal partners: Top-tier Big Sky season passes include three days each at Boyne’s other nine ski areas: Brighton, Summit at Snoqualmie, Cypress, Boyne Mountain, The Highlands, Loon Mountain, Sunday River, Pleasant Mountain, and Sugarloaf. Closest neighboring ski areas: Yellowstone Club (ski-to connection); Bear Canyon (private ski area for Mount Ellis Academy – 1:20); Bridger Bowl (1:30) Base elevation: 6,800 feet at Madison Base Summit elevation: 11,166 feet Vertical drop: 4,350 feet Skiable Acres: 5,850 Average annual snowfall: 400-plus inches Trail count: 300 (18% expert, 35% advanced, 25% intermediate, 22% beginner) Terrain parks: 6 Lift count: 38 (1 75-passenger tram, 1 high-speed eight-pack, 3 high-speed six-packs, 4 high-speed quads, 3 fixed-grip quads, 9 triples, 5 doubles, 3 platters, 1 ropetow, 8 carpet lifts – Big Sky also recently announced a second eight-pack, to replace the Six Shooter six-pack, next year; and a new, two-stage gondola, which will replace the Explorer double chair for the 2025-26 ski season – View Lift Blog’s inventory of Big Sky’s lift fleet.) View vintage Big Sky trailmaps on skimap.org. Why I interviewed him Big Sky is the closest thing American skiing has to the ever-stacking ski circuses of British Columbia. While most of our western giants labor through Forest Service approvals for every new snowgun and trail sign, BC transforms Revelstoke and Kicking Horse and Sun Peaks into three of the largest ski resorts on the continent in under two decades. These are policy decisions, differences in government and public philosophies of how to use our shared land. And that’s fine. U.S. America does everything in the most difficult way possible, and there’s no reason to believe that ski resort development would be any different. Except in a few places in the West, it is different. Deer Valley and Park City and Schweitzer sit entirely (or mostly), on private land. New project approvals lie with local entities. Sometimes, locals frustrate ski areas’ ambitions, as is the case in Park City, which cannot, at the moment, even execute simple lift replacements. But the absence of a federal overlord is working just fine at Big Sky, where the mountain has evolved from Really Good to Damn Is This Real in less time than it took Aspen to secure approvals for its 153-acre Hero’s expansion. Boyne has pulled similar stunts at its similarly situated resorts across the country: Boyne Mountain and The Highlands in Michigan and Sunday River in Maine, each of them transforming in Hollywood montage-scene fashion. Progress has lagged more at Brighton and Alpental, both of which sit at least partly on Forest Service land (though change has been rapid at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire, whose land is a public-private hybrid). But the evolution at Big Sky has been particularly comprehensive. And, because of the ski area’s inherent drama and prominence, compelling. It’s America’s look-what-we-can-do-if-we-can-just-do mountain. The on-mountain product is better for skiers and better for skiing, a modern mountain that eases chokepoints and upgrades facilities and spreads everyone around. Winter Park, seated on Forest Service land, owned by the City of Denver,

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Dec. 30. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 6. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below: Who Aaron Kellett, General Manager of Whiteface, New York Recorded on December 4, 2023 About Whiteface View the mountain stats overview Owned by: The State of New York Located in: Wilmington, New York Year founded: 1958 Pass affiliations: NY Ski3 Pass: Unlimited, along with Gore and Belleayre Closest neighboring ski areas: Mt. Pisgah (:34), Beartown (:55), Dynamite Hill (1:05), Rydin-Hy Ranch (1:12), Titus (1:15), Gore (1:21) Base elevation: 1,220 feet Summit elevation: * 4,386 feet (top of Summit Quad) * 4,650 feet (top of The Slides) * 4,867 feet (mountain summit) Vertical drop: 3,166 feet lift-served; 3,430 feet hike-to Skiable Acres: 299 + 35 acres in The Slides Average annual snowfall: 183 inches Trail count: 94 (30% expert, 46% intermediate, 24% beginner) Lift count: 12 (1 eight-passenger gondola, 2 high-speed quads, 3 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 3 doubles, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Whiteface’s lift fleet) View historic Whiteface trailmaps on skimap.org. Why I interviewed him Whiteface, colloquially “Iceface,” rises, from base to summit, a greater height than any ski area in the Northeast. That may not impress the Western chauvinists, who refuse to acknowledge any merit to east-of-the-Mississippi skiing, but were we to airlift this monster to the West Coast, it would tower over all but two ski areas in the three-state region: The International Olympic Committee does not select Winter Games host mountains by tossing darts at a world map. Consider the other U.S. ski areas that have played host: Palisades Tahoe, Park City, Snowbasin, Deer Valley. All naturally blessed with more and more consistent snow than this gnarly Adirondacks skyscraper, but Whiteface, from a pure fall-line skiing point of view, is the equal of any mountain in the country. Still not convinced? Fine. Whiteface will do just fine without you. This state-owned, heavily subsidized-by-public-funds monster seated in the heart of the frozen Adirondacks has just about the most assured future of any ski area anywhere. With an ever-improving monster of a snowmaking system and no great imperative to raise the cannons against Epkon invaders, the place is as close to climate-proof and competition-proof as a modern ski area can possibly be. There’s nothing else quite like Whiteface. Most publicly owned ski areas are ropetow bumps that sell lift tickets out of a woodshed on the edge of town. They lean on public funds because they couldn’t exist without them. The big ski areas can make their own way. But New York State, enamored of its Olympic legacy and eager to keep that flame burning, can’t quite let this one go. The result is this glimmering, grinning monster of a mountain, a boon for the skier, bane for the tax-paying family-owned ski areas in its orbit who are left to fight this colossus on their own. It’s not exactly fair and it’s not exactly right, but it exists, in all its glory and confusion, and it was way past time to highlight Whiteface on this podcast. What we talked about Whiteface’s strong early December (we recorded this before the washout); recent snowmaking enhancements; why Empire still doesn’t have snowmaking; May closings at Whiteface; why Whiteface built The Notch, an all-new high-speed quad, to serve existing terrain; other lines the ski area considered for the lift; Whiteface’s extensive transformation of the beginner experience over the past few years; remembering “snowboard parks” and the evolution of Whiteface’s terrain parks; Whiteface’s immense legacy and importance to Northeast skiing; could New York host another Winter Olympics?; potential upper-mountain lift upgrades; the etymology of recent Whitef

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Dec. 28. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 4. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below: Who Jon Schaefer, Owner and General Manager of Berkshire East, Massachusetts and Catamount, straddling the border of Massachusetts and New York Recorded on December 6, 2023 About the mountains Berkshire East Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: The Schaefer family Located in: Charlemont, Massachusetts Year founded: 1960 Pass affiliations: * Berkshire Summit Pass: Unlimited Access * Indy Base Pass: 2 days with blackouts (reservations required) * Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackouts (reservations required) Closest neighboring ski areas: Eaglebrook School (:36), Brattleboro (:48), Hermitage Club (:48), Mt. Greylock Ski Club (:52), Mount Snow (:55), Jiminy Peak (:56), Bousquet (:56); Catamount is approximately 90 minutes south of Berkshire East Base elevation: 660 feet Summit elevation: 1,840 feet Vertical drop: 1,180 feet Skiable Acres: 180 Average annual snowfall: 110 inches Trail count: 45 Lift count: 7 (1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Berkshire East’s lift fleet) View historic Berkshire East trailmaps on skimap.org. Catamount Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: The Schaefer family Located in: Hillsdale, New York and South Egremont, Massachusetts (the resort straddles the state line, and generally seems to use the New York address as its location of record) Year founded: 1939 Pass affiliations: * Berkshire Summit Pass: Unlimited Access * Indy Base Pass and Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackouts (reservations required) Closest neighboring ski areas: Butternut (:19), Otis Ridge (:35), Bousquet (:40), Mohawk Mountain (:46), Jiminy Peak (:50), Mount Lakeridge (:55), Mt. Greylock Ski Club (1:02); Berkshire East sits approximately 90 minutes north of Catamount Base elevation: 1,000 feet Summit elevation: 2,000 feet Vertical drop: 1,000 feet Skiable Acres: 133 acres Average annual snowfall: 108 inches Trail count: 44 (35% green, 42% blue, 23% black/double-black) Lift count: 8 (2 fixed-grip quads, 3 triples, 3 carpets – view Lift Blog’s inventory of Catamount’s lift fleet) View historic Catamount trailmaps on skimap.org. Why I interviewed him Might I nominate Massachusetts as America’s most underappreciated ski state? It’s easy to understand the oversight. Bordered by three major ski states that are home to a combined 107 ski areas (50 in New York, 27 in Vermont, and 30 in New Hampshire), Massachusetts contains just 13 active lift-served mountains. Two (Easton School and Mount Greylock Ski Club) are private. Five of the remainder deliver vertical drops of 400 feet or fewer. The state’s entire lift-served skiable area clocks in at around 1,300 acres, which is smaller than Killington and just a touch larger than Solitude. But the code and character of those 11 public ski areas is what I’m interested in here. Winnowed from some 200 bumps that once ran ropetows up the incline, these survivors are super-adapters, the Darwinian capstones to a century-long puzzle: how to consistently offer skiing in a hostile world that hates you. New England is a rumbler, and always has been. Outside of northern Vermont’s Green Mountain Spine (Sugarbush, MRG, Bolton, Stowe, Smuggs, Jay), which snags 200-plus inches of almost automatic annual snowfall, the region’s six states can, on any given day from November to April, stage double as Santa’s Village or serve as props for sad brown Christmas pining. Immersive reading of the New England Ski History website suggests this contemporary reality reflects historical norms: prior to the widespread introduction of snowmaking, ski areas could sometimes offer just a single-digit number of ski days in particularly dif

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Dec. 26. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 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: Who Greg Gavrilets, General Manager of Mt. Rose, Nevada Recorded on November 27, 2023 About Mt. Rose View the mountain stats overview Owned by: The Buser family Located in: Incline Village, Nevada Year founded: 1964 Pass affiliations: None Reciprocal partners: None Closest neighboring ski areas: Sky Tavern (:03), Diamond Peak (:15), Northstar (:28), Homewood (:44), Palisades Tahoe (:45), Tahoe Donner (:48), Boreal (:49), Donner Ski Ranch (:51), Sugar Bowl (:52), Soda Springs (:53), Heavenly (:56). Travel times vary considerably given weather conditions, time of day, and time of year. Base elevation: 7,900 feet (bottom of Chuter lift) Summit elevation: 9,700 feet Vertical drop: 1,800 feet Skiable Acres: 1,200+ Average annual snowfall: 350 inches Trail count: 70+ (10% expert double black, 40% black, 30% intermediate blue, 20% beginner green) Lift count: 8 (2 six-packs, 1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 carpet, 1 “Little Mule”) View historic Mt. Rose trailmaps on skimap.org. Why I interviewed him There’s something so damn dramatic about skiing around Tahoe. The lake, yes, but it’s also the Sierra Nevada, heaving and brutal, pitched as though crafted for skiing, evergreens loper-spaced apart. It’s the snow, piled like pizza boxes in a hoarder’s apartment, ever-higher, too much to count or comprehend (well, some years). It’s the density, the always knowing that, like some American Alps, there is always another ski center past the one you’re riding and the one you can see from there and the one you can see beyond that. Mt. Rose is one of just three Tahoe ski areas that sits fully on the Nevada side of the lake (the other two are Diamond Peak and Sky Tavern; Heavenly straddles the California-Nevada border). That whole Nevada thing can sap some of the Tahoe mystique. What is Nevada, after all, to most of us, but desert, dry, wide-open, and empty? I once slipped into a hallucinogenic state of borderline psychosis on a 122-degree drive Vegas-bound across Interstate 15. I was dead sober but sleep-deprived and in a truck with no air-conditioning the rippling distances tore my soul into potpourri and scattered it about the alien planet I became convinced I was crossing. But Nevada is a ski state, and Mt. Rose is its finest ski area. As the truest locals’ bump on the block, it is a crucial piece of the Tahoe Zeitgeist, the place that tourists don’t bother with, and that locals bother with specifically because of that fact. There are a handful of communities in America that count as their home bump a big, thrilling ski area that is not also a major tourist attraction. Bogus Basin, outside of Boise; Mt. Spokane, Washington; Montana Snowbowl, looming over Missoula. Where you can mainline the big-mountain experience sans the enervation of crowds. Mt. Rose is one of those places, a good, big ski area without all the overwhelm we’ve come to associate with them. What we talked about Early-season openings; assessing the Lakeview chairlift upgrade after year one; why Mt. Rose doesn’t operate into May; extending the ski day after Daylight Savings; could night skiing ever work at Mt. Rose?; living through 668 inches of snow; Ober Mountain; the upside of starting your career at a small ski area; the brilliance of Peak Resorts; where Vail went right and wrong in their acquisition of Peak; the existential challenges of Paoli Peaks; the Very Bad 2021-22 ski season at Attitash; fortress mentality; convincing Vail to upgrade the Attitash Summit Triple; what Gavrilets found when he showed up at Mt. Rose on Saturday of President’s Weekend; how the Busers built Mt. Rose into a first-rate ski area; why the family considered selli

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Who Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher, Big Sky President Taylor Middleton, Big Sky GM Troy Nedved, and Garaventa Chief Rigger Cédric Aellig Where Big Sky invited media to attend the opening of their new Lone Peak tram, the first all-new tram at a U.S. ski resort since Jackson Hole opened theirs in 2008. Recorded on December 19, 2023 About Big Sky Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Boyne Resorts Base elevation: 6,800 feet at Madison Base Summit elevation: 11,166 feet Vertical drop: 4,350 feet Skiable Acres: 5,850 Average annual snowfall: 400-plus inches Trail count: 300 (18% expert, 35% advanced, 25% intermediate, 22% beginner) Terrain parks: 6 Lift count: 40 (1 75-passenger tram, 1 high-speed eight-pack, 3 high-speed six-packs, 4 high-speed quads, 3 fixed-grip quads, 9 triples, 5 doubles, 3 platters, 2 ropetows, 9 carpet lifts) – View Lift Blog’s inventory of Big Sky’s lift fleet. About the new Lone Peak Tram It may seem like the most U.S. American thing ever to spend tens of millions of dollars to replace a lift that was only 28 years old (remember when the Detroit Lions dropped half a billion to replace the 26-year-old Pontiac Silverdome?), but the original tram cost just $1 million to build, and it served a very different ski resort and a very different ski world. It was, besides, a bit of a proof of concept, built against the wishes of the company’s own CEO, Boyne Resorts founder Everett Kircher. If they could just string a lift to the top, it would, the younger Kirchers knew, transform Big Sky forever. It did. Then all sorts of other things happened. The Ikon Pass. Montana’s transformation into a hipster’s Vermont West. Social media and the quest for something different. The fun slowly draining from Utah and Colorado as both suffocated under their own convenience. Big Sky needed a new tram. The first thing to understand about the new tram is that it does not simply replace the old tram. It runs on a different line, loading between the top of Swift Current and the bottom of Powder Seeker; the old tram loaded off the top of the latter lift. Here’s the old versus the new line: The new line boosts the vertical drop from 1,450 feet to 2,135. Larger cabins can accommodate 75 passengers, a 500 percent increase from 15 in the old tram (Big Sky officials insist that the cars will rarely, if ever, carry that many skiers, with capacity metered to conditions and seats set aside for sightseers). One dramatic difference between the old and the new lines is a tower (the old tram had none), perched dramatically below the summit: It’s a trip to ride through: But the most astonishing thing about riding the new Lone Peak tram is the sheer speed. It moves at up to 10 meters per second, which, when I first heard that, meant about as much to me as when my high school chemistry teacher tried to explain the concept of moles with a cigar-box analogy. But then I was riding up and the down-bound cabin passed me like someone just tossed a piano off the roof of a skyscraper: Here’s the down-bound view: The top sits at 11,166 feet, which is by no means the highest lift in America, but it is the most prominent point for an amazing distance around, granting you stunning views of three states and two national parks, plus the Yellowstone Club ski area and Big Sky itself: The peak is fickle as hell though – an hour after I took those photos, I walked into a cloud bank on a second trip to the summit. Right now, the only way to access the tram is by riding the Swift Current 6 (itself an extraordinary lift, like borrowing someone’s Porsche for a ride around the block), and skiing or walking a few hundred vertical feet down. But a two-stage, 10-passenger gondola is already under construction. This will load where the Explorer double curre

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Dec. 11. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 18. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below: Who Shaun Sutner, snowsports columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Telegram.com Recorded on November 20, 2023 About Shaun Sutner Shaun is a skier, a writer, and a journalist based in Worcester, Massachusetts. For the past 19 years, he’s written a snowsports column from Thanksgiving to April. For the past three years, he’s joined me on The Storm Skiing Podcast to discuss that column, but also to talk all things New England skiing (and beyond). You should follow Shaun on social media to stay locked into his work: Why I interviewed him Last month, I clicked open a SNOWBOARDER email newsletter and found this headline slotted under “trending news”: Yikes, I thought. Not again. I clicked through to the story. In full: Tensions simmered as disgruntled Stevens Pass skiers, clutching their "Epic Passes," rallied against Vail Resorts' alleged mismanagement. The discontent echoed through an impassioned petition, articulating a litany of grievances: excessive lift lines, scant open terrain, inadequate staffing, and woeful parking, painting a dismal portrait of a beloved winter haven. Fueled by a sense of betrayal, the signatories lamented a dearth of ski-ready slopes despite ample snowfall, bemoaning Vail Resorts' purported disregard for both patrons and employees. Their frustration soared at the stark contrast to neighboring ski areas, thriving under similar conditions. The petition's fervor escalated, challenging the ethics of selling passes without delivering promised services, highlighting derisory wages juxtaposed against corporate profiteering. The collective call-to-action demanded reparation, invoking consumer protection laws and even prodding the involvement of the Attorney General and the U.S. Forest Service. Yet, amidst their resolve, a poignant melancholy pervaded—the desire to relish the slopes overshadowed by a battle for justice. The signatories yearned for equitable winter joys, dreaming of swift resolutions and an end to the clash with corporate giants, vowing to safeguard the legacy of snow sports for generations to come. As the petition gathered momentum, a snowstorm of change loomed on the horizon, promising either reconciliation or a paradigm shift in the realm of winter recreation. The “impassioned petition” in question is dated Dec. 28, 2021. In the nearly two intervening years, Vail Resorts has fired Stevens Pass’ GM, brought in a highly respected local (Tom Fortune) who had spent decades at the ski area to stabilize things (Fortune and I discussed this at length on the podcast), and installed a new, young GM (Ellen Galbraith), with deep roots in the area (I also hosted Galbraith on the podcast). Last ski season (2022-23), was a smooth one at Stevens Pass. And while Skier Mob is never truly happy with anything, the petition in question flared, faded, and went into hibernation approximately 18 months before Snowboarder got around to this story. Yes, there were issues at Stevens Pass. Vail fixed them. The end. The above-cited story is also overwritten, under-contextualized, and borderline slanderous. “Derisory wages?” Vail has since raised its minimum wage to $20 an hour. To stand there and aim a scanny-beepy thing at skiers as they approach the lift queue. Sounds like hell on earth. Perhaps I missed the joke here, and this is some sort of snowy Onion. I do hate to call out other writers. But this is a particularly lazy exhibit of the core problem with modern snowsports writing: most of it is not very good. The non-ski media will humor us with the occasional piece, but these tend to be dumbed down for a general audience. The legacy ski media as a functioning editorial entity no longer exists. T

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Dec. 8. It dropped for free subscribers on Dec. 15. To receive future pods as soon as they’re live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below: Who Benjamin Bartz, General Manager of Snowriver, Michigan Recorded on November 13, 2023 About Snowriver Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Midwest Family Ski Resorts Located in: Wakefield (Jackson Creek Summit) and Bessemer (Black River Basin), Michigan Year founded: 1959 (Jackson Creek, as Indianhead) and 1977 (Black River Basin, as Blackjack) Pass affiliations: Legendary Pass (also includes varying access to Lutsen Mountains, Minnesota and Granite Peak, Wisconsin) * Gold: unlimited access * Silver: unlimited access * Bronze: unlimited midweek access with holiday blackouts The Indy Base Pass and Indy+ Pass also include two Snowriver days with no blackouts Closest neighboring ski areas: Big Powderhorn (:14), Mt. Zion Ski Hill (:17), Whitecap Mountains (:39); Porkies Winter Sports Complex (:48) Base elevation: * Jackson Creek: 1,212 feet * Black River Basin: 1,185 feet Summit elevation: * Jackson Creek: 1,750 feet * Black River Basin: 1,675 feet Vertical drop: * Jackson Creek: 538 feet * Black River Basin: 490 feet Skiable Acres: 400 (both ski areas combined) * Jackson Creek: 230 * Black River Basin: 170 Average annual snowfall: 200 inches Trail count: 71 trails, 17 glades, 3 terrain parks * Jackson Creek: 43 trails, 11 glades, 2 terrain parks * Black River Basin: 28 trails, 6 glades, 1 terrain park Lift count: 11 (1 six-pack, 6 doubles, 1 T-bar, 2 ropetows, 1 carpet) * Jackson Creek Summit: 6 (1 six-pack, 2 doubles, 1 T-bar, 1 ropetow, 1 carpet) * Black River Basin: 5 (4 doubles, 1 ropetow) View historic Snowriver trailmaps on skimap.org. Why I interviewed him I could tell this story as a Michigan story, as a young skier still awed by the far-off Upper Peninsula, that remote and wild and snowy realm Up North and Over the Bridge. I could tell it as a weather story, of glacial bumps bullseyed in the greatest of the Great Lakes snowbelts. Or as a story of a run-down complex tumbling into hyper-change, or one that activated the lifts in 1978 and just left them spinning. It’s an Indy Pass story, a ski area with better skiing than infrastructure that will give you a where’s-everyone-else kind of ski day. And it’s a Midwest Family Ski Resorts (MFSR) story, skiing’s version of a teardown, where nothing is sacred and everything will change and all you can do is stand back and watch the wrecking ball swing and the scaffolding go up the sides. Each of these is tempting, and the podcast is inevitably a mash-up. Writing about the Midwest will always be personal to me. The UP is that Great Otherplace, where the snow is bottomless and everything is cheap and everyone is somewhere else. Snowriver is both magnificently retro and badly in need of updating. And it is a good ski area and a solid addition to the Indy Pass. But, more than anything, the story of Snowriver is the story of MFSR and the Skinner family. There is no better ski area operator. They have equals but no betters. You know how when a certain actor or director gets involved in something, or when a certain athlete moves to a new team, you think, “Man, that’s gonna be good.” They project excellence. Everything they touch absorbs it. Did you know that one man, Shigeru Miyamoto, invented, among others, the Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, and Star Fox franchises, and has directed or produced every sequel of every game for four decades? Time calls him “the Spielberg of video games.” Well, the Skinners are the Spielberg – or perhaps the Miyamoto – of Midwest skiing. Everything they touch becomes the best version of that thing that it can achieve. What we talked about Snowriver’s new six-pack lift; why Snowriver removed three chairlifts but o

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: Who Brandon Swartz, General Manager of Attitash Mountain Resort, New Hampshire Recorded on November 6, 2023 About Attitash Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Vail Resorts Located in: Bartlett, New Hampshire Year founded: 1964 Pass 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 tiers Closest 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 feet Summit elevation: 2,350 feet at the top of Attitash Peak Vertical drop: 1,750 feet Skiable Acres: 311-plus Average annual snowfall: 120 inches Trail 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 him Ask 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

This podcast hit paid subscribers’ inboxes on Nov. 14. It dropped for free subscribers on Nov. 21. 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 Jim Vick, General Manager of Lutsen Mountains, Minnesota Recorded on October 30, 2023 About Lutsen Mountains Click here for a mountain stats overview Owned by: Midwest Family Ski Resorts Located in: Lutsen, Minnesota Year founded: 1948 Pass affiliations: * Legendary Gold Pass – unlimited access, no blackouts * Legendary Silver Pass – unlimited with 12 holiday and peak Saturday blackouts * Legendary Bronze Pass – unlimited weekdays with three Christmas week blackouts * Indy Pass – 2 days with 24 holiday and Saturday blackouts * Indy Plus Pass – 2 days with no blackouts Closest neighboring ski areas: Chester Bowl (1:44), Loch Lomond (1:48), Spirit Mountain (1:54), Giants Ridge (1:57), Mt. Baldy (2:11) Base elevation: 800 feet Summit elevation: 1,688 feet Vertical drop: 1,088 feet (825 feet lift-served) Skiable Acres: 1,000 Average annual snowfall: 120 inches Trail count: 95 (10% expert, 25% most difficult, 47% more difficult, 18% easiest) Lift count: 7 (1 eight-passenger gondola, 2 high-speed six-packs, 3 double chairs, 1 carpet) View historic Lutsen Mountains trailmaps on skimap.org. Why I interviewed him I often claim that Vail and Alterra have failed to appreciate Midwest skiing. I realize that this can be confusing. Vail Resorts owns 10 ski areas from Missouri to Ohio. Alterra’s Ikon Pass includes a small but meaningful presence in Northern Michigan. What the hell am I talking about here? Lutsen, while a regional standout and outlier, illuminates each company’s blind spots. In 2018, the newly formed Alterra Mountain Company looted the motley M.A.X. Pass roster for its best specimens, adding them to its Ikon Pass. Formed partly from the ashes of Intrawest, Alterra kept all of their own mountains and cherry-picked the best of Boyne and Powdr, leaving off Boyne’s Michigan mountains, Brighton, Summit at Snoqualmie, and Cypress (which Ikon later added); and Powdr’s Boreal, Lee Canyon, Pico, and Bachelor (Pico and Bachelor eventually made the team). Alterra also added Solitude and Crystal after purchasing them later in 2018, and, over time, Windham and Alyeska. Vail bought Triple Peaks (Crested Butte, Okemo, Sunapee), later that year, and added Resorts of the Canadian Rockies to its Epic Pass. But that left quite a few orphans, including Lutsen and sister mountain Granite Peak, which eventually joined the Indy Pass (which didn’t debut until 2019). All of which is technocratic background to set up this question: what the hell was Alterra thinking? In Lutsen and Granite Peak, Alterra had, ready to snatch, two of the largest, most well-cared-for, most built-up resorts between Vermont and Colorado. Midwest Family Ski Resorts CEO Charles Skinner is one of the most aggressive and capable ski area operators anywhere. These mountains, with their 700-plus-foot vertical drops, high-speed lifts, endless glade networks, and varied terrain deliver a big-mountain experience that has more in common with a mid-sized New England ski area than anything within several hundred miles in any direction. It’s like someone in a Colorado boardroom and a stack of spreadsheets didn’t bother looking past the ZIP Codes when deciding what to keep and what to discard. This is one of the great miscalculations in the story of skiing’s shift to multimountain pass hegemony. By overlooking Lutsen Mountains and Granite Peak in its earliest days, Alterra missed an opportunity to snatch enormous volumes of Ikon Pass sales across the Upper Midwest. Any Twin Cities skier (and there are a lot of them), would easily be able to calculate the value of an Ikon Pass that could deliver 10 or 14 days between Skinner’s two resorts, and additional days on that